Opinion

December 20, 2012 — UMASS has set a dangerous precedent by ousting Brian Rothschild because they see his politics as obstacles to the school gaining grant dollars from the likes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and nonprofit groups.

On the surface, it makes sense for the University of Massachusetts to seek outside funding through grants for its Massachusetts Fisheries Institute program, founded by renowned marine scientist Brian Rothschild and run out of UMass Dartmouth.

The institute, after all, has come to be seen as a significant research partner for the state Department of Marine Fisheries and the New England commercial fishing industry, with its work and Rothschild’s own efforts looming as one of the few sources of fisheries data that’s seen as credible by virtually all sides.

But in ousting Rothschild from his director’s post, UMass Dartmouth Academic Affairs Dean Marcie Williams and Chancellor Divina Grossman have sent a dangerous message. That’s the notion that Rothschild and his politics are seen as obstacles to the school’s gaining grant dollars from the likes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and nonprofit groups that have had excessive input into the federal policies that condemned New England’s fishery to the “economic disaster” it has become.

It’s no accident that Gov. Deval Patrick went to Rothschild’s marine institute for the data to make the case for the federal Commerce Department’s economic disaster declaration; it’s also no accident that Rothschild was U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s recommended candidate to head NOAA when President Obama first took office — or Congressman Barney Frank’s recommendation to lead NOAA’s Division of Marine Fisheries.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times 

 

 

December 19, 2012 — There can be no celebration, only a sense of profound relief over the resignation and coming exit of Jane Lubchenco as chief administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

And that sense of relief should not allow either commercial fishermen or our federal lawmakers to relax their guards between now and the February date when Lubchenco will formally bow out of her role. Indeed, the downside of Lubchenco’s plan to leave her six-figure post is that the Department of Commerce is essentially allowing her to do so on her own terms as if she should have had any choice after her policies reduced one of America’s oldest and most noble small-business industries to an admitted state of “economic disaster” in New England during her four short years at the helm.

But while federal leaders seek a successor, it’s important that this tunnel-visioned pseudo scientist — whose signature paper supporting her own catch share agenda is a now widely discredited report funded by a Walton Foundation whose Wal-Mart roots could benefit greatly from it — not have any role whatsoever in any transition process.

For throughout her term, Lubchenco has shown nothing but disdain for the fishing industry, for congressional leaders and for American taxpayers, who are still paying six-figure salaries to now-ousted NOAA law enforcement leaders who have been cited by Inspector General’s Office investigators for carrying out excessive enforcement against fishermen and other businesses, misspending money from an asset forfeiture fund, and shredding federal documents while an investigation was under way.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times 

 

 

 

 

December 20, 2012 — There are some predictable patterns in life. When there is an accident, at the end of the traffic jam you find a police officer. When you go to a restaurant, at the end of dinner the bill comes. And when you attend a fisheries management council meeting that is dealing with a crisis, there is usually a bad stock assessment.

I nearly always attend New England Fishery Management Council meetings in person, but last month, I was unable to attend the meeting in Newport, and instead listened to the proceedings online. I found that listening, and not physically being there, gives you a different perspective on a meeting. You hear more intently. There are fewer distractions. Examples seem clearer. Patterns emerge.
 
There are some predictable patterns in life. When there is an accident, at the end of the traffic jam you find a police officer. When you go to a restaurant, at the end of dinner the bill comes. And when you attend a fisheries management council meeting that is dealing with a crisis, there is usually a bad stock assessment.
 
Bad stock assessments have become as predictable as the sunrise.
 
In Newport, a long and difficult discussion took place to determine how next year's miniscule limit of yellowtail flounder would be divided between the scallop fleet and the groundfish fleet. Eventually a decision was made. But wait! It turns out there is another fishery – whiting – asking for a share of the allegedly non-existent yellow tail flounder.
 
