FISHERYNATION.COM

NOAA OVERSIGHT PROJECT

Introduction

From Dutch Harbor to the Old Harbor Float in Petersburg, from Gloucester and all the way round to Corpus Christi, wherever Americans untied their boats to fish in the decades since the Magnuson Act passed, fishermen had to take on science, politics, and NOAA.

Some of you spent your shore time up to your knees in fish politics dividing the stock or arguing with managers about areas or days at sea.

Because you engaged in politics, new generations of kids setting and hauling gear can still catch fish. Sort of–

Like me, some of you believe that passing down the fishing tradition between generations is a bedrock of American independence and that after 2009 NOAA threatened it.

In 2008 a push for Catch Shares, which began in Alaska’s^[1] halibut fishery in the early 1990s and expanded 20 years latter to 20 percent of all US caught fish, threatened to spread to all ports.

^[1] In Alaska back in 1971, when I started to  learn how to troll and gillnet salmon, hook halibut and black cod, fish stocks were on their way to rock bottom even as the number of boats kept growing. One summer, we were down to fishing 12 hours a week. In 1975, the entire 400 mile long South Eastsalmon season shut down a month early. In 1976, the State limited entry of the number of boats who could fish salmon. In the late 1980s, a Federal program to give each fisherman a share of the halibut quota for the year began to take shape enriching captains at the expense of many crew members.

In early 2009, when the Senate approved Under Secretary Jane Lubchenco (and her right hand woman, Monica Medina, wife of Biden and Gore political operative, Ron Klain), Catch Shares were going to take off like a rocket.

James Balsiger, the acting head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, was going to be replaced by fisherman/ Senate staffer Arne Fuglvog who favored catch shares or scientist Brian Rothschild who did not.

But for Richard Gaines’ corruption busting headlines in the Gloucester Times and fishermen who turned in Fuglvog for illegal fishing, Catch shares would have applied to all fish stocks.

I hope you’ll learn a lot about one facet of how NOAA’s plans got busted. It springs from dozens of FOIAs I made since 2010. When I got stonewalled on getting 13,000 pages related to the Fuglvog investigation, I started a lawsuit in 2015 year that has forced NOAA to cough up out about 7000 pages so far.

Without the guidance and insight of some fishermen, lawyers, a scientist, and policy makers, and others it would have been pretty hard to pull all the pieces together.

For me, the story begins in 2010.

Out of the blue, a candidate for the US Senate in Alaska, who had won his party’s nomination, pulled me out of retirement in California by a phone call. “Help me fight corruption,” he said, “ I want you to be my regional manager.” I asked him if he had the right guy.

A decorated Army Officer and a Yale Law School alum, he was not going to let the old guard continue the corruption that had rocked Alaska.

Because of my ten years on the beach in California, I was out of touch, but he insisted. I took a deep breath and accepted. I never regretted the choice or doubted the character of the man.

I caught a plane up to Juneau where for several days we met with party members and agency heads and then I flew down to a conference in Petersburg to prepare the ground for his arrival. There, old fishing friends updated me on what had been going on in the fleet during my decade ashore.

They told me that Senator Murkowski’s fisheries aide, Arne Fuglvog, should not remain in that position, because he was a fish crook who had been pushing catch shares in 2008-9 before he suddenly withdrew his name to be head of the NMFS.

I was shocked. So were a lot of people in town. I knew and admired this guy’s dad. They claimed Arne had been fishing illegally for a long time for halibut and black cod under the Catch Share program or IFQs. NOAA should have investigated the crimes. But there was nothing public about it.

This was a campaign issue which could not be raised without facts. Details were few and I couldn’t locate crew members. In Juneau the candidate and I had met, at the Ted Stevens NOAA Lab/Monument, with high ranking NOAA officials who never uttered a peep about the investigation (or catch shares). It puzzled me then that NOAA would fly a guy fly up from Seattle to meet with an Alaskan politician, a guy who might scrutinize the money pipeline to NOAA.

Lacking hard evidence of a NOAA investigation, I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to NOAA on my own behalf on October 21^st.

Just before Christmas, and more than six weeks after the 2010 November election, the mailman delivered NOAA’s Response. This first FOIA resulted in tantalizing clues and dead ends.

NOAA’s Response stonewalled by claiming that they could “neither confirm nor deny” an open investigation, a tactic the government first used to block inquires about Howard Hughes’ Glomar Explorer searching for a sunken Russian Nuclear Submarine.

Five years later, FOIA documents showed the investigation was almost or should have been closed before Christmas 2009, because NOAA knew many months before Christmas that Fuglvog was cooperating (“admitting guilt”) after a Grand Jury convened and his log books and vessel computer seized.

What the Christmas time 2010 NOAA response did prove were fishing violations in 2005. In May of 2005, Fuglvog was a Board Member of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

He exceeded his bi-catch by 100%. He also exceeded his black cod quota. NOAA blanked out the amount of pounds and the fines. (NOAA also withheld nine pages, and redacted dozens more– the good stuff).

I don’t know if Fuglvog revealed these 2005 fisheries violation on his 2006 job application to Senator Lisa Murkowski. The potential fine was $25,000 on one count. Certainly there was a long history of illegal fishing that he should have disclosed. I have yet to find out.

More important than NOAA’s stonewall on the Fuglvog investigation was a blackout in the press. In October 2010, I informed at least three large mainstream news outlets about the Fuglvog rumors. No stories ran. After I got the FOIA Response, I sent evidence to at least one national news outlet. No outlet mentioned the 2005 violations, even though they had documented proof and even though the election for Senator was still contested in the courts.

Disinterest in Fuglvog seemed surreal. I got calls from reporters in Paris and New York wanting to talk to my candidate. Gail Collins even crossed the Hudson to fly into Petersburg to interview and poke fun at my candidate and me. Yet when poop on Fuglvog surfaced, the media closed their collective eyes.

Winter turned to summer.

Then on August 1, 2011, Fuglvog announced a plea deal, agreeing to go to jail and pay about $150,000, copping to only one instance of illegal fishing. The media was all over it. O my gosh when and what did NOAA know. But they had had their heads in the sand refusing to report on evidence.

A few days before Fuglvog appeared in Federal Court, NOAA emailed me that “Records prior to 2005 were destroyed in 2009.” That was not completely true, as I discovered years latter when NOAA released documents referring to more illegal fishing prior to 2005.

There were few times, I have from a reliable source, when he did not fish illegally.

NOAA’s stonewalling and the media black out whetted my curiosity. What corrupt or illegal means did the government use to keep you in the dark about Fuglvog and the push for Catch Shares? Who within NOAA ran the game? How did they manage the controversy?

The picture I’ve assembled so far from the dozens of FOIAs and lawsuit is not yet a complete one. But enough salacious details are now available to give you a peek into the inside story about the Fuglvog scandal.

This is the first in what I hope will be a series of pieces revealing what the heck went wrong inside NOAA under Jane Lubchenco and who outside the agency supported her and Fuglvog.

Alan Stein

————————-

This is the start of a new probe into mysteries arising out of the 2010 Alaska Senate Campaign which, but for the Fuglvog Scandal –an investigation stalled, buried, and botched by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA)—most likely would have ousted Senator Lisa Murkowski.

Arne Fuglvog one year into his job as Fisheries Assistant to Senator Lisa Murkowski. She never fired him even though he admitted to officials in 2009 that he had habitually broke fisheries law. He resigned his job with Murkowski in August, 2011, after striking a plea deal more than two years after a grand jury considered his case in 2009 and three months after she claimed to have first learned of his plea. Picture Credit: Juneau Empire

Keep in Mind These Questions

  • Why did the press –which swarmed into Alaska from Los Angeles, New York, and Europe looking for any nit to pick– ignore a tawdry story about Senator Murkowski’s fisheries aide, Arne  Fuglvog, that would have changed the outcome of the 2010 election?

 • In 2010, why did the media miss digging into widespread rumors about a story that would have made headlines showing why Fuglvog in July, 2009 withdrew his quest to be the   top administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) after pursuing the spot for only three and a half months? (Documents I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act after filing suit against NOAA show, for the first time, that contrary to Fuglvog’s reasons for withdrawing from the race (he claimed the process was taking too long)— he withdrew his quest for the leadership slot in the NMFS immediately after he learned NOAA obtained evidence that could have convicted him on federal offenses; namely, someone turned in his fishing log books showing he had lied repeatedly on official documents submitted to NOAA.)

• Who or what organizations pushed Fuglvog to seek the top NMFS job and how would they benefit if he took the helm?
• Did NOAA botch or cover up 2007 complaints made about Fuglvog’s illegal commercial fishing?
  • In 2011, why, after he publicly admitted to crimes, did NOAA officials stonewall on what and when they knew about his crimes.
  • In 2009 or afterwards, did NOAA exchange information with the White House, Senator Murkowski, or any other member of Congress and if not, why not? If NOAA exchanged information, did the White House, Senator Murkowski, or Congress take appropriate action to expose Fuglvog in 2009 or 2010? If not, why not?

The NOAA Oversight Project will uncover and make public all the issues surrounding the Fuglvog Scandal, Catch Shares, and other national fisheries issues.

Six years after NOAA was forced to pursue Fuglvog, after over a dozen FOIAs to NOAA (many still outstanding) and a law suite filed to compel production, I can start to answer some of these questions.

Before discussing some of the information I’ve obtained under FOIAs from NOAA, I want you to remember that the back story involves the mainstream media asleep at the wheel (or beholden to editors acting as gate keepers who have no appetite to dog a story that could jeopardize a sitting Alaska Senate seat).

This story arises in a federal agency in disarray, subjected to strong manipulation by US Senators and their lackeys within the agency, and so committed to promoting its Catch Shares Program (reducing fleet size as a way to manage fish catches and enrich the big boys) that its golden boy, Fuglvog, escaped outing for federal fisheries crimes he had committed for over half a decade, before and after he was appointed by Frank Murkowski, to sit (as a Board Member of a regional fisheries management council . Starting in 2006 when he became the Senate’s foremost fisheries aide to Lisa Murkoswi, Frank’s daughter, Fuglvog sold the program to policy makers and fishermen around the country.

[Updates

September 11^th, 2015, I posted a small but revealing part of the story—emails recently obtained from NOAA which show how NOAA reacted on August 4^th, 2011, a few days after the US Attorney filed charges against Fuglvog.

September 18th, I added the names of Fuglvog’s supporters who sent letters to NOAA urging his appointment to the top job at the NMFS including the dates in 2009 when they did so.   These details that I am revealing have remained hidden in NOAA’s files, some for six years.

September 18^th, 2015: NOAA released three FOIA Requests I made near the start of the year. These documents were released about six weeks after I filed a lawsuit to get them and other FOIAs are still outstanding].

December 21st, 20015, NOAA released 19 pages concerning Monica Medina. One email shows Monica Medina had a private email account in April 2009 which Fuglvog used to communicate with her about a strategy for getting support for his run for the head of NMFS. Conducting public business on private email accounts we have learned in the cases of Hillary Clinton, Ashton Carter, and other officials is forbidden under federal law. Perhaps I am not getting more communications of Medina because most of them were on her private account and these were not archived by NOAA?

