Florida Fishermen express concerns about regulation and Magnuson to Senator LeMieux
Captain Mike Eller, with the Destin Charter Boat Association, said, "We're looking for that happy balance. We're going to come out of the overfishing category, whether we make it in 10 years, which is a non-scientific arbitrary date, or whether we make it in 12 or 13 years." Sen. LeMieux says he wants to bring officials to Florida to see the fish and the economic ripple effects of their regulations.
In a victory that challenged conventional wisdon, Republican Scott Brown has won the special Senatorial election in Massachusetts and will succeed liberal "lion" Ted Kennedy, filling a seat held by Democrats since JFK defeated Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. 58 years ago in 1952.
The Associated Press called Senator-elect Brown's victory a "stunning embarrassment for the White House". The Boston Globe said "It is difficult to overstate the significance of Scott Brown’s victory".
Last week, Brown came out in support of the fishing industry's goal of amending the Magnuson-Stevens Act to allow greater flexibility in rebuilding fish stocks, according to the Gloucester Daily Times.
In a January 15 endorsement of the Senator-elect, The Gloucester Daily Times noted: [d]uring a Wednesday meeting in Salem, Brown not only said he'd support revisiting and reforming the Magnuson-Stevens Act — the federal legislation that governs New England's and America's fisheries, he said Magnuson "must be" reopened and reformed.
The Senator-elect's comments demonstrate a willingness to join the bipartisan effort aimed at Magnuson reform led by Democratic Congressman Barney Frank and including fellow Massachusetts Democrat John Tierney.
The Obama Administration has not yet named an appointment for the position of NOAA Fisheries Administrator, which remains filled by Acting Administrator Jim Balsiger. Congressman Frank has actively supported the candidacy of UMass Dean Emeritus Brian Rothschild for the position. Six months ago, over fifty industry members wrote to Senator John Kerry and the late Senator Kennedy endorsing Dean Rothschild.
In late October, Congressman Frank wrote to the Obama Administration's NOAA director Jane Lubchenco raising a number of concerns.
Government regulations imposed on recreational fishing for red snapper, amberjack and other Gulf of Mexico fish have decimated the region’s charter boat industry, area fishermen told Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida, Tuesday, January 12, during his Bay County visit.
After listening to the fishermen’s complaints about the application of the Reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (RMSA) of 2007, particularly its lack of emphasis on accurate data collection and socioeconomic impacts caused by government regulations, LeMieux said he would push for more flexibility in the law to preserve jobs threatened by reduced fish catches and shortened Gulf of Mexico fishing seasons.
“We need help, sir, and we need it now,” said Chuck Guilford, a former Mexico Beach mayor and charter boat owner, to LeMieux at the start of Tuesday’s meeting.
Part of Tuesday’s discussion between LeMieux and the fishermen centered around RMSA’s national standard 8, a provision of the act that addresses the balancing of conservation needs with a fishery’s social and economic importance to communities affected by management actions.
Several participants at Tuesday’s meeting complained to LeMieux that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) failed to acknowledge the economic hardship brought on by its regulations and needed better funding to produce more accurate data.
Read the complete story at The Panama City News Herald.
Earlier this week, Lois J. Schiffer was named to the post of chief counsel for NOAA. Attorney Schiffer served as Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Clinton Administration.
According to her DoJ biography, "her goals as AAG included better developing the Division's environmental crimes program and improving relationships with U.S. Attorneys' Offices and the states. A review and restructuring of the Department's environmental crimes program occupied much of Schiffer's first years as AAG."
In the private sector, she has worked for the Audubon Society, as a partner at Baach Robinson & Lewis, and as general counsel for the National Capital Planning Commission. She is an adjunct professor of environmental law at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Schiffer, born on February 22, 1945, graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in the District of Columbia, and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1966 and Harvard Law School in 1969.
Her complete bio and career summary is available on the Department of Justice website.
The text of the Preserve Fishing Coalition release is presented below…
Fix Magnuson Now is the title of the introductory page to a petition posted on the internet by an ad hoc group of 14 leaders of the recreational, commercial and party/charter fishing sectors called the Preserve Fishing Coalition. Intended to reinforce the message that will be taken directly to Congress on the steps of the US Capitol in Washington on February 24th by fishermen from around the country, the petition is in the form of a letter to the twenty-six House Members and two Senators who are sponsoring The Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009, legislation introduced by Congressman Frank Pallone (HR 1584) and Senator Charles Schumer (S 1255). The Act will allow managers some much needed discretion in determining what are now arbitrary and unnecessarily rigid stock rebuilding timelines.
The letter thanks these legislators for their continuing support of fishermen and the businesses that depend on them and for taking what will be a critical step in the process of allowing independent fishermen and women to once again resume significant roles in the fisheries management process.
It also recognizes the part that multi-billion dollar philanthropic foundations with strong corporate connections have played in inflicting massive and unnecessary damage on fishermen, fishing businesses and fishing communities, in marginalizing in the media and the management process those that are still holding on, and of undermining the original intent of the Magnuson Act, which was to balance the inadequacies of the science underlying fisheries management with the on-the-water experience of working fishermen.
