The agency that brought us Trawlgate...

now presents Investigate, the next in the series

I can only imagine how much satisfaction hundreds of fishermen and folks from fishing businesses are deriving from the recently released first installment of the US Department of Commerce Inspector General’s report on the scandalously inadequate, unbalanced and inequitable job that NOAA/NMFS has been doing in enforcing fishing regulations, particularly in the Northeast. I can likewise only imagine the frustration that they must feel, knowing that their lives, their reputations, their finances and their future prospects were severely damaged – and in some tragic instances, destroyed – by what appears to be nothing less than an out-of-control bureaucracy. I sincerely hope that those people pursue whatever avenues of institutional and personal redress are available to them and wish them the best of luck in that pursuit. (The full report is available here, a summary here).

The follow-up report, looking at specific cases that have been investigated by the Inspector General’s office, is on the way. That could be even more satisfying.

To nobody’s surprise, NOAA head Jane Lubchenco’s response to this report consisted of assuring us that NOAA/NMFS would be revising regulations, creating a policy manual, improving communications and convening a national “summit” on agency enforcement policies.

Shouldn’t we expect a bit more than that?

The “summit” sounds like it could be just another white-washing junket for those members of fishing organizations, ENGO staffers and academic researchers on the foundation-funding gravy train that are so interested in saving us from ourselves. I wonder if the NOAA/NMFS leadership is planning on holding it at the Mount Washington Resort in New Hampshire. Once again that would keep the working people away in droves.

And I don’t find it all that comforting to know that in these days when just about everyone is suffering from a surfeit of communications - to such an extent that the NY Times deemed it front-page worthy - someone is in charge of NOAA/NMFS who actually thinks that more communications could be the answer to anything. In issue after issue that fishermen are facing we’ve had much too much communication and much too little substantive action.

What it all boils down to is that for you folks at the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation, brace yourselves. You’re about to get your knuckles rapped really, really hard.

That isn’t anywhere near an adequate response for an agency that has purposely kept proud, honest and hardworking members of one of our oldest industries in a state of undeserved terror for most of a generation.

If there was ever a reason for Congressional oversight, this is it, and everyone who is demanding it – and that list is growing every day – is definitely heading in the right direction. But they’re not yet where they need to be.

It shouldn’t be oversight limited to the Inspector General’s report and the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation. That’s not the disease that’s infecting NOAA/NMFS. That’s only one of the symptoms.

I’ve already heard and read that this enforcement fiasco can’t be laid at Ms. Lubchenco’s feet, or at the feet of the foundation/ENGO people she brought to Washington with her; that most of the enforcement mess-ups occurred before they were in Washington and running NOAA.

But let’s give that idea a bit more consideration.

First off, as we all know far too well, an ever intensifying anti-fishing malaise has afflicted NOAA/NMFS for at least a decade. What’s its source? To a very large extent, it’s come from a very successful and very expensive campaign bankrolled by very large foundations to convince as many people as possible with an interest in the world’s oceans that fishing is one of the greatest scourges to ever afflict them. Through the skillful – did I mention expensive? – manipulation of science and scientists, and through the selective – did I mention expensive? – manipulation of the print and broadcast media, a large proportion of those people, and the officials who represent them, have bought into this fantasy.

Unfortunately, when the people and their legislators in Washington go in a particular direction, whether that direction is right or wrong, most federal agencies aren’t too far behind. Thus, it’s fairly easy to suggest that the NOAA/NMFS Office of Law Enforcement’s “treat ‘em like criminals” attitude towards fishermen and fishing businesses is an understandable outgrowth of the institutional attitude of the parent agency. No one in the front office, no matter how many complaints fishermen registered and no matter how surreal their persecution became, was concerned enough to do anything about it, so the whole mess just continued to spiral out of control.