December 21st, 2015 NOAA placed in the US mail 2641 pages of the investigative file on Fuglvog, the second installment since I filed the lawsuit. A month earlier, they released about the same number of pages. More releases are scheduled. Without the lawsuit, I’m guessing it would be Christmas 2020 before I would have gotten this information.

The Rise and Fall of Fuglvog

Background and Connections

In 2009, a clamor for Fuglvog to be prosecuted arose when those who knew of his crimes learned he was a candidate to be the head of the NMFS. Complaints to NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) began in May, 2009, but as well, and significantly, were also made in 2007 when NOAA botched and buried investigations into the 2007 complaints.

The 2009 complaints occurred around the same time that his supporters in the fishing industry and Congress were inundating Jane Lubchenco, the new head of NOAA, with letters of recommendation to make him chief of the NMFS.

Thanks to an April, 2009 email, we now know Fuglvog was seeking a private meeting with Medina who was to coach him, apparently, on whom to solicit letters of support from the industry and Congress. Since Fuglvog wrote to her private email account on AOL, I’m not sure whether NOAA has Medina’s replies to Fuglvog’s repeated requests for help. FOIA allows the person who created the document to decide if it should be archived by NOAA and if it is deleted on a private account, no one is the wiser.

This exchange takes on added significance when we remember that the anti Catch Share choice was a scientist whom the records so far show was not being coached for support by Medina. It adds weight to claims I have heard that Fuglvog was Lubchenco’s choice and Rothschild’s short interview was just window dressing to appease the East Coast horde backing him.

Further evidence of stonewalling is the failure of NOAA to give me Medina’s scheduling calendar showing whom she met and when she met them. Perhaps that too resides on private account or server. In response for Medina’s calendar, NOAA provided Jane Lubcheco’s (without attachments). We shall see.

Obviously, Fuglvog who is not a scientist, was her first choice over the well regarded marine scientist, Professor Brian Rothschild. Many of my sources believe that the EDF, which promoted Lubchenco’s career, was a main force behind the push to make Fuglvog the administrator of our nation’s fish research and resources.

In 2009, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement itself was in hot water, thanks to East Coast pressure. Its Director, Dale Jones, would be caught by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) ordering case files destroyed while OIG investigated. NOAA has yet to reveal whether Jones destroyed Fuglvog related criminal files. NOAA could neither confirm nor deny aspects of this. I have learned an Inspector General computer in the Denver Office charged with investigating the Fuglvog affair crashed which may have contained relevant information. Obfuscation can take many forms.

Alaska’s OLE office, it appears, had totally botched 2007 crew complaints against Fuglvog and some would say it covered them up. In late April, 2009

some crew again contacted OLE. Sensing more inaction from OLE , the complainants then contacted the FBI and the Inspector General.

By June, 2009, amazingly, OLE agents in Alaska were zealously conducting interviews concerning Fuglvog. Funny what happens when you go to the FBI. It wasn’t long before a fish log was seized and then the boat’s computer showing GPS positions. NOAA notified Fuglvog, FOIA information reveals, of its investigation on June 24th. Once the evidence was seized, he knew his goose was cooked.

But Fuglvog had discovered the investigation weeks earlier, indicating someone in NOAA may have warned him. NOAA has not yet responded to FOIAs that may clarify this all important issue. I have evidence that will also clarify, but want to see how it fits with NOAA’s ability to answer my request.

After 2009, over two years passed until Fuglvog’s prosecution became public August 1, 2011 and another half year elapsed before he went to jail. Meanwhile, he continued to work on fisheries issues while on Senator Lisa Murkowski’s staff, no news of his crimes leaked in 2010 to affect the tough reelection fight for the Alaska Senate seat, and NOAA escaped scrutiny for not prosecuting him for years after the 2007 complaints were made.

Fuglvog’s Rise to Power

Fuglvog did not get where he was because he was a ladies man or a nice guy—though he was both:

• Fuglvog was room mates with Alaska fisherman Bobby Thorstenson Jr. who supposedly inherited a lot of Icicle Seafood stock from his father, the founder of Icicle Seafoods.
• Fuglvog’s dad held one of the largest blocks of stock in Icicle Seafoods.

Fuglvog got appointed by Lisa Murkowski’s father, the Governor of Alaska, to the North Pacific Management Council (NPFMC) which

• allocates some of Alaska’s billion dollar a year stocks of fish that are not salmon or herring.
• One of his votes on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was key to benefiting Icicle and a couple of other mega players in Alaska fisheries.
• Subsequently Icicle, which had been on the block for a long time, sold for about 80 million dollars, according to one of my sources.
• We’ll never know how much his votes raised the value of the company. He never disclosed to NOAA, nor was he required to disclose, his father’s interest in the company.
• His policy for promoting Catch Shares was in line with organizations funded by Sam Walton (the Wall Mart Sam) or Pew Trusts, such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Eco Trust, and Sea Web.
• In 2008, EDF funded a seminar for members of the many regional Fishery Management Councils under NOAA by giving several hundred thousand dollars through Stanford University to the Woods Foundation. The latter two refuse to answer questions about the money which paid for Fishery Council Members to attend. A NOAA memo raised the question of whether bribery was involved. (I will examine this issue later).
• At the California event, Fuglvog, by then Murkowski’s fisheries aide, conducted a day long explanation of Catch Shares that was the best attended of all the items on the agenda. Having passed his audition in California with flying colors, Fuglvog got a green light for his next career move—to take over NMFS.
• Lubchenco long favored The Aldo Leopold Leadership Project, while she was a long time EDF trustee, and it received $2.1 million in funding from the Packard Foundation of Palo Alto.

After being confirmed by the Senate, in March, 2009, Lubchenco had to replace the acting leader of NMFS, a Phd scientist named Balsiger who was also Fuglvog’s friend. In April, Fuglvog applied for the job. She favored Fuglvog – who had no scientific background in fish management – over an East Coast fisheries scientist of national stature, Dr Brian Rothschild, according to an inside source.

In May, 2009,Fuglvog was on the brink of claiming the the NMFS prize position. Support peaked in late May just as unfriendly forces were about to dash all his dreams, for as the Bard says, “false hope lingers in extremity.”

 NOAA Stonewalled and Stalled

2007 Cover Up

2009 Political Cover

In 2007, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) investigated and then dropped, some sources say covered up, several complaints about Fuglvog’s long standing illegal activities, but in 2009 when OLE again stalled a new investigation, the FBI, Inspector General, Congressmen, and finally the White House were contacted. Finally a vigorous investigation began in earnest.

Some political motives for stalling the investigation and stone-walling the release of information about his guilt for two years are obvious, others are obscure. Fuglvog was picked for the NMFS directorship for his skill in advocating for Catch Shares ⎯ an objective he shared with Jane Lubchenco ⎯ and also because it is believed, under Senator Murkowski, he was a player in clearing the way for Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic.

Was NOAA’s stalling and lethargy in pursuing him politically motivated? A partial answer emerges by reviewing the sequence of political support he received during the spring of 2009.

• Fuglvog became a candidate for the NMFS directorship on April 9^th, 2009 (weeks after the Senate confirmed Jane Lubchenco to be head of NOAA on March 19^th). But no sooner did Fuglvog throw his hat in the ring than a former crewman complained to NOAA on April 27 about Fuglvog’s misdeeds as a fishing captain.
• April 9^th, letters of recommendation began pouring in from the EDF Senators, including Murkowski and Murray, and fishing companies

• May 6^th David Benton of the Marine Conservation Alliance wrote a letter recommending Fuglvog addressed to Lubchenco (from # 80022772 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
• May 8^th Gregg Block, Wild Salmon Center, supported Fuglvog in his letter to Lubchenco (#80022849 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
• May 8^th, Ben Landry, Omega Protein, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog (#80022954 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
• May 8^th, Glen Brooks, Gulf Fisherman’s Association wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog . (#80022957 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
• May 11^th, Keith Criddle, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog ( # 80023002Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
• May 11^th, Shirley Marquardt, City of Unakleet, Alaska, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog. ( # 80023003 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
• May 18^th, CONGRESSIONAL Recommendations came from
  • Representative Mike Thompson,
  • President Bob Dickinson,
  • Representatives Robert Wittman,
  • Brian Baird,
  • Chairman Don Young,
  • Representative Frank LoBiondo,
  • Co-Chair Representative Sam Farr,
  • • Representative Walter Jones,
    • Representative Jay Inslee,
    • Representative David Wu (NOAA Congressional Correspondence Log #80023162, FOIA released September 18^th, 2009
    • May 18^th,another letter of recommendation for Fuglvog arrived at NOAA signed by
      • Senator Mel Martinez,
      • Senator (Texas) Kay Bailey Hutchison,
      • Chairman Mark Begich,
      • Chair Senator Mary Landrieu,
      • Senator Bill Nelson. ((NOAA Congressional Correspondence Log # 80023163) FOIA released September 18^th, 2009
    • May 19^th, Margaret Williams, World Wildlife Fund, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( #80023088 , Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
    • May 19^th Ed Backus, EcoTrust,wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( 80023092 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
    • May 19^th, Mark Vinsel and Joe Childers, United Fisherman of Alaska, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( 80023090 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
    • May, 19^th TJ Tate, Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. (#80023080, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015 )
    • May 19^th, Jack Stern Esq., and David Wilmon Ocean Champions wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( 80023081, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
    • • May 19^th Kathy Hanson, Southeast Alaska Fisherman’s Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . ( 80023082, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • May 19^th, Don Giles, Icicle Seafoods,wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . ( #80023084 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • May 19^th, Dorthy Childers, Alaska Marine Conservation Council, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . ( #80023085 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • May 22^nd, Dan Castle Southeast Seiners Association,wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . (#80022948 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • June 2^nd, Chris Zimmer, Rivers without Borders, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . (#80023303 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • June 3d, Julianne Curry, Petersburg Vessel Owners Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. (80023328 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • June 16^th, Representative Dave Reichert, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( #80023519 80023328 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)
      • July 9^th, maybe the only one in Alaska’s fishing industry who did not now then know Fuglvog was being investigated, Alvin Birch, Alaska Whitefish Trawlers Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. (#80023086 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18^th, 2015)

      Powerful forces at this point were backing Fuglvog for a variety of reasons, not least of which was his ability to sell national fish council members on the Catch Share concept of fish management—kinda like fencing in the range in the 1890s out West— demonstrated the year before at a retreat near Stanford University that was bankrolled by EDF money passed through Stanford. Lubchenco, had been an EDF Board Member for  ten years and a trustee https://www.edf.org/news/environmental-defense-fund-honored-board-vice-chair-reportedly-picked-noaa-administrator

    • https://www.edf.org/people/board-of-trusteesShe has recently won EDF’s prestigious prize for her work on Catch Shares, while heading NOAA. https://www.edf.org/media/dr-jane-lubchenco-wins-tyler-prize-environmental-achievement ).
      • On May 22^nd, Lubchenco announced federal funding of almost $19 million to implement Catch Shares in New England. More importantly, she announced a National Catch Shares Task Force, comprised of many of NOAA’s top brass who, a year and half later, would be controlling information to the press, Congress, and presumably the White House about Fuglvog’s criminal behavior.

