Washington

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — October 26, 2012 — The Obama administration, through its Commerce Department and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has declined to respond to inquiries as to whether it would release before the Nov. 6 election a special investigator’s set of case studies into allegations of abuse and excesses against American fishermen by federal law enforcers still insulated and protected by top Commerce and NOAA officials.

Sen. Scott Brown and his opponent, Democrat Elizabeth Warren, also each issued new statements to the Times this week urging the release of the report.

Brown has evolved in his three years in the Senate into a fierce critic of NOAA fisheries policy generally and especially law enforcement. Evincing a penchant for bipartisanship, he convinced his colleague, Democratic Sen. Tom Carper, to bring the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management that he chairs to hold a field hearing in Boston. The Carper subcommittee gave Brown the stage — at Boston’s Faneuil Hall — to ask Lubchenco’s top fisheries assistant, “What does it take to get fired at NOAA?”

“This report has been done for months and the delay is inexcusable,” Brown said Thursday in an email to the Times. “I have repeatedly asked for this report to be released and will continue to do so.”

“The Department of Commerce should immediately release Special Master Swartwood’s final report,” Warren said in an email or her own. “Fishermen who were intimidated, abused, and harmed by NOAA law enforcement need to be cleared, and they should receive the compensation they are due. The public also has a right to this important information, so appropriate changes can be made to ensure that there will be no further unfair enforcement practices.”

In an email, Congressman John Tierney said, “It is outrageous that repeated requests made by me and my colleagues for release of the most recent report by the Special Master have fallen on deaf ears.”

“As I reiterated in my last letter to Acting Secretary Blank, fishermen and the community have waited long enough for answers,” said Tierney, who has joined with Brown and Congressman Barney Frank, as well as North Carolina Republican Rep. Walter Jones, in calling for Lubchenco’s dismissal. Tierney represents Cape Ann; Frank’s district includes New Bedford, Jones the Outer Banks of North Carolina

Within the delegation, Kerry has maintained cordial diplomatic relations with Lubchenco. His press office issued a statement at the start of the month asserting the importance of getting Swartwood II released “at the earliest possible date.” But his spokeswoman Jodi Seth addded that “it is just as important that it be comprehensive. Sen. Kerry has been assured that the administration has been working hard to meet both those standards.”

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

October 23, 2012 — On Monday, Congress was called on by a leading environmental organization to address the increasing threat to sea life that has been caused by decades of warming ocean temperatures and C02 pollution.

The action by Center for Biological Diversity included submitting a detailed letter to the House of Natural Resources Committee, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, and the Senate Environmental and Public Works Committee.

The Center’s letter asked for a hearing focused on solutions that would curb carbon pollution, which threatens fish, corals, sea otters and other marine life; from the smallest microbes to the largest whales.

Moreover, ocean acidification threatens the world’s shellfish and seafood supply, which many people around the globe depend on for food and income.

Ocean acidification, referred to by scientists as the evil spawn of global warming— because emissions from burning coal and fossil fuels get trapped in the atmosphere— is caused when too much carbon dioxide is absorbed into the world’s seas and oceans.

 

Read the full story in the Examiner

 

 

 

 

October 16, 2012 — The apparent widespread fraud involving seafood labeling practices around ports of entry for imported fish poses a serious health risk for some, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration needs to step up enforcement of this food, says a longtime U.S. Senator.

“It is unacceptable that proven fraud is occurring on such a widespread basis,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, wrote Monday in a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg. “Seafood fraud is not only deceptive marketing, but it can also pose serious health concerns, particularly for pregnant women seeking to limit exposure to heavy metals or individuals with serious allergies to certain types of fish.”

FDA has recognized seafood fraud as a problem since at least 1991.

“Seafood is a high-value product and it is a particularly attractive target for fraud,” says the agency’s Seafood Fraud website, which offers both guidance for the industry and tips on identifying certain fraudulent practices.

