January 30, 2013 — If only more NOAA personnel could be as honest and blunt as Bullard, as much as it might hurt. People can take bad news from those they respect and Bullard is saying that the whole regulatory world where he works needs a rethink. There are scientists who feel as he does, who think the whole process has become impossibly complicated and, now we know, ineffective and even damaging.
This feels like a good place to start to rebuild.
Fishermen in the Northeast — and everywhere else, for that matter — have never enjoyed the kind of political clout that, say, Midwestern farmers do.
So it is with mixed feelings that we see Sen. John Kerry stepping from that job to the post of Secretary of State. It's nice to see that Massachusetts connection, and congratulations to him.
But he's taking with him his influence over federal fishery policies, and years of accumulated knowledge and experience. Kerry might have been a little late to the fishery party but once he engaged federal regulators, he stayed with it until the very end, in a letter last week asking NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard for a rethink of his denial of a fishing industry appeal over cod and haddock quotas.
We've lost Barney Frank, too, upon his retirement. Maine — and the rest of New England — lost Sen. Olympia Snowe.
Meanwhile, sophomore U.S. Rep. Bill Keating has embraced fishing issues but he has much to learn.
On the plus side, newly elected U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren hired New Bedford native Bruno Freitas, who was Frank's chief of staff. That's big, and gives us hope. And the fact that she co-signed Kerry's letter is a sign she's on board.
But the list of politicians who are fishery activists isn't long. UMass Dartmouth political science professor Kenneth Manning observed that "fishing is very much a regional economic activity of great importance to the city of New Bedford. But go 50 miles away inland and it's completely off the radar screen.
Read the full opinion piece by Steve Urbon in the New Bedford Standard Times