       

      • With his “friends” and, we believe, former wife, being interviewed in Alaska by OLE in June and July 2009 and a Grand Jury convened on July 21^st.

       

      • Fuglvog withdrew his name for consideration to be head of the NMFS on the last day of July, the day after he discovered someone had confiscated his vessel fish log. He knew his goose was cooked. So did NOAA.
      • Months later, in December 2009, during his first interview with NOAA, Fuglvog admitted it was “common” practice to make misrepresentations in his log book.
      • Between the July 2009 Grand Jury, when much evidence against Fuglvog was aired, and August, 2011 the public did not know of Fuglog’s guilt— though there were rumors aplenty in Alaska.

      Meanwhile, Fuglvog, though his dream took flight, was scot free for two more years to advocate for Catch Shares, while still an aide to a powerful US Senator. Until of course

      The Fish Hits the Fan

      2011

The following is but a sample of what you can expect to read about the Fuglvog Scandal and how it was integral to the Catch Share push from NOAA. To throw the cold light of truth onto this story, I posted emails from high level managers in NOAA after the Fuglvog story broke which I obtained from NOAA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after I had to file suit to get them. (NOAA had 20 days to comply, it took them about eight months to produce. Some of my requests for information have languished for years).
On August 4^th, 2011, Politico’s August 2nd headline read:,

Former Murkowski Aide Arne Fuglvog Admits To Breaking Fishing Laws

Senator Murkowksi being asked about Arne Fuglvog 2011.

Politico failed to ask the obvious question. What did NOAA know and when did they know it? Instead, Politico’s story downgraded the crime, calling it a misdemeanor, even though Fuglvog had agreed to pay $150,000 and go to jail for ten months. At a subsequent hearing, more facts became public. Fuglvog had broken the law multiple times but was being charged with only one instance. Because he was caught red handed, he copped a plea in exchanged for shorter jail time and a smaller fine and agreed to testify

against others. Others had been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and required forfeiture of million dollar boats.

Politico made no mention of OLE’s Chief who ordered case files shredded, as revealed in a 2010 report by the Office of Inspector General. I have an outstanding FOIA to investigate if Fuglvog’s files were shredded. I was informed that after the Inspector General investigated OLE for this outrageous conduct, the computer containing information relevant to my FOIA request crashed. Sound familiar?

Still, NOAA was getting phone calls from reporters who were curious to know why a misdemeanor deserved a 150 grand fine and they caused NOAA’s upper management to scramble.

It is not yet clear if this apparent born again concern by upper management as reflected in the following emails was a ruse to conceal prior knowledge of the investigations or only decision making on what to release to the press. It is clear DC was controlling the flow of information carefully. Nor is it yet clear which members of the upper management team had knowledge prior to August 4th. I have yet to get a full Response including all of Lubchenco’s emails. I do have a document and sources have confirmed that in June of 2009 she was made aware about allegations against Fuglvog. In a FOIA release, NOAA omitted the red herring email to Lubchenco that I have. It is inconceivable that others on the email list of August 4th were ignorant of Fuglvog’s prior acts.

Here’s the sequence of events that followed the filing of charges against Fuglvog:

• On August 1^st, 2011, the US Attorney in Anchorage filed charges against Fuglvog and entered his plea deal into the record.

August 2nd, Senator Murkowski issued a news release announcing his guilt and his resignation from her staff. It was the talk of Washington and fishing communities which were shocked, simply shocked–except those who knew all along.

August 4^th, back at NOAA headquarters where all the facts were becoming known or well known, frenzied exchanges occurred between alarmed

• officials, keeping Lubchenco out of the loop, which utterly belies the “misdemeanor” story-line Politico was pushing.
• August 5^th, Murkowski announced though her Press Secretary, that she knew in late June of the plea deal. She knew he faced some violation, she claimed, back in December, 2010 ⎯ right after her reelection. (We are researching to discover if the delay in Fuglvog’s firing qualified him for a pension from the Senate.)

 

The cast of Lubchenco’s top NOAA management team on August 4th, engaged in media containment included the following:

 

• Monica Medina, Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration She led the Catch Share Task Force that Lubchenco announced in May and appointed in June 2009. Her husband, Ron Klaine, was the Ebola Czar, who led the recount effort in Florida for Al Gore. He’s closely connected to the White House through Joe Biden.

       •  Lois J. Schiffer, NOAA General Counsel

       •   Margaret Spring, Chief of Staff, who is now with the Monterey Bay Aquarium near Palo Alto.

        •   John Oliver Deputy Assistant Administrator for Operations, NOAA’s Fisheries Service. He is also the Executive Director of the NPFMC He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force. He found the Office of Law Enforcement’s Dale Jones was blameless in 2006 even though an Inspector Generals Report four years latter found the head of OLE shredded case files for four hours while under investigation by the IG. NOAA has not yet turned over documents showing if Jones shred Fuglvog’s case file  http://www.savingseafood.org/news/enforcement/nmfs-dep-admn-john-oliver-and-ex-admn-hogarth-knew-of-ole-complaints-four-years-ago/

• John Gray, Director of Legislative Affairs

 

• Samuel Rauch, Fisheries Acting Assistant Administrator, now head, was the author of a 2010 policy paper distributed to all the national fisheries councils called, “NOAA’s Catch Share Policy under Development” (2010)calling for 15 fisheries limited by 2011 and 31 in coming years. http://www.fisherycouncils.org/SSCpapers/Catchshares abstract.pdf He administered national fisheries management councils and Fuglvog had sat on the NPFMC. He is a key player in catch shares within the agency. He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force

 

 

• Alan Risenhoover, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, was the author of a 2010 policy paper distributed to all the national fisheries councils called, “NOAA’s Catch Share Policy under Development” (2010), calling for 15 fisheries to be limited by 2011 and 31 more in coming years. http://www.fisherycouncils.org/SSCpapers/Catchshares abstract.pdf He administered national fisheries management councils and Fuglvog had sat on the NPFMC. He is a key player in catch shares within the agency. He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force

 

• Justin Kenney Director, NOAA Office of Communications & External Affairs. He was an ex officio member of the Catch Share Task Force
• Amanda Hallberg Office of Legislative Affairs and former Congressional Staffer

 

On August 4^th, 2011 between noon and 4:30, a string of emails went out between the individuals on the above list under the subject head:

CONFIDENTIAL FUGLVOG CASE.

The flow initially— from the limited records I obtained so far— went to John Oliver, a much over looked play maker, to Monica Medina, Lubchenco’s right hand gal whose husband was a key Biden and Gore player.

It is not clear if the first email was sent by Risenhoover prior to 12:08, since the content of that message was not provided to me and the sender is deleted, but the 12:08 email appears to have been sent to John Oliver who managed the day to day of NOAA. Oliver appears to have gotten “info” from Risenhoover. Note that the account Oliver is sending to Medina is blanked out. Was it to her private or NOAA account? Oliver’s NOAA account is provided

 

Twenty minutes after Oliver got the “info,” Medina forwarded “very sensitive” materials to the following:

• Schiffer, the General Council
• Samuel Rauch, Fisheries Acting Assistant Administrator
• Justin Kenney, Director of NOAA’s Office of Communications & External Affairs.
• Amanda Hallberg, Office of Legislative Affairs and former Congressional Staffer
• Justin Kenney, Director of NOAA’s Office of Communications & External Affairs

See the 2:23PM email below:

By about an hour and a half later, it became clear the information sent was “confidential,” because Rausch told the legislative affairs officer Halberg and the others it was so:

What was the confidential information? Why would someone in fisheries be the one to determine political and legal information was confidential? Note everyone was now using Medina’s NOAA account.

NOAA’s FOIA Response did not include any of the “info” alluded to, several years after Fuglvog got of jail. NOAA may or may not provide it in the coming weeks. So who is NOAA protecting in 2015 by so far withholding this “info” and will a judge order them to release it? The facts suggest NOAA is stonewalling to protect itself from the prying eyes of the pesky public.

Did the “info” include the results of the criminal investigation or did the Management Team already know about that? Did the details inform them when and to what extent the agency knew Fuglvog was committing crimes say back to 2002? Did the “info” include facts showing Murkowski knew about Fuglvog long before she said she did? Did the White House know and do nothing? Was the 2009 email to Lubcheco about Fuglvog part of the “info” packet? Did other people in Congress know? All inferences can be drawn from a stonewalling agency.

While that exchange about “info” obtained about Fuglvog from John Oliver or the NPFMC was taking place, another exchange was occurring about him between Lubchenco’s Chief of Staff and Lois Schiffer, the General Counsel. But the instruction goes far beyond the letters of recommendation for Fuglvog from US Senators et. al. that are on file. The following emails reflect the team’s “info” was everything NOAA knew about Fuglvog.

The Counsel General of NOAA herself, Schiffer, recommended stonewalling about what NOAA knew.

Ms. Schiffer’s instruction to the publicity officer, Kinney, and the Chief of Staff, Spring, is most disturbing. Schiffer wrote that when talking to the press:

 

“I WOULDN’T ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT WE KNEW OR DIDN’T KNOW [ABOUT FUGLVOG’S ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES]”.

(Email Schiffer to Spring et al 3:36PM EST):

After five years of effort using FOIA and the courts, NOAA has still not revealed all of what it knew or didn’t know and when it knew it. For if it did know Fuglvog was cheating between 2007 (when complaints were made to OLE) and 2011 when news broke of the prosecution, it was going to look like NOAA had held back information that could have changed the course of the 2010 election for Senator in Alaska as well as added weight to the criticism Congress was making that OLE needed major reforms. Why would Lubchneco welcome that kind of news? Why would the White House be happy that its new appointee was in deep muck soon after Senate confirmation?

 

Burying a National Story

If NOAA had informed the public about the investigations it conducted on Fuglvog up through 2009—as I had requested before the 2010 vote—-instead of waiting until January of the next year), the outcome for Alaska’s US Senate Race almost certainly would have been different that year.

For between July, 2009 and November, 2010, NOAA was sitting on enough evidence to throw the book at this aide to Senator Murkowski, including evidence presented to the 2009 Grand Jury and his own 2009 admission, for which he would later serve time in federal jail.

This is but a sampling of what you can expect to read about the inside story about Fuglvog Scandal and how it was integral to the catch share push from NOAA, a story essentially and potentially affecting tens of thousands of lives in fishing communities around the country ⎯ and the 2010 Senatorial campaign in Alaska.

It is a complicated story, one that any one of the national outlets could have explored had their budgets not been slashed, their reporters demoralized, and their editors cowered, as Sharyl Attkisson has recently shown in Stone Walled (2014).

Instead, except for a few right wing web sites, and one thorough story by Libby Casey ion Alaska Public Radio, the story got buried. A few reporters had their FOIAs delayed or incompletely answered and then they were on to hotter topics. After all, Mitch McConnell’s gal won the Senate Race.

Unless the lame stream press latches on to this story, I hope to unwind more of this story as NOAA, excruciatingl slow, produces more information requested under the FOIAs and the Federal Court System. Stay tuned.

This material is copyrighted @ 2015 by Alan Stein. None of it may be reproduced in any form, in or on any platform or publication without permission which can be obtained by contacting this web site.

