Mar 8
2011
State officials search for ways to respect marine habitats and native fishing rights
Trinidad Head PHOTO BY RYAN BURNS
BY RYAN BURNS
It’s been almost a dozen years since the California legislature approved the Marine Life Protection Act, a momentous piece of legislation designed to help coastal ecosystems rebound from decades of overfishing and ecological abuse. The Act was based on a model that’s proved effective elsewhere, including the oceans off New Zealand and the Great Barrier Reef, where fishing is limited or prohibited inside designated marine reserves. Establishing such a network of Marine Protected Areas here in California has been slow and tumultuous as virtually every resident with a toe in the Pacific has lodged objections to the process or the outcome or both.
The latest attempt to unravel the work done so far came last week when a group of southern California fishermen filed suit against the state Fish and Game Commission. The anglers argue that the MLPA work completed in their region last year should be nullified because the process violated the California Environmental Quality Act. Tensions between commercial fishermen and environmentalists have accompanied nearly every step of the MLPA initiative.
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Mar 3
2011
By Richard Gaines Staff Writer
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.
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Mar 3
2011
The threads of corruption infesting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and administrator Jane Lubchenco’s beloved catch share fishery management program gets wider and more varied with each passing week.
So it is a mystery why every member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation is not making every effort possible to reign in the federal fishing regulatory agency through a budget amendment aimed at freezing NOAA’s funding for expanding this job-killing national policy.
The latest example is an anonymous petition faxed to and circulated among fishermen, asking that they sign on in support the new regulatory system, which allocates fishermen “shares” of an allotted catch that be bought, sold or traded like commodities.
The system, launched in New England last May, has concentrated control of fisheries into larger, corporate hands and out of the hands of smaller, independent fishermen like those who dominate Gloucester and many other fishing communities around the country. And remember that, back in 2009, Lubchenco indicated that’s actually a state goal of her program, saying she felt the need to eliminate “a sizeable fraction” of the fishing fleet.
Now comes a contrived petition, designed to make it look like there is grassroots support for catch shares among those it is putting out of business — smaller fishermen, and those who work as boat crew members.
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Feb 25
2011
photo © 2009 Mike Baird | more info (via: Wylio)
Sun Journal Staff
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.”
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Feb 25
2011
By Richard Gaines Staff Writer
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.
photo © 2009 Center for American Progress Action Fund | more info (via: Wylio)
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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Feb 24
2011
WASHINGTON – Feb. 19, 2011 (Saving Seafood) – Amendment #548 to H.R. 1 sponsored by Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) and cosponsored by Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) passed the United States House of Representatives on a recorded vote of 259-159 at 1:43 a.m.
The Amendment would prevent funds from being expended by NOAA to enact new limited access fishing programs. The Amendment, if H.R. 1 is passed by the Senate and signed into law, would prevent spending on new catch shares programs.
51 Democrats joined 208 Republicans voting in favor of the Amendment.
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Feb 24
2011
photo © 2009 Mike Baird | more info (via: Wylio)
CBS focuses on excessive fines, abusive enforcement, lack of oversight
By Richard Gaines Staff Writer
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.
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Feb 24
2011
photo © 2008 Dion Hinchcliffe | more info (via: Wylio)
The U.S. House has voted to cut off funding for future catch share programs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration policy that opens the door to commodities trading of fishermen’s catch allocations — and a policy already steering control of the fishing industry to larger corporations while driving out smaller, independent boats.
The 259-159 vote early Saturday morning was largely un-lobbied by either fishing industry backers or the Obama administration and its environmental allies, notably the Environmental Defense Fund that developed and has pushed hard for catch share policies.
The vote marked the first time a House of Congress has weighed in on the management regimen, and it looms as a setback for the Obama administration, whose most visible advocate of catch shares is Jane Lubchenco, the embattled NOAA administrator who formerly served as a top board member with Environmental Defense.
While with EDF, she helped organize a disputed scientific justification for catch shares, implying that without them, all food fish would soon be taken.
Feb 17
2011
NOAA Fined One Fisherman $19,000 for Catching About 20 Extra Codfish
By Armen Keteyian
(CBSNews)
For 37 years the waters off the coast of Mass. were a way of life for fishermen Bill Lee. Then, without warning – it all changed.
“NOAA took a career that I enjoyed and put me out of business,” Lee said. “And laughed all the way to the bank.”
NOAA is short for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency that oversees the $3.9 billion dollar fishing industry.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports in 2009 NOAA fined Lee $19,000 for catching about 20 extra codfish – nearly three years after he caught them. A fine, he says, that destroyed his one-man operation.
“They just took it away,” Lee said.
Now dozens of New England fishermen charge their livelihood is at risk. Sinking under the weight of 700 pages of confusing federal regulations.
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