The emerging story of oil companies allowed to conduct seismic surveys and drill for oil with cursory oversight and without permits has produced angry responses from the national fishing community, which before the failure of the BP operation, perceived a double standard in the way oil and fishing enforcement is treated by the government.
Nils Stolpe, a fishing columnist and industry advisor, noted in a column Friday, (Fishnets USA) an April 7 interview with administrator Jane Lubchenco on Web site TakePart where she was quoted saying that "at the global scale, probably the one thing currently having the most impact (on the oceans) is overfishing and destructive gear."
Citing the September 2009 letter from Lubchenco to the minerals agency, Stolpe went on to wonder "why was there no substantive follow-up by her agency over the intervening a half year before the Deepwater Horizon disaster?
"Environmental groups push congress and the regulators relentlessly to restrict fishing with very flawed and arbitrary science knowing full well that none of these species are in real biological trouble," said Jim Donofrio, executive director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance.
RFA organized and was the permit-holder of record for the national rally of fishing forces in Washington last February to lobby Congress to write flexibility into the Magnuson Stevens Act so as to give NOAA clear authority to lengthen fishing stock rebuilding regimens.
"The potential effects of a major oil spill for short and long term effects on the marine ecosystem outweigh any fishing effects that are currently regulated … yet those groups pay no attention to the regulatory and legislative mandates for the oil industry because of the funding they receive through big oil. They have proven to be no more than whores for an ideology."
"NOAA's ark needs to protect all species," said Mayor Carolyn Kirk. "The agency could do noble work but they seem to have gone astray. It is difficult to understand how they can claim environmental triumph over the fishing industry on one hand and sacrifice endangered turtles to the oil industry on the other."
Read this entire story at The Gloucester Daily Times.