Tag Archives: Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund
$63.5K to help reshape Gloucester’s fish industry
When the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund was established in 2007, the Gloucester fleet already had transitioned away from its sizeable offshore groundfish fleet to a largely inshore fleet dependent on cod and other groundfish species in the Gulf of Maine. More than a decade later, the demise of the Gloucester inshore fleet continues, fueled by regulation, environmental restrictions and the simple demographics of an aging and declining workforce. “The aging-out of the fleet and attrition have really taken a toll,” said Vito Giacalone, GFCPF executive director. “We’ve now experienced two generations of fishermen who saw no value in continuing to fish.” >click to read<09:55
Letter: Fishermen grateful for Congressman Seth Moulton’s efforts
We would like to publicly thank Congressman Seth Moulton for his support for fishing business in Gloucester. During the campaign, Congressman Moulton promised to advocate for sound policies for the fishing industry. In office for less than one month, he has delivered on that promise. Congressman Moulton’s strong and timely support of a sector-based solution offered by the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund was critical and well received. Ultimately, NOAA agreed to amend the Gulf of Maine cod for the remainder of this fishing year. Read the rest here 09:31
NOAA and the fishermen: Across the great divide?
The sampling remains microscopically thin, so only time will tell whether the compromise forged by the commercial fishing industry and NOAA Fisheries on the Gulf of Maine interim cod measures will stand as a template for the future. Even given that uncertainty of what lies beyond the horizon, the lack of rancor in modifying the emergency cod measures was a refreshing departure from the antagonistic tango federal regulators and the fishermen have danced in the past. Read the rest here 08:59
NOAA to reconsider emergency Gulf of Maine cod measures
The fishing sector-based proposal to remove some of the most restrictive emergency cod measures in the Gulf of Maine, initially rejected by NOAA Fisheries, is back in play. NOAA Regional Administrator John K. Bullard rejected the sector-based proposal and all other suggested modifications to the emergency cod measures at the New England Fishery Management Council’s January meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., saying the agency had not had enough time to fully study the implications and possible benefits of the sector-based proposal. Read the rest here 10:17
Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund shows boat’s debt up 700%
Over the first two years of catch share fishing, through 2011, debt to the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund for the lease of the allocation of fish from the permits acquired by the fund to help keep Gloucester boats active climbed almost 700 percent to nearly $800,000, according to the fund’s 2011 filings with the Internal Revenue Service and the state attorney general. continued
Gloucester fishermen’s leader cleared, but shocked by allegations
Vito Giacalone, president of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by former attorney general L. Scott Harshbarger after a three-month investigation. But that does not mean Giacalone is happy with what he found in Harshbarger’s report. In fact, he said, he was astonished to read — for the first time — details of the allegations against him, such as charges of misappropriation of funds and exerting improper influence on fishermen. Read more here
Editorial: Ex-AG’s report, hardly independent, needs further review
But it was clear from the start that the Preservation Fund, which paid for Harshbarger’s services, essentially had the probe and the report right under its own thumb. And instead of answering questions, the report itself — released through selected public presentations last week, yet still protected under attorney-client privilege, as its own pages note — has unfortunately raised new ones. Read more here
Former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger defends probe of fish fund
Former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger says he was aware that he cited a disbarred lawyer as a character witness for Vito Giacalone’s altruism in an investigative report that cleared Giacalone — fisherman, shoreside Gloucester businessman, head of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund and policy head of the Northeast Seafood Coalition — of abusing his influence in collusion with other powerful industry figures. And Harshbarger conceded Friday that he had uncovered evidence similar to one second-hand allegation —Read more here
UPDATED – Ex-AG Harshbarger report clears fisheries group, but raises questions By Richard Gaines
A 48-page report released today by a former state attorney general has found allegations of wrongdoing by Vito Giacalone in his role heading the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund “without merit” and with no “credible basis.”,,,,The investigation and report, filled with compliments and praise for Giacalone, in one place noting that his many admirers consider him a “genius” of foresight, was commissioned and financed by the preservation fund, for which Giacalone serves as president and executive director. Read more Todays Update January 30, 2013 Read more
Editorial: Ex-AG’s ‘probe’ of fishing fund hardly independent – Gloucester Daily Times
The Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund’s naming of former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger to carry out an investigation into its own “governance, policies and operations” might seem like a good move — one that could clear up the clouds raised last winter by fishermen who voiced conflict-of-interest and concerns to Gloucester’s two state lawmakers.
Harshbarger, after all, has extensive experience both as attorney general and private attorney dealing with regulatory and fiscal issues involving nonprofit organizations. And that fits the fishing preservation fund, which largely serves as a commercial fishing permit bank handling the $12 million in mitigation money granted to fishermen as compensation for having a liquified natural gas terminal plunked down in the middle of some of the regional’s most lucrative fishings grounds five years ago.
But it doesn’t take much looking beneath the surface to find all sorts of red flags and questions marks regarding a purported “investigation” that is not at all as it seems.
Fishtown slides as a top port – Catch landed in Gloucester declines 63 percent in 2 years – Richard Gaines GDT
Once the world’s preeminent fishing port, even today Gloucester is arguably its best known, heralded in literature, cinema and lore……But Gloucester’s fishing industry is in steep decline, the epicenter of a regional disaster
declared days ago by the federal government. In a nation that imports 91 percent of its seafood, Gloucester has dropped nearly out of the top 20 ports in the U.S. based on landings volume, its fleet now barely 75 boats, according to a spokesman for the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, the charitable nonprofit permit bank that leases quota from acquired rights…..In only two years, according to the government’s annual report of domestic and global fisheries, released Wednesday, landings have declined by 63 percent, from 122.3 million pounds landed in 2009 to 77 million landed in 2011….The precipitous decline was at odds with national trends, whose indicators, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are mostly pointing upward, and shoved Gloucester from 10th place in landings volume to 19th place. http://www.gloucestertimes.com/local/x964639688/Fishtown-slides-as-a-top-port
Fishing fund hires ex-AG for probe
Former state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger is under contract to — and has already begun an assessment of — the “governance,
policies and operations” of the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund, the locally-based nonprofit corporation announced.
Fund President Vito Giacalone declined comment Wednesday, a day after the fund announced the hiring of Harshbarger
who agreed to take on the task last month, the former attorney general said in a telephone interview. Instead,
Giacalone referred questions to the fund’s newly hired spokesman, David Guarino.
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/topstories/x550074880/Fishing-fund-hires-ex-AG-for-probe
