Trying to sell institutional investors on the merits of the Obama administration’s plan to convert the nation’s fisheries into commodity markets capable of yielding windfall profits, an Environmental Defense Fund vice president described the industry before “catch shares” as a human wasteland. Such a world, David Festa, told investors at the Milken Institute Global Conference in 2009, was governed by ever-greater effort controls limiting the amount of time fishermen are allowed on the water; with constraints on fishing time, comes social decay, he explained. “That means all you have is itinerant labor that bounces around from job to job,” Festa said. “It’s unskilled, it’s unprofessional, it’s low paid, there’s high drug use, it’s a rough life.” The Obama administration, which adopted EDF’s catch share mantra and made it U.S. policy, distanced itself Monday from Festa and his opinions.
Reaction from Gloucester and New Bedford, the original twin capitals of the East Coast fishing industry — now struggling with economic dislocation associated with the catch shares system imposed last May on the groundfishery — was fierce and angry.
“I used to have great admiration for the mission of EDF, but more and more I see that this is just another brand of greed thinly disguised as environmentalism,” Mayor Carolyn Kirk said Monday. “And they don’t know the first thing about Gloucester fishermen.”
“Fishermen are not a disposable commodity,” said New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang. He described Festa’s comments as “disgraceful.”
“It shows real lack of appreciation of all the heritage and all sacrifices that have been made in all the port cities,” Lang added. “Those people (EDF) have lost their way and basically see conservation as a way to the money. People in the industry as treated as collateral damage.”
In an e-mail to the Times Monday, Festa said his comments were “a statement about the conditions that can exist when fisheries are not managed in a way that works for fishermen.” EDF President Fred Krupp agreed
“Regulations have historically been stacked against fishermen,” said Krupp, who heads the $200 million nonprofit that preaches a faith in markets and partners Wall Street investment bankers and energy conglomerates, “EDF works with fishermen to find solutions that will help make fishing a stable, successful livelihood.”
But the Department of Commerce, which has stood by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric’s Administration’s push for catch shares, took steps Monday to keep Festa and his views at arm’s length.
“David Festa does not work for or speak for the administration,” said Shannon Gilson, spokeswoman for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.
Lang and Kirk have made their cities lead plaintiffs in a landmark suit now before a U.S. District Court judge in Boston that challenges the constitutionality and legality of the catch share-based regulatory regimen written to govern the groundfishery. Lang brings the Mayor’s Oceans and Fisheries Council to Washington D.C.for an educational and informational meeting in the U.S. Capitol today to challenge what he calls “biased rule-making, not based on the best science, which has caused economic harm to fishermen from Maine to North Carolina.”
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.