Washington

BOSTON — NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco told a Senate Commerce Committee field hearing today that, while there is a "long way to go" in rebuilding trust with the fishing community, "we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel."

But, except perhaps for her assistant administrator Eric Schwaab — who sat next to Lubchenco during an often tense 2 1/2-hour State House hearing organized by Sen. John Kerry — there was little evidence that anyone else either on the panel of six federal lawmakers or among stakeholder-witnesses spied the same light.

Congressmen John Tierney, Barney Frank and Sen. Scott Brown spoke of Lubchenco and her administration as a lost cause, both before and after she and Schwaab departed the State House hearing room just before Brian Rothschild, the distinguished scientist at University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, delivered his three-minute oral statement at the end of the second panel.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A congressional hearing in Boston today to examine the impact of new regulations on Massachusetts ground fishermen comes at a critical time for the industry, when reports show a decline in the number of fishermen and a larger portion of the annual catch being hauled in by a small concentration of boats.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry will be joined on a panel by his Republican counterpart Scott Brown, along with Democratic Reps. Barney Frank, John Tierney, Stephen Lynch and William Keating, all Massachusetts members of Congress. Panelists will question fishermen, regulators and Jane Lubchenco, chief administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fishery scientists Brian J. Rothschild and Steve Cadrin from UMass Dartmouth's School for Marine Science and Technology will also testify, along with the chairman of the New England Fisheries Management Council.

"There are things that can be done right now to start alleviating the hardships our fisherman are facing," Kerry wrote in an email to The Standard-Times. "That's what the hearing on Monday is all about. It's about seeing what we can do now to start bridging the gap between good intentions and real changes our fisherman can see in their paychecks and at the docks."

The hearing comes as fishery management in New England is in trouble, and Lubchenco feels increasing pressure to do something about it.

An independent review, commissioned by NOAA and released last April, concluded that the entire regulatory process is "beset with problems and in need of urgent reform."

Allowing boats to carry more of their unused quota over to the next fishing year was an immediate change they recommended. Currently that is limited to 10 percent, even on such stocks as haddock, which are at historically high levels.

Reducing the costs of onboard observers was singled out as the key issue, however. Observer coverage is now being funded by the federal government. When the 2012 fishing year begins on May 1, payment becomes the boat owner's responsibility. With costs as high as $675 per day for an observer, some fishermen could be forced out of business. Observers in catch share programs in other parts of the country typically cost around $365 per day, the senators noted.

Even conservation groups, such as the Environmental Defense Fund, which has clashed with the industry in the past, have expressed public support for these measures.

Read the story by Don Cuddy in the Standard-Times

"I firmly believe that recovering the iconic fisheries in New England is paramount," Jane Lubchenco, who's been the nation's ocean chief since March 2009, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "The old, dark days are not something anyone wants to continue."

Lubchenco said she favored limits on how much catch one fishing entity can control so that larger fishing interests can't force small boats out of the industry. She also wanted help for fishermen facing millions in looming costs under the new system. She dismissed the notion that her past ties to environmentalists puts her at odds with the fishermen who disagree with them.

"I have a long-standing great relationship with fishermen as well as environmental groups, and I know they are not at polar opposite ends," she said.

"There's light at the end of the tunnel, but it's a long tunnel," she said.

Lubchenco said NOAA has realized the new system lacks "checks and balances" to stop a few entities from controlling most of the fishery. She said she favors putting caps, so-called accumulation limits, on how much any single fishing interest can control and has pushed regional managers to quickly decide what those limits should be.

"I think it is in the best interests of the region to have a lot of fishermen," Lubchenco said. "This is a cultural identity of the region, and it's valuable for that reason."

Lubchenco has been criticized for saying the fleet needed to be substantially reduced to relieve pressure on fish stocks, but last week she said reducing the fleet is not her goal.

"I do not know what the size of the fishery should be," she said. "It is not our goal to have anything other than a diverse fleet that is sustainable."

She also said it's important to find a way to help fishermen pay the millions in potentially crushing costs for at-sea monitors, which are required under the new system to track the catch and ensure fishermen are staying within the set limits. The costs were covered by the federal government in the first two years of the new system, but fishermen look to be on their own in 2012.

"It's a very real concern that we share with fishermen," she said. "I don't know what the answer is. I just know we need to figure that out."

Read the complete story from by The AP at the Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A long-promised U.S. Senate Commerce Committee hearing into regional fisheries policy, organized by Sen. John Kerry and featuring Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and a bipartisan panel of senators and representatives, will be held Monday morning at the State House in Boston.

The hearing is expected to focus on the impact on the fishing industry of the new catch share management regimen which began in May 2010, partially transmuting into a commodity market which has brought consolidation and accelerated the maldistribution of equity.

