Some Notes On What Has Happened To The East Coast Fishing Industry

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Last week, South Coast Today posted an article about the protest by commercial fishermen staged off Martha's Vineyard. 

The article deals with the protest and the people who have been hurt by the overly strict regulations on fishing, but at the heart of the story is a runaway government agency.

According to the article:

Bob Vanasse, the executive director of the industry advocacy group Saving Seafood, put the issue in the best perspective.

It's not environmentalists versus fishermen, he said. It's both the environmentalists and fishermen versus a rogue bureaucratic agency.

Think Jane Lubchenco, the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration administrator who promised reform but delivered another round of weak-science regulation.

Think Dale Jones, the never-fired NOAA law enforcement director who shredded documents showing stricter enforcement of Northeast fishermen than all others. The man who refused to tell Congress whether his junket trips were funded by those same fishermen's fines.

Think of an agency that used decades worth of faulty data gathered on the Albatross, and that even now refuses to give up that faulty data.

Think of an agency that, based on a loophole, adopted the most Draconian regulations possible, even though the Magnuson Act forbid such extreme measures.

(The Magnuson Act that governs fisheries requires that regulations be the ones that have the least impact on the commercial fishing effort, and that's being ignored.)

Fourth District Congressman Barney Frank has proposed an amendment to Magnuson that would require a referendum among fishermen when the agency uses regulations that involve a fishing quota system.

Frank has given the White House a temporary reprieve on firing Lubchenco so this protest was one last effort to get the president's attention before Frank reopens the issue.

Besides the pleas of Frank and Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown, Gov. Deval Patrick has demanded changes from Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

And some 5,000 fishermen, back in February, went to the mall in Washington in an effort to get President Barack Obama's attention on the rogue agency.

But they did not.

This is a situation that impacts not only unemployment for East Coast fishermen, but also plays a part in where we get our seafood as a nation.  The government bureaucracy in the fishing industry has gotten out of hand and needs to be pushed back.  There is no way that what is being done to the fishermen could be Constitutional.

 

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This page contains a single entry by Granny G published on September 2, 2010 2:18 PM.

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