March 4, 2020 — The following was released by the U.S. Department of Commerce:
I would like to thank Earl Comstock for honoring his commitment to serve for three years as Director of Policy and Strategic Planning at the Department of Commerce. I value his wise counsel, his deep policy expertise, his innovative thinking and leadership, and I thank him for his service to the American people. I know he will excel in whatever new role he takes on and wish him the very best.
July 18, 2019 — The White House is pushing a top aide to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross out of the Trump administration, the first round of house-cleaning after the 2020 census debacle and clashes over tech policy.
In recent months, Commerce policy director Earl Comstock has angered Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, White House lawyers, members of the National Security Council and officials at the National Economic Council, according to five current and former administration officials. The irritation extends to the highest staff level of the White House, several officials stressed, citing both Comstock’s handling of the 2020 U.S. census’s citizenship question and the internal debate over spectrum policy as key areas of disagreement.
One former administration official said he could not think of anyone who “had pissed off as many senior White House officials” as Comstock, who critics allege often tried to exceed his own authority as a top Commerce policy staffer. Comstock also clashed with officials across federal agencies, according to one administration official.
While officials said the process of forcing out Comstock through a firing or resignation is underway, the date of his actual departure remains unclear. He was at the agency until the end of the day on Wednesday.
December 19, 2017 — The Trump administration scored last week when a House panel voted to give Gulf of Mexico states more power in managing the popular red snapper, but court records suggest it may be a tainted victory.
Internal memos show that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and a top adviser may have knowingly violated federal fisheries law in June when they extended the Gulf red snapper season, hoping the move would pressure Congress to act.
In a June 1 memo, Earl Comstock, the Commerce Department’s director of policy and strategic planning, told Ross that a longer season “would result in overfishing” of the stock by as much as 40 percent and possibly prompt a lawsuit.
But Comstock urged Ross to extend the season anyway, saying it could lead to “a significant achievement” by forcing Congress to liberalize the federal law and transfer more authority to Gulf states.
“It would allow a reset in the acrimonious relationship and set the stage for Congress to adopt a long-term fix,” Comstock told Ross.
Comstock followed up with a second memo on June 7, reminding his boss that both the White House and a dozen congressmen from Gulf states had asked Ross to explore the possibility of a longer fishing season.
The next week, Ross decided to extend the season from three to 42 days, much to the joy of recreational anglers in Florida, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (Greenwire, Sept. 20).
Critics say the memos offer proof that Commerce and NOAA Fisheries plotted to bypass the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a 1976 law that sets quotas as a way to rebuild overfished stocks, including the red snapper.
“I appreciate it when people are transparent about their intentions,” said Janis Searles Jones, the CEO of Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental group.
Commerce made the memos public as part of its response to a lawsuit filed in July in U.S. District Court in Washington by Ocean Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund. The complaint accuses Ross, NOAA and NOAA Fisheries of mismanagement by allowing overfishing.
Read the full story at E&E News
October 19, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Three additional documents have emerged as part of the lawsuit filed against the US Commerce Department that appear to show an intent to end-run normal channels of public comment and regulated processes for regional council activities, only to serve the needs of the sportfishing industry.
The lawsuit, filed by Ocean Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund last July, focused on mismanagement of the Gulf Red Snapper fishery, but documents released last week show the recreational industry expects a level of allowance that flies in the face of the legal requirements of the Magnuson Stevens Act, and the processes for managing fisheries that is contained within it.
The documents are part of a 70-page package submitted by the government in response to the plaintiff’s lawsuit. They show clear intent to receive special treatment when it comes to taking more of the annual catch, and broader influence on choosing who sits on the regional management councils, a process specified by the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) which is poised for reauthorization in 2018.
Moreover, in at least three instances, Department of Commerce employees, after briefing sports industry stakeholders on the requirements of MSA, go on to suggest various legislative — not regulatory — “fixes” for breaking the rules with the red snapper action.
Indeed, the documents point to a blurred state of authorities and influence wielding between the Commerce Department and the US Congress. Whether it is a beleaguered agency’s attempts to protect its standing among Gulf states or an intentional violation of the law remains unclear, but no one is disputing that the regulations within MSA are clear, and have, in the case of red snapper, been ignored.
A letter to commerce secretary Wilbur Ross from Ben Speciale, president of Yamaha Marine Group, was sent on April 3, less than a week after Ross met with Speciale, Mike Nussman, Scott Deal and Pat Murray to discuss the need for a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) fisheries administrator who had experience with the recreational sector. Chris Oliver was hired as head of NOAA Fisheries two and a half months later.
