October 24, 2013 — It’s a little hard to figure how a 16-day “shutdown” would push back the distribution of Saltonstall-Kennedy Act dollars to fishermen and local businesses by more than a month from the original target date, as NOAA officials are now saying.
Indeed, it would seem more appropriate if NOAA leaders, recognizing the dire straits fishermen and fishing communities are facing, opted to redouble and accelerate their efforts to go through the applications and parcel out the grants, rather than pushing the projected disbursement dates from late December to the end of January or early February, as noted in Wednesday’s Page 1 story.
Yet that’s the new timeframe outlined by NOAA, which has, through its catch share policies, questionable science methodology and tight new landing limits, gone a long way toward triggering the current fishing crisis in the first place.
There is good news regarding the pending Saltonstall-Kennedy grants, rooted in a 1954 congressional act that should have steered some 30 percent of all seafood tariff dollars into a fund for promoting and aiding the industry. NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen indicated that the overall aid package — initially pegged at between $5 and $10 million — has been set at roughly $11 million under the NOAA budget for fiscal 2013, which just began federally on Oct. 1.
Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times