DEDHAM, MA — Without reading it, the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary advisory committee Wednesday voted for a 39 page proposal to set up an "ecological research area" that would halt trawling in 39 percent of the sanctuary and fishing of all kinds, including hook-and-line from private boats in 14 percent.
But the plan which had been kept secret by its author, sanctuary Superintendent Craig MacDonald, until after he completed his morning Powerpoint presentation at a hotel here, had already been shelved by a high level consensus of Obama administration officials at the Department of Commerce and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The proposed closing, which under any circumstances was months off and needed approval by the New England Fishery Management Council, "put 123 jobs at stake," said one Obama administration official.
"It's really unfortunate to try to sell this plan as insignificant," Vito Giacalone, the policy director for the coalition and a member of the ad hoc subcommittee of the advisory committee, said. "I'm appalled."
He went on to propose an alternative plan that would have shifted most of the no fishing zone into the 900 nautical square miles of the Western Gulf of Maine Closed area, a long thin rectangle that overlaps Stellwagen, creating a "sliver" inside the sanctuary where commercial fishing has been banned for 13 years but recreational is allowed.
Giacalone said his idea had the benefit of providing a 13-year history free from commercial fishing that is ignored in the plan put forward by MacDonald, but the advisory council rejected the alterative option by a similar, 9-5, to the 9-4-1 vote for MacDonald's plan.
"If NOAA drags its heels," said Priscilla Brooks, an advisory committee member and vice president of ocean conservation at Conservation Law Foundation, "this will never be considered. I'm very frustrated."
Les Kaufman, a Boston University biologist and longtime participant in the management of Stellwagen, was one observer of the meeting who was not frustrated. He said he understood the thinking in Washington to put the SERA proposal in the freezer for a while, out of political discretion, and added that he also saw reason for hope in the commercial fishing industry's agreeability — reflected in Giacalone's counter proposal to shift the no fishing zone out of Stellwagen, but still have one.
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