U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said Tuesday he will be back in the White House to demand changes in fisheries regulation by next week unless Commerce Secretary Gary Locke takes some action on the matter this week.
Meanwhile, NOAA announced last Monday that as of May 27 there will be sharp reductions in the daily landing limits for five fish species. The limits apply to boats that elected not to join sectors and are still fishing under “days at sea” rules.
Frank told a radio audience that he has already spoken once to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel about the fisheries issue, and he said he told him he would pursue it even as the congressman prepares to convene a financial regulation committee to deal with the nation’s banking crisis.
Frank and many others have been frustrated by the refusal of fishing regulators at NOAA, which is part of Commerce, to relax any of the strict new regulations that were imposed May 1 along with sharp reductions in permit allocations.
“If they set out to discredit the notion of catch shares they couldn’t have done a better job than they’re doing,” said Frank, who last week announced he would write a “friend of the court” brief backing New Bedford’s lawsuit against the Commerce Department.
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The NOAA announcement, said local boat owner Carlos Rafael (who has all of his boats in sectors) confirms what he and others predicted for the boats in the common pool: a fishing derby and a rapid exhaustion of the meager allocations awarded to the pool vessels by the government.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in its notice that as of May 18, less than three weeks into the fishing year, the pool boats had already landed one-third of their annual share of winter flounder, 13.7 percent of the Georges Bank haddock, 11.2 percent of the Georges Bank winter flounder, and 24.4 percent of the Georges Bank yellowtail.
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