January 10, 2013 — The word on the street suggests that the current administration of UMass Dartmouth has adopted a strategic plan that attempts to reduce friction between SMAST and the National Marine Fisheries Service. If this is concluded, the essence of SMAST is gone.
It is reported that an administrative decision has been made that SMAST give up its independence and not conflict its research and conclusions with that of the federal National Marine Fisheries Services and succumb to government control. Why? Money is the answer, but changing its consistent questioning of government science, its innovative approach to assessment of stocks and its ability to film the seabed bottom has brought into question the prior findings of the feds and the science that was relied upon before SMAST. Keep in mind that the feds and their scientific arm located at Woods Hole is a bureaucracy and its ability to consider questions regarding its practices is offensive.
SMAST has clearly proved that some of the methods, procedures and conclusions of government science are often very questionable and sometimes dead wrong. The silence of SMAST would put government before SMAST, the only game in town, and without question its conclusions being the best available science because it would be the only science that the feds would pay attention to. Those of us who have lived through the years preceding SMAST know what that means. The bureaucracy gets stronger because it does not have an institution vibrant with ideas, attracting the best and developing a student body that graduates and brings the desire for better answers and innovative methods to other schools, which is in itself is contrary to bureaucracy.
The word on the street suggests that the current administration of UMass Dartmouth has adopted a strategic plan that attempts to reduce friction between SMAST and Woods Hole. A reduction of friction means that SMAST not engage in activities or produce results that conflict with those of the National Marine Fisheries Service. If this is concluded, the essence of SMAST is gone. Scientists, teachers and students gravitate to SMAST because it gives them an opportunity to think, innovate and experiment. That is not possible with government control.
Of lesser importance than the future of SMAST is that the recent actions taken against Dr. Brian Rothschild are an opening salvo by the administration to satisfy the feds by removing a person who has led the success of SMAST. His future and his relationship to the school and his ability to attract good people have made it what it is. It appears that the current administration does not want what he has been able to develop in such a short time and so brilliantly and that a fisheries school is no longer the priority for SMAST.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times