Lubchenco will be faced with questions from Kerry, U.S. Sens. Scott Brown and Mark Begich, an Alaska Democrat who chairs the Commerce Committee, along with Congressmen John Tierney, who represents Cape Ann, Barney Frank, who represents New Bedford, and William Keating and Stephen Lynch, who represent the South Shore and Cape Cod respectively.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Rep Frank Pallone [D-6] on Thursday reintroduced a bill that would loosen a number of fisheries regulations that anglers have long decried as too harsh.

Pallone's Flexibility and Access in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2011 would:

    •    Extend the authorized time period for rebuilding certain fisheries;
    •    Call on government scientific and statistical committees to provide regional fishery management councils.

The fisheries are "overfished," which means anglers take more fish than the government has allowed.

Under the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management Act, the federal law which currently governs fisheries management, certain fish species were placed in rigid, 10-year timetables to reach a certain stock level, measured in pounds.

Anglers have long complained that while some species such as summer flounder have reached record high stock levels in recent years, fishing could be shut down or heavily regulated because a target number has not been reached.

Read the complete story from The Manasaquan-Belmar Patch

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Senator John Kerry’s office announced that the October 3rd hearing, regarding the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), will be located at the Massachusetts State House, in Boston, at 9 am. Senator Kerry has invited Senator Scott Brown, Mayor Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester, Mayor Scott Lang of New Bedford, as well as various US congressmen from Massachusetts to attend.

Senator Kerry’s influence with the Obama administration appears to have swayed chief administrator of NOAA, Dr Jane Lubchenco, to agree to testify. Dr Lubchenco declined an invitation to appear before Senator Scott Brown and Senator Tom Carper’s June 20th hearing at Faneuil Hall. That hearing featured revelations of wide spread malfeasance and possibly criminal conduct by members of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE).

Highlights from the June 20th hearing:

An independent audit, by KPMG, was unable to account for some $38,000,000 of the nearly $100,000,000 that agents had seized from New England fishermen. This was partially due to sloppy accounting and partially due to the former director of the OLE, Dale Jones Jr, orchestrating the shredding of approximately 75% of the documents relevant to an ongoing Inspector General investigation from Todd Zinser. Dale Jones Jr retains employment with NOAA and has not been prosecuted for any of his conduct. Instead, Dale Jones Jr was transferred to the Gulf of Mexico to deal with payouts related to BP and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill along with Charles Juliand. Juliand was heavily criticized in Zinser’s IG report for his overzealous seizures and intemperate prosecutions.

Read the complete story from Americans for Forfeiture Reform.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A week after NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco met privately with 16 environmental organizations to discuss fisheries issues, the Commerce Department inspector general spent a day in New Bedford gauging whether to open an investigation in alleged untoward influences of the so-called "greens" on fisheries and ocean governance.

The petition for the probe was penned in August by Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, based largely on charges by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang that fisheries policy for years has been driven by non-government organizations with agendas to protect fish from fishermen.

The argument is that the influence has led to policies that are weakening the fishing industry and are at odds with the Magnuson-Stevens Act's mandate to maximizing economic output while conserving the resource.

Among the 16 groups at the meeting were 10 which had recently received grant funding from at least one of four mega foundations pursuing agendas to limit or more aggressively regulate fishing or privatize and commodify the common wealth resource.
The groups in the room last week with NOAA chief Lubchenco and her staff included: the Environmental Defense Fund, the primary driver behind catch shares; American Rivers, Center For American Progress, Environmental Law Institute, MCBI, Marine Fish Conservation Network, Mission Blue, National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, Natural Resources Defense Council, Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, Pew Environment Group, Restore America's Estuaries, Seaweb, The Nature Conservancy and the World Wildlife Fund.

"(These groups) are the architects of the bureaucratic agenda and overreach," Lang said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Lang's comments to the Times came after Inspector General Todd Zinser had completed his day of informal fact-finding and interviewing in New Bedford. Among those who briefed Zinser and his staff was Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who shares Lang's theory and concerns.

Lang said NOAA's close coordination with the environmental nonprofits and cross pollination via recruitment from their ranks "blurred the line between NOAA's agenda and the NGOs (non-government organizations)."

Since Lubchenco, who had served on the EDF board, became NOAA's administrator in early 2009, Lang, Frank, Tierney and Kirk have led a growing industry resistance to what Lang calls "improper influence."

Zinser told the Times he would speak with Tierney, who represents the ports of the North Shore, and Frank, whose district includes New Bedford and Fairhaven, before deciding on whether to begin an investigation.

Andy Winer, NOAA's director of external affairs who participated, described the meeting as an opportunity to satisfy numerous requests for face time with Lubchenco.