Nussman is the president of the American Sportfishing Association, Deal is from Maverick Boats and Murray is from the Coastal Conservation Association.
Ross posed questions to the group and asked them to respond later. One topic that may have been brought up — Ross certainly raised it frequently during his confirmation hearing and in separate interviews following his confirmation — was ways to reverse the seafood imbalance of trade.
It was a topic Speciale responded to in his April 3 letter to Ross.
“We support imposing assessments on imported seafood based on the country of origin’s management program,” wrote Speciale. “We believe this will help level the playing field and allow our domestic commercial fishermen to increase revenue without increasing their landings. We also support efforts to promote aquaculture….and we must not forget that all recreational landed fish are consumed in the US,” Speciale pointed out.
“Promoting recreational fishing is a conservation-minded way of increasing the consumption of US-caught fish,” he wrote.
Speciale did not elaborate on the ramifications of increased per capita consumption coming from sports landings and the impact on sustainably managed populations of fish.
Speciale’s first request was about more red snapper for Gulf of Mexico anglers.
“…we must return to a recreational red snapper season of no less [than] the 60 days for the 2017 and 2018 seasons,” he wrote.
“I understand that the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council and the regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries in the southeast region will present obstacles to this initiative, but they must be overcome so that we may restore a sense of fairness for recreational anglers.”
Speciale continued: “Excessive precaution and fear of frivolous litigation from the environmental industry has created a massive bureaucrat roadblock that has been unfair to anglers and stifled our industry.
“We ask that you overcome these obstacles at the regional fishery management councils and Regional Administrators’ Offices.”
Speciale’s second request was to appoint a person within the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning (currently headed up by Earl Comstock) to have direct oversight on all regional fishery management council appointments. Further, that every appointment should be made only after coordinated consulting with the recreational industry.
Finally, Speciale asked for NOAA Fisheries to adopt a long-term strategy to increase public access to state and federal waters and “eliminate any management effort or technique that attempts to privatize federal fisheries, which are and should remain a public resource.”
Almost two months later, as the red snapper season caught its quota in a matter of days, Shannon Cass-Calay, Chief of the Gulf and Caribbean Branch of the Sustainable Fisheries Division at NOAA Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center ran the numbers on what the impact a 45-day extension would have on the red snapper stock in the gulf.
She sent a summary of the research to five of her colleagues, asking them to consider it, emphasizing the uncertainties in the data, and warning that an extended season “…will very likely cause catches to exceed OFL (Over Fishing Limit) and delay recovery by 4-6 years. Each additional overage will degrade the condition of the stock further.”
The final dissemination of that memo is not known, but it must have reached Earl Comstock, because he referenced it in one of two memos to Secretary Ross in early June.
After consulting with all five gulf state fisheries managers, Comstock asked Ross if he could move ahead on crafting an extension to the red snapper season. At the bottom of his first memo to Ross, dated June 1, Comstock hand wrote “Secretary said go with two days plus holidays. OK to proceed.”
On June 7, Comstock sent a memo to Ross preparing him for a hearing on appropriations where Senator Shelby (R-AL) may ask Ross about the gulf snapper issue. He also presented two options for the extension and asked Ross to pick one.
“As discussed, under either option the increased angler catch will result in the overall catch limit for this year being exceeded by 30% and 50%,” Comstock explained to Ross. “Either option would mean that, absent Congressional action to modify the Magnuson-Stevens Act requirements for the gulf, the recreational season next year would be significantly reduced. All the state fishery managers know this, but agree the coordinated action has the greater long-term benefit,” Comstock wrote.
He acknowledged that either option will be opposed by commercial fishermen and charter operators, and “it will almost certainly draw a lawsuit.”
Comstock noted that any plaintiffs in a suit “cannot get a temporary restraining order because the Magnuson-Stevens Act prohibits them. However, they might be able to get an injunction based on the argument we are violating a recent court order that stopped a 2% reallocation from commercial to recreational that the Gulf Council had adopted,” he wrote.
A third new document appears to depict a National Marine Fisheries Service administrator suggesting work arounds for an action that would be in direct violation of MSA. It’s a memo from Harry Blanchet, Biologist Administrator of the Fisheries Division, Louisiana Department of Wildlife, to John Searle, the Congressional staffer to Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise. Searle had been in discussions with the state fisheries department regarding the red snapper situation.
