Washington

Scallop allocations might be a settled issue for now, but U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., is going toe-to-toe with the head of NOAA over a series of other problems facing the fishing industry in the Northeast.

In a Jan. 29 letter to Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Frank expresses frustration with the lack of urgency that he believes NOAA is showing following an October meeting in Washington, D.C., between fishing representatives and government regulators.

Frank spelled out details of those concerns in an Oct. 26 letter to Lubchenco, calling for specific and immediate remedies for such things as the overfishing limit on pollock, the lack of government funds for mandatory observers on scallop boats, and the impending shrinkage of the fleet as “sectors” are introduced along with quotas strict enough to drive many boats out of business.

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Larry Robinson, Florida A&M’s vice president for research, may soon add another title to his name.

President Barack Obama nominated Robinson to the post of assistant secretary of commerce. The job will require Robinson to be responsible for conservation and management at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I am grateful that these distinguished men and women have chosen to join my administration as we work to bring about real change for the American people,” said President Obama in a news release announcing the nomination of Robinson and five others Friday. The U.S. Senate must confirm Robinson’s nomination.

A professor in the Environmental Sciences Institute, Robinson has been an administrator at FAMU since 1997. He has links with the agency where he is headed. He is director of NOAA’s Environmental Cooperative Science Center headquarters on the FAMU campus.

Read the complete story at The Famuan.

Congressman Barney Frank has expressed "disappointment" in the pace and significance of Obama administration responses to a suite of New England fisheries' problems placed in front of Jane Lubchenco, the President's top appointee on ocean issues, last October.

Frank, who previously had a lengthy sitdown to enlist Lubchenco's support for "the economic and social health of the fishing industry," received a letter from her on Jan. 6; he answered on Jan. 29.

The Newton Democrat and acknowledged leader of the East Coast fishing caucus minced few words, asserting that Lubchenco, as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, had "squandered" a major opportunity to mitigate severe cuts in the mixed groundfish stocks.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

For the last few years the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been an also-ran among federal science programs. But if NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco gets her way with Congress, the agency will join the front ranks in 2011.

The agency was excluded from the America Competitiveness Initiative (a budget doubling for the physical sciences begun by the Bush Administration) and left with crumbs in the massive 2009 stimulus package. Observers wondered how a new Administration so supportive of environmental science and climate research could ignore an agency intended to be a good steward of the air and sea. (NOAA received a 9% budget increase last year, for example, but its satellite procurement efforts got the biggest share.) The second-rate status for ocean research was all the more ironic given that the president had put a world-renowned marine ecologist in the driver's seat.

But now Lubchenco has made her move, and the agency is poised for a huge investment in science. Yesterday's proposed 14% increase, to $5.5 billion, for the agency as a whole would be the largest increase in NOAA's budget in a decade. Research efforts at the agency get a 7% increase overall, to $522 million; big winners include earth-system modeling, research on marine pathogens, and studies related to ocean acidification. Each reflects priorities that go beyond the agency's bread-and-butter work of regulating fisheries and monitoring weather. Overall, climate work at the Department of Commerce, most of which is at NOAA, would rise by 21% under the new budget.

Read the complete story at AAAS.

They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore.

We're talking about salt water fishing enthusiasts from every coastal corner of the country, fed up with what many see as the haphazard and ineffective way in which our fisheries are managed with the unwelcomed implementation of unreasonable minimum size requirements, diminishing creel limits, shorter seasons, and total closures in the case of some popular species.

In what organizers hope will be a historic show of solidarity, recreational and commercial fishermen will gather together on the steps of the Capitol on Feb. 24, from noon until 3 p.m. in an organized demonstration against the unintended negative impacts of the Magnuson Stevens Conservation and Management Act (MSA), the federal fisheries law which was revised in January of 2007.

Those of us who spend our summers fishing the mid-Atlantic coastal waters of neighboring states like Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland have felt the grip of these federal regulations squeeze ever tighter over the past few years. I've been fluke fishing the back bays of Maryland for decades now, and I've seen first-hand how the minimum size requirement has increased to the point where catching a legal flounder is a rare feat indeed.

Read the complete story at Tri County Record.

With the release of the President’s FY 2011 Federal Budget, NOAA announced today that President Obama had requested $5.6 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for FY 2011. In a statement released today, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco said “This budget reflects the commitment of the president and secretary of commerce to job creation, science and the environment.” Dr. Lubchenco is inviting public comment at her Facebook Fan Page.

