FISHERYNATION.COM

Early last summer the fishing industry lost one of their loudest voices from the early years of federally managed fisheries when Gosta Lovgren of Lavallette New Jersey passed away less than two months after his wife of 55 years, Carol, died. He was born December 9 th 1938 and lived in Ocean County all his life. Affectionately known as “Swede” he was one of the first fishermen to understand the politics of the fishing industry and knew that if the industry did not become aware of, and fight, what was going to happen to them through management measures supposedly to save the fish, then they would be doomed. Swede was the leading industry voice in the fight against sludge dumping in the New York Bight and was the first person to understand and push for more involvement in fisheries from the New Jersey Farm Bureau, American Farm Bureau and the Department of Agriculture. His death was not widely reported as it happened in the middle of the Covid crisis, and he didn’t deserve to have passed away without the recognition he warranted.

Gosta started fishing with his dad in the Surf Clam fishery in 1960 and worked there until the Mid-Atlantic Council created their first fishery management plan and promptly put over 100 boats out of business including him. By that time, he owned his own Dock and business called Lovgren Enterprises located on Channel drive in Point Pleasant Beach, where he docked his 70 year old converted oyster schooner, the Carollelle. Kicked out of the clam industry, he switched his boat and dock over to successfully enter the booming New Jersey Whiting fishery, with his dock handling the landings of half a dozen boats daily and ignoring the local industry trip limits that stabilized the market. From the 1970’s thru the 1980’s when the media in New Jersey covered a fishing industry story, they always sought out Swede’s opinion, as while his language was colorful, he was very knowledgeable, insightful, and opinionated. [plus, he was never wrong, a family trait].

In 1976 the U.S. suffered what was, at the time the worst ecological disaster in our history with the great ocean kill in the New York Bight that covered hundreds of square miles of ocean bottom from New York City down to Atlantic city, and extended forty miles offshore. Every living bottom creature in the area died, with the Surf and Quahog populations being decimated, along with Lobsters and crabs, while most fish could swim away from the disaster. Swede recognized early on from the signs he was seeing in his dredges and the observations of other clammers that there was a serious unknown problem taking place and it probably had something to do with the huge sludge dump site located about fifteen miles east of Long Branch where millions of gallons of untreated sewerage was dumped every day. He hired a diver to get a sample of the bottom water near a local wreck and brought it to a meeting that had been arranged between a few local fishermen, the head of the regional EPA, and Congressman Jim Howard. Presenting the bottle to them he told the EPA head and the Congressman that they were not doing their job very well, in language that may not be suitable for all audiences. He continued this battle until it was won, over ten years later.

After passage of the Magnuson Act and the beginnings of fishery management plans Gosta knew that our industry needed to organize and he became involved in the New Jersey Farm Bureau, and actively encouraged local fishermen to join. Within a few years Gosta was the Ocean County Farm Bureau President, and served on the Board of Directors of the New Jersey Farm Bureau. He used his position to push fisheries issues into the mainstream of NJFB policies hoping eventually to get national involvement with the American Farm Bureau and their four million members. He was honored with the Art West distinguished service to the New Jersey Farm Bureau award in 1985 for his efforts. Swede recognized early on that the commercial fishing industry had absolutely no one in power that cared about them, and saw the agricultural community as brothers who faced similar problems but had much more support nationwide than fishermen. Since both industry’s harvested food, teaming up should be a no brainer, but politics is a complicated thing and agriculture had their own ideas about fish production, namely aquaculture, so his efforts nationwide were fruitless at that time, but still continue through the efforts of the NJFB.

In 1985, after being kicked out of the surf clam industry, fighting NMFS over two written violations, and seeing the authoritarian ruthlessness of an NMFS administrative law judge, Swede took out a full two-page ad in the National Fisherman magazine issue from May 1985 confronting the actions
of NMFS and the fishery management system they set up. When he finished writing the piece, he promptly suffered a massive stroke and almost died. He was left with paralysis on his left side, and his active involvement in fishing was ended. He had to sell his boat and the dock and concentrated on
rehabbing his body with a strenuous physical regimen that helped him regain some of his functions. He spent much time after the creation of the internet trying to beat the stock market, before creating his own award-winning website, Swede’s Dock, which covered all types of various issues, but mostly concerned fishing. Here he wrote many opinion pieces on fishing that are still relevant today. The website is still online, with an incredible amount of fishing information on fishery management, science, and even back yard ponds. In 2000 Gosta became a published author with his 178-page book, the “Ponder’s Bible, all you need to know to build and maintain your own pond”. It is still available on Amazon.

