Opinion

Lately, it seems like each morning brings a new editorial piece posted on SavingSeafood about how the small-boat commercial fishermen on Cape Cod are responsible for everything wrong with the world. James Lovgren's Plaintiff fears another NOAA shredding party is the latest.

A herring/mackerel processing facility in New Bedford shuts its doors because the mackerel have disappeared (less than 1% of this year’s quota has been caught) and it’s somehow the fault of groundfish fishermen who think the so-called "mid-water" trawlers should have the same accountability standards we fish under? This is the first year the herring boats had any meaningful observer coverage, and they suddenly have a haddock bycatch problem they’ve never admitted before. Please.  Everyone on the water knows what goes on with the "mid-water" trawlers, there’s a reason why they’re banned in Canada. And plenty of us, including myself, had to leave Georges Bank this year when we hit our cod cap even though we had plenty of haddock quota left, that's just the way things are now.  Every fishery has to stay within its limits.

People who oppose sector management, blame nearly everything on an allocation decision that affects only one of the 20 groundfish stocks and that adds up to less than 0.1% difference of the overall quota.  That just doesn't make any sense.

We read all the time about how we on Cape Cod are armchair captains and haven’t fished at all.  Anyone who cares to find out the facts knows that the 60 members of the Fixed Gear Sector sailed more that 1800 trips this year, more than just about any other sector in New England.  We landed about 2.2 million pounds of groundfish, 2.5 million pounds of skates, 1.2 million pounds of dogfish, and half a million pounds of monkfish.  Jim Lovgren's opinion piece pulls numbers out of thin air. 

Just like everyone else in the fishery, we were sick of discarding thousands of pounds of dead fish and sick of Days At Sea crushing our businesses.  If you don’t like sectors, join the common pool.  We couldn’t care less.  But blaming us for everything needs to stop.   It might be a convenient excuse, but it’s not making this fishery or other fisheries any better managed or more profitable.

If you have a better alternative to sectors that provides accountability and moves this fishery forward, then bring it to the table.  Otherwise, quit all this complaining and find a way to make it work.
 
John Our FV Miss Fitz

State and federal authorities should fight to keep a system that appears to be working.

When May 1 rolls around this year, commercial fishermen in New England will get something that they haven't had in a long time: Good news.

Following one year of a new management program that divides the right to catch fish among cooperatives of fishing boats called sectors instead of limiting individual boats' days at sea, the Department of Commerce is increasing the catch limits on 12 different groundfish stocks.

The new limits are evidence that after many years of overfishing followed by years of harsh regulation, the fish populations are rebounding. They also show that the new sector management program has been a success, and that what has been good for the fish is also good for the fishermen, offering hope to a beleaguered industry.

The new rules are not universally loved and are under challenge in court from two Massachusetts communities, New Bedford and Gloucester, which charge that the old system was fairer. While some parts of the industry may have done better under the old system, it's also true that it was not successfully conserving the fish or offering a sustainable basis for the industry as a whole. Mainers interested in a sustainable fishery should encourage federal authorities to fight the lawsuits and protect the new system that is showing signs of progress.

Regulators under the days-at-sea system told fishermen what they could not do: It limited when they could go out, how much they could catch in a day and where they could set their nets. Sector management lets fishermen decide when and how they fish, as long as their catch does not exceed proscribed amounts. Fishermen have a share of a quota, which they can fill themselves or sell to another boat. When prices are low, they can stay home.

Read the complete editorial from The Portland Press Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

Preliminary numbers gathered by the National Marine Fisheries Service show that sectors have been successful in keeping ocean harvests well within the annual catch limits. Meanwhile a number of shoreside processors have seen a decline in the amount of fish they are buying and an increase in what they are paying fishermen for their product.

Moreover, the price that fishermen are paid for their catch has also risen significantly, as has overall revenue for the fishery to date. In the first eight months of the program, revenues were up 8 percent over last year. From both an economic and conservation point of view, the system is working. Some fishermen, however, argue that they did not receive a large enough allocation.

This has led to a polarized and charged political atmosphere. In fact, some elected officials are now suing the federal government to roll back the new system in an effort, they say, to help the small- boat fleet. Yet, rather than scrapping the plan, there are alternatives to assist small-boat family fishermen. Many family fishermen are being hurt by the recession, and we must find ways to assist them. But their long-term interests, as well as those of our region, will not be helped by undercutting efforts to better manage one of New England’s most precious resources — our fish populations.