P.S. Up date 12/27/15 NOAA has still not released all of the 13,000 pages of the investigative files I requested years ago and to which I am entitled to under the FOIA. Five months after the lawsuit was filed in 2015, I now have about 5,000 pages. The quest for documents continues.

 

 

 

 

 

From Dutch Harbor to the Old Habor Float in Petersburg, from Gloucester and all the way round to Corpus Christi, wherever Americans untied their boats to fish in the decades since the Magnuson Act passed, fishemen had to take on science, politics, and NOAA. Some of you spent your shore time up to your knees in fish politics dividing the stock or arguing with managers about areas or days at sea. Because you engaged in politics, new generations of kids setting and hauling gear can still catch fish.

Sort of– Like me, some of you believe that passing down the fishing tradition between generations is a bedrock of American independence and that after 2009 NOAA threatened it. In 2008 a push for Catch Shares, which began in Alaska’s1 halibut fishery in the early 1990s and expanded 20 years latter to 20 percent of all US caught fish, threatened to spread to all ports. In early 2009, when the Senate approved Under Secretary Jane Lubchecno (and her right hand woman, Monica Medina, wife of Biden and Gore political operative, Ron Klain), Catch Shares were going to take off like a rocket.

In Alaska back in 1971, when I started to learn how to troll and gillnet salmon, hook halibut and black cod, fish stocks were on their way to rock bottom even as the number of boats kept growing. One summer, we were down to fishing 12 hours a week. In 1975, the entire 400 mile long Southeast salmon season shut down a month early. In 1976, the State limited entry of the number of boats who could fish salmon. In the late 1980s, a Federal program to give each fisherman a share of the halibut quota for the year began to take shape enriching captains at the expense of many crew members.

Picture Credit: Juneau Empire 2007
• Why did the press –which swarmed into Alaska from Los Angeles, New York, and Europe looking for any nit to pick– ignore a tawdry story about Senator Murkowski’s fisheries aide, Arne Fuglvog, that would have changed the outcome of the 2010 election.
• In 2010, why did the media miss digging into widespread rumors  about a story that would have made headlines showing why  Fuglvog in July, 2009  withdrew his quest to be the top administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) after pursuing the spot for only three and a half  months?  (Documents I obtained under the Freedom of Information Act after filing suit against NOAA show, for the first time, that contrary to Fuglvog’s reasons for withdrawing from the race (he claimed the process was taking too long)— he withdrew his quest for the leadership slot in the NMFS immediately after he learned NOAA obtained evidence that could have convicted him on federal offenses; namely, someone turned in his fishing log books showing he had lied repeatedly on official documents submitted to NOAA.)

Who or what organizations  pushed Fuglvog to seek the top NMFS job and how would they benefit if he took the helm?

Did NOAA botch or cover up  2007 complaints made about Fuglvog’s illegal commercial  fishing?

In 2011, why, after he publicly admitted to crimes,  did NOAA officials  stonewall on what and when they knew about his crimes.

In 2009  or afterwards, did NOAA exchange information with the White House, Senator Murkowski, or any other member of Congress and if not, why not? If NOAA exchanged information, did the White House, Senator Murkowski, or Congress take appropriate action to expose Fuglvog in 2009 or 2010? If not, why not?

The NOAA Oversight Project has and will uncover and  make public all the issues surrounding the Fuglvog Scandal, Catch Shares, and other national fisheries issues.

Six  years after NOAA was forced to pursue Fuglvog, after over a dozen FOIAs to NOAA (many still outstanding) and a law suite filed to compel production, I can start to answer some of these questions. You can come to this link on Tongass Low Down to find newly released information from NOAA or information a court orders NOAA to produce.

Before discussing the information I’ve obtained under FOIA from NOAA after long periods of time have passed, I want you to remember that the larger story involves the mainstream media was asleep at the wheel (or beholden to editors acting as gate keepers who have no appetite to dog a story that could jeopardize a sitting Alaska Senate seat).

This story arises in a federal agency in  disarray, subjected to  strong manipulation by US Senators and their lackeys within the agency, and so committed to promoting its Catch Shares Program (reducing fleet size as a way to manage fish catches and enrich the big boys) that its golden boy, Fuglvog, escaped prosecution for federal fisheries crimes he had committed for almost a decade. In the meantime, sold the program to policy makers and fishermen around the country.

On September 11th, 2015, I  posted a small but revealing part of the story— emails recently obtained from NOAA which show what NOAA did on August 4th, 2011, a few days after the US Attorney filed charges against Fuglvog.

Today on September 18th I am  adding the names of  Fuglvog’s supporters who sent  letters to the agency urging his appointment to the top job at the NMFS including the dates in 2009 when they did so.   These details that I am revealing have remained hidden in NOAA’s files, some for six years.
[Update September 18th, 2015. Today, NOAA released three FOIA Requests  I made near the start of the year. Documents were released about six weeks after I filed a lawsuit to get them and other FOIAs are still outstanding].

Background and Connections

In 2009, a clamor for Fuglvog to be prosecuted arose from among those who knew of his crimes and did not want him to be the head of the NMFS. Complaints to NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) began in May, 2009, but as well, and significantly, were also made  in 2007 when NOAA botched and buried investigations into the 2007 complaints. The 2009 complaints occurred around the same time that his supporters in the fishing industry and Congress were inundating  Jane Lubchenco, the new head of NOAA, with letters of recommendation to make him chief of the NMFS.

It is likely, Fuglvog who had no scientific background, was her first choice over a well regarded marine scientist, Professor Brian Rothschild. Many of my sources believe that the EDF which promoted Lubchenco’s career was a main force behind the push to make Fuglvog the administrator of our nation’s fishery research and resources.

In 2009, OLE itself was in hot water. Its Director, Dale Jones, would be caught by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) ordering  case files destroyed  while OIG investigated OLE. OLE, it appears, had totally botched the 2007 complaints against Fuglvog and some would say it covered them up. Two years latter n 2009 and sensing more inaction from OLE, the complainants contacted the FBI and the Inspector General.
By June, 2009 OLE agents in Alaska were conducting interviews concerning Fuglvog.

But over two years passed after 2009 before Fuglvog’s  prosecution became public and another half year elapsed before he went to jail. Meanwhile, he continued to work on fisheries issues while on Senator Lisa Murkowski’s staff, no news of his crimes leaked in 2010 to affect the tough reelection fight for the Alaska Senate seat, and NOAA escaped scrutiny for not prosecuting him for  years after the 2007 complaints were made.

Fuglvog did not get where he was because he was a ladies man or a nice guy— though he was both:
• Fuglvog was room mates with Alaska fisherman Bobby Thorstenson Jr. who supposedly inherited a lot of Icicle Seafood stock from his father, the founder of Icicle Seafoods.
• Fuglvog’s dad  held one of the largest blocks of stock in Icicle Seafoods.
• Fuglvog got appointed by Lisa Murkowski’s father, the Governor of Alaska,  to the North Pacific Management Council (NPFMC) which allocates  some of Alaska’s billion dollar a year stocks of  fish that are not salmon or herring.
• One of his votes on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council was key to benefiting Icicle and a couple of other mega players in Alaska fisheries.
• Subsequently Icicle, which had been on the block for a long time, sold for about 80 million dollars, according to one of my sources.
• We’ll never know how much his votes raised the value of the company. He never disclosed to NOAA, nor was he required to disclose, his father’s interest in the company.
• His policy for promoting Catch Shares was in line with organizations funded by Sam Walton (the Wall Mart Sam) or Pew Trusts, such as the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), Eco Trust, and Sea • In 2008, EDF funded a seminar for members of the many regional Fishery Management Councils under NOAA by giving several hundred thousand dollars through Stanford University to the Woods Foundation. The latter two refuse to answer questions about the money which paid for Fishery Council Members to attend. A NOAA memo raised the question of whether bribery was involved. (I will examine this issue later).
• At the California event, Fuglvog, by then  Murkowski’s fisheries aide, conducted a day long explanation of Catch Shares that was the best attended of all the items on the agenda. Having passed his audition in California with flying colors, Fuglvog got a green light for his next career move—to take over NMFS.
• Lubchenco long favored The Aldo Leopold Leadership Project, while she was a long time EDF trustee, and it received $2.1 million in funding from the Packard Foundation of Palo Alto.
• After being confirmed by the Senate, in March, 2009, Lubchenco had to select a new leader for the NMFS. In April, Fuglvog applied for the job. She favored Fuglvog – who had no scientific background in fish management –  over an East Coast fisheries scientist of national stature, Dr Brian Rothschild, according to an inside source.

In May, 2009,Fuglvog  was on the brink of claiming the the NMFS prize position. Support peaked in late May just as  unfriendly forces were about to dash all his dreams, for as the Bard says, “false hope lingers in extremity.”

NOAA Stonewalled and Stalled 2007 Cover Up 2009 Political Cover

In 2007, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE) investigated and then dropped, some sources say covered up, several complaints about Fuglvog’s long standing illegal activities, but in 2009 when OLE again stalled a new investigation, the FBI, Inspector General, Congressmen, and finally the White House were contacted. Finally a vigorous investigation began in earnest.

Some political motives for stalling the investigation and stone-walling the release of information about his guilt for two years are obvious, others are obscure. Fuglvog was picked for the NMFS directorship for his skill in advocating for Catch Shares ⎯ an objective he shared with Jane Lubchenco ⎯ and also because, under Senator Murkowski,  he was a player in clearing the way for Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic.

Was NOAA’s stalling and lethargy in pursuing him politically motivated? A partial answer emerges by reviewing the sequence of political support he received during the spring of 2009.

• Fuglvog became a candidate for the NMFS directorship on April 9th, 2009 (weeks after the Senate confirmed Jane Lubchenco to be head of NOAA on March 19th). But no sooner did Fuglvog throw his hat in the ring than a former crewman complained to NOAA on April 27  about Fuglvog’s misdeeds as a fishing captain.

