Management & Regulation

The Obama administration is launching a significant new effort to reach out to marine recreational fishermen, an economically and politically powerful group that has previously felt shut out by the new administration.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the main federal agency overseeing ocean and fisheries policy, has rolled out a series of new initiatives in the past month aimed at raising the profile of recreational fishing within the agency and calming some of the hostile waters between fishermen and the administration. NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco created a new post for a high-level national policy adviser for recreational fishing, reorganized regional offices to put greater emphasis on sportfishing and created a new advisory panel on the issue.

And in its most visible move, the administration is hosting hundreds of fishermen this weekend in Alexandria, Va., for a national summit on recreational saltwater fishing.

The efforts are an attempt to reach out to a vast group of more than 15 million saltwater recreational fishermen who pump more than $31 billion into the economy each year and who could pose significant challenges as NOAA attempts to rebuild depleted fish stocks.

Read the complete story at The New York Times.

NEW BEDFORD — Four congressmen, including two from Massachusetts, on Friday asked the administrator of NOAA to dramatically ramp up her efforts to overhaul the agency's fisheries Office of Law Enforcement, specifically asking that she exclude the No. 2 law enforcement official from the reform effort.

The letter comes days after U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, revealed that the former head of NOAA law enforcement shredded up to 80 percent of his own files while being investigated by the Commerce Department's inspector general last year. That official, Dale Jones, was forced out of the job earlier this month in a hailstorm of criticism, but NOAA has never revealed whether he was fired, transferred or put on leave.

Kucinich, chairman of the House Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, threw a spotlight on Mark Spurrier, Jones' deputy, for questionable conduct in office and during the investigation, including document shredding. He said, "Spurrier's stated reasons changed considerably to explain why he, unlike Jones, director of OLE, did not participate in the inappropriate shredding of documents."

A source confirmed that Kucinich's committee has obtained from NOAA the full report of the inspector general, which documented years of anecdotal reports of arbitrary and even malicious prosecution of fishermen, especially in the Northeast. But the report hasn't yet been released to other members of Congress or the public.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

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WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Ranking Member on the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard yesterday led a group of 16 U.S. Senators in a letter urging the Chairman and Ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science to increase funding to increase the President’s Fiscal Year 2011 request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)by $47 million to fully invest in the science that supports the nation’s fisheries.

“Science is the foundation upon which sustainable fisheries must be constructed,” said Senator Snowe.  “The level of funding for fisheries science called for in the President’s budget request for fiscal year 2011 is simply insufficient to support the hard-working fishermen who are the backbone of our coastal economy.  Yesterday, the last can of sardines rolled off the production line in a century old fish processing plant and today 128 people are out of work because of it.  The Stinson cannery did not close because the resource is overfished, but because we do not have enough confidence in our stock assessments to know how much fish we can catch.  Continuing to underfund our fisheries science programs will exacerbate this fundamental flaw in the system and cost more employees their jobs.”

The lawmakers said the current budget fails to adequately invest in fundamental fishing programs and, in some cases, reduces funding from the Fiscal Year 2010 levels.  Specifically, the group requested the Subcommittee increase funding in the areas of: stock assessments, cooperative research, fisheries statistics, fisheries observers and survey and monitoring projects.

“These increased investments will result in a higher degree of confidence in our stock assessments, which will quickly pay dividends by reducing the amount of time it will take our fisheries to rebuild, and in some cases, allowing higher catch levels in the very near term,” wrote the lawmakers.

The letter specifically calls for an addition of $10 million to the cooperative research budget. Cooperative research is science conducted in conjunction with fishermen.  This symbiotic effort allows fishermen to better understand the precise needs of scientists, and allows scientists to take advantage of fishermen’s knowledge in what is widely considered a win-win that leads to better data and an improved relationship among industry members, scientists, and regulators.

“As I discussed with Dr. Lubchenco during our NOAA budget hearing last month, if NOAA is serious about rebuilding the climate of trust between regulators and fishermen, cooperative research funding must be maintained,” added Senator Snowe.

Along with Senator Snowe, the letter was signed by her colleagues Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), John Kerry (D-Mass), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.); Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D- R.I.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), George LeMieux (R-Fla.), Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont).

Signed copy of the letter is attached.

