All for one and one for all with Jerry Leeman

Well, if NOAA goes through with these cuts this coming year to groundfish stocks I’m afraid there won’t be a fishing season next year. They have created choke species thru faulty assessments. I don’t know why I say assessments because they really haven’t done enough to make any logical cuts to any stock. To my family and friends who are lobstermen. You will watch the bait prices double overnight once the last groundfish boat is done. No more bait will be landed thru the groundfish efforts. That’s right no redfish racks, no hard bait and no skates. This will happen.

I’ll do my best to argue everyone’s circumstances and the errors of their data and sampling methods using on the job experience offshore for 14 years at sea in the last 21 years. The entire groundfish fleet Captains are united in this argument that the data is corrupt and wrong in many ways. Truth is there is nothing wrong with the fish stocks that are now in jeopardy from bad data.

All offshore fishermen spend more time trying to avoid fish due to the made-up choke species brought to us by bad science and lack of know how.

It’s all due to faulty assessments by a bunch of folks with nice degrees but no experience. To top it all off our government is allowing windmills in the Gulf of Maine. which will kill the fish stocks and do God knows what to your lobsters. They only made 1/12 of 1% of bottom fall survey tows in the Gulf of Maine and that warrants them to cut haddock and hake next year? What a joke.

They only managed to complete only 82% of the total fall survey. The entire survey only covered 306 miles of bottom for the entire 66 days from Virginia to the Gulf of Maine of towed bottom. While only around 10% of that, 82% was done in the Gulf of Maine.

Not to mention their survey never looks at the juvenile hake and codfish along the Maine coast or anywhere near where the windmills will be placed. NOAA bought a 54-million-dollar research boat to do the work and spent another 2 million dredging in front of their science building in Woods Hole, Massachusetts so they could dock their vessel up front and make it a tourist attraction. I guess the price of gas must’ve been too much to drive to a dock like everyone else, but you know it’s only the taxpayers’ money.

A basic groundfish boat in 10 days covers more bottom than they did in 66 days of research tows. 40 nautical miles total of bottom towed in the Gulf of Maine for 66 days of bottom surveys for this fall assessment. Like I said an average dragger tows 480 miles in a 10-day trip. So, we are basing our catch on what I would call no data at all. That’s right a dragger could tell you more in 10 days then a 54-million-dollar research vessel in 66 days.

They’ll tell us it’s best available data. No sir you didn’t do anything, and your making cuts based on no data at all. Especially when you consider their assessments are based on 40 nautical miles of towing in an area that’s 36 thousand square miles that’s not including George’s banks area. That’s literally nothing.

All groundfish Captains efforts have been diverted due to faulty assessments we are trying to stay away from fish while catching enough fish to make a living! It’s crazy I tell you. The markets are collapsing because of supply problems from avoiding species and they think 40 nautical miles of towing in 36 thousand square mile area is enough evidence to justify any kind of cuts?

This is mismanagement and purposeful corruption against the working waterfronts of New England, and I urge everyone to get ahold of your representatives in every New England state and demand justice. It’s time to get loud about this. Our government has turned against we the people along the entire New England seaboard. We are about to be taken down systematically by a bunch of college degrees that haven’t done a thing with 60 million dollars but make guesses based on nothing then push for more cuts based on literally not enough data to make an epiphany with let alone any logical thought. This cannot stand.

I plead for all fishermen, lobstermen, charter boats to unite and end this corrupt agency’s agenda pushing lunacy. NOAA and NMFS is making judgment calls on all of us on no basis at all. If they want to save the ocean, then why are they allowing windmills on our ocean. Studies have already been conducted showing the windmills drop the oxygenation of the water around the environment and the cables power running to shore will have a 60% mortality rate to juvenile fish and could stop breeding migration habits to all marine life from electromagnetic interference in the fish migration effecting groundfish and perhaps even tuna fish, while increasing marine traffic strikes to whales and killing sea birds in migration.

We must all unite before it is too late. We have all tried to overturn their rulings one at a time and have failed. It’s time to fight together as one. We are a fishing nation here in New England. It’s time to make a stand and fight this corruption which will have effects through all fisheries and generations to come. We can stop this together. I know we can. All for one and one for all. FISH ON MY FAMILY AND FRIENDS Jerry Leeman