Blanchet, who also sits on the Gulf Council’s Science and Statistical panel, warned Scalise that “recreational red snapper harvest for 2017 may well overrun the recreational allocation by a substantial amount, and as a result, overall harvest may overrun the total allowable catch.”
Blanchet, like those before him, warned Searle that, “historically, and required by Magnuson, those over-runs would have to be paid back in following years, resulting in even lower recreational quota and thus federal seasons,” he told Seale.
Blanchet’s solution was a waiver.
“My thought was that a simple waiver of those Magnuson requirements in another bill in the current Congress could help a lot in terms of allowing there to be a federal waters recreational red snapper season in 2018. I understand that you may want to do a lot more, but just want to be sure that those payback provisions to not come back to bite next year,” he wrote.
This story originally appeared on Seafood News, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
October 16, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Internal memos show top Trump administration officials knew extending the recreational fishing season in the Gulf of Mexico from three to 42 days this summer would lead to significant overfishing.
But they did it anyway.
In memos released in response to a lawsuit, Commerce Department officials defended the move by saying that keeping the three-day season would be “devastating” to the recreational marine industry and the communities whose economies are tied to it.
And extending the time would also help solve a long-running dispute with states who have much longer seasons and want to wrest control of red snapper management from federal managers, they argued.
“It would result in overfishing of the stock by six million pounds (40%), which will draw criticism from environmental groups and commercial fishermen,” Earl Comstock, director of Policy and Strategic Planning for Commerce, conceded in a June 1 memo to his boss, Secretary Wilbur Ross. “However NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) agrees that this stock could handle this level on a temporary basis.”
October 12, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Internal memos between Earl Comstock, Director of the Office of Policy and Strategic Planning, and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross show that both men intentionally violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act to allow sports fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico a summer of weekend openers for red snapper.
As a result of the decision, the quota for red snapper was exceeded by an estimated 50 percent. Prior to the decision, red snapper stocks in the Gulf were halfway through a successful rebuilding program. The damage done to the stocks will be assessed this year and likely would result in further cuts to all sectors — recreational, commercial, and charter — next year.
But the insistence to break the law had more nefarious motives than simply to give recreational fishermen more red snapper.
The memos, released as part of a lawsuit against the Department of Commerce by Ocean Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund, show that the disaster caused by the decision would “…put the ball squarely in the court of Congress,” wrote Comstock to Ross in a June 7, 2017 memo.
“Congress would need to act to prevent reduced catch limits for all fishing sectors next year. This problem will not be able to be addressed through the fishery management system without a change of law,” Comstock said.
“The Congressional representatives know this, and are looking to DoC [Department of Commerce] for leadership. By resetting the debate and building a strong partnerhsip with the State fishery managers … we can provide the leadership Congress is asking of us,” Comstock wrote to Ross.
Ocean Conservancy called this “playing a game of chicken with Congress. They have manufactured a crisis in the fishery by allowing so much overfishing that now everyone could get hurt next year.”
The reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act is poised to happen in 2018. Already there are half a dozen bills aimed at making changes to MSA, which is the foundation for the nation’s sustainably managed fisheries resources. Comstock’s agenda, as outlined in the memos to Secretary Ross, implies that to respond to the overfishing that will occur on red snapper as a result of the decision, an MSA reauthorization favoring recreational interests would be more likely.
Red snapper was just coming up to its halfway mark of a 27-year rebuilding plan, having been reduced to just 3 percent of historic levels by decades of overfishing.
Stocks were showing a strong recovery under the plan until large overages from the recreational sector resulted in lowering catch levels by 20% in 2014.
Catch rates in the recreational sector are two to three times higher than they were a decade ago, when the rebuilding plan began.
The five states bordering the Gulf of Mexico were estimated to catch 81% of the available quota, before Commerce’s decision to extend their sports fisheries. The estimate of what was taken now is three times the sustainable limit.
It isn’t as though Comstock, who has worked on other recreational issues within the Council system before, including the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council in Alaska, doesn’t know any better.
In a May 2, 2017 testimony to the House Oversight & Government Report Subcommittee, Comstock explained that “NMFS, as required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, must set an annual catch quota for the red snapper fishery that does not exceed the level specified by the Gulf Council’s scientific advisors, and must prohibit fishing when the quota is reached.”
His memos to his boss five weeks later encourage a complete reversal of that principle, with little regard for the law.
This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.