In recent weeks, with utter destruction facing the New England groundfish fleet, newly appointed NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard, whom it was hoped by many would be a responsive voice of reason in the midst of governmental and scientific uncertainty and chaos, has instead used it to further demean and dismantle this nation’s hardworking families. Read more here
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
Thank you for an excellent statement of some of the dynamics that went into this absolute travesty that NOAA calls groundfish management. At the Portsmouth council meetings the SSC report clearly indicated how much astonishing ambiguity, ambivalence, and outright confusion plagued the stock assessment research. Yet shortly thereafter it was also quite clear that a policy of no flexibility was in force—no matter what the consequences to the fishing communities. Instead of working something out to use less extreme measures until more intelligent assessments could be accomplished, NOAA’s John Bullard treated the fishermen in the room to his paternalistic remarks about facing “the hard realities” on this, their “day of rekoning”. And I agree, this action by NOAA is definitely illlegal, violating several statutes of Magnuson Stevens; and it is also in violation of the ethics of governing and the moral statutes of respect and human decency.