• April 9th,  letters of recommendation began pouring in from the EDF Senators, including Murkowski and Murray, and fishing companies

• May 6th David Benton of the Marine Conservation Alliance wrote a letter recommending Fuglvog addressed to Lubchenco (from # 80022772 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 8th Gregg Block, Wild Salmon Center, supported Fuglvog in his letter to Lubchenco (#80022849 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 8th, Ben Landry, Omega Protein, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog  (#80022954 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 8th, Glen Brooks, Gulf Fisherman’s Association  wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog . (#80022957 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 11th,  Keith Criddle, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog ( # 80023002Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 11th, Shirley Marquardt, City of Unakleet, Alaska, wrote Lubchenco to support Fuglvog. ( # 80023003 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 18th,  CONGRESSIONAL Recommendations came from

▪ Representative Mike Thompson,

▪ President Bob Dickinson,

▪ Representatives Robert Wittman,

▪ Brian Baird,

▪ Chairman Don Young,

▪ Representative Frank LoBiondo,

▪ Co-Chair Representative Sam Farr,

▪ Representative Walter Jones,

▪ Representative Jay Inslee,

▪ Representative David Wu

(NOAA Congressional Correspondence Log #80023162, FOIA released September 18th, 2009

• May 18th,another letter of recommendation for Fuglvog arrived at NOAA signed by

▪ Senator Mel Martinez,

▪ Senator (Texas) Kay Bailey Hutchison,

▪ Chairman Mark Begich,

▪ Chair Senator Mary Landrieu,

▪ Senator Bill Nelson. (NOAA Congressional Correspondence Log # 80023163) FOIA released September 18th, 2009

• May 19th, Margaret Williams, World Wildlife Fund, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog. ( #80023088 , Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 19th Ed Backus, EcoTrust,wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog. ( 80023092 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 ) Page 7

• May 19th, Mark Vinsel and Joe Childers, United Fisherman of Alaska, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog. ( 80023090 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May, 19th TJ Tate, Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog.  (#80023080, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015 )

• May 19th, Jack Stern Esq., and David Wilmon Ocean Champions  wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog. ( 80023081, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 19th Kathy Hanson, Southeast Alaska Fisherman’s Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog . ( 80023082, Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 19th, Don Giles, Icicle Seafoods,wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog . ( #80023084 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 19th, Dorthy Childers, Alaska Marine Conservation Council, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog . ( #80023085 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• May 22nd, Dan Castle Southeast Seiners Association,wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog .  (#80022948 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• June 2nd, Chris Zimmer, Rivers without Borders, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog . (#80023303 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• June 3d, Julianne Curry, Petersburg Vessel Owners Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog.  (80023328 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• June 16th, Representative Dave Reichert, wrote Lubchenco to recommend Fuglvog. ( #80023519 80023328 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• July 9th, maybe the only one in Alaska’s fishing industry who did not now then know Fuglvog was being investigated, Alvin Birch, Alaska

Whitefish Trawlers Association, wrote Lubchenco to recommend  Fuglvog.  (#80023086 Lubchenco Correspondence Log FOIA release September 18th, 2015)

• Powerful forces at this point were backing Fuglvog for a variety of reasons, not least of which was  his  ability to sell national fish council members on the Catch Share concept of fish management— kinda like fencing in the range in the 1890s out West— demonstrated the year before at a retreat near Stanford University that was paid for with EDF money. Lubchenco, had been an EDF Board Member for ten years and a trustee https://www.edf.org/ news/environmental-defense-fund-honored-board-vice-chairreportedly-picked-noaa-administrator  https://www.edf.org/people/board-of-trustees

She has recently won EDF’s prestigious prize for her work on Catch Shares, while heading NOAA. https://www.edf.org/media/dr-janelubchenco-wins-tyler-prize-environmental-achievement ).

• On May 22nd, Lubchenco announced federal funding of almost $19 million to implement Catch Shares in New England. More importantly, she announced a National Catch Shares Task Force, comprised of many of NOAA’s top brass who, a year and half later, would be controlling information to the  press, Congress, and presumably the White House about Fuglvog’s criminal behavior.

• With his “friends” and, we believe, former wife, being interviewed in Alaska by OLE in June and July 2009 and a Grand Jury convened on July 21st.

• Fuglvog withdrew his name for consideration to be head of the NMFS on the last day of July, the day after he discovered someone had confiscated his vessel fish log. He knew his goose was cooked. So did NOAA.

• Months later, in December  2009, during his first interview with NOAA, Fuglvog admitted it was “common” practice to make misrepresentations in his log book.

• Between the July 2009 Grand Jury, when much evidence against Fuglvog was aired, and August, 2011 the public did not know of Fuglog’s guilt— though there were rumors aplenty in Alaska. Meanwhile, Fuglvog, though his dream took flight,  was scot free for two more years to advocate for Catch Shares, while still an aide to a powerful US Senator. Until of course…

The Fish Hits the Fan 2011

The following is but a sample of what you can expect to read about the Fuglvog Scandal and how it was integral to the Catch Share push from NOAA. To throw the cold light of truth onto this story, I  posted emails from high level managers in NOAA after the Fuglvog story broke which I obtained from NOAA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after I had to file suit to get them.  (NOAA had 20 days to comply, it took them about eight months to produce. Some of my requests for information have languished for years).

On August 4th, 2011, Politico’s August 2nd headline read:,  Former Murkowski Aide Arne Fuglvog Admits To Breaking Fishing Laws

The following is but a sample of what you can expect to read about the Fuglvog Scandal and how it was integral to the Catch Share push from NOAA. To throw the cold light of truth onto this story, I  posted emails from high level managers in NOAA after the Fuglvog story broke which I obtained from NOAA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) after I had to file suit to get them.  (NOAA had 20 days to comply, it took them about eight months to produce. Some of my requests for information have languished for years).

On August 4th, 2011, Politico’s August 2nd headline read:,

Former Murkowski Aide Arne Fuglvog Admits To Breaking Fishing Laws !

Politico failed to ask the obvious question. What did NOAA know and when did they know it? Instead, Politico’s story downgraded the crime, calling it a misdemeanor, even though Fuglvog had agreed to pay $150,000 and go to jail for ten months. At a subsequent hearing, more facts became public. Fuglvog had broken the law multiple times but was being charged with only one instance. Because he was caught red handed, he copped a plea in exchanged for shorter jail time and a smaller fine and agreed to testify against others. Others had been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and required forfeiture of million dollar boats.
Politico made no mention of OLE’s Chief who ordered case files shredded, as revealed in a 2010 report by the Office of Inspector General. I have an outstanding FOIA to investigate if Fuglvog’s files were shredded. I was informed that after the Inspector General investigated OLE for this outrageous conduct, the computer containing information relevant to my FOIA request crashed. Sound familiar?
Still, NOAA was getting phone calls from reporters who were curious to know why a misdemeanor deserved a 150 grand fine and they caused NOAA’s upper management to scramble.
It is not yet clear if this apparent born again concern by upper management as reflected in the following emails was a ruse to conceal prior knowledge of the investigations or only decision making on what to release to the press. It is clear DC was controlling the flow of information carefully. Nor is it yet clear which members of the upper management team had  knowledge prior to August 4th. I have yet to get a full Response including all Lubchenco’s emails. I do have a document and sources have confirmed that in June of 2009 she was made aware about  allegations against Fuglvog. It is inconceivable that others on the email list of August 4th were ignorant of Fuglvog’s prior acts.

Here’s the  sequence of events that followed the filing of charges against Fuglvog:

• On August 1st, 2011, the US Attorney in Anchorage filed charges against Fuglvog and entered his plea deal into the record.

• August 2nd, Senator Murkowski issued a news release announcing his guilt and his resignation from her staff. It was the talk of Washington and fishing communities which were shocked, simply shocked–except those who knew all along.

• August 4th, back at NOAA headquarters where all the facts were becoming known ( some facts were not already known by Lubchenco), frenzied exchanges that occurred between alarmed officials, keeping Lubchenco out of the loop,, belie the “misdemeanor” story-line Politico was pushing.

Politico failed to ask the obvious question. What did NOAA know and when did they know it? Instead, Politico’s story downgraded the crime, calling it a misdemeanor, even though Fuglvog had agreed to pay $150,000 and go to jail for ten months. At a subsequent hearing, more facts became public. Fuglvog had broken the law multiple times but was being charged with only one instance.

Because he was caught red handed, he copped a plea in exchanged for shorter jail time and a smaller fine and agreed to testify against others. Others had been fined hundreds of thousands of dollars and required forfeiture of million dollar boats.

Politico made no mention of OLE’s Chief who ordered case files shredded, as revealed in a 2010 report by the Office of Inspector General. I have an outstanding FOIA to investigate if Fuglvog’s files were shredded. I was informed that after the Inspector General investigated OLE for this outrageous conduct, the computer containing information relevant to my FOIA request crashed. Sound familiar?

Still, NOAA was getting phone calls from reporters who were curious to know why a misdemeanor deserved a 150 grand fine and they caused NOAA’s upper management to scramble.

It is not yet clear if this apparent born again concern by upper management as reflected in the following emails was a ruse to conceal prior knowledge of the investigations or only decision making on what to release to the press. It is clear DC was controlling the flow of information carefully. Nor is it yet clear which members of the upper management team had  knowledge prior to August 4th. I have yet to get a full Response including all Lubchenco’s emails. I do have a document and sources have confirmed that in June of 2009 she was made aware about  allegations against Fuglvog. It is inconceivable that others on the email list of August 4th were ignorant of Fuglvog’s prior acts.

Here’s the  sequence of events that followed the filing of charges against Fuglvog:

• On August 1st, 2011, the US Attorney in Anchorage filed charges against Fuglvog and entered his plea deal into the record.

• August 2nd, Senator Murkowski issued a news release announcing his guilt and his resignation from her staff. It was the talk of Washington and fishing communities which were shocked, simply shocked–except those who knew all along.

• August 4th, back at NOAA headquarters where all the facts were becoming known ( some facts were not already known by Lubchenco), frenzied exchanges that occurred between alarmed officials, keeping Lubchenco out of the loop,, belie the “misdemeanor” story-line Politico was pushing.

• August 5th, Murkowski announced though her Press Secretary, that she knew in late June of the plea deal. She knew he faced some violation, she claimed, back in December, 2010 ⎯ right after  her reelection. (We are researching to discover if the delay in Fuglvog’s firing qualified him for a pension from the Senate.)

The cast of Lubchenco’s top NOAA management team on August 4th, engaged in media containment included the following:

• Monica Medina, Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration She led the Catch Share Task Force that Lubchenco announced in May and appointed in June 2009.   Her husband, Ron Klaine, was the Ebola Czar, who led the recount effort in Florida for Al Gore. He’s closely connected to the White House through Joe Biden.

• Lois J. Schiffer, NOAA General Counsel

• Margaret Spring, Chief of Staff, who is now with the Monterey Bay Aquarium near Palo Alto.

• John Oliver Deputy Assistant Administrator for Operations, NOAA’s Fisheries Service. He is also the Executive Director of the NPFMC He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force. He found the Office of Law Enforcement’s Dale Jones was blameless in 2006 even though an Inspector Generals Report four years latter found the head of OLE shredded case files for four hours while under investigation by the IG. NOAA has not yet turned over documents showing if Jones shred Fuglvog’s case files http://www.savingseafood.org/news/enforcement/nmfs-dep-admn-john-oliver-and-ex-admnhogarth-knew-of-ole-complaints-four-years-ago/

• John Gray, Director of Legislative Affairs

• Samuel Rauch, Fisheries Acting Assistant Administrator, now head. was the author of a 2010 policy paper distributed to all the      national fisheries councils called, “NOAA’s Catch Share Policy under Development” (2010)calling for 15 fisheries limited by 2011 and 31 in coming years. http://www.fisherycouncils.org/SSCpapers/ Catchshares abstract.pdf He administered national fisheries management councils and Fuglvog had sat on the NPFMC. He is a key player in catch shares within the agency. He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force

• Alan Risenhoover, Office of Sustainable Fisheries, was the author of a 2010 policy paper distributed to all the national fisheries councils called, “NOAA’s Catch Share Policy under Development” (2010), calling for 15 fisheries to be limited by 2011 and 31 more in coming years. http:// www.fisherycouncils.org/SSCpapers/Catchshares abstract.pdf He administered national fisheries management councils and Fuglvog had sat on the NPFMC. He is a key player in catch shares within the agency. He was a member of the Catch Share Task Force

• Justin Kenney Director, NOAA Office of Communications & External Affairs. He was an ex officio member of the Catch Share Task Force • Amanda Hallberg Office of Legislative Affairs and former Congressional Staffer

On August 4th, 2011 between noon and 4:30, a string of emails went out between the individuals on the above list under the subject head: CONFIDENTIAL FUGLVOG CASE.
The flow initially— from the limited records I obtained so far— went to John Oliver, a much over looked play maker, to Monica Medina, Lubchenco’s right hand gal whose husband was a key Biden and Gore player.
It is not clear if the first email was sent by Risenhoover prior to 12:08, since the content of that message was not provided to me and the sender is deleted, but the 12:08 email appears to have been sent to John Oliver who managed the day to day of NOAA. Oliver appears to have gotten “info” from Risenhoover.

