AMERICA’S FISHERMEN USED AS A POKER CHIP AGAIN – BY JIM LOVGREN
With his recent reversal of his loudly proclaimed stoppage of offshore wind projects, President Trump has proven what fishermen have known for years, the U.S. government has never cared about them and have always looked at them as nothing more than a bargaining chip to gain favor for other deals for more important industries. This historical neglect of the fishing industry dates back to the mid 1950’s. This is when it became apparent to US fishermen that foreign factory trawlers, that dwarfed American vessels had moved into the world’s richest fishing grounds on the Georges bank. This was legal at the time because a countries legal boundary only extended to 12 miles from their coastline.
Hundreds of foreign trawlers, each one hundred to three hundred feet long, raped and pillaged the coast of North America, after wiping out their own fish stocks off their own countries. In the beginning of this invasion ships from European countries, and Japan were involved. When their boat was full they went home. That changed in the 1960’s when the Soviet Union’s fleet got involved. Their modern, state of the art vessels were two to three hundred feet long, and operated in small packs, targeting concentrations of Cod, Haddock, Whiting, Mackerel, and any other species that happened to get in their way. These trawlers
then transferred their catch to their five- to six-hundred-foot-long mothership which traveled along with the pack. When the mothership was full, it went home and was replaced with another one. They followed forty-mile-long schools of mackerel up and down the east coast, leaving crumbs for US fishermen. Cod and Haddock were wiped out, and Cod stocks have yet to recover. To add insult to injury many of the Soviet fleet vessels operated as spy ships,
monitoring US activities both on land and at sea.
This invasion and the damage it was causing was clear to US fishermen by the mid 1960’s and they started to complain about it to Washington. At the time nothing was being done because the vessels were operating in international waters, but something could have been done, a number of other countries starting laying the groundwork for expanding their territorial waters out to two hundred miles from their coastlines. Peru and Chile were the first countries to declare a two-hundred-mile limit in 1947, over the ensuing years other countries followed. Not the US though, despite a large and growing opposition to foreign vessels so close to the US coastline, our government refused to expand and protect our natural resources offshore. The reason why; they were using those resources as poker chips in an international game of politics. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union was our mortal enemy, and we were enriching them by allowing them to cheaply harvest our fishery resources, so that they could spend the money they saved on building nuclear weapons to destroy us, we allowed them to continue. It wasn’t until the passage of the Magnuson Act in 1976, after fish stocks along the whole of the North American continent had been wiped out, that we finally kicked out the foreign fleet.
Why did we wait so long, even after other countries had expanded their territorial waters to two hundred miles? The answer lies in the US Department of State. They opposed the two-hundred-mile limit, because they did not want to offend a few friendly countries, among them Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, U.K, Italy, and Japan that were also fishing these grounds. Legally the US could not selectively kick out the Soviets without also kicking out everybody. So, the State department allowed the rape to continue for years after it should have been stopped, all because they looked at the US fishing industry as nothing but a poker chip to be traded for favors in other more important, [to them] issues.
How could an industry that was actually the first and for some time the most important industry on the continent be treated so badly? The US commercial fishing industry has always been the ugly unwanted stepchild of food production. Many agencies within the government have their hand in the pie, always wanting their slice of it, because it brings in revenue to their department, and can be used as a bargaining chip. US fisheries are managed by the National Marine Fisheries service, which is a small department within NOAA, which is a small part of the Commerce department. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has taken an increasingly large share of the pie, leasing out mineral rights and ocean bottom to anybody with millions of dollars and good political connections, they are within the Department of the Interior. The Department of Agriculture also has a large share of the pie, and especially love stealing SK funding supposedly for the fishing industry, to waste on other matters. Then there are the other actors, The State department, US fish and Wildlife service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, US Coast Guard, Navy, and on and on. None of these departments care about US fishermen, we
have always just been a poker chip to any of them, to use for trading for something they value
more.
The fishing industry should not be surprised by President Trump’s betrayal in regard to Empire wind. He has just done what every other federal agency has done throughout our history, used the fishing industry and our fishery resources as a poker chip. It appears that the president weighed the value of a previously cancelled pipeline to feed natural gas from Pennsylvania into New England states as more valuable than the thousands of fishing industry
jobs that will be lost thanks to the Empire wind project. A project that does nothing for anybody in this country except Wall Street investors. Empire wind is owned by Equinor, a large Norwegian energy company, that has a long history of environmental indifference. When all the world became aware of the collapsing populations of large Whales, the International Whaling Commission banned Whaling in 1986. Norway was one of only three countries that refused to abide and continued to commercially harvest whales. Since then, they have harvested an estimated fifteen thousand Minke Whales, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody that they don’t care about the marine carnage they are causing with their Quixotic wind adventures.
It’s all about the Benjamins to them and our government. What the President should be doing is not helping bail out New York and New England with a natural gas pipeline, they have made it clear they hate him; he should let their citizens suffer with the enormous increase in electric rates that the Green New Deal’s offshore wind will usher in. After all they blindly supported the Democratic party’s energy policies. Maybe that would wake them up to how damaging their policies are. It should not take the destruction of the US fishing industry to prove that though, but it appears that we are just collateral damage to the Trump Administration, another poker chip to get something else they care more about.
Remember this Jim — my comment on your piece last month “A Man is Only as Good as His Word”?
“If Trump is :only ‘as good as his word’ he is most biblically Satanic (identified by Christ as the “father of lies”) person that has ever risen to this American political pinnacle. The only absolute campaign claim he has come close to fulfilling is the imposing of across the board tariffs that is tanking the world economy and eroding the foundation of this Nations position as the leader of the Free World.
It’s too late to “un-elect him”, impossible to undo his dishonest, self-interested and illegal actions now, since he controls all legislative and enforcement arms of government; the one thing you can do is save yourself. Find something and someone else to believe in.”
AMEN. Time for the commercial fishing community to wake up and see this snakeoil salesman for what he is. This guys never worked a day in his life – how does he attract support of the hardest working people in this country. You gotta give him that, he’s a helluva salesman – except when it comes to tariff deals.
i mean, i agree the fisher people on the west coast have been suffering to some degree, and maybe also ignored by the press and a mute voice without recognition speaks empty from small sized “day boats,” you know the type, one to three people on board, trips of a week or more or until fuel and food need replenishing, a fresh pile of clean ice in the holds after a timely but thorough sanitizing. but i dont think its anything less than a financial margine surpressing the fisherman [i include myself confidently as ignored.] one set by the poloticians and officials pounding documents and collecting large chunks and high dollar checks from a budget i feel should be non-incvlusive and could be further passed down to commercial fisherman forced to live in poverty due to mord regulations and closing fisheries. you know what? i find this artical to be too opinionated and lack factual or significant information relevant to the problems swallowing our industry. how bout they reopen and permit boats for whale-ing again so we can fish for more crab and keep ropeless traps for long lining and swordfish. buhhummmmbala dingaaaa