When there is good science, the industry will agree to a cut. Just a week ago, NOAA closed an area to scalloping with the support of the industry. The reason is because for over a decade, a survey conducted under the direction of Dr. Kevin Stokesbury at the UMass School for Marine Science and Technology has been performed in cooperation with fishermen using actual scallop vessels. Fishermen believe those results. In the yellowtail survey, fishermen don't even believe government scientists are using the right equipment to catch bottom-dwelling flat fish.
 
Dr. Bill Karp, the newly installed chief of NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, has promised greater cooperation between industry and government scientists. Sam Rauch, the head of the National Marine Fishery Service, has also promised greater cooperative research. Unfortunately, it hasn't started yet, and won't be done by 2013.
 
There has not been a new benchmark assessment since 2005. Instead, we get update after update of a model that everyone knows is flawed. The science committee's report on its attempt to determine an overfishing limit is full of statements like these: "a retrospective pattern, which was present in the previous "¦ assessment, became stronger in the current assessment, resulting in less confidence;" the committee "was not comfortable with the assessment outcomes"; "there should be no directed fishery "¦ in light of the high uncertainty."
 
It's been seven years since the last benchmark assessment was done on yellowtail. But whenever a new survey is requested, NOAA claims to have neither the staff, the time, nor the money. But they always find the time and funding to tweak, twist and fiddle with a model that produces worthless results time after time. 

 

Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times 

 

 

 

December 19, 2012 — Dr. Brian Rothschild a world-renowned fisheries researcher and author, and dean emeritus of Marine Fisheries Institute, has been removed from his co-directorship of the institute, which he founded and developed over the past 10 years.

This move by the UMass president's office will place the institute under the control of the president's office and the institute's co-directorship will go to the current School of Marine Science and Technology dean, Dr. Steve Lohrenz, not exactly a fish specialist, but a champion of President Obama's controversial National Ocean Policy and a former vice-chair of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, which partners with Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (a program devoted to deep ocean geology exploration associated with oil and gas production).

The stated reasons for Rothschild's removal are at best flimsy and at worst they appear to be a Kafkaesque rationale for a political purge.

"It lacked an oversight board, a budget and annual reports and it wasn't coordinated well enough to solicit research grants from industry, government and other institutions, said university spokesman John Hoey," according to a Dec. 14 Standard-Times article ("Fisheries institute revamp ousts co-director").

Really? After 10 successful years, this Marine Fisheries Institute now isn't coordinated well enough to get research grants? Grants coming from industry, government, and other institutions. Now who might they be? Could it be Pew or perhaps EDF/CLF/NOAA or the Department of the Interior?

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

December 19, 2012 — As soon as SMAST arrived and commenced operations, it began to get the respect of the non-governmental scientific community, and with the efforts of Dr. Rothschild there developed a partnership with industry mostly because of the scientific approaches taken by the school and the ability to observe and attempt to develop fisheries in a manner that improved the financial rewards of the industry.

Throughout the 50 years I have been involved in the fishing industry, nothing has been more meaningful than the establishment of the School for Marine Sciences and Technology.

Prior to that event and the arrival of Dr. Brian Rothschild and his associates, the domestic fishing industry was subjected to the science used for assessing fishing stock sizes and their use in fishing conservation plans. The law called for the fishery management councils to use the best available scientific information, and in the days before SMAST that meant that whatever the National Marine Fisheries determined to be the proper approach was indeed the gospel. Fishermen and the industry generally were put through management measures that not only didn't make sense but ended up killing millions of pounds of seafood product, fish and scallops, subjected vessels to huge fines and loss of vessels, and resulted in a highly confrontational relationship between industry and government.

As soon as SMAST arrived and commenced operations, it began to get the respect of the non-governmental scientific community, and with the efforts of Dr. Rothschild and company there developed a partnership with industry mostly because of the scientific approaches taken by the school and the ability to observe and attempt to develop fisheries in a manner that reduced waste and improved the financial rewards of the industry. We all have been exposed to the camera and tripod method used to actually count scallops and their size and location rather than doing the annual trips that were the basis for government assessments and plan developments.

Within a few years after its inception, SMAST began to be looked at as developing over time into a world-class fisheries school and, as of this year, has graduated several classes of students with bachelor's degrees and doctorates, all of whom have been pursued by institutions and hired in their programs.

