At the front of a broad, diverse and bipartisan political coalition, U.S. Sen. John Kerry Tuesday renewed the call for the Obama administration to improve its fisheries science, and to do right by the fishing industry of the New England and mid-Atlantic states.
"We've seen some progress in the past few weeks," Kerry said, referring to the announcement by the Commerce Department that it will send teams to Gloucester and other key New England fishing ports to evaluate the hardship engendered by conservative government-set catch limits that minimize allocations of fishermen's catch shares in the groundfishery.
But despite some recent concessions, Kerry said, "Massachusetts still needs a disaster declaration and we've got to deal with catch levels that are strangling our fishermen."
Just before the start of Tuesday's special U.S. Capitol meeting of New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang's Ocean and Fisheries Council, Kerry released copies of a letter he and Reps. Barney Frank and William F. Keating, both Massachusetts Democrats, had sent to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke asking that uncaught fish allocated for the soon ending fishing year be reallocated into the base for the 2011 season that begins May 1.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.