Twenty minutes after Oliver got the “info,” Medina forwarded “very sensitive” materials to the following: • Schiffer, the General Council • Samuel Rauch, Fisheries Acting Assistant Administrator • Justin Kenney, Director of NOAA’s Office of Communications & External Affairs. • Amanda Hallberg, Office of Legislative Affairs and former Congressional Staffer • Justin Kenney, Director of NOAA’s Office of Communications & External Affairs
See the 2:23PM email below:

By about an hour and a half later, it became clear the information sent was “confidential,” because Rausch told the legislative affairs officer Halberg and the others it was so:

What was the confidential information? Why would someone in fisheries be the one to determine political and legal information was confidential?
NOAA’s FOIA Response did not include any of the “info” alluded to, several years after Fuglvog got of jail. NOAA may or may not provide it in the coming weeks. So who is NOAA protecting in 2015 by so far withholding this “info” and will a judge order them to release it? The facts suggest NOAA is stonewalling to protect itself from the prying eyes of the pesky public.

Did the “info” include the results of the criminal investigation or did the Management Team already know about that? Did the details inform them when and to what extent the agency knew Fuglvog was committing crimes say back to 2002? Did the “info” include facts showing Murkowski knew about Fuglvog long before she said she did? Did the White House know and do nothing? Was the 2009 email to Lubcheco about Fuglvog part of the “info” packet? Did other people in Congress know? All inferences can be drawn from a stonewalling agency.

While that exchange about “info” obtained about Fuglvog from John Oliver or the NPFMC was taking place, another exchange was occurring about him between Lubchenco’s Chief of Staff and Lois Schiffer, the General Counsel.

But the instruction goes far beyond the letters of recommendation for Fuglvog from US Senators et. al. that are on file. The following emails reflect the team’s “info” was everything  NOAA knew about Fuglvog.

The Counsel General of NOAA herself, Schiffer,  recommended stonewalling about what NOAA knew.

Ms. Schiffer’s instruction to the publicity officer, Kinney, and the Chief of Staff, Spring,  is most disturbing. Schiffer wrote that when talking to the press:

“I  WOULDN’T ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT WE KNEW OR DIDN’T KNOW [ABOUT FUGLVOG’S ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES]”.
(Email Schiffer to Spring et al 3:36PM EST):

After five years of effort using FOIA and the courts, NOAA has still not revealed all of what it knew or didn’t know and when it knew it. For if it did know Fuglvog was cheating between 2007 (when complaints were made to OLE) and 2011 when news broke of the prosecution, it was going to look like NOAA had held back information that could have changed the course of the 2010 election for

Senator in Alaska as well as added weight to the criticism Congress was making that OLE needed major reforms. Why would Lubchneco welcome that kind of news? Why would the White House be happy that its new appointee was in deep muck soon after Senate confirmation.

Burying a National Story

If NOAA had informed the public about the investigations it conducted on Fuglvog up through 2009—as I had requested before the 2010 vote—instead of dealing until  until January of the next year), the outcome for Alaska’s US Senate Race almost certainly would have been different that year.

For between July, 2009 and November, 2010, NOAA was sitting on enough evidence to throw the book at this aide to Senator Murkowski, including evidence presented to the 2009 Grand Jury and his own 2009 admission, for which he would later serve time in federal jail.

This is but a sampling of what you can expect to read about the Fuglvog Scandal and how it was integral to the catch share push from NOAA, a story essentially and potentially affecting tens of thousands of lives in fishing communities around the country ⎯ and the 2010 Senatorial campaign in Alaska.

It is a complicated story, one that any one of the national outlets could have explored had their budgets not been slashed, their reporters demoralised, and their editors cowered, as Sharyl Attkisson has recently shown in Stone Walled (2014).

Instead, except for a few right wing web sites, and one thorough story by Libby Casey in Alaska,  the story got buried. A few reporters had their FOIAs delayed or incompletely answered and then they were on to hotter topics. After all, Mitch McConnell’s gal won the Senate Race.
Page 18

Absent a vigilant press, I hope to unwind more of this story if NOAA produces more information requested under the FOIA and the Federal Court System. Stay tuned.
This material is copyrighted @ 2015 by Alan Stein. None of it may be reproduced in any form, in or on any platform or publication without permission which can be obtained by contacting this web site.

P.S. NOAA has still not released over 13,000 pages of the investigative files I requested years ago and to which I am entitled to under the FOIA. NOAA has turned over some interviews of witnesses, a few of which will be published for the first time on these pages.

Nils E. Stolpe

http://fishnet-usa.com/

3/25/2014

There are people who don’t like fishing. There are people who don’t like anyone who isn’t a vegan. There are people who don’t like progress. There are people who don’t like efficiency. There are people who don’t like to thoroughly research issues. There are people who don’t like technology. There are people who don’t like competition. There are people who don’t like people. There are people who don’t like the truth. There are people who don’t like whatever they’re paid not to like.

Let’s say that you shared a number of these traits and you were in search of what would be to you a rewarding career. Could you do much better than becoming an anti-fishing activist?

From the outside it appears as if the anti-fishing world is a world in which you can indulge your dislikes, inadequacies, frustrations and greed with impunity. And it appears as if the more effectively you do so, the greater your success in climbing the ENGO/foundation bureaucratic ladder.

When I was a lot younger and a lot more naïve I thought that anti-fishing activists were sincerely (though misguidedly) interested in the fish and in the fishermen, and that their goal was healthy fish and healthy fisheries. Their overriding concern with what they termed overfishing and their claimed aim of sustainable fisheries seemed, at least to the average unsophisticated and impressionable folks who are blind to what goes on under the ocean’s surface, sensible and to a limited extent defensible.

But, since “overfishing” is no longer considered to be a problem in U.S. waters, some members of the anti-fishing cadre are branching out with their campaigns in every imaginable direction. As long as it has to do with catching fish they are doing whatever they can to maintain and increase the anti-fishing momentum that they have built up, and they are doing so regardless of the cost of their efforts in terms of fishing community survival and personal economic hardship.

Emblematic of this is their purposeful confusion in the public’s collective eye of the term “sustainable,” a perfectly acceptable – though often unattainable because of anthropogenic or natural environmental perturbations – condition in which a natural harvest can be maintained year by year.

Generally sustainability is a good thing. Barring extenuating economic or social factors it is a goal that our fisheries managers should be and in fact have been striving for. Today, considering the fact that overfishing isn’t happening and the stocks aren’t being overfished in just about all of our major fisheries, one could term virtually all of our commercial fisheries sustainable (and the few that aren’t, exemplified by New England’s Atlantic cod, aren’t so not because of fishing but because of changing ocean conditions).

So the anti-fishing activists, and in all likelihood the foundations that sustain them, have been at work for years convincing the public and the pols that “sustainable” actually means something more in the neighborhood of “natural” or “undisturbed.”

Consider how ridiculous a concept that is. According to these people the world’s fisheries, which produce about a fifth of the animal protein that sustains humanity, are supposed to be conducted in a manner that has no impact on the “natural” environment. Consider the other major sources of animal protein: pigs, cattle, chicken and goats. Can you imagine any meaningful production (in terms of a world population of seven billion and still growing) of any of them without severe modifications of the environment? Yet our expectations have been raised to this level in our supposed quest for sustainable fisheries.

Why is this? We inarguably have more fish swimming around in our coastal and offshore waters than we have had in over a generation. We inarguably have a federal regulatory system for our fisheries that guarantees against overfishing and guarantees for sustainability. In spite of this, these activists aren’t moving on to other areas in ocean management where they can continue to exercise those abilities that made them – at least in their own minds – effective at solving the overfishing problems.

I certainly wouldn’t attempt to estimate how the minds of these people work or to try to suggest why they do what they do, but one of the things that I try to keep in mind is that they are all part of a very successful “save the oceans” bureaucracy, a bureaucracy which works hand in glove with an equally successful federal “manage the oceans” bureaucracy.

The ties joining these two bureaucracies today go back to the very earliest days of the Obama administration. In fact, Obama’s first inauguration was on January 20 of 2009 while on January 12-14 the Meridian Institute and the Monterrey Bay Aquarium held a workshop titled Setting Ocean Priorities for the New Administration and Congress.

From FishTruth.net, one of my websites (http://www.fishtruth.net/ObamaPriorities.htm):

“The title says almost all you need to know. The participant list, after a little research, says all of the rest.

The workshop lists sixty-five participants and thirteen staff. Of the participants, at least 75% can be directly tied to at least one of the four mega-foundations that are leading the anti-fishing movement. All four of the participants from the commercial fishing industry are tied to at least one of the four mega-foundations as is the sole participant from the recreational fishing industry. Of the fourteen participants with no discoverable – at this point – ties to the mega-foundations, two are from the offshore energy industry, seven are from research oriented institutions which, if not receiving funding from one of the four mega-foundations at this point, will certainly have their institutional hands out in the future, one is from a California state agency (no one who is familiar with what state government is doing to fishermen in California is going to find any comfort in that – see http://www.fishtruth.net/MLPA.htm) and the other is from NOAA (ditto on a national level). Of the remaining three, one is from the travel and tourism industry, one is from the reinsurance industry and one is from the aquaculture industry. Oh yes, two participants are now in high leadership positions at NOAA.

All of the staff for the workshop are directly tied to funding from the four mega-foundations.

Is it any wonder that the Obama administration is completely out of touch with commercial, recreational and party/charter fishermen? All of the fisheries advice its members have been getting is being controlled by hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of funding from four foundations with inarguable track records in putting fishermen of every stripe out of work and off the water.

It’s important to note here that Sally Yozell, who was with the Nature Conservancy at the time of the workshop, is now NOAA’s Director of Policy and Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere (http://www.gulfbase.org/person/view.php?uid=syozell) and Monica Medina, then with Pew Environment Group, is now Principal Deputy Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere at NOAA (http://www.noaa.gov/medina.html).

What a happy six years for so many of those folks who I characterized in the first paragraph! It doesn’t matter that overfishing in U.S. waters is no longer a concern. It doesn’t matter that increasing ocean temperatures are affecting the “sustainability” of our fisheries to a much greater extent that overfishing ever has. It doesn’t matter that they are increasingly focused on what are nothing more than token fishing issues like saving deepwater corals, saving forage fish, completely eliminating bycatch or protecting huge areas of natural ocean through Marine Protected Areas (which are generally protected only from fishing). The sum total is fewer fish landed and at greater cost to the fishermen every year.