From Nils Stolpe; I knew Swede for almost all my professional career in fisheries. My dealings with him started when I was attempting to do fisheries support and development work for the New Jersey Department of Agriculture, a whole ‘nother story that I won’t get into here. At the time he was
fairly contemptuous of most of the bureaucrats, both federal and state, that were involved in [or were pretending to be involved in] fisheries, and he maintained a lot of that contempt for as long as I knew him. Fortunately, my life as a bureaucrat lasted for somewhat less than a decade, and I like to think that in the subsequent years some of his contempt for me became a limited bit of grudging respect. But he was still Swede, and while it took me quite awhile to figure it all out, I came to see that his contempt for the huge, and many of us would argue just about completely ineffectual-government fisheries bureaucracy was spot on. In essence his distrust of the lions share of fisheries bureaucrats-aka “fishcrats” thanks to a long running column in National Fisherman- was rooted in the real world and was about as prescient as any commercial fishing advocate’s predictions involving the ongoing demise of the commercial fishing industry in the United States. Though I don’t know for how long it will be there, parts
of Swede’s website, “Swede’s Dock”, is still available at http://www.exit109.com/~gosta/. While some of it will probably offend some folks, and other portions are definitely controversial, if you are interested in fisheries management, it is certainly worth a visit or ten.

By Jim Lovgren and Nils Stolpe

I wrote Gumballs sure are fun, but policy decisions should be based on complete and accurate information (it’s at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Gumballs.pdf) eight or so years ago. In hindsight it was right on target back then and I think I’m safe in writing that it still is today. A lot of time and effort went into it. What were the results? As far as I’ve seen, there weren’t any, or at least any that were positive for the commercial fishing industry. The trade media as far as I saw back then (or in the intervening years) hasn’t done much at all to counter the fishing hobbyists “we’re more important than commercial fishermen are” political push. Though I’ve got to admit that the attention I’ve paid to the few “major” commercial fishing publications, the press releases redistributed ad nauseum by the on-line commercial fisheries news aggregators, and the self-promotions masquerading as industry “news” has waned in recent years, so I might not be completely up to date. Why? Because none of it seems of particular interest to me or of particular utility to the folks I’ve been working with over the last forty or so years. But hey, it’s always good to know who won a lobster boat race, got a grant to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse, or was named the “fisher of the decade.”

Ever since quota transfers in “shared fisheries” have been made so easy to justify (see the Massachusetts justification for the recent reallocation of fluke, bluefish and black sea bass at https://tinyurl.com/yckkr6vm), such transfers each year are going to cost us hundreds of tons of product and tens of millions of dollars of business. And as long as one-third of the voting members of the eight regional fishery management councils and three commissions either work for or run the state agencies that are funded in very large part by Wallop-Breaux revenues (see my most recent piece on Wallop-Breaux funding at https://fisherynation.com/wallop-breaux-funding-the-rest-of-the-story), without a major campaign to make the quota setting system more fair to commercial fishermen, the businesses that depend on them, and the seafood consumers they should be supplying, I don’t see that changing.

What options do we have to make such a biased system more equitable for every seafood consumer, supporting more than just those folks who want to and can afford to “catch their own”? There’s always the opportunity to sue the feds. But, as we all know, that’s expensive…. and seems to me to be somewhat akin to locking the barn door after the horses are three quarters of the way down the road to the glue factory.

So where’s the analyses, the data, the quotes, the citations, the definitions, the tables, the charts, the comparisons, the entire wherewithal to support the commercial fishing industry’s and the seafood consumer’s position in “who should get the fish” deliberations? The culinary cravings of non-fishing seafood consumers must be largely satisfied by tilapia (Google it!), swai (Google again!) and farmed shrimp (Ditto!) from God knows where because lobbyists claiming to represent a relative handful of anglers have convinced the right politicians that their clients fishing for fun are more deserving of the lion’s share of our locally available species.

The recent reallocation of Gulf of Mexico red grouper is being challenged in Federal Court in an impressive effort by the A.P. Bell Fish Company, the Southern Offshore Fishing Association, and the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance. See https://tinyurl.com/yt7hkavk. Their seemingly compelling comments at the hearings-except to those  Council/Commission bureaucrats whose budgets are to a large extent subsidized with Wallop-Breaux bucks-along with those of dozens of other participants in or businesses dependent on the commercial fishery were obviously ignored.

Were you associated with the domestic commercial fishing industry back in 2014? If you were, did you see the gumball piece linked above? If you did, did you do anything about it (like forward it to media contacts, local pols, Congressional staffers, business associates, etc.)? Or, going a step or so before that, did you have any media contacts, know any local pols, communicate regularly (or irregularly) with any Congressional staffers or business associates? If you can answer positively to any part of this, you were doing a part-a small part-of the job that you needed to do. You were reacting to what the people who were trying to put you out of business were saying. But bear in mind that’s not what is referred to today as being proactive, which is defined by Merriam-Webster as “acting in anticipation of future problems, needs, or changes.”