 

Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times  

 

 

December 16, 2012 — Barney Frank quietly slipped out of the city that he has done so much for, leaving behind a downtown that will soon reclaim its connection to its waterfront, and a UMass marine science campus that has already expanded to become a world leader.

At my request, this congressman who brought such great federal commitment to New Bedford willingly took a quick walk in the heavy rain to the site of two of his greatest accomplishments — the redesigned and reconstructed Route 18 and the fishing docks where the boats berth for our rejuvenated scallop industry and our still-beleaguered groundfish one.

The SouthCoast has been on the winning side of the lottery to have had such a congressman.

Most regions of the country are represented by back-bench House members, folks who make little mark on their districts, never mind the nation.

In Barney Frank, however, Greater New Bedford and Fall River have had a congressman who understood their uniquely regional needs but also had the intellect and power of personality to command the national stage on the issues they share with the nation.

Barney Frank in his last weeks will not be voting to raise the age of Medicare or to eviscerate Social Security. In the future, he will continue lobbying for regulations to prevent Wall Street's devastating practices of gambling with other people's money. He will continue to argue for Europe and the Far East sharing a greater burden of the defense budget and he will continue to speak out on personal freedom issues like marijuana legalization and gay rights. He will also continue to be a voice against the environmental extremism he saw destroy the lives of so many working fishermen. Look for him to write a book encompassing all these subjects in the next year. Call it philosophy of government, according to Barney Frank.

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

December 14, 2012 — I’d like to get the conversation started about how the fisheries economic disaster relief should be invested. Over the past few months, since the disaster was declared by the U.S. Department of Commerce, many ideas have been circulated. We’ve boiled down our ideas into a 5-point plan that I’d like to share today.

The first point in the plan for mitigating the fisheries economic disaster is direct aid to fishermen. There must be some component of the federal assistance that goes straight to the fishermen who’ve been harmed by the regulations that have led to the economic disaster declaration. What the aid is, and how it should be structured, should be driven by the fishermen themselves. We will look to the Gloucester Fisheries Commission to assist in obtaining input from fishermen on how to best deliver direct aid to the fishermen.

The second point is money for unfunded NOAA mandates. There are many expensive mandates placed on fishermen. The observer program where an individual goes out on the fishing boat to keep an eye on the catch is one example. Fishermen are expected to pick up this expense and what they end up doing to cover this cost is to perhaps go out with one less crew member, which can make the trip more dangerous than needed.

Porpoise pingers are another example of a NOAA mandate. Porpoise pingers are important — they are a device placed on nets that “ping,” which alerts a porpoise to swim away from the net. This program is very effective in protecting the porpoises and if viewed as a partnership between the fishermen, the regulators and environmentalists, there should be recognition that the cost should be shared.

The third point in the plan for mitigating the fisheries economic disaster is a significant increase in collaborative fisheries research. The underpinning of this type of research is that the scientists and the fishermen work together in scientific observation and inquiry. Fishermen are great observers of what is going on in the oceans. A few years ago, the codfish stock was thought of as “abundant” and only two years later, it was thought of as vanished.

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

December 14, 2012 — The removal of an extreme environmentalist from this position — and one has to assume Lubchenco was removed, since just a few weeks ago it seemed she was gunning for another four years at NOAA — is a good sign for our long-suffering fishing industry.

"Ding Dong! The Witch is dead!"

Area fishermen — those few that are left, that is — must be dancing around like the Munchkins in "The Wizard of Oz" after finding out that the hated Jane Lubchenco would finally be leaving as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Her four-year reign as chief administrator of the department that regulates commercial fishing was marked by scandal over law enforcement and by lawsuits over fishery management and ended with a national fishery disaster declaration by the U.S. Commerce Department in September.