Boxer’s pressure on FDA is over a study released in April 2012 by Oceana, a world ocean conservation group that often takes on projects to draw consumer interest into its larger agenda to protect oceans. For the study, Oceana researchers in 2011 and 2012 collected and tested 119 seafood samples from grocery stores, restaurants and sushi bars.

 

Read the full story on Food Safety News

 

 

 

 

 

 

October 15, 2012 — Add another powerful political voice urging the Food and Drug Administration to better combat rampant seafood mislabeling in restaurants and stores.

This time, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California has written a strongly worded letter to FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg asking her to better deal with alarmingly high incidences of seafood fraud. Other politicians, including U.S. Representative Ed Markey of Massachusetts who has co-authored a sweeping bill to stop mislabeling, have made similar pleas to the agency.

“It is unacceptable that proven fraud is occurring on such a widespread basis,’’ the Democrat wrote. “Seafood fraud is not only deceptive marketing, but it can also pose serious health concerns, particularly for pregnant women seeking to limit exposure to heavy metals or individuals with serious allergies to certain types of fish.”

The Boston Globe published a series on seafood mislabeling last year called “Fishy Business”. The five-month investigation found that Massachusetts consumers routinely and unknowingly overpay for less desirable fish. The Globe targeted fish most likely to be mislabeled from more than 100 restaurants, grocery stores, and seafood markets and DNA tested them. The investigated found that 48 percent of 183 samples turned out to be a different species than what was advertised.

Oceana, an environmental advocacy group, has been working to end seafood fraud and has also DNA-tested fish collected from numerous grocery stores, restaurants and sushi venues across the country. In Miami and Fort Lauderdale, 31 percent of the seafood tested by the group was mislabeled. In Los Angeles and Orange counties, 55 percent of the seafood tested was mislabeled.

 

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — October 13, 2012 — Congressman John Tierney Friday pressed Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank to release what is widely believed within industry and legal circles to be an explosive set of 66 case studies into possible law enforcement abuses of the fishing industry completed and delivered by a special judicial master nearly seven months ago.

But neither Blank, Cameron Kerry, general counsel for the Commerce Department, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco nor her chief counsel Lois Schiffer responded to telephone and email queries from the Times for comment on the delay in releasing the second report completed by Special Master Charles B. Swartwood III.

“The livelihood of many fishermen will be seriously impacted by the information gathered and analyzed in the special master’s report, as the fines issued by the Offi e of Law Enforcement have already limited the ability of many fishermen to continue fishing,” wrote Tierney, whose district includes Cape Ann.

The letter indicates it closely follows a telephone conversation between the two.

The refusal of the administration to issue the second Swartwood report has added to the alienation and cynicism of the fishing industry, which won vindication for years of complaints in the earlier Swartwood report. But even after a Cabinet level apology to 11 of the most abused victims of law enforcement excess and the payment of more than $650,000 in reparations, the government continued to be perceived as arrogant and patronizing. And the decision by Lubchenco to protect the careers of all those involved in the abuse of fishermen’s rights helped reinforce the alienation.

Also Friday, former New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, who helped convince then Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to authorize a second set of case studies by Swartwood, compared the government’s unexplained, unreleased report to an “abscess” that grows in pressure and pain until lanced.

“This is troubling to say the least,” said Lang, who left office last year and now is practicing law in New Bedford. “This is the same agency that, when I did a F.O.I.A. (Freedom of Information Request), they sent us one tenth of the eligible material and came up with every possible explanation for why they could not (comply).

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

BOSTON (AP) — October 6, 2012 — The law that governs the nation’s fisheries was passed 36 years ago to oust foreign boats working in U.S. waters. Today, New England fishermen wonder if it will soon oust them.

Because of certain controversial mandates in the law, the fishermen face colossal cuts in how much they’re allowed to catch in 2013. Lawmakers are pushing a $100 million aid package just to sustain the fleet.

