Barnegat Light, N.J. — August 18, 2012 — John K. Bullard said he was brought in to change things in the Northeast region of the National Marine Fisheries Service, and nine days into the job he was on Long Beach Island to ask fishermen first hand how they see the agency and its issues.
Do something about the impending shutdown of black sea bass fishing, they told him.
“How do we keep our recreational fishery alive in our town? Every time I talk to people about it, it’s a horror show,” said Mayor Kirk Larson.
Keep New Jersey’s monkfish fleet from being sucked into New England’s problems, they said.
“They (New England fishermen) need monkfish to stay alive. Now they want to stack and lease (monkfish permits) on boats,” warned gill net captain Kevin Wark. ‘They need quota, they need fish…Don’t bring that whole system down here.”
Why are there not more repercussions from the NMFS law enforcement scandal? “Names have been named, and people are still in office,” complained lobsterman Marty Stillufsen.
Bullard is a former mayor of New Bedford, Mass., the East Coast’s biggest commercial port, and watched it struggle through a violent crewmen’s strike and the near-death experience of the scallop industry during the 1990s. Now his old employer, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has brought him back to repair dysfunctional relations between the agency’s fisheries division and fishermen, frayed by tighter catch limits and complaints of excessive fines extracted by law enforcement.
“That’s the job, protecting those seaports. When we lose those seaports they never come back. When the fish plant turns to condos, it’s gone forever…. I believe in the value of seaports, working waterfronts. That’s why I took this job,” Bullard told a group of about 30 fishermen and fishing advocates who met for an informal discussion Thursday at the Surf City fire house.
Bullard, 65, comes back to the agency after 10 years running the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass. NMFS chief Sam Rauch chose him to lead the Northeast region with the new science director, Bill Karp, who is transferring cross-continent from Alaska.
Read the full story in the Asbury Park Press