Washington, D.C. – Friday, April 16, 2010, U.S. Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) and colleagues Barney Frank (MA-4), John Tierney (MA-6) and Mike McIntyre (NC-7) sent a letter to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Administrator Jane Lubchenco regarding her plan to fix the systemic problems with NOAA Fisheries Law Enforcement identified by the recent U.S. Department of Commerce Inspector General investigation.  That plan, laid out in a March memo to Inspector General Todd Zinser, included many proposals to help restore accountability to NOAA law enforcement.  However, Jones and his colleagues believe several elements of the plan need to be improved.  Their letter makes the case that the NOAA personnel most responsible for the problems identified in the IG report should not be involved in crafting reforms; that NOAA’s workforce realignment should be rolled out nationally, not just on a pilot basis in one region; and that pending enforcement cases should be reviewed before further action is taken on them.   

The text of the letter follows:

“Thank you for your March 2010 memo to Department of Commerce Inspector General (IG) Todd Zinser outlining your plan to fix the systemic problems identified in the IG’s recent investigation of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) fisheries law enforcement operation.  Your continued attention to this issue is greatly appreciated.  

We believe many of your proposals will improve accountability and transparency in the enforcement of our nation’s fishing laws.  However, we are concerned that elements of your plan do not adequately address major problems identified by the Inspector General, and we respectfully request that you reevaluate those elements.

First, one of the IG’s principal findings was that the workforce composition of the agency’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) should be realigned to better accomplish its mission, which is “primarily regulatory”, not criminal.  The IG found the number of criminal investigators “disproportionate to agency function and operational need, particularly compared with other agencies with similar mission profiles and enforcement profiles (e.g. EPA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).”  That conclusion was based on the fact that over 90 percent of the OLE workforce are criminal investigators, while only 2 percent of its caseload is criminal.

We believe your plan to address this finding could be improved in the following respects, and we strongly urge you to address these issues:

1.    According to Appendix #9 of your memo to the IG, Mark Spurrier – Deputy Director of OLE, is one of three team members selected to review and realign OLE’s workforce.  Given that OLE leadership under Dale Jones played a key role in creating the existing workforce imbalance and was principally involved in many other issues identified in the IG report, we believe it is entirely inappropriate for Mark Spurrier or any senior OLE officials who worked under Director Jones to play any role in restructuring OLE.

2.   According to your memo to the IG, workforce realignment will be done on a pilot basis in one region, and then based on results of the pilot, expanded nationwide.  Given the severity of the workforce imbalance, addressing this issue on a pilot basis is inadequate.  There is no reason for fishermen in one region to benefit from realignment while the rest of the country suffers under the existing structure.  Realignment should occur simultaneously nationwide.   
         
Second, the IG report found many problems with NOAA Fisheries’ Office of General Counsel (GCEL), but was particularly critical of GCEL operations in the Northeast Region.  This finding confirmed years of anecdotal evidence from fishermen under the jurisdiction of that office.  The IG found Northeast Region fine assessments “inconsistent with those of the other five regions”, and had the appearance of being “arbitrary”.  Specifically, “initial fine assessments totaled nearly $5.5 million, an amount two-and-a-half times greater than the second highest region, and about five times greater than the other four regions.”  Furthermore, the Northeast had “the greatest percentage reduction from assessed to settled fine amounts (approximately $5.5 million assessed to approximately $1.6 million settled – a nearly 70-percent reduction).”  Clearly, NOAA GCEL-Northeast has a problem.

We are encouraged by many aspects of your plan to fix GCEL.  However, we are very concerned that responsibility for crucial reforms has been designated to individuals who led the office most responsible for the existing problems; namely, the Northeast region.  According to Appendix #9 of your memo, several people within GCEL-Northeast are named to lead teams tasked with revising GCEL’s penalty schedules, penalty assessment guidance policies and procedural regulations, and with devising a system of providing explanatory notes to case files.  It would seem inappropriate for these individuals to be involved in these processes at this time until the on-going investigations are complete, and we strongly encourage you to replace them with other qualified GCEL personnel from outside the Northeast region.

Finally, we are disappointed that your plan did not include a commitment to review pending enforcement cases.  Given the depth of problems identified by the Inspector General, there is little confidence that NOAA has prosecuted fisheries cases fairly.  It is imperative that all pending enforcement cases be subject to a thorough review before further action is taken.   At the very least, the most egregious cases should be referred to an independent third party for a thorough review to ensure that the defendants were not unjustly prosecuted.

Again, thank you for commitment to fixing the issues that have plagued our nation’s fisheries law enforcement, and for your consideration of these requests.”

For additional information, please contact Catherine Fodor in Congressman Jones’ office at (202) 225-3415.

Read the letter here.