A fisherman unloads a portion of his catch for the day at Pigeon Cove Whole Foods docks in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Eric Schwaab, the administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, announced this week that overfishing will end in U.S. waters. (AP/Lisa Poole)

By Michael Conathan | March 25, 2011

The administrator of federal fisheries has reportedly declared restoration efforts of overfished stocks — now in their fourth decade under Magnuson-Stevens Act mandates — have succeeded in making sustainable the nation’s last great wild food resource.

In informal remarks during a private meeting with a seafood marketing group on the first day of the International Boston Seafood Show, Eric Schwaab, administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, was applauded not only for his optimistic assessment of the long struggle to end overfishing, but for his commitment to marry government resources with U.S. industry efforts at increasing the domestic share of the global seafood market, according to multiple audience sources.

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Schwaab spoke to about 70 members of the National Seafood Marketing Coalition on Sunday, during the first day of the three-day seafood show, considered an apex event on the global fisheries calendar.

Expressed in multiple variations, the theme of the show, according to Seafood.com, an industry news site, was supplier and seller efforts to measure and demonstrate seafood sustainability in a global market in which 84 percent of U.S. consumption is imported, half of it farmed.

The leading exporter to U.S. markets is China, to which the United States had a $1.6 billion trade deficit in seafood alone in 2010, according to government statistics.

Schwaab’s characterization of the success of stock restoration efforts in the United States intersects the pending Senate confirmation hearing as ambassador to China of Gary Locke.

Locke, the Secretary of Commerce, has become the center of a festering dispute between coastal state congressional leaders and the White House over administration fisheries policy, and whether the conversion to catch share management and a commodities market system has caused grave harm to the industry and fishing communities, as U.S. Sens. John Kerry, Scott Brown and Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, all of Massachusetts, and other lawmakers have argued.

Read the rest of the story from the Gloucester Times.

Pondering how he might vote on the so-called Jones amendment — should the House-approved cutoff of funds for future NOAA catch share programs come to a Senate vote — Sen. John Kerry announced Monday he would be holding a “due diligence” meeting Thursday with Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco.

Lubchenco is the lead advocate for the catch share management program, which she began promoting while an academic scientist and officer of the Environmental Defense Fund before President Obama nominated her to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Kerry also said Monday he hoped to gain insight into catch shares via a field hearing he plans to schedule in Massachusetts for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Read the rest of the story here.

The search for balance between economic and environmental concerns intensified this week over catch limits from those in both commercial and recreational fishing industries.

Key North Carolina congressional delegation members have asked U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke “to consider other well-established fishery management techniques” to help keep the industry alive.

A letter from Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., Rep. Mike McIntyre, D-N.C., Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., joined several senators and congressmen from other East Coast states in the request. The request came over “concern that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations catch share policy will further endanger the economic vitality of the already-struggling fishing industry and will not end overfishing.”

“The fishing industry is a crucial part of our nation’s economy, but in these tough economic times too many fishermen are struggling to provide for themselves, their families and their communities,” the letter said.

It maintains, as have fishermen speaking at recent public hearings in New Bern before the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council this year, that NOAA has “committed significant funding to encourage the adoption of catch share programs when it has not committed sufficient funds to adequately assess the stocks of our nation’s fisheries.”

Read the rest of the story here.

U.S. Sen. John Kerry has put his political weight behind the struggles of the fishing industry in its growing fight for relief from the regulatory, economic and law enforcement policies created and being carried out by the Obama administration.

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Expressing disappointment and frustration at the lack of progress in a year’s struggle dating to the Feb. 24, 2010, national fishermen’s rally in Washington, D.C., Kerry announced plans organize a field hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee — somewhere in Massachusetts, and no later than April.

The hearing would gather testimony for comprehensive legislation aimed at modifying the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the landmark 1976 law that governs America’s fisheries and is credited with achieving sustainable stocks and ending overfishing.

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A nationally televised report has told the world of the travails of the Gloucester-based fishing industry at the hands of government regulators.

Featuring testimony from longtime port of Gloucester fishermen Bill Lee and Richard Burgess, the CBS News report broadcast Wednesday night marked the first extended network coverage of a struggle that was joined with the start of the Obama administration and has built in intensity for two years

The grievances against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service trace back more than a decade, as the federal Commerce Department inspector general has acknowledged.

The report by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian covered issues that readers of the Times have been immersed in — stultifying overregulation and vindictive, debilitating law enforcement, which together put small businessmen out of business — but CBS also added a new perspective.

Read the rest of the story here.