The abrupt and seemingly arbitrary move by NOAA's regional fisheries administrator Patricia Kurkul to cut allocations in half for Gloucester's and New England's so-called "common pool" fishermen can be filed under the heading of "inevitable."
After all, last year's equally arbitrary actions of the New England Fisheries Management Council — tied to the puppet strings of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and thus to its fishery management puppeteer, the Environmental Defense Fund — granted Kurkul the authority to make random allocation changes. That only set the stage for this kind of outrageous regulatory action. Perhaps that's why there seems to be relatively little outrage; there's absolutely no surprise.
The fact is, Kurkul's latest cut — which targets those fishermen who could not realistically enter NOAA's and EDF's new catch share management system — proves once more just how grossly NOAA's management has set up the New England Fishery for failure. And cutting the common-pool fishermen's allocations by 50 percent merely expedites the collapse the agency and council had set in motion.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Daily Times.