Tag Archives: Scott Lang
Jack Spillane: NOAA – A rogue agency gets set to shut down another New Bedford fishery
Scott Lang has been around fisheries issues for a long time. Both when he was mayor and afterwards. In 2013, Lang helped organize the Center for Sustainable Fisheries as a grassroots lobbying group to try to make sure New Bedford fishermen were not totally forgotten by NOAA. He’s worked for the industry for a long time and seen a lot of arguments from both sides back-and-forth over the years. But until last week, he said he had never seen NOAA make a decision to close a fishery with no science behind it. Not even questionable science, as for years NOAA has used for New England groundfishing limits in the opinion of many. >click to read<09:42
A Famed Fishing Port Staggers as Its ‘Codfather’ Goes to Jail
Carlos Rafael, whose initials are emblazoned on boats all over this port city, boasted that his fishing empire was worth even more than official records showed.,,Fishermen, ice houses and shoreside suppliers who once did business with Mr. Rafael are anxious, as their own businesses have slowed or stopped. As Mr. Rafael sits in prison, having pleaded guilty to lying about his catches and smuggling cash out of the country, nearly two dozen of his boats have been barred from fishing for species like cod and haddock, grinding part of the centuries-old maritime economy in the nation’s most lucrative fishing port to a halt. >click to read< 16:45 
An Important Message From Scott Lang – Please Help Support The Center For Sustainable Fisheries
Greetings from all of us here at CSF, This organization was founded on the principle that our fishermen, and the fishing industry, were not getting their voices heard and we wanted that to change. In the constant clamor over catch limits, stock assessments and bycatch there is little respect afforded to people whose livelihood rests squarely on an ability to discern what is occurring in the ocean month to month. In recent months CSF has ramped up its efforts to highlight the problems facing the industry and our groundfishermen in particular. CSF board members Dave Goethel and John Haran have been highly visible on both local and national media on the issue of industry funding of at-sea monitors. CSF program director Don Cuddy has gained valuable exposure for our mission with his excellent op-ed pieces and also with the recent documentary Counting Fish, filmed on the SMAST yellowtail survey trip. Read the rest here, and please donate. They are in YOUR corner! 10:00Scott Lang – Northeast Fisheries Science Center cannot ignore other fishery data
From the article: Prior to the June meeting, NEFSC hosted an “empirical approach” TRAC Yellowtail Benchmark meeting in April to “evaluate all relevant data sources with respect to their support for alternative hypotheses on stock status and . . . their directional impact on catch advice.” With NEFSC pledging that the “empirical approach” meeting would be new, innovative, inclusive, and transparent, there was much hype leading up to the April “Empirical Approach” meeting. NEFSC has been criticized in the past for a lack of transparency,,, Read more here 17:41
Broken Bureaucracy – Magnuson-Stevens Act – It’s All Out of Balance
Since 1976, when the Magnuson-Stevens Act went into effect, both Captain Krusa’s regulation by natural selection and the Magnuson-Stevens Act’s promised balance between controlling harvests and protecting fishing communities have gone by the board. To be fair, the job has become extraordinarily complex, in large part because fish are hard to count, but also because the regulatory machinery, which includes government scientists, battling user groups, powerful conservation groups, and industry representatives, is broken. The result is a wasted resource and damaged communities. [email protected] 08:16