An investigation of NOAA by the Commerce Department revealed systemic abuses of authority that created a "dysfunctional relationship" between NOAA and the fishing industry. Citing reports of "booze cruise" excursions by NOAA fisheries agents aboard a pleasure boat bought with fishermen's fine money and allegations that the agency's chief of law enforcement had shredded documents amid the probe, an exasperated Sen. Scott Brown demanded back in February: "What does it take to get fired from NOAA?"

Apparently, it takes a lot.

Lubchenco survived the "booze cruise" scandal, the heart of which took place before she took the wheel at NOAA. She survived the Dale Jones shredding scandal, never taking any substantive, punitive action against the fisheries law enforcement director. She survived her attack on New England's groundfishing fleet through her imposition of catch shares and so-called sector cooperative management. And she survived repeated calls from the state's congressional delegation over the last 2½ years that she step down or be fired.

Defiant to the end, she thumbed her nose at the fishermen she put out of business with a departing comment that listed her so-called achievements, including "returning fishing to profitability."

 

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

 

December 13, 2012 — In Mr. Baker's op-ed, all arguments for severe regulation lead back to Pew-managed, Pew-organized or Pew-funded efforts. In the lobbying and public relations world, this type of manufactured grass-roots support is known as "astroturf."

In a recent Standard Times opinion piece ("Strong action on menhaden best for coastal economy and ecology," Dec. 3), Pew Environment Group's Peter Baker attacked our earlier op-ed ("Menhaden fishery needs reasonable — not drastic — action," Nov. 7), accusing us of portraying "an outdated picture of the science" and offering "a false choice between protecting menhaden and jobs."

Mr. Baker cites a "recent study of 'forage fish' such as menhaden" to support his argument that a 50 percent reduction in menhaden harvest is necessary. Mr. Baker doesn't tell readers that the study's sponsor, the Lenfest Ocean Program, is managed by Pew.

Mr. Baker cites "a letter signed by 94 leading scientists" to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) saying current measures are inadequate. Mr. Baker doesn't tell readers that at least 31 of the signers are affiliated with or are part of organizations receiving funding from Pew Environment. Few of the signers have direct experience working on menhaden issues. One of them is an English professor, not a scientist.

Mr. Baker states that last year "more than 90,000 people "¦ urged the ASMFC to protect menhaden." What he doesn't say is that response was generated by Pew-organized online campaigns — in partnership with Greenpeace and other groups — using alarmist and sensationalized headlines that selectively presented facts.

In Mr. Baker's op-ed, all arguments for severe regulation lead back to Pew-managed, Pew-organized or Pew-funded efforts. In the lobbying and public relations world, this type of manufactured grass-roots support is known as "astroturf."

Let's look at Mr. Baker's approach to science and evidence not generated through Pew channels.

Mr. Baker underplays the concerns of the ASMFC Menhaden Technical Committee when he writes of "some degree of uncertainty" present in current estimates. The most recent menhaden assessment, conducted in 2012, concludes that problems with the assessment model "cast considerable doubt on the accuracy of the estimates from this update stock assessment."

 

Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times

 

 

December 12, 2012 — When it comes time for handing out appointed posts for Obama’s second term, nothing may speak louder than his choices for the positions to head Commerce and NOAA.

No one inside the Beltway or along the East Coast from Maine to the Carolinas should be the least bit surprised that even the annual report from the Commerce Department’s own Inspector General spotlights not only the number of complaints received about its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but NOAA’s absolute lack of any commitment to address them.

Let’s face it, NOAA chief administrator Jane Lubchenco has shown nothing but contempt for Congress and for America’s fishermen since President Obama plopped her into the top NOAA seat in 2009 to do the bidding of the Environmental Defense Fund and other nonprofit giants. Her lack of accountability has never been more evident than in her refusal to take any substantive, punitive action against her former law enforcement chief, Dale Jones, Gloucester-based agent-in-charge Andy Cohen, and others in their thuggish posse, despite demands to do so from the likes of U.S. Sens. Scott Brown and John Kerry.

With that in mind, Congressman John Tierney deserves credit for seeing the Commerce Inspector General’s report for what it is — another damning piece of evidence that NOAA is sorely lacking in leadership under Lubchenco’s misdirection.

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times