For the first time since she was tapped to be the nation's top ocean administrator just under a year ago, NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco will consult Gloucester's commercial fishermen tomorrow morning about the future of their industry.
The closed-door 8 a.m. session at City Hall will include as many as 30 fishermen hand picked by Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who planned the meeting in the run-up to last week's demonstration in Washington by fishermen across the country targeting federal fisheries management and the need for legislative changes by Congress.
The meeting will come hours before Lubchenco is slated to testify before a congressional oversight hearing at City Hall on alleged abuses in federal fisheries law enforcement identified by U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General Todd Zinser.
And it comes as protests by New England fishermen, steady for years, have been building over the federal government's planned launch in May of an entirely new regulatory regime tied to hard limits on the catch for each fish stock and fishing cooperatives called sectors.
"I feel I am brokering a peace agreement," Kirk said Friday after announcing plans for tomorrow morning's closed-door meeting. "I see it as the beginning of a dialogue. What if there was a willingness to hear directly from fishermen."
Both the oversight hearing and the warm-up with Kirk and fishermen will be new ground for Lubchenco.
When she was confirmed by Congress last March, Lubchenco faced questioning from Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, about conflicts between fishermen and regulators in New England.
But, in her only other time in Gloucester as NOAA head, Lubchenco met briefly with workers at the NOAA regional offices in Blackburn Industrial Park before leaving. She did not meet with either city officials or with anyone within the fishing industry.