Arrogance is NOAA Fisheries “to border on recklessness, if not irresponsibility.” ending ten year SMAST/ Scallop Industry collaborative research.

August 31, 2012   National

Industry leaders are furious that this productive program has been hi jacked by NMFS, while the sallop set aside fund money will now be detoured to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and will now be conducting the survey utilizing the “Habcam”.

Ma State Rep. William Straus, D-Mattapoisett said.”Cutting SMAST out is a problem,”.

“SMAST is one of the few outside parties doing review that will keep the feds honest, so to speak,” he said.

No doubt the state rep has been watching the downward credibility spiral of NOAA/NMFS, and keeping them honest is not something that seems to be possible.

http://bore-head007.newsvine.com/_news/2012/08/31/13593636-arrogance-is-noaa-fisheries-to-border-on-recklessness-if-not-irresponsibility-ending-ten-year-smast-scallop-industry-collaborative-research

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5 Responses to Arrogance is NOAA Fisheries “to border on recklessness, if not irresponsibility.” ending ten year SMAST/ Scallop Industry collaborative research.

  1. scupguy says:
    September 1, 2012 at 6:29 pm

    Taking over the stock assesment science by the government will begin the process of destroying the scallop industry. If allowed to happen this will mark the beginning of the end of scallioing as we know it.

    Reply
    • borehead says:
      September 1, 2012 at 6:56 pm

      All survey work must be collaorative efforts of industry/ academia.
      The NOAA Navy is no longer, if they ever were, capable of honesty, and integrity.

      Reply
      • borehead says:
        September 1, 2012 at 7:13 pm

        STANDARD-TIMES: Why switch from SMAST scallop survey to HabCam?

        August 31, 2012 — It's difficult to see the logic behind shifting the set-aside funds from a low-cost, peer-reviewed program to a very high-cost, government-staffed plan. It's like going from a bicycle to a Greyhound bus just to get a loaf of bread from the corner store.
        .
        NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service has decided to use a Woods Hole device in counting scallops, which prompts several pertinent questions, the first of which being: Why?

        UMass Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology, housed in New Bedford's South End, wrote the book on scallop surveys. According to any reasonable accounting of the past 15 years of scallop fishery science, SMAST's innovation and creativity and the hard work of key members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation saved the scallop fishery, today the most valuable fishery in the U.S.

        SMAST's peer-reviewed survey data convinced federal regulators the fishery wasn't collapsing and that closed areas could be opened and managed for sustainability. The school built on a shoestring budget equipment that showed scallop populations were healthy, in contradiction to data gathered by improperly calibrated government equipment.

        So we ask: Why squeeze SMAST out of the process by cutting its allocation of Research Set-Aside funds from $500,000 to $100,000?

        Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute is filling the breach for NOAA's data gathering, using a high-definition, high-cost camera and a harness of wires and gauges to measure salinity, oxygen, plankton and more, but when the data's being gathered by survey vessels, not seasoned scallopers, we can see the science starting to drift back toward the days of the R/V Bigelow, the progenitor of "Trawlgate."

        It's difficult to see the logic behind shifting the set-aside funds from a low-cost, peer-reviewed program to a very high-cost, government-staffed plan that hasn't shared the data, and can't deliver the same degree of accuracy by virtue of the difference in techniques used. It's like going from a bicycle to a Greyhound bus just to get a loaf of bread from the corner store.

        Our congressional delegation should have its nose deep into this process, asking the same questions and wondering why the money doesn't stay where it gets the job done most efficiently and effectively. All the extra money it took WHOI to develop its "habcam" equipment could have been spent on different research, on scallop growth and mortality, for example. Or perhaps on developing modern metrics and assessment systems, so that varied scallop habitats can be managed with more precision as in our agricultural systems.

        As New England members of Congress are considering a draft of a disaster relief package being circulated that puts more money into buybacks than into support for keeping fishermen in business, we ask that they not take the easy way out. Throwing millions at the problem — just so it'll be in the rearview mirror, it seems — is hardly different than spending many hundreds of thousands in tax dollars on creating a scallop counting system and paying government employees to run government survey vessels when you already have a system that does a more accurate job at a fraction of the cost, and with the broad support of the industry, to boot.

        Read the full story in the New Bedford Standard Times

        Reply
    • borehead says:
      September 1, 2012 at 9:52 pm

      Dorty bastards are gonna wreck them next!

      Reply
    • borehead says:
      September 1, 2012 at 9:53 pm

      dirty bastards are gonne wreck em next!

      Reply

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