Read the complete piece from The Boston Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taunton was once known as “herring town,” for the abundance of fish that ascended the Mill River each spring. Today, just a fraction of historic fish populations pass through the rivers each spring and the aging dams that impede their journey pose threats to public safety.

Late last week, Sen. John Kerry and Congressman Barney Frank called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service to provide $500,000 in funding for The Nature Conservancy’s Mill River Habitat Restoration Project. In conjunction with a number of partners, the Conservancy is working to improve fish habitat throughout the Mill River system.

Removing the dam is a key part of the Mill River Habitat Restoration Project, which would reconnect 40 river miles — opening traditional migratory routes to American eels, alewife and blueback herring and restoring access to more than 500 acres of spawning habitat.

Read the complete opinion piece from Taunton Gazette.

 

 

 

 

April 20, 2011 – These supposed allocation "increases" are nothing more than what was promised to fishermen in 2009, when the New England Fishery Management Council rammed through its notorious Amendment 16 and its job-killing catch share system.

Beyond that, the bogus increases largely cover stocks in which New England's fishermen, thanks to other mandates tied to the catch share format, have not even been able to land their total allowable catch in the current fishing year.

And then — as if to pull off just one more snide, cruel joke — the few stock reductions Locke noted in his grand announcement won't bring any overall increase in fishermen's allocations at all.

Based on figures provided by NOAA's Gloucester-based Northeast regional office, the industry will be allowed to catch just 76,330 metric tons of mixed groundfish in the coming year, compared to the 84,106 metric tons allowed in the current year — a drop of some 9 percent.

Why? Because, while limits on 17 stocks will be marginally higher, the cut in haddock was 24.4 percent — from 41,265 metric tons to 31,627 metric tons — and the cut in pollock was 16 percent, from 16,553 metric tons to 13,952, more than offsetting any gains elsewhere.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

City officials and the state Legislature had the right idea back in 1956, when they created a Gloucester Fisheries Commission for "promotion, preservation, and protection of the Gloucester fishing industry."

Indeed, if such a panel had been in place over the last 10 years or so, perhaps Gloucester and other New England fishermen might have been sooner and more unified case to fight against the heavy-handed regulatory and enforcement tactics of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's law enforcement henchmen, whose treatment of fishermen and waterfront businesses like the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction have finally been documented by a federal Inspector General's report.

But while lawmakers on the local, state and federal level all now press for changes and a revisiting of many of those wrongful cases, it's also good to see Mayor Carolyn Kirk resurrect this city commission that somehow just faded into oblivion roughly a decade ago.

Read the complete editorial from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

April 18, 2011 – NOAA and the Commerce Dept. don't recognize the importance of hiring directors with a formal education, even though its eventual new director of federal fisheries enforcement will lead a force of more than 200 agents, working closely with state and law enforcement leaders under a budget of more than $50 million — and, oh yes, earning between $119,554 and $179,000.

NOAA and the U.S. Department of Commerce do not recognize the importance of hiring directors with a formal education, even through its eventual new director of federal fisheries enforcement will lead a national force of more than 200 agents, working under a budget of more than $50 million, working closely with state and law enforcement leaders — and, oh yes, earning between $119,554 and $179,000.Why? That's open to speculation. And that's because the explanations by Justin Kenney, spokesman for NOAA chief Administrator Jane Lubchenco, don't hold any more water than some of the pseudo-science writings Lubchenco and her Environmental Defense Fund cronies have used to hold down fishermen's catch limits even though current data shows most stocks are recovering — or have recovered.

Kenney says the idea of leaving out a degree requirement is aimed at ensuring the embattled agency does not want to "eliminate qualified candidates just because they may not have a degree."

There might be a context to that if he had said there might be candidates with enforcement experience, and experience in working with the commercial fishing industry. But, of course, it doesn't.

Read the complete editorial by The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over the last decade the public has been bombarded by apocalyptic predictions about the future of fish stocks — in 2006, for instance, an article in the journal Science projected that all fish stocks could be gone by 2048.

Subsequent research, including a paper I co-wrote in Science in 2009 with Boris Worm, the lead author of the 2006 paper, has shown that such warnings were exaggerated.

Much of the earlier research pointed to declines in catches and concluded that therefore fish stocks must be in trouble. But there is little correlation between how many fish are caught and how many actually exist; over the past decade, for example, fish catches in the United States have dropped because regulators have lowered the allowable catch. On average, fish stocks worldwide appear to be stable, and in the United States they are rebuilding, in many cases at a rapid rate.

