August 18, 2013 — NOAA has been siphoning off Saltonstall-Kennedy tariff funds for decades, and the Senate's success in turning the funds back to their original purpose is what should be done. But considering about 90 percent of the fish sold in the U.S. is imported, we wonder how — over the years — it was ever allowed to get like this.
The list of fisheries disasters grew last week with the addition of Florida's oyster industry, blamed mostly on diminishing freshwater flow into Apalachicola Bay due to drought.
You could plug in "groundfish," "Massachusetts" and "warming ocean" into the news reports and hardly tell the difference.
The Northeast, Alaska and Mississippi all joined the list last year, but budget talks couldn't get $150 million in disaster funds through for the fisheries because of Republican opposition.
Congress' current opportunity to help troubled fishermen includes work done to vastly improve allocation of tariffs raised under the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954, also called the "Promotion of the free flow of domestically produced fishery products."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been siphoning off these tariff funds for decades, and the Senate's success in turning the funds back to their original purpose is what should be done. But considering about 90 percent of the fish sold in the U.S. is imported, we wonder how — over the years — it was ever allowed to get like this.
Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard Times