When the Secretary of Commerce approves a Fishery Management Plan that ENGOs think doesn’t punish fishermen adequately, they sue in federal court. This is supposedly to protect our oceans, and yet an exploratory drilling rig exploded and sank on April 20. It was in operation with little or no federal oversight.
There hasn’t been a meeting of any federal regional fishery management council in at least a decade that hasn’t been attended by representatives of various ENGOs, constantly striving for more and more stringent controls on fishing and fishermen. And time after time, when the Secretary of Commerce approves a Fishery Management Plan or plan amendment that the ENGOs think doesn’t punish fishermen adequately, they will sue the Secretary in federal court to “save the fish” even more thoroughly.
Fishermen are required to take federal observers on board on request to insure that they are fishing in conformance with applicable regulations. The frequency of these “observed” trips can vary from several times a season up to 100% coverage. In the latest amendment to the New England Multispecies Fisheries Management Plan, vessels are required to have observers on 38% of their trips. In some fisheries fishermen are required to notify federal personnel a set time before landing so they can be met at the dock and their catch for that trip can be inspected. In some fisheries, each boat is required to have a vessel tracking system installed and operational so that the federal government knows where the boat is and what its doing 24/7, three-hundred and sixty five days a year.
This is supposedly necessary to protect our oceans, and yet an exploratory drilling rig, a rig twice as big as a football field, worth upwards of a half a billion dollars and with a crew of well over a hundred, operating forty-some miles out in the Gulf of Mexico and drilling in a mile of water, exploded and sank on April 20. It was in operation with little or no federal oversight, with nothing resembling an environmental impact statement filed for its operations in US waters, and with nothing more rigorous than the oil industry’s, the rig operators’ and the owners’ assurances that there were adequate systems in place to allow it to avoid environmental disasters such as the one that has now been ongoing in the Gulf for almost a month.
Read the complete story at Fish Net USA.