NOAA special agents and enforcement officers handle more than 3,000 seafood fraud, marine mammal protection and fisheries-related incidents per year in the United States. This video focuses on the investigative work of NOAA Office of Law Enforcement special agents.11:51
NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?
While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here
It’s all good and well to go after a few million in little guy trafficking and illegal fishing, regulatory violations and even Lacey Act transgressions, but that’s paltry. Almost like it is all just for show. I knew several former NOAA OLE special agents in charge who personally paid attention to the Abusive Transfer Pricing aspects but found little support to make headway, through their desks, into that multi-billion world — illicit accounting, tax evasion, international trafficking in seafood at false values across borders in order to falsify USA profits and pay fishermen low prices. Back to recent posts on Don Young’s role in MSAR, he, like Ted Stevens and useless Frank Murkowski, and now Lisa Murkowski, have kept Congress from meaningful reforms and providing mechanisms for multi-agency (IRS/Treasury, Justice/Antitrust, USTR/Commerce) cooperation in going after the real criminals. They have all been aware of Abusive corporate transfer pricing for a long time, and do nothing to stop it, despite the $50 billion lost to Alaska. It does not suffice to make a lot of noise about IUU fishing and thousands of small OLE cases that sometimes result from regional fish council actions that define regulatory crimes such that small defenseless fishermen become a criminal class, unjustly, while big players get away with billions in financial transgressions at great harm to the nation. Go after them — especially foreign-owned and -controlled subsidiaries of Japanese transnationals and others, and apply US laws, claw back true prices, rational prices, and restore competition and protect labor (deckhands) sector, and remove all Processor Quota Shares awarded to FCCs from abroad. Economic sustainability is imperative, too. Sorry, but we can’t apologize for Alaska’s forty years of sending hoodlums to the Congress, but we do acknowledge it’s America’s fault, and “you can see it from here” (on Alaska’s coastline).
Stephen Taufen, founder of Groundswell Fisheries Movement
Hint: give FisheryNation and Groundswell the same amount of funds it took to create that cute video and we’ll head off to D.C. and tune up a few congressmen on what to do about really improving MSA.
Great Job Groundswell. I tried to comment but despite my Security Buffers my comment was interrupted and there is only one Agency in the position to do that. I sent them a message before I erased my comment. An “AUDIT” is do given the minute National Fish on the Market before any CREDIT or KUDOS should be given. Do you see that happening? I don’t!!!
The PISS-ANT move I experienced was “SAD” and “PATHETIC”…
Thanks. But you lost me in part of it, so please can you ease up on the cryptic stuff and write as if you were an uninformed reader, as you are a worthy voice! Write your congressmen…
I apologize for the crypt…
You had to be there to see what was happening on the Screen. Call it Hacking or unauthorized Editing. Not my imagination.
I have been fighting for the cause online since 2009 and active far before that. B.H. will back me up on that. I’ve done more then just comment too.