Management & Regulation

GLOUCESTER, MA (March 19, 2009) – The Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, a group representing midwater trawl and purse seine fishermen from Maine to New Jersey, is seeking Amicus Curiae, or “Friend of the Court”, status in a lawsuit brought against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and the US Department of Commerce.

The suit was filed by Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, on behalf of the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association, based in Port Clyde, Maine. The suit alleges that NMFS violated the law in denying a petition to prohibit fishing vessels engaged in midwater trawling for herring from fishing in areas closed to groundfishing.

Read the Main News Direct story in full

 

WASHINGTON, DC (March 18, 2009) – The U.S. Senate confirmation of Jane Lubchenco, the celebrated and suspected icon of academia and the Pew philanthropies, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and adjudicate between the fisheries and the fishing industries has inched closer.

The Senate Commerce Committee which, on Feb. 12, conducted a congenial joint hearing on President Barack Obama’s matched nominations of Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, and Harvard physicist John Holdren to head the White House Office of Science and Technology, decided last week to send the nominations to the full Senate.

But it was not clear whether the move, made informally off the floor of the Senate, signaled that the hold — or holds — on the nominations had been removed, according to committee sources.

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full

 

GLOUCESTER, ME (March 17, 2009) – Over the objections of the local fishing community, the legislature and the governor of an island chain on the other side of the world, a 115,000-square-mile, fishing-free "marine protected area" was created by President George W. Bush two weeks before he left office in January.

The idea was formed within the Pew Charitable Trusts, the multi-billion dollar philanthropy created by the descendants of the founder of the Sun Oil Co. and used to advance disparate environmental campaigns, backed by scientific research and pseudo-scientific public relations aimed at ending "overfishing."

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full

 

NORTH ANDOVER, MA (March 16, 2009) – According to President Barack Obama, we have entered a new era, in which government will "make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology."

Well, maybe.

The president was speaking after he had abolished the previous Bush administration limits on government funding for embryonic stem cell research. But it is worth asking if that commitment to reject ideology will extend to other areas, specifically the regulation of the fishing industry.

Read The Eagle-Tribune opinion in full

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (March 17, 2009) – Times readers ought to thank Sam Frontiero and Russell A. Sherman for their willingness to go public with their concerns about the many problems facing Gloucester fishermen and the entire local seafood industry.

The two men’s letters to the editor appeared in the paper’s March 12 edition, Frontiero’s under the headline, "Case against the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction shows NMFS ‘vindictiveness,’" Sherman’s, "Thanks for marine lessons in democracy."

Sherman and Frontiero probably know as much about commercial fishing as anybody in the country. But what struck me about both letters was the two men’s sincerity in voicing their frustration over the complex, burdensome, and increasingly punitive regulations and enforcement policies of a government agency that appears to view local fishermen as second-class citizens, if not worse — as criminals whose every movement at sea must be carefully governed and monitored.

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full

 

NEWBURYPORT, MA (March 17, 2009) – It is called the National Marine Fisheries Service. But its function and agenda in recent years have been so predatory on the industry that it might as well be called the National Destruction of Marine Fisheries Service.

And if federal lawmakers do not rein in the NMFS, the agency will "succeed" in that twisted revision of its mission.

North Shore fishermen, who have been struggling for years under the weight of both draconian regulation and heavy-handed enforcement of the NMFS, got a bit of encouragement recently when Democratic leaders of the Massachusetts Legislature appealed to Congress for an independent investigation into NMFS.

Read the Newburyport Daily News Story in full

 

BANGOR, ME (March 16, 2009) – Government regulators are proposing a new set of fishing rules designed to protect and rebuild declining fish stocks in the North Atlantic. If approved they’ll go into effect May 1st.  As part of a collaboration with Northeast stations, Rhode Island Public Radio’s Megan Hall reports some fishermen say the restrictions would cripple their industry.

Early one morning fisherman Chris Brown stands on the deck of his 54-foot trawler next to a dock in Galilee, Rhode Island.  He’s wearing orange waterproof overalls and pulling large buckets of fish out of the bottom of the boat. Brown’s spent the past three days south of Block Island catching different types of groundfish, including yellow-tail flounder and cod, the type of fish he wouldn’t be able to catch under a proposed new set of fishing rules.

Listen to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network story in full

 

THE INTERNET (March 14, 2009) – So, our new President looks for someone to nominate as the new head of NOAA.   Maybe things will change for the better soon?

Not likely.  The new nominee is Dr. Janet Lubchenco.  Her nomination stalled for a bit in the Senate but, in a move typical of old school Washington, DC,  her nomination (along with that of the Nominee to head The Office of Science and Technology Policy)  was moved right along in an unannounced closed door session of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Read the "Fishing Fool" blog commentary in full

 

WASHINGTON, DC (March 13, 2009) – This is the first in a regular series of columns to be presented by Dr. Jim Balsiger, acting assistant administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

I want to thank Gloucester Daily Times Editor Ray Lamont and fishing/waterfront reporter Richard Gaines for meeting with Regional Administrator Pat Kurkul and me last week at the Times as the winter storm subsided.

I am also grateful to the paper for raising the groundfish issue to the public, and I appreciate this chance to write a column that will appear every two weeks to share NOAA’s perspective and answer questions.

Read the column in full in the Gloucester Daily Times

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (March 14, 2009) – Three weeks ago today, we presented a rare bird in the newspaper business, a front-page editorial.

That’s generally "outside the box" when it comes to traditional journalism. Editorials, letters to the editor and opinion columns are almost always confined to the Opinion page, so that they’re not confused with news reporting.

But in this case, we felt the heavy-handed actions of the National Marine Fisheries Service against the Gloucester Seafood Auction were indeed tantamount to a declaration of war on the industry in Gloucester and elsewhere — and that, while clearly marked as an "editorial," it merited Page 1 attention.

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full