Consider two current campaigns. One is to ban the sale of bluefin tuna in New York City. The activists who are politically pushing this ban know full well that thanks to years of stringent management measures by U.S. fishermen the bluefin tuna stock on our side of the Atlantic Ocean has recovered from overfishing and there is a healthy, well regulated and totally legal fishery for them. So their campaign has shifted to ban the sale of these fish in select markets. The other is to ban the possession or sale of shark fins on a state-by-state basis. Ostensibly this is to prevent the removal of fins from sharks at sea and the disposal/waste of the carcass. Again, the activists behind this campaign know that shark fins must be landed with carcasses by U.S. fishermen, that the fins are a part of every permitted shark fishery and that making it illegal to possess or sell the fins will do nothing more than take money out of permitted shark fishermen’s pockets. These are legitimate and sustainable fisheries and each is controlled by stringent and effective regulations. Yet this isn’t enough for the anti-fishing activists and that’s simply because they don’t have anything else to do.

The bucks keep rolling in, the misinformation those bucks buy continues to influence the public and the non-coastal politicians, the lawsuits those bucks fund continue to put our fishermen out of business, the anti-fishing bureaucracies continue to grow and the anti-fishing salaries continue to increase.

Is it any wonder that 90% of the seafood consumed in the United States is imported?

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The Associated Press just ran a report on a year-long investigation into slavery in foreign fisheries (Are slaves catching the fish you buy? by Robin McDowell, Margie Mason and Martha Mendoza  at http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b9e0fc7155014ba78e07f1a022d90389/ap-investigation-are-slaves-catching-fish-you-buy). It’s kind of amazing but sadly understandable that when inhumane treatment of fishermen is taking place in countries that are apparently exporting fish to our domestic markets, and with our fisheries in such good shape, the ENGOs – and the mega foundations that are funding them? – remain so focused on our fisheries and our fishermen. Spending time at regional Fisheries Management Council meetings in places like San Diego, Seattle, New York City and Charlestown, is definitely much more enjoyable – and orders of magnitude safer – than documenting inhumane treatment of fishermen in Benjina, Indonesia. And it seems like it would be infinitely easier to steam roller small domestic fishing companies than to try to deal with major U.S. corporations (from the AP article: “tainted fish can wind up in the supply chains of some of America’s major grocery stores, such as Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway; the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart; and the biggest food distributor, Sysco”).

Please Comment Here

A Pathetic Joke Reaffirm’s that some Politicians are Clueless

So. I’m sitting here listening to the Webinar/phone meeting that has just ended, approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes early!

Can’t even imagine holding a webinar session with no sound, but, heh, that’s our government for ya!

If I wanted to listen, (I did) I needed to tie up my telephone! I did!

There were probably twenty five listeners, and three or four asked question’s.

Earlier in the week, Senator Warren wrote an op – ed piece about the $10 Million in S-K dough NOAA was gonna “grant” back to the industry.

Guest View: Tide begins turning fishermen’s way

For the past two years, I have made many visits to Massachusetts fishing communities in New Bedford, Gloucester and the South Shore to hear about the challenges facing the industry. I’ve listened to boat owners and fishermen who face devastating catch allocation cuts, and I’ve spoken with net makers and icemen whose businesses depend on a strong fishing fleet to make ends meet. The message I’ve heard has been clear:

The truth is, she didn’t get it, and there are a few poli bum kisser’s (they know who they are) that trumpet her message as progress, instead of leaning in hard and making her get it.

Ray Lamont at the Gloucester Daily Times is not one of them.

Editorial: Fishing aid package far short of even basic needs

She did replace someone that did get it, and I’d bet Scott Brown would never patronize the fishermen he stood up for.

That’s all that op-ed was. Patronization of the desperate.

Grant is the key word here, and no clue when it comes to Liz Warren!

Today’s display of the S-K funding Folly was revealing to say the least.

Let the Competition Begin!

The guest list had nary a fisherman that needs relief attending the session, but plenty of professional grant hounds, with a few amateurs thrown in.

Today’s exercise was another example of fishermen getting the shit end of the stick.

 

 

Comment here

 

The Pew Charitable Trusts says Atlantic cod stocks are at “perilously low  levels,” and suggested that even the best fishing boat captains in the fleet  couldn’t find enough cod during the last fishing season to meet match their  quotas.

Pew also said the same law being used to replenish the ground fish stocks was  successful in rebuilding the scallop fishery, keeping New England fishing  revenue strong.

“The cod population is clearly in free fall, and if we over fish then we may  push them into extinction,” said Jeff Young, a spokesman for The Pew Charitable  Trusts.

“Even if we could find that flexibility, we really have to rebuild these  fisheries,” Bullard said. “That takes very painful measures to cut back these  stocks and that’s what we’re going to do.”

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Just chop the vegetables and shut up, will ya?

Chef Holly Smith of Café Juanita in Kirkland is one of dozens of local chefs that have joined “Chefs for Seals,” part of the Humane

Society of the United States’ Protect Seals Campaign. 

What is it about these chefs that makes them think the seals are going to support them as they serve up tilapia and Asian farm raised shrimp?

The seals will not tolerate eating that crap, no matter how hard the cook try’s to mask that swill.

Even seals have standards!

I realize that parody may offend the chefs but, shrugs, who care’s?

The Humane Society of the United States’ Protect Seals Campaign., and the chefs, who appear to be snobby towards people, and prefer to raise an issue strictly based on vanity, and decorative icon’s.

If the chefs are doing this to take a stand, why won’t they take a stand against world hunger?!

As the new trend in fishery management is eco based management, the seals cannot be removed from the equation. They are now a primary predator in the eco system because of a number of reasons, one in the United States being the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and another being the un palatable appeal of environs, pro and amateur, and the anti fur movement.

I know that the idea of eco based management will appeal to them in the spirit of being “in tune” with the eco system.

It will be interesting to watch them try to separate a top predator in the eco based management system in the name of vanity, because this is apparently what they have taken a stand against, to the point of a boycott of Canadian fish products.

They will now be forced to accept the fact that seals will be on the menu, as there is an over abundance of this resource having a detrimental affect on other species in the eco system.

To focus on fur products and ignore the protein that seals would provide, utilized by the hungry people of planet that don’t get enough of it will expose the chefs as just trendy interlopers looking for attention or humanitarians toward their fellow human beings.

Comment here

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The contentious issue of seals, marine mammal population’s and public comment ignorance.

Posting link’s to story’s for fisherynation.com viewer’s today, and over the past few day’s, some issues stand out and I thought I’d address them. These are my opinion’s, and mine only.

If you agree, or disagree, you have an opportunity to present your opinion. Submit them through the contact, located on the blue menu bar, and they will be featured. Keep it civil, and on point, please, with no insults or vulgar language.

During the week, I posted three articles about “Study shows depleted fish stocks can come back from the brink”, with the claim cod will never recover in Canada because there are no management measures in Canada to foster a recovery, and besides, it’s to late for them.

Two articles contained the doom and gloom analysis of fisheries scientist Jeffrey Hutchings at Dalhousie University.

In two articles, it appears the authors who interviewed Mr. Hutchings were content to accept his opinion without questioning of any other factors related to the cod issue. These were “blame the fishermen”, ignore the problem’s forums.

The third article posted about the study, appeared at Pys.org.

It was like I had never read the first two!

I am used o the articles that are pointed. with the fisheries being the only factor when it comes to fish stock’s, even though I suspect it’s more complicated, but almost simple enough for me to understand.

Why is it that the scientist’s, and the environmentalists choose to ignore the thing’s we can control to increase cod stock’s in the North Atlantic, east and west? They can’t be in denial forever, and they will be forced to deal with reality if they want to eat fish, or if the fishing industry is going to survive.

We are on this sustainability thing, right?

Marine Mammals are increasing in numbers that are now detrimental to the fish stock’s we prefer to see the populations of, increase.

There are seal issues along the Western Atlantic, and on the East Atlantic, also.

Alaska with the exploding populations of Sea Otter’s is having problem’s, getting the Wanted – “Dead or Alive” posters ready.

They too are having a negative effect on species we desire to harvest and consume.

The population has doubled in the last decade which would mean it would double again in five years.

These stock’s and various species provide livelihoods that are even further in jeopardy if these issues continue unabated.

We will discuss the other predatory species of cod herring, dogfish skates and lobster another time.

An interesting event occurred in American Samoa regarding a predatory specie, and three US Government agencies, decided that eradication was worth implementing as the Crown-of-Thorn starfish became a threat to coral, and it was decide euthanasia was the only option. This is a precedent setting event.

A predatory species is predatory species, whether it’s a starfish or a marine mammal.

The comments at the article “EU ban on trade in seal fur set to be overturned” – European court expected to back attempt by pelt traders and sporran makers to reverse 2010 ruling, are a good indication of the general publics’ opinion.

What they tell me is, these people, all of them food consumers, have no sense of the gritty reality of food production, or, life in general.

These are the people that would say eat more chicken, or just vegetable’s, but if they invested 25 minutes into Ray Hilborn, and they were honest, they’d realize fish consumption in a burgeoning human population cannot be replaced. It’s irreplaceable!

The basis for the opposition to harvesting marine mammals is shallow.

To them, it’s about human vanity. Why else would the headline focus on fur and sporrans?

All I see is references to outrage over vanity,

No outrage for the people in Nambia that eat these seals to survive, as the Seals of Nam’s group threatens Adventure Travel and Trade Association (for the upcoming travel summit in Namibia in October); the Namibian embassy in the United States; the Henties Bay municipality; Namibian Ombudsman John Walters; the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources; and numerous other businesses, travel agencies,” to further their shallow campaign.

I really doubt the African nation of Nambia, or it’s hungry people care about the fur, or even sporrans for that matter, but leave it up to people that have warped senses of purpose to threaten a country of poor people by holding back “tourist” dollars!

Based on,,,,,ideology?

Let’s talk about cruelty!

EU ban on trade in seal fur set to be overturned

Namibia: Seal Campaigners Continue With Harvest Protest

Stopping spread of crown of thorns is to kill it

Draft SE otter population assessment out

 “Canada’s cod, and many other depleted fish, unlikely to recover”

“Study offers bleak outlook for fish recovery” 

Study shows depleted fish stocks can come back from the brink

Comment here

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NOAA Fisheries Service? No such agency!

First off, I’m a cranky old person.

I wasn’t always like this, but time and events have taken their toll.

I’m not ready for the dirt sandwich, although, ya never know!

For quite a while now, something has really been bugging me, and it has nothing to do with my crotchetiness.

NOAA, and the National Marine Fishery Service have pulled a MMS.

Recall before Deep Water Horizon, the agency overseeing the offshore drilling operations were under the MMS moniker

Following revelations of cozy industry / agency interactions of lewd behavior, the administration abandoned MMS and changed it to BOEM, trying to erase it’s shameful past.

I guess strippers, drinking bashes and cocaine abuse between regulators and industry had something to do with that if I recall correctly.