That might be passed off as bureaucrats simply being bureaucrats. We could assume that it was only ineptitude that caused the people in charge to pay no attention to all of those official press releases going out with, we assume, their or their underling’s approval that were announcing with pride the most recent apprehension and prosecution of fishermen. We could as easily assume that Ms. Lubchenco’s ho-hum response to the partially completed Inspector General’s investigation, an administrative reshuffling and a feel-good “summit,” was just more of the same.

But is it? In case after case, fishermen were investigated and treated as criminals by an Office of Law Enforcement staff trained and paid as criminal investigators when virtually all of the supposed offenses, the Inspector General’s report puts it at 98%, were non-criminal in nature. And even now this trend is apparently continuing in NOAA, with the newly appointed NOAA Chief Counsel’s most notable accomplishment as an Assistant Attorney General being development of the Environment and Natural Resources Division’s environmental crimes program.

Is it a stretch to suppose that much of this was due to the demonization of fishermen by the media?

How this took place, what was - and is - behind it, and how else it has affected and is affecting NOAA/NMFS in carrying out its mission regarding fishermen and fishing is every bit as deserving of oversight investigation by Congress as the dysfunction endemic in the NOAA/NMFS Offices of Law Enforcement and General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation. In general that wouldn’t be the case, but the leadership at NOAA in the Obama Administration, the close ties of those leaders to the foundation/ENGO world that has so successfully persecuted so many people connected with harvesting fish for fun or profit, takes this beyond the realm of the “general.”

For all of the fishermen who were wrongfully criminalized, for their families, for the businesses they support, for the communities they are a part of, for all of the rest of us in or associated with fishing and for the future of fishing in the United States, we deserve answers to some crucial questions. How involved were the people now in the upper management levels of NOAA/NMFS in this process? To what extent, if any, were they responsible for establishing the institutional mindset at NOAA/NMFS from the outside that allowed the abuses reported by the Inspector General to flourish? And, of course, how much of that involvement, if any, has been carried over into the current management and philosophy of NOAA/NMFS?

As Ms. Lubchenco’s unilateral shifting of the entire management focus of NOAA/NMFS to the implementation of catch shares virtually overnight illustrates so clearly, she is in a position to tremendously influence the lives and futures of millions of fishermen, the economic well-being of tens of thousands of fishing dependent businesses and a huge segment of our coastal economy. If that isn’t justification for intense Congressional scrutiny, it’s hard to imagine what is.

Even now the Boston Globe just doesn’t get it

From my most recent Another Perspective column:

In an editorial this morning the Globe bemoaned the fact that the New England Fishery Management Council will reconsider its decision to reduce next year’s sea scallop harvest by almost a quarter; an action that would cost the coastal economies of Massachusetts, New Jersey, Virginia and every other coastal state from North Carolina to Maine hundreds of millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs.

The editorial finished up with the words “while the industry is all too willing to risk permanent harm to scallop stocks - and its own livelihood - the council must be steadfast in protecting the region’s marine resources.” That fits perfectly with the condescending attitude towards fishermen espoused by the elitists who run the multi-billion dollar foundations behind so much of the current – and unnecessary – suffering in the commercial fishing industry; the attitude that they’re there to protect us from ourselves.

But it’s dead wrong.

For the entire column, click here

For information about the February 24 Rally in Washington

The Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund has information on charter bus pickup locations for the February 24 rally in Washington, DC on the website by clicking here. You can also download a printable flyer for the rally at the site.

If you're unhappy with fisheries management...

and of the ongoing marginalization of fishermen in the management process, you have to ways to protest what's going on. The first of these is to register your dissatisfaction by signing on to a letter to all of the sponsors of the Magnuson Flexibility legislation thanking them for their support and indicating that it is only a start. The letter is linked here. The second is to go to Washington on February 24th to register your dissatisfaction in person (the letter will be presented to the sponsors then). It appears commercial, recreational and party/charter fishermen from across the US will be there.

I'll have more information on the DC rally within a few days.

Thanks for your attention,
Nils