Over $1 billion of the total $5.6 billion requested for NOAA in the president’s FY 2011 budget is allocated toward the National Weather Service and weather related research. This figure includes $26.7 million for the enhancement of aviation weather forecasts to make our nation’s airways safer. A total of $464.9 million was requested in the FY 2011 Federal Budget proposal for NOAA’s research office. This figure includes $11.6 million to monitor and assess the effects of ocean acidification. Dr. Lubchenco commented, “NOAA’s innovations in science and technology have been instrumental in ensuring that a strong economy and a healthy environment go hand in hand.”

While noting that coastal communities provide 42% of the nation’s economic output despite occupying only 16% of our country’s land area, NOAA’s statement on the budget included an intent to spend $580.6 million in support of coastal communities and their economies. $992.4 million would be dedicated to rebuilding fisheries and supporting fishing jobs and communities.

Read the complete story at The Examiner.

When the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) closed the recreational amberjack fishery on October 24, it was essentially the shot heard round the American docks.  NMFS had made a similar emergency closure on the black sea bass fishery in federal waters north of Cape Hatteras, NC just three weeks prior – a fishery which remains closed to recreational fishermen to this day – while the decision had already been made through NMFS and the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council to close all bottom fishing in over 1000 square miles of coastal waters from North Carolina to Florida to protect and rebuild the red snapper populations.

In 2006, the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (MSA) was passed in the Senate by "unanimous consent" – and signed into law by then President G.W. Bush soon after.  The act of unanimous consent on the floor of the Senate officially sets aside rules of procedure so as to expedite proceedings.  The quick passage of MSA in the Senate helped to memorialize Sen. Ted Stevens in the naming of our federal fisheries law before his departure from office, and it also facilitated the rapid progression of this broken federal fisheries law without any debate on the floor.

For the past five years, the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) has been quite vocal in its opposition to "time-specific" deadlines and the arbitrary, non-scientific provisions contained within MSA.  The inflexibility of the fisheries law to respond to an ever-changing marine ecosystem coupled with grossly inadequate management information systems within our federal fisheries service is contributing to a major industry collapse which has been felt throughout our coastal communities.  Through strict enforcement of the provisions of MSA, and the rapidly expanding denial of public access to rebuilt and rebuilding fisheries, it has become extremely clear to the majority of anglers and fishing organizations that the federal fisheries law must be fixed. 

Read the rest of the email at The Pensacola Fishing Forum

Organizers are planning to mount a Feb. 24 protest demonstration by several thousand fishermen in Washington, D.C., with busloads coming from New Jersey ports to meet up with their couterparts from the Gulf of Mexico and remote Alaskan islands.

Their goal is to win changes to the federal Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — especially lifting the law's demand for a 10-year rebuilding schedule for bringing back overfished stocks. Key speakers may include Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., prime sponsors of bills to insert a "flexibility" provision into the law.

"We're hoping for anything between 3,000 and 5,000" in the crowd, said James Donofrio of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, one of the rally organizers. "I tell people it's worth taking a vacation day from work to come, because otherwise the way things are going with Magnuson and NMFS (the National Marine Fisheries Service), we're all going out of business. There will be no angling, no commercial fishing."

Read the complete story at APP.

Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) issued the following statement regarding the decision by the New England Fisheries Management Council to reverse its earlier decision on scallop fishing limits.

WASHINGTON – Congressman Barney Frank today released the following statement about the decision by the New England Fisheries Management Council to reverse an earlier decision on scallop fishing limits.

“I would like to thank the Council for revisiting and overturning the November decision.  The plan they have chosen puts the limit on scallop harvests at a level that the Council’s own planned development team and science and statistical committee said is sustainable.  This decision will save jobs, help the local economy, and preserve scallops as an important sustainable fishery.”

 “This positive step was initiated by thousands in the scallop industry who advocated passionately on their own behalf.  I appreciate their hard work and also the efforts of Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor Scott Lang, State Senator Bruce Tarr and State Representatives John Quinn and William Strauss, who fought for this fair decision.  Additionally, I want to express my gratitude to all the members who signed the letter I initiated to Secretary Locke asking him to reverse the November Council decision, especially my Massachusetts colleagues, Senators Kerry and Kirk, and Congressmen John Tierney, Jim McGovern, and Mike Capuano.  Finally, I wish to thank the 10 council members who supported the today’s proposal.”

Click here to read the original letter to Secretary Gary Locke.

"Job creation" will be a major focus of President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech tonight, according to the preliminary reports.

That is very much as it should be, or should have been. The president should have focused on the economy and job creation before turning his attention, and expending his political capital, on a government takeover of health care.

But any promises he makes about jobs will ring hollow for the region's fishing industry if his administration allows its own federal fishing regulators to continue on their current path.

The result of those policies will be fewer jobs in an industry that has, over the past two decades, been crushed to about a third of its former size.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.