The law has become ‘‘an impediment to keeping the fishing industry alive,’’ said Scituate fisherman Frank Mirachi

Drew Minkiewicz, a former U.S. Senate staffer who worked on the 2007 fishery law reauthorization, recalled the push to ‘‘immediately’’ end overfishing came amid concerns regulators were forever delaying needed cuts.

The change requires, and enforces, precisely determined catch limits during a fish’s rebuilding period. But scientific projections of the health of some stocks have since proven way off, and painful adjustments were needed to keep the fish in its rebuilding track.

For instance, scientists believed in 2008 that Gulf of Maine cod stocks were robust. Today, cod’s recovery is seen as so weak that the huge cut became unavoidable.

‘‘There was a lot more confidence in the science than there should have been, that is fair to say,’’ Minkiewicz said.

Among the estimated cuts next year: 72 percent to Gulf of Maine cod, 70 percent to Georges Bank cod and 51 percent to Georges Bank yellowtail flounder.

But several species in line for the biggest cuts have actually grown since 2007, fisheries scientist Steve Cadrin noted. The Gulf of Maine cod, for instance, has ticked up from about 10,800 metric tons worth of spawning age fish in 2007 to 11,900 metric tons in 2010.

He also finds absurdity in regulations designed to save the industry that could actually enact industry-killing cuts.

‘‘You've now come full circle, and it’s not making sense anymore,’’ said Cadrin, a University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth researcher.

 

Read the full story by the Associated Press in the Boston Globe 

 

 

October 4, 2012 — It's been a tumultuous few years for marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, the head of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She's confronted an unprecedented and politically sensitive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, struggled to keep expensive satellite programs on track, and butted heads with Congress, which sank her efforts to reorganize NOAA's climate science programs and appoint the agency's first chief scientist in nearly 2 decades. Still, Lubchenco says she'd like to keep her job if President Barack Obama is reelected in November.

"There is so much more yet to do, and I want to do everything possible to make [it] happen," she tells ScienceInsider. ScienceInsider traveled to Monterey, California, last week to attend a scientific conference on ocean acidification, where this wide-ranging interview with Lubchenco took place.

In addition to discussing NOAA's budget and infrastructure challenges, Lubchenco revealed that she's hoping to soon fill the agency's long-empty chief scientist slot, which Congress recently removed from a list of positions requiring confirmation by the Senate. "I really want to fill that position," she says. "I can't imagine a science agency not having a chief scientist." The White House could announce the appointment as early as this month, she added, but declined to give any hints. Her initial pick to fill the position, geochemist Scott Doney of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, stepped aside this past January after Senator David Vitter (R-LA) blocked a vote on his nomination as a result of an unrelated dispute with the Obama Administration.

In the meantime, Lubchenco says she's relieved that a temporary spending measure that Congress approved last month gives NOAA special permission to move ahead with two satellite systems. The measure—called a continuing resolution—essentially freezes spending for most government programs for 6 months. But it allows NOAA to proceed with a planned ramp-up in spending on its $12 billion Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), which needs $916 million in fiscal year 2013 to stay on track to launch in 2017. The agency will also be able to forge ahead with its Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R program, which was in line to get a $200 million boost, to $802 million.

The arrangement reflects a bipartisan desire to avoid further delays in the two programs, which will provide critical data to weather forecasters, disaster planners, and climate scientists, Lubchenco says. "Normally NOAA would be building either a geostationary system or a polar orbiting system," but "for historical reasons, we are doing both right now," she says. "That is a lot of money."

 

Read the full story at Science Insider

 

 

October 2, 2012 — Acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank has asked her staff “to gather more information regarding issues identified” in the 554-page report on 66 case studies into alleged abuse of the fishing industry by NOAA law enforcers, delivered about seven months ago by Special Master Charles B. Swartwood III.

”The acting secretary will use that information to finalize her decision memorandum,” Blank’s press secretary, Marni Goldberg, said in an email to the Times last week.

