Washington

With demands on US ocean resources control growing quickly, the Obama administration on Friday (Sept, 18th) outlined a new comprehensive ocean management plan [PDF] to guide federal agencies in restoring and protecting a badly stressed US coastal and ocean environment.

Today’s policy shift proposed by the president’s Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force holds enormous potential for sweeping changes in how the nation’s oceans are managed, including energy development, experts say.

At its core, the plan would set up a new National Ocean Council to guide a holistic “ecosystem-based” approach intended to elevate and unify what has long been a piecemeal approach by US agencies toward ocean policy and development — from oil and gas exploration to fisheries management to ship transportation to recreation.

The proposal would include “a more balanced, productive, and sustainable approach to using managing and conserving ocean resources,” Nancy Sutley, chairman of the president’s Council on Environmental Quality told reporters in a teleconference unveiling the plan. It would also set up “a comprehensive national approach to uphold our stewardship responsibilities and ensure accountability for our actions.”

Read the complete story from The Christian Science Monitor.

The White House Interagency Task Force on Ocean Policy Interim Report is now available and is undergoing a 30-day public review and comment period. This report provides proposals for a comprehensive national approach to uphold our stewardship responsibilities and ensure accountability for our actions. Additionally, the report outlines a more balanced, productive and sustainable approach to our ocean resources.

Read the report.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tapped Professor Andrew Rosenberg, a environmental activist and business executive based at the University of New Hampshire, to advise the White House on marine spatial planning or zoning.

The contract was not announced by NOAA, but in response to questions, NOAA spokesman Scott Smulllen said in an e-mail that "Andy will be on a small NOAA contract through the university ’til the end of the year. He will serve 20 to 40 percent of his work week as a senior advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality working on Ocean Policy Task Force issues."

Smullen declined to respond to requests for a copy or terms of the contract.

In a telephone interview, Rosenberg said NOAA will reimburse the university for the 20 percent of the time he spends advising the Ocean Policy Task Force, which was created by President Obama in June to develop "a recommendation for a national policy (to ensure) protection, maintenance, and restoration of oceans, our coasts and the Great Lakes."

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

It is time for all of those remaining who represent the interests of Cape Ann to step up to fight for fishermen’s rights — like the right to go about their trade without lobbyist-driven science and renegade enforcement agents driving them out of business. As Kennedy himself put it, "the cause endures." It must.

While it was Massachusetts state legislators who first demanded that the Inspector General investigate alleged vindictive prosecutions of fishermen, it really bore fruit when Kennedy’s office got behind it and a letter to NOAA head Jane Lubchenco. And it was Kennedy’s influence that helped prompt Lubchenco to soften the current regulatory regime known as the "Interim Rule" that initially held even tighter fishing constraints.

As Gloucester residents know — especially by the dwindling number who still go down to the sea in ships — Kennedy was a true champion for fishermen. And in their fight against heavy-handed regulations and excessive federal enforcement tactics, Gloucester’s, New England’s and the nation’s fishermen need a champion now more than ever.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

What now for the New England fishing industry?

Over five decades, nearly every dispute between bureaucrats and the boats of the New England industry found its way into the Senate offices of the late U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

His death Tuesday leaves a gaping hole at the peak of the pecking order.

It leaves an uncertain interim: It may or may not involve a caretaker senator.

It also leaves an uncertain long-term future for the community and industry that leaned confidently on Kennedy.

There is no obvious successor ready to assume the mantle of the fishermen’s guardian angel.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

See also: Kennedy championed fishermen’s causes,

        and SALEM NEWS OPINION: Kennedy was passionate advocate for region’s fishermen,

        and Senator Ted Kennedy, Friend of the Fisherman, 1932-2009.

"There was never any doubt that he was out there watching out for you," Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition told a reporter last week. "He had your back."

Kennedy’s colleagues, Sen. John Kerry and U.S. Rep. John Tierney of Salem, have both supported financial aid to the industry. But Kerry, with his ties and sympathies more in line with environmentalists who continue to call for tighter regulation on fishing, has not had the visceral connection to the industry that Kennedy did. And fishing has not been the priority for Tierney that it was for Kennedy.

Read the complete story from The Salem News Online.

See also: Kennedy championed fishermen’s causes,

        and News analysis: ‘With fisheries, the first number you’d dial was Kennedy’s’,

        and Senator Ted Kennedy, Friend of the Fisherman, 1932-2009.

 

For the people of Gloucester, it was the equivalent of a death in the family.

It seemed fated to be that way in the sense that things Kennedy descend on history like things from no other family — in this case, the quintessential sailor adopting himself into America’s most seaworthy city.

From the pre-beginnings of his own political career — when a former Gloucester mayor was assigned to keep the Kennedy family’s dibs on the U.S. Senate seat of his brother John, who’d been elected president, until he was old enough to run for, win and secure it for the next 47 years — right up to the end, which came late Tuesday, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy treated Gloucester as his home away from home.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Earlier this week, a Microsoft Word document entitled "Letter – to NOAA in support of Catch Shares FINAL.doc" which had been circulating on Capitol Hill, came to the attention of a number of individuals in the fisheries communities.  The document’s properties showed that it was created on April 6, 2009 by Amanda Leland, a registered lobbyist with the Environmental Defense Fund, and last saved by “dreineman” on July 31, 2009.  Since Dan Reineman is currently a Sea Grant fellow for Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif. this suggested a collaboration between Mr Reineman and Ms. Leland, a former Sea Grant fellow for Congressman Farr (2003).  Richard Gaines of the Gloucester Times looked into the lobbying effort, and the possible collaboration, and wrote this story.

The Environmental Defense Fund and a California congressman have undertaken a lobbying campaign on behalf of "catch shares," the policy advanced by national oceans administrator Jane Lubchenco that would privatize the fisheries, converting a commonly held resource into a commodity.

Together, the EDF and Congressman Sam Farr have written and distributed to his House colleagues a letter that holds catch shares out to be nothing short of a panacea for the ailments of a national industry.

EDF also has identified potentially lucrative investment opportunities in catch share futures.

"Research published in the journal Science shows that ‘catch shares,’ a performance-based approach to management, can stop and even reverse, the collapse of fisheries when properly applied," Farr wrote in his recently distributed form letter.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

The southern sea otter and the marine turtle would get federal assistance in their struggles to survive under bills the House passed Tuesday, August 18.

The House voted 316-107 to approve $5 million a year over the next five years for research and recovery programs run by the Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey for the southern sea otters along the coast of California.

In 1977, the southern sea otter was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Currently there are about 2,800 of the marine mammals along the California coast.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree issued the following statement on the appointment of Glenn Libby to the New England Fisheries Council and the New England Fisheries Council meeting in Portland.  (Pingree wrote a letter to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco supporting Libby’s selection to the Council)

“I am very happy that Glen Libby was appointed to the New England Fisheries Management Council.  Glen’s 30 years of experience in the fishing industry and his commitment to sustainability and sustainable fishing will make him a good addition to the Council.

“Over the next few years, the Council must work together to solve the fundamental problems facing the fisheries – overcapacity , misalignment of economic incentives and a highly complex regulatory system.  All Council members must be up for the challenge and to be willing to work towards sustainability.  Glen is a perfect candidate for the job.

Read the complete statement at Congresswoman Chellie Pingree’s website.