A rare victory for New England commercial fishermen
The New England fishing industry is enjoying a rare victory over federal regulators as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this week that it would pick up the cost of at-sea monitoring of boats this year. What’s more, NOAA will reimburse fishermen for some of their out-of-pocket expenses from 2017. While that’s good news, there is still work to be done. There is no guarantee the new policy — less a promise of change than a one-time concession tucked in the federal budget — will continue past this year. And beyond the cost, the expensive, inefficient at-sea monitoring program, which spreads a limited number of monitors among a large number of vessels for an undetermined number of trips, must be able to provide accurate information regulators and fishermen can trust. >click to read<07:34
When the presiding government agency, NOAA, is finally responsible for funding its own inefficient and relatively useless fisheries monitoring program rather than the previous outrage of NOAA requiring the fishermen to pay…it’s called a victory for commercial fishermen?
Really…a Victory! This is some statement on the unfortunate status of the fishing industry, isn’t it?
David Goethal a New Hampshire fisherman and Cause for Action brought a lawsuit to reverse the requirement of fishermen being forced to pay for their ankle bracelet “monitors”. The suit was defeated in court, but probably influenced this funding coming through. But, to see it as a “victory” for fishermen simply because something makes even a little bit of sense in the Fisheries “mis-management” cosmos, speaks to the oppressive conditions in the relationship between fishermen and management, and in general, the negative environment in which this industry exists.
A victory would be an honest look at what exactly are the goals of fisheries management, and what has been the outcome of the current posture of management. A victory would be some intelligent and common sense co-governance of this precious resource; while throwing overboard the bogus and destructive political government agency cow-towing to the multi-billion dollar Eco-NGO very-profitable non-profit organizations such as Pew, EDF, NRDC, Oceana, et al. That would actually be “A rare victory for New England commercial fishermen”.
Make that kow-towing!