Tag Archives: NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco

Fishermen look to White House – John Bullard, NOAA’s Northeast regional administrator based at Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park, scoffed at that idea.

By default and past experience, what slim hope remains to relieve the declared federal fisheries disaster before it consumes the surviving core of the groundfishing fleet in Gloucester and other New England ports has shifted from lepcohanadership at the Commerce Department to the White House.  ”I have not heard one word about fisheries from the president,”said Paul “Sasquatch” Cohan, the Gloucester fisherman who announced at the Warren meeting in Gloucester that he had nothing left to fight with. “I wouldn’t give up, but now I have to give up,” said Cohan, who operated a gillnet day boat. Read more

NOAA’s fishing policies under investigation

After issuing a series of investigative reports exposing excessive enforcement on the part of federal fisheries agents, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Office of Inspector General has now turned to auditing how NOAA carried out and implemented policies that have transformed fisheries into commodity markets — and are being blamed for job losses and consolidation throughout the industry. Read more

Editorial: Fishery ‘disaster’ aid out of place in Sandy bill – disaster was largely created by Lubchenco and NOAA

Yes, fishermen are entitled to disaster aid stemming from the economic calamity documented more than a year ago by Gov. Deval Patrick through the marine science program at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. And the Sandy relief bill — which would grant aid to Middle Atlantic fishermen directly affected by that storm — gives Kerry and other fishing state lawmakers an avenue to seek the aid that was never even referenced in the September economic disaster declaration announced by acting Commerce Secretary Rebecca Blank.  Read more

Rep. Broun: NOAA’s Response to Sandy Service Assessment Inquiry Disappointing (Lubchenco under the weather) !

805562027_qrX5M-M“…I am disappointed that you elected not to answer many of my questions,”

A series relating to NOAA weather problems! It ain’t fishin’ but it’s all Jane!

Lubchenco replied by the requested deadline to Broun’s first letter citing that she understood Broun’s concerns. She left many of his questions unanswered, however.

“…I am disappointed that you elected not to answer many of my questions,” Broun wrote in his most recent letter, adding that her reply also raised ‘additional questions that require explanation.’  Read Lots More!!

Redress for NOAA law cases- Commerce Department on Friday closed the book on past violations

“After months of unacceptable delay and stonewalling of Congress, the Commerce Department has released a report that found serious misconduct by NOAA personnel,” said U.S. Sen. Scott Brown. “Some of this misconduct happened during the current administration, yet no one has been fired or even demoted. This report provides more context to Administrator Lubchenco’s resignation and makes her planned service through February untenable.” http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x520560721/Redress-for-NOAA-law-cases

Despite stock gains, NOAA chief sought cuts for tuna catch

 “She is on an agenda to deny American fishermen the right to succeed.”

“Dr. Lubchenco pushed hard to reduce the projected quota to far less than the current 1,750 metric tons to further conserve bluefin although such a reduction would have a devastating effect on fishermen and their communities,” Zales said in an email to the Times. “Managing and maintaining maximum sustainable yield is the prime objective of ICCAT and NOAA.” http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x520552032/Status-quo-holds-for-tuna-catch

News analysis: More NOAA appeal talk fails truth test ! (who knew?!) CLF Shyster in Denial.(yeah.that too.)

By Richard Gaines, Heading altered by Bore Head

The lead attorney for the government was not the only one whose statements before the second highest court in the land this week ran contrary to documented evidence.

Justice Department lawyer Joan Pepin, defending the legality of the federal government’s conversion of the Northeast groundfishery into a commodities market, was joined in that realm by her co-counsel, Peter Shelley, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation.

Appearing Wednesday in Boston before the First U.S. Court of Appeals, Pepin introduced a claim — contradicted by records and comments from the New England Fishery Management Council — that federal fishery regulators had already put into place a system to prevent industry consolidation that would destabilize the way of life and underlying culture of the ports, Gloucester and New Bedford and beyond from New Hampshire to North Carolina. A check of record and talks with council officials confirmed that’s not the case, as the Times reported Friday.

Following Pepin, Shelley said the New England Fishery Management Council, the arm of the federal fishery regulatory system, had adopted fishery consolidation as its official policy.

But Patricia Fiorelli, spokeswoman for the council — a part-time, 16-member panel charged with researching and writing policies for approval by the federal government — said Friday that “the council does not have a policy supporting consolidation.”

Shelley’s argument to the three-judge panel on Wednesday also condescended to scoff at concerns held and expressed by many plaintiffs — including Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, former New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang, Congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney and others — that major environmentally-rooted nonprofits and foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation, which operates as an adjunct to and with endowment from Wal-Mart, had gained improper influence over federal fisheries polices.

“The plaintiffs (believe),” Shelley argued, “(that) some dark force of privatization was at work — nothing could be farther from the truth. This is not Wal-Mart vs. the corner pharmacy.”

Yet the common fear among many plaintiffs that Wal-Mart, through the Walton Family Foundation and in concert with a Wal-Mart corporate partner, the Environmental Defense Fund, has achieved a controlling position in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is grounded in documented fact.

The catch share policy instituted by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco after her appointment by President Obama and confirmation in 2009 was precisely the policy that was advocated in a policy paper written in 2008 by Lubchenco and a team of scientists and politicians. And The Walton Foundation was lead underwriter for the paper, “Oceans of Abundance,” which warned that overfishing was so depleting the oceans that jellyfish would be masters of the seas by the middle of this century.

Lubchenco at the time was vice chairwoman of EDF board of directors; the paper has since been widely discredited in both scientific and academic spheres.

One of the appeal plaintiffs’ attorneys, Gloucester fisheries lawyer Stephen Ouellette, alluded to the concern across the industry that the catch share system creates a business model that invites external investment. The worry, he said, is over the future erosion of the local ownership feature that has defined the groundfishery for centuries.

“There is a large political movement seeking to force a catch share system on all the fisheries,” Ouellette said. READ MORE!

 http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x550068870/News-analysis-More-NOAA-appeal-talk-fails-truth-test

Fishing appeal on fed docket- Catch share challenge

A three-judge panel of the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston is due to hear arguments today in a suit alleging the federal government’s re-engineering of the Northeast groundfishery into a quasi commodity market trading in catch shares beginning in 2010 was illegally introduced by denying industry the referendum promised by federal law.Read more.http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x1884284835/Fishing-appeal-on-fed-docket