The overall record of American fisheries management since the mid-1990s is one of improvement, not of decline. Perhaps the most spectacular recovery is that of bottom fish in New England, especially haddock and redfish; their abundance has grown sixfold from 1994 to 2007. Few if any fish species in the United States are now being harvested at too high a rate, and only 24 percent remain below their desired abundance.

Read the complete opinion piece at The New York Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

U.S. Sen. John Kerry is right when he says discussion "has come a long way" in pressing the Commerce Department and its renegade officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to address the government-created crisis in the New England fishing industry.

These government policies have forced out of business many of the mainstay of our New England fishing fleet — small, independent fishermen with a single boat and a small (or no) crew. The policy has made it far more lucrative for the large-scale commercial fishing companies to dominate the seas. It's an economic policy that has punished the independent fisherman, under the guise of managing fish stocks.

It's also good to know that Commerce Secretary Gary Locke — however begrudgingly and for whatever political reasons — has commissioned assessment teams to come to Seabrook, Gloucester and other New England ports to assess the economic damage the fishery policies of NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco have wrought.

Read the editorial from The Newburyport News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a lead plaintiff in the second lawsuit filed to challenge the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) implementation of Amendment 16, I can’t help but fear that the agency might follow its previous inappropriate efforts to destroy evidence in a manner similar to that conducted by former Enforcement chief Dale Jones, who remains a NOAA employee.

Previous attempts by NOAA officials to destroy potentially incriminating documents are well established. There was a total disregard for the rule of law when 75 to 80 percent of the files in the office of disgraced law enforcement head Dale J. Jones, Jr. were shredded while he was under Federal investigation by Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinzer. As Zinzer wrote, "the shredding implicates that it was done to conceal information…"

Many of the same officials who ran the agency at that time remain.  They oversaw a culture that allowed such activity to occur. It only stands to reason that efforts might again be made by agency officials to hide any possible illegal coordination between the NOAA and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) with the non-governmental groups that have undue influence over the agency.

While we live in a nation that professes "equal justice under law" as is enscribed in stone on the ediface of the Supreme Court, there are actually two de facto sets of law in America, one for the public and another for the government. Thanks to US District Judge Rya W. Zobel’s decision not to allow discovery into the numerous behind-the-scenes contacts between NOAA, NMFS, and the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) with environmental groups, the public may never know how much influence these groups have had in the implementation of Amendment 16.

Unfortunately, this ruling has provided NOAA /NMFS and the NEFMC more time to also purge their records of any relevant information. It is also reasonable to expect that the special interest NGO’s have deleted and destroyed incriminating evidence by now since they were not required by law to retain it.

We need elected officials to demand the release of all the relevant contacts between the Federal Government and the NGOs regarding Catch Shares and Amendment 16. Whether by Congressional subpoena, FOIA or other means, this information needs to be brought to light.

It has now become clear that the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association (CCCHFA)  and its sector has profited by decisions made by the New England Managmennt Council which is chaired by the Hook Association's CEO, John Pappalardo.  Amendment 16 granted the CCHFA and the recreational-for-hire sector larger allocations that other sectors by allowing their use of more advantageous qualifying years.  Were these benefits accrued legitimately or by undue inflluence and insider trading?  The  only way to remove the appearance of illegality is for all contacts between NOAA, NEFMC, and environmental grouns such as Pew Environment, EDF and "fishermen's" organizations such as CCFHFA that accept NGO money tp be made public.

So far this year, CCHFA members have caught less then 5 percent of their fishery allocation, selling the rest to other sectors and pocketing the profits. One of the criticisms of Amendment 16 when it was being considered was a prediction that it would create rich armchair fishermen who no longer fish but instead profiteer off the hard work of others that must pay to acquire enough fish to survive. The actions of CCCHFA have shown that these predictions were accurate.  Quota rentals drive up the cost of doing business and reduce individual boat profit along with crewmember paychecks.

Another problem faced by the plaintiffs is the near-certainty that if the judge decides in our favor, NOAA/NMFS will certainly appeal the case to a higher court. While appeal is every plaintiff’s and defendant’s right, NOAA has a curious bias toward only appealing lawsuits against NMFS that they lose to fishing industry litigants.   When they lose to environmental groups, they seem to not have the same zeal for appeal.

Fairness and good sense demand that all these loose ends be fully and officially investigated so the truth come out once and for all.