Winer said the meeting informally honed in on three topics: illegal fishing in international waters, data poor stocks and how to manage them, and problems emerging from the 2006 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

Winer said multiple priorities were discussed in an informal, two-hour roundtable at the offices of the Ocean Conservancy, where Margaret Spring, Lubchenco's chief of staff, previously had been director of marine programs.

No decisions were made at the meeting, but Lubchenco and her team left with food for thought, Winer said.

Ellen Bolen, Ocean Conservancy's associate director of government policy, provided a similar briefing to the Times.

Still, the fact that the event attracted Lubchenco — who, in June, begged off an invitation to appear before a Senate subcommittee hearing on fisheries issues, sending Schwaab and explaining he is the hands-on fisheries executive, is raising eyebrows within the industry.

"I can't help but wonder when or where you reach a point where a collaboration like this (discusses) planning strategy for some of their 'pet' causes crosses the line," said Jim Kendall of New Bedford Seafood Consulting.

"This is the most corrupt administration in modern history," said Jim Donofrio, executive director of Recreational Fishing Alliance.

"They're slippery," said Bob Jones, executive director of Tallahassee, Fla.-based Southeastern (commercial) Fisheries. "NOAA is blatant in their policies with the green machine. Without transparency and written records, it's like living under an oligarchy."

"Why do the wacko enviros have so much influence on our resources that so many fishermen, their families, and communities depend on?" said Bob Zales, a Panama City, Fla., charter skipper and activist.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD — Todd J. Zinser, the inspector general from the U.S. Department of Commerce, came to the city Wednesday and Thursday to hear firsthand from the fishing industry how the regulatory system in the Northeast might be improved.

Zinser's visit followed an Aug. 8 letter from New Bedford Mayor Scott W. Lang pressing for an investigation into the rule-making process governing the groundfishery, following repeated criticism of the National Marine Fisheries Service and its Northeast Regional Office.

"We wanted to get a better understanding of what they think we might do to be helpful. We get a number of requests for investigations. I try to bring oversight to the issues," Zinser said in a telephone interview late Thursday afternoon. "What we heard centered around the characteristics of rule-making."

However, Zinser declined to say whether his visit would spur a full-scale investigation. "We'd like to identify some manageable issues that we could look at and maybe provide some insight," he said.

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) September 22, 2011- United States Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) will hold a field hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation field hearing in Boston on the state of the Massachusetts fishing industry.  Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will appear. Participating Members of Congress and the Senate include Senator Kerry, Senator Scott Brown, Congressman Barney Frank. Congressman John Tierney and Congressman William Keating.
 
According to Senator Kerry's offices in Washington and Boston, the hearing will examine the first year of the catch share fisheries management plan, including its social and economic impacts, and discuss constructive steps forward to improve its outcomes. 
 
"One of the most important things I can do as our state's senior senator is bring together all the stakeholders from our state and the federal government to reason together and talk face to face, and particularly to put a human face on the choices being made for our economy and our fisheries. This hearing will examine current the state of Massachusetts' fishing industry, analyze the impacts of regulations on our local economy, and perhaps most importantly, provide an open forum for dialogue between our state's fishermen and state and federal regulators," said Sen. Kerry.  "The panels we've assembled will allow for direct questioning and analysis from the Administration as well as both seasoned and fresh voices from Massachusetts' fishing and science communities."

The hearing will be held at 9 a.m. on Monday, October 3, 2011 in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in Boston.

In addition to Dr. Lubchenco, others who will testify include Paul Diodati, Director, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries; Dr. Brian J. Rothschild, Montgomery Charter Professor, Department of Fisheries Oceanography School for Marine Science & Technology, UMass Dartmouth; Colin McAllister "Rip" Cunningham, Jr., Chair, New England Fisheries Management Council; Dr. Steve Cadrin, Associate Professor, Department of Fisheries Oceanography School for Marine Science & Technology, UMass Dartmouth, and Stephen P. Welch, Fisherman and Board Member, Northeast Seafood Coalition.

The U.S. Commerce Department inspector general is reportedly close to deciding whether to grant a congressional request for an investigation into "rule-making" by the New England's federal fisheries regulators.

In a letter dated Aug. 17, Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank petitioned IG Todd Zinser to open a second investigation.

In June 2009, Zinser began a landmark investigation into law enforcement excesses, vindictive motives and questionable judgment that uncovered scandalous miscarriages of justice leading to cabinet-level apologies last May to 11 individuals and businesses, and reparations totaling more than $600,000.

The diplomatically worded Tierney-Frank letter spoke of a "high degree of mistrust" between NOAA Fisheries and its regional management council and the fishing industry — and followed a more detailed and blunt request for the investigation by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang.

Read the complete article from The Gloucester Times' staff writer Richard Gaines