December 21, 2013 — Peter Ferrante arrived at the O’Maley Innovation Middle School on Friday expecting to give one talk to 250 students and ended up giving a different one, giving rise to at least the notion that more communication between fishermen and regulators might create more common ground than anyone thought possible.
Ferrante, a retired fisherman who fished out of Gloucester for more than 30 years, was invited to speak to the students about his fishing experiences and how they related to marine conservation — subjects that many of the kids have been studying this quarter.
The agenda called for him to be followed by Colleen Coogan, a fishery biologist from the federal National Marine Fisheries Service, who would lend the regulators’ perspective on the way and means of marine conservation.
“When I came here today, I actually was going to criticize NOAA for taking too stiff of a stand on these issues,” Ferrante said after the program.
But that’s not what happened. Before the kids even trooped into the auditorium, Ferrante and Coogan took a few moments to chat and something she said made the longtime fisherman soften his views on the divide that exists between the regulators and the regulated.
Coogan, according to Ferrante, explained that NOAA, in its mission to manage the nation’s fisheries, is beholden to higher powers and the mandates that spring from the letter of the laws that govern the nation’s fishermen and fisheries. They are not, she told him, in business to hurt fishermen, that there is no solution to the current crisis without them.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times