Eric Schwaab — who said he aims "to balance long-term sustainability and short-term economic realities" — takes the helm at a time when some commercial and recreational fishing interests are increasingly critical of the government's ocean-management policies. A large group of these critics will march on the Capitol on Wednesday in a protest they've dubbed United We Fish, aimed at rolling back a series of fishing reforms that the Bush administration pushed to enact along with a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in 2006. The restrictions were designed to protect depleted species.
"We haven't always agreed with each other, but we've always been able to work things out," said Larry Simns, president of the Maryland Watermen's Association.
In the early part of the decade, Simns recalled, Schwaab angered local fishermen by insisting on stricter catch quotas to reduce blue crab mortality by 15 percent.
"We were able to talk to him and get the same results, [so that we could] still save the crabs without hurting the watermen too bad," Simns said. "He can deal with people; he can talk to them."
Robert Glenn, who got to know Schwaab when Glenn served as executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association Maryland, praised him for figuring out how "to balance the science with the implications on people's lives" when making decisions about commercial and recreational fishing.
"He's fair, and he listens to all sides," Glenn said, adding that when it came to setting quotas for the state's crab fishery, Schwaab "followed the science. He looked to the biologists, instead of the political class."