In NOAA’s case, the shameful OLE debacle of NMFS must have had the same affect.

It appears NOAA is ashamed of the National Marine Fishery Service name, and avoid using it when ever possible.

They can’t though, and every time I get information about anything, it is communicated through an un official agency called NOAA Fisheries Service, an agency that does not exist!

Looking at the attractive logo, and the ease of pronouncing NOAA Fisheries, it reminds me of slick tobacco packaging.

You know, pretty colors with attractive font’s and graphics, hiding the negative impacts, or in some cases , death from it’s use.

I wanted to know when the official transition had taken place, because they have websites all over the place with the “un official” logo and non name, and as close as I’ve become to them, I didn’t recall any notices about it.

I made an inquiry.

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 1:45 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:

I would be interested in seeing the official documentation regarding the shift to the title “NOAA Fisheries Service”Thank you.

I received this.

from: Allison McHale – NOAA Federal <[email protected]>

to: [email protected]

cc: Paul Jones – NOAA Federal <[email protected] _mce_keep=”true”>

date: Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 5:24 PM

subject: Re: inquiry

 Important mainly because of the words in the message.

Our official name is still the National Marine Fisheries Service.  NOAA Fisheries Service or NOAA Fisheries has for many many years been our common use name since we are the fisheries part of NOAA.

Thank you, Allison, for the response. I appreciate that. BH

I knew that the official name is still National Marine Fisheries service because every time I get a notice with the fancy logo, directly below, it usually announces, “The National Marine Fisheries Service” today,,,” You get it.

With sequestration causing the agency to shut down, yes shut down – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to shut down most agency operations for four mandatory furlough days in July and August in response to sequester-related budget cuts, according to the agency’s acting chief. continued!, I can’t help but to wonder how much money has been spent on converting all the websites, all the stationary, all the everything’s it has been un officially attached to.

That’s one thing cranky old people do. Bitch about the cost.

Comments can be made here

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As grim fishing year approaches, industry tries to deal with new catch limits

BOSTON –  Deep cuts in catch limits will  hit New England’s fishing fleet in less than three weeks, and there’s little  hint any real relief is coming. But regulators and fishermen are still seeking  ways to lessen a blow fishermen warn will finish them off.

As time grows short, Gloucester’s Al Cottone said he and his fellow fishermen  seem to be facing the future in a sort of “state of shock.”

“Everyone’s in denial. They still think, you know, someone’s going to come in on  their white horse and save us,” he said.

“What are people doing to help the industry?”

I’ve tried to mount up and be a rider. I have not been successful.

What I see is herds of black horses being ridden by hypocritical green cowboys riding rough shod over a bunch of un organized fishermen, manipulating natural phenomena, and cherry picking snippets of information to further the cause of the anti fishing conservation groups.

I’ve watched an endless parade of politicians exclaim they would do everything possible to preserve a 400 year old industry that’s reputation has been skewed by a well organized highly financed special interest sector that operates as an army of non profit, tax deductible lawyer assholes who believe they have all the answers. To everything.

Which leads to this.

Plan to open no-fishing zones faces opposition

Allowing commercial fishing in closed areas would bring stocks even closer to ruin, said John Crawford, science and policy manager for the Northeast Fisheries Program of the Pew Charitable Trusts, which is spearheading an effort to slow down NOAA’s approval process long enough to ensure that in-depth environmental impact studies will be done. More than 70,000 residents up and down the Atlantic Coast and 100 scientists have expressed opposition to the plan in comments to NOAA.

“The habitat has to be protected,” Crawford said. “This is the opposite response of what a rational person would have.”

That’s seventy thousand progressives that had nothing better to do than respond to a mega campaign staged by Pew, and  CLF non profit, tax deductible, NOAA insider Peter Shelley, and his for Cods Sake appeal where he ignores facts about the Cod Stocks, as in like, they move?

The big mystery has been solved by an old fisherman in Newfoundland, and he has the answer about where the cod went. His back yard!

Hasn’t seen fishing like this in almost fifty years!

Of course, Shelley’s in denial, and would rather utilize the short comings of the fishery “science”.

“The habitat has to be protected,”

Unless Crawford opposes offshore wind farms along the New England coast, he should keep his Pew mouth shut.

Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling

The senior communications manager for the National Wildlife Federation decided he should communicate his feelings about his support of habitat destruction.

Ocean Industrialization is exactly that. Habitat destruction.

I realize Miles Grant, another green energy, crony envirocapitalist, thinks he knows what’s best for the planet, but that’s only because as a communicator, he’s not a listener, or a researcher, because if he were, he would clam up and oppose the destruction caused by pile driving, cable trenching, and chemical spills associated with the construction he endorses.

His masterpiece of hypocrisy is literary pollution in it’s purest form.

Same with Peter Shelley. I’m quite sure he’s a Cape Wind rah rah kinda guy.

I know his boss is!

Which lead’s to this.

Meet John Kassel CLF President / Cape Wind Shill / Advocate of Ocean Destruction, and a crappy blogger, too.

Also included in his article,

Just as there is no doubt that our oceans are treasures, so too is there no doubt that they are being damaged. Bottom trawlers damage huge swaths of the ocean floor with their heavy chains, doors and dredges, likened by some scientists to a bulldozer scraping the delicate floor of a pristine forest. New England’s oceans are rising much faster than predicted. They are also becoming more acidic from harmful greenhouse gas emissions. Recent record increases in precipitation may even be fundamentally altering plankton production, jeopardizing the very productivity of our marine web of life.

As it stands, the commentary of ocean acidification is a legitimate argument.

As far as fundamentally altering plankton production, Kassel mentions nothing of pollution, like estrogen, and chemicals flushed through our bodies being injected into the ecosystem via sewerage treatment, which also have negative affects.

He does hammer away at the fishing industry’s methods of modern day harvesting methods that he finds unpalatable.

I will argue, the notion is unfounded, while he bulldozes his Cape Wind preference as a harmless project that with just the right amount of pixie dust sprinkled on it, will deliver energy to New England with no environmental consequence!

11 years. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for the promise of Cape Wind: clean, renewable energy; new, green jobs; reduced air emissions and carbon pollution; energy at a predictable price over the long-term; and energy security. At a time when the evidence of global warming is overwhelming, and the need for jobs critical, unleashing the potential of this home-grown offshore wind project can only be a good thing.

Now this is rhetorical hyperbole at its finest!

I wrote that on Oct 4, 2012

I posted this on April 14,2013

Which lead’s to this.

Noise Pollution from an Ocean Idustrialization Shill

Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling, Miles Grant lives in New Bedford and is senior communications manager for the National Wildlife Federation. Offshore wind energy can and must be developed in a wildlife-friendly manner. Plenty of baloney in this guys display case! Read it here.

Miles Grant’s article has an uncanny familiarity to it. Like it reads like Kassel’s!

Barbara Durkin tie’s this up this loose end nicely.

Which lead’s to this.

BARBARA DURKIN – Your View: Cape Wind offers only empty promises so far. Spanks the communications manager of National Wildlife Federation

April 16, 2013              ENGO, Letter to the Editor, New England, Offshore Wind/Industrialization

Her response to this drivel.  Your View: Polluter blockade of New Bedford wind jobs finally falling continued

NWF makes jobs claims on behalf of Cape Wind that are unfounded. For 22 months, from April 1, 2011, to Dec. 31, 2012, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center Wind Technology Testing Center has created zero jobs, according to the federal government’s Recovery Tracker. The MACEC ratepayer surcharge program is the source of the $13.2 million used to develop the testing center. The center also received a $2 million DOE grant, and funding by U.S. taxpayers through ARRA stimulus of $24.7 million. We have no jobs to show for our $40 million spent. continued

Supporting article by Menakhem Ben-Yami  https://fisherynation.com/battlefrontoffshore-wind-industrialization

Nothing will destroy habitat like ocean industrialization. What’s it going to be Mr. Crawford?  Mr. Shelley? Mr. Kassel? More hypocrisy?

(calling Dr. Moe, Dr. Larry, Dr. Curley)

The politicians, if they were honest instead of opportunistic vulture pretenders would realize there is no possible way to support two industries that are non conducive, but because of pie in the sky green wet dreams of “free “energy which is not cost effective, driven with tax incentives, they say the right words hoping they can fool everyone into thinking they can be all things to all people.

Ya know what? They can’t be.

They need to be put on the hot seat, and grilled.

They need to decide.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/14/as-grim-fishing-year-approaches-industry-tries-to-deal-with-new-catch-limits/print#ixzz2QRsrXkJd

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130414/OPINION/304140310

http://www.pressherald.com/news/fishermen-questioning-plan-to-open-new-areas-_2013-04-15.html?pagenum=full

http://bore-head007.newsvine.com/_news/2012/10/04/14224982-meet-john-kassel-clf-president-cape-wind-shill-advocate-of-ocean-destruction-and-a-crappy-blogger-too

Noise Pollution from an Ocean Idustrialization Shill  https://fisherynation.com/archives/7260

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Industry Transformations

I used to jump like an electricians apprentice getting his first jolt every time I’d get an email alert from certain places.

I’d drop everything and post it on newsvine, and in the beginning, fisherynation.

I’m not so jumpy anymore.

I got one today about The Gulf of Maine Research Institutes Trawl to Table rsvp for permit holders and Captains to rub elbows with chefs, restaurant owners, and food service professionals for the day.

The permit owners and captains that do any kind of reading must realize that fishermen and chefs in recent times have meant chefs ripping and gutting fishermen as unsustainable louts, at least in Europe and in Canada, anyway, not to mention the Save the Swordfish days.

The mission is to build awareness of the sustainability of the groundfish ground fish resource and improving the  profitability and resilience of fishing businesses.

There will also be interactive gear displays, the latest in gear research and quality handling technology, and important information on accessing restaurant and food service markets, with an emphasis on the value of promoting underutilized species!

The chef’s will show off the latest in potato peelers, the latest latex glove for safe handling, and pass on important information!

The permit holders will be wondering how to squeeze a couple of extra nickel’s from of a pound of a shrinking commodity, and will be eager to find that margin advantage. Where will it come from, and who will pay for it? That is the question.

One thing you’ll notice about the fishing industry is richness of statistics. For everything, but, here’s one I did not know.

Restaurants sell 70% of the seafood consumed in the United States.

This from the email alert:

Chefs and restaurant owners influence what consumers want. Successful  chefs are most concerned with quality of product, traceability, and  sustainability. Yet, they often lack access to the latest and most  accurate information on Gulf of Maine seafood and the industry that  harvests it. This is your opportunity to have a conversation with chefs  from your area about the importance of sourcing locally and supporting  Gloucester’s fishing fleet.

So. Back to the question. Who is going to get filleted for that margin advantage?

From my seat, it looks like the auctions are the ones that are about to see a drastic transformation.

There is already a drive for fishermen to increase their profit margins by selling direct to savvy consumers.

There are innovate company’s that are offering alternatives to fishermen that remove some of the risks of being a hero, or a zero, depending on whether they “hit the market” or not.

We have been watching this industry transform rapidly.

Which industry entity will experience the next transformation?

I think it will be the fresh fish auction.

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