The letter ends “the increase in our seafood trade deficit, which went from $6 billion in 2000 to $9 billion in 2008 and is still rising, is in the largest part due to the unnecessarily harsh and inflexible management regime that is now afflicting our fishermen.”
By 3:00 pm on Tuesday the petition had been signed by well over 800 fishermen and associated businesspeople from Alaska to Maine. It will remain on the web at http://fs16.formsite.com/FixMagnusonNow/form793561462/ until the Washington rally. Anyone who fishes or who owns, operates or is employed by a fishing dependent business is encouraged to visit the site.
Updates on the petition and the Washington rally will be available at the Commercial Fishing – the Rest of the Story blog at http://fishnetlite.blogspot.com/.
The organizers of the Fishermen's March on Washington scheduled for February 24, 2010 have issued the following press release thanking "Congressmen Pallone, Frank, Jones et al and Senator Schumer" and have created a website through which supports can sign the letter online.
The March on Washington scheduled for February 24, 2010 is on and interest is growing daily. Everyone who fishes, consumes fish, supports fishing, and depends on fishing is encouraged to attend.
Info has been posted at http://fs16.formsite.com/FixMagnusonNow/form793561462/
where a letter to Congressmen Pallone, Frank, Jones et al and Senator Schumer thanking them for their support of
recreational, commercial and party/charter fishermen, their families and the businesses that depend on
In the letter the problems that fishermen have been facing and continue to face, the cause of those
problems, and the way to fix them – which boils down to restoring the role for fishermen that was
designed into the original Magnuson Act have been pointed out.
Please view the site and read the information. If you agree with it, please fill out the form and urge the
people who you fish or do business with to do the same. The future of our fisheries, and of who controls
them, depends on it.
Contact: Capt. Bob Zales, II
Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen, Phone 850-763-6242, Fax 850-763-3558, Email:ccgf@att.net
Conservation Cooperative of Gulf Fishermen, P.O.Box 53, Orange Beach, AL 36561 Phone 850-774-5822
Fax 850-763-3558
Robert Vanasse has returned to his New Bedford roots after decades of political involvement in the nation's capital.
The New Bedford native and longtime Washington resident is now executive director of The Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources, an advocacy group in Washington for the New Bedford fishing community.
He is, in short, the lobbyist for his hometown's important fishing industry, with the goal of making a local issue one of national importance,.
"He loves his New Bedford roots," said Michelle Jaconi, who studied with Vanasse in graduate school at Georgetown University and was a producer at NBC for 12 years before joining CNN earlier this year.
Vanasse said his interest in politics "was always around in my family, to some degree." His mother moved to Washington at 18, after she graduated from high school. She worked in the Treasury Department, but eventually moved back to her native city, married and gave birth to Robert, her only child, in 1962.
Thank God for democracy.
We do not need to run to the streets to enforce fairness and justice. We issue an appeal to Congress; and we keep aware that the Congress of the United States is quite busy. It will listen, not to personal, but to popular demands. Hence my plea.
This is an appeal to the public to petition Congress to change an unjust and inefficient law, the Magnuson Law, formally known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. This law has surreptitiously become the Fisherman's Destroyer Act. This law must be changed.
Thanks to the relentless efforts of the Gloucester Daily Times and its dedicated staff in the reporting and editorial departments, very few people need to be told again the gory details of the arbitrariness and strong-arm tactics in the enforcement of this law by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Coast Guard. Cumulative evidence is available at www.gloucestertimes.com/fishing.
"United we fish" will be the rallying cry for both recreational and commercial fishermen as they gather Feb. 24, from noon to 3 p.m., on the steps of the Capitol. They will be there to protest a snowballing avalanche of fisheries closures prompted by revision of Magnuson-Stevens Conservation and Management Act (MSCCA).
"We need to let Congress and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) know that we are the collective voice of the recreational fishing community and the collective voice does not accept the current broken management system, which wreaks such havoc on all of us and our businesses," said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA).
Those within the recreational fishing industry point out that a big part of the problem exists now because the NMFS, with oversight from NOAA and the Department of Commerce, did little to properly manage ocean fisheries before revision of the MSCCA. Now, in the face of legislation that requires cessation of overfishing by 2011, the federal agency is overreacting. In other words, the law is a good one because of its intent, but past and present mismanagement is resulting in hardship and chaos.
The chairman of the New England Fishery Management Council has asked the U.S. Secretary of Commerce for an independent management consultant's study and analysis of the relationships between the council, the regional executive and the federal fisheries science center at Woods Hole.
While carefully lauding the federal system of regulating fisheries — which has been under fierce attack by multiple niches of the industry and a growing chorus from Congress — John Pappalardo conceded that "our region's bureaucracy is unable to efficiently meet its expanded obligations."
Pappalardo also admitted to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke that "our bureaucracy is often driven by process and protocol rather than by mission and outcome."
He asked Locke — the cog in the bureaucracy between President Obama and Jane Lubchenco, the assistant secretary for oceans and fisheries, who supervises Regional Administrator Patricia Kurkul — to support funding for an "established management consultant" who would review the relationship between the trio of federal agencies responsible for the strained relationship with the industry and make recommendations.