New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell (left) and Rep. Rob Bishop (right) discuss fishing issues in New Bedford on Thursday, June 2. (Photo: House Natural Resources Committee)
June 3, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the New Bedford Standard-Times:
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A congressman from the Mountain West got a full dose of a New England coast Thursday, as seafood and fishing industry representatives aired their views on several contentious issues — including the ongoing marine monument debate — during a whirlwind tour of New Bedford’s waterfront.
U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, visited the city to get a firsthand look at the highest-value commercial fishing port in the country. Numerous industry leaders from across the region took the opportunity to speak to the committee chairman, particularly about the push for monument status in the New England Canyons and Seamounts, about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod.
Eric Reid, a general manager with Rhode Island frozen fish business Seafreeze, told Bishop during a noontime forum at the New Bedford Whaling Museum that economic impacts from monument status, which would restrict commercial fishing, could cost $500 million and “countless jobs.”
Reid unfurled a map of ocean waters on a Whaling Museum table and pointed out to Bishop where he felt commercial fishing businesses could, and could not, survive if a monument status was put in place. Reid suggested a line of demarcation in the Canyons and Seamounts area, where bottom-fishing would be allowed north of the line but not to the south.
“We can protect the industry, and we can protect the corals,” Reid said, urging that “pelagic” fishing, or fishing that occurs well above ocean floors, be allowed in both zones.
Bishop called the map an “extremely good” start to alternative proposals for which he could advocate as the issue unfolds in coming months, during the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s administration.
Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Saving Seafood, said Bishop’s visit hopefully was the first of many lawmaker visits facilitated by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC). Saving Seafood launched the coalition last fall, with members that span the country and include New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.
“We want to bring these members of Congress who have jurisdiction over the fishing industry, to visit the ports that their laws regulate,” Vanasse said. “This is the kind of communication effort that the National Coalition is about.”