Goldberg also said Blank is “completing her analysis” of the second Swartwood report, but she did not respond to questions about the nature of staff inquiry, nor did she indicate when the report would be published, or whether the public would be given the full report as written, altered only with redacted material considered non germane or private. That’s how the first Swartwood report arrived April 2011 along with a later Cabinet level apology and more than $650,000 in reparations for the most egregious victims of justice miscarried by NOAA agents and litigators.

The redactions of the first Swartwood report became controversial in a number of places, none more so than p. 129. There, nearly five consecutive lines of Swartwood’s narrative were redacted ahead of the final sentence of his paragraph in which he wrote: “I find this email to be credible evidence that money was NOAA’s motivating objective in this case.” The status of the latest report continued to draw questions Monday.”It’s important that the report be released at the earliest date possible,” said Jodi Seth, spokeswoman for Sen. John Kerry, whose brother Cameron Kerry is general counsel for the Commerce Department. “But it’s just as important that it be comprehensive. Sen. Kerry has been assured that the administration has been working hard to meet both those standards.”

”At this point, the question might be whether or not there will be a report released,” said Mayor Carolyn Kirk. “I don’t mind waiting as long as the report is ultimately released.” New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell took the issue a step farther regarding any added information the Commerce Department may include.”The routine overreaching by NOAA’s General Counsel’s Office deepened the mistrust between the government and the commercial fishing community,” Mitchell said. “The longer NOAA waits to come clean with the second Swartwood report, the more difficult it will be for NOAA to re-establish a productive dialogue with fishermen.”

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

September 26, 2012 — The following was released by the office of Sen. John Kerry.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) applauded an announcement from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Northeast Regional Administrator John Bullard that will shift the closure date of the gillnet fishery to protect harbor porpoises. Previously scheduled to close October 1, NOAA today announced that the closure would be shifted to February when the economic impact on fishermen would be greatly reduced.
 
Reversing its previous denial for a date change, NOAA’s announcement comes on the heels of appeals from the Northeast Seafood Coalition, Senator Kerry and several members of Northeast congressional delegations for regulators to meet with the fishing industry representatives and review a proposal that would offer better protection to harbor porpoises while reducing the economic hardship on fishermen.
 
“We were days away from trouble, and we got the relief we asked for, and that’s important. Because we established an open dialogue between fishermen and regulators, we achieved a better outcome for our fishermen. By keeping the gillnet fishery open this fall, fishing boats will be on the water for one of the busiest seasons, and we can save fishing families and communities from tighter budgets and undue pain,” said Sen. Kerry. “We know regulators must be smarter in the way they impose new rules so they don’t cause unnecessary burden. Today’s announcement is an example of how fisherman and government can work together to do just that.”
 
Kerry, joined by members of the Massachusetts delegation and other Northeast states, called on NOAA to approve these changes in a September 6, 2012 letter to Acting Assistant Administrator Samuel D. Rauch.

 

 

WASHINGTON — September 25, 2012 — Sen. John Kerry is calling on the National Marine Fisheries Service to organize a meeting with NOAA scientists and Northeast experts and fishermen to discuss groundfish stock assessments.

"I can't stress enough how important it is that fishermen who fish our waters every day are at the table for the discussions that shape rules that shape their economic fortunes," Kerry, D-Mass., said Monday after sending a letter to Samuel D. Rauch, acting assistant administrator for fisheries. "Northeast fishermen have a vested interest in making the system work. The jobs of more than 77,000 folks in Massachusetts depend on the fishing industry and my job is to make the rules of the road work for them from start to finish."

In a press release accompanying the letter, Kerry said that "by engaging local scientists, members of the New England Fisheries Management Council and our fishermen to discuss the complexities of accurately assessing stocks, regulators will gain a more complete picture of the realities of the fishing industry in Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine."

In the letter, Kerry went on to say that "it is critical that NOAA provide fishermen and others the opportunity to engage in the process, provide feedback, and share ideas about existing methods" used by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other federal agencies "and how they can be improved."

 

Read the full article at South Coast Today