Being proactive is what we should have done and should be doing as an industry. It’s not impossible. Twenty some years ago a bunch of industry leaders got together and formed The Seafood Coalition, a national group at one time representing the harvesters of about half of the seafood produced by domestic fishermen. All it took was the will and the means. Unfortunately, the will and the means seem to be hard to come by today. And if they continue to be, I’m afraid that we will continue to be spectators as our historically determined proportion of shared fisheries is nibbled away with every new/updated stock assessment.

If what is being done to federal fisheries policies was communicated to the right people, with “you gotta read-and believe-this” assurances by a large enough group of credible commercial fishing supporters, do you think it might make a difference? According to the American Sportfishing Association, in 2013 less than nine million Americans fished in saltwater in 2012. That was less than 3% of the U.S. population, three hundred and sixteen million people. How many of the non-fishing population eat fish and shellfish and how many more would if it was higher quality and less costly? Without some effective industry action we’re never going to know.

Who’s ready for another serving of tilapia?

Nils Stolpe

ps – Some after-the-fact legal actions have been successful, and I have no doubt that some will continue to be in the future. But keep in mind that every time a management decision or action is overturned in court, a bunch of lawyers and bureaucrats from the Federal government, the recreational fishing groups and the anti-commercial fishing ENGOs treat that as a learning experience. And they have the luxury of time on their side. But once a commercial fishery is gone it’s most probably never coming back.

Pps – I’m always interested in reactions to what I write. Please don’t hesitate to let me know by replying directly to this email.

Coming next – Is “the best available scientific information” good enough?

For more read Gumballs sure are fun, but policy decisions should be based on complete and accurate information at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/Gumballs.pdf

“The Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration Act, passed by the federal legislature in 1950, provides funding to state fish and wildlife agencies to support recreational fishing…. In 1984, the Wallop-Breaux amendment modified the act to also capture motorboat fuel excise taxes, which go toward boating access improvements.”

Folks – I’ve been yammering on and on about the Wallop-Breaux program, an excise tax on boating and fishing gear and non-commercial marine use fuel sales. At the same time I’ve been focusing on a potential conflict of interest because 1/3 of the votes on the eight regional fishery management councils and 1/3 of the total votes on the three marine fisheries commissions (Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific) are cast by each of the states’ senior marine fisheries administrator.

Why a potential conflict? Because, as the attached table* demonstrates, the various state fisheries programs receive a major part of their funding each year from Wallop-Breaux. The amount of funding each state receives each year is based on the excise taxes on specific expenditures of saltwater recreational fishermen in those states.

It doesn’t require a rigorous statistical analysis to show that the more fish that recreational fishermen are allowed to catch, the more those fishermen are going to be willing to spend on equipment and boats and fuel to catch them. And that more recreational fishermen will be trying to catch them.

And it doesn’t require a profound understanding of how bureaucracies work to know that a large part of determining what a bureaucrat’s job is worth is determined by his’ or hers’ responsibilities, and that those responsibilities are in large part determined by the available funds.

In other words, that $399,661,336 of Wallop-Breaux funding to the states is going to make a lot of bureaucrats happy, and amongst those happy state bureaucrats will be those folks who have the largest say in deciding which user group gets how much of a share of those fisheries that are shared by user groups.

Conflict of interest? You decide.

There is also some confusion (maybe purposeful?) about the Saltonstall-Kennedy program, which is supposed to help the commercial fisheries and is funded by a tax on some seafood imports, sometimes considered a balance on the commercial fishing side to the Wallop-Breaux largess directed to recreational fishing. Saltonstall-Kennedy dollars coming to the commercial fisheries averages about $10 million a year. That’s about two and a half percent of the annual Wallop-Breaux transfer. And while it seems as if the states have a large say in determining what their Wallop-Breaux bucks are to be spent on, It’s up to NOAA/NMFS to decide what the commercial industry is going to get out of the Saltonstall-Kennedy pittance. Good idea or great idea, so what? If the folks at NOAA/NMFS aren’t interested, don’t bother!

I had a fairly short career as a bureaucrat, somewhat less than ten years. In that time I increased the funding of the program I was responsible for by a factor of ten or so. My program staff increased from one to five or six. My salary increased as well. That’s the way it worked in the 1970s and I’m pretty sure that’s the way it works today. Bigger budget, more responsibility, more perks (boats, vehicles, electronics, travel, etc.), more pay.

So we have a bunch of people who are paid to decide who gets to catch which fish. They-or the bureaucracies they work for-will reap significant financial benefits if one of the groups gets more fish (recreational) and will reap negligible benefits if the other group (commercial) gets those fish.

* For a state by state breakdown go to https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/sportsmen-and-sportswomen-generate-nearly-1-billion-conservation-funding

Nils Stolpe

The question should actually be “how much is FishNet USA worth to you?”

I’ve been writing stuff for the commercial fishing industry for over three decades. That’s a lot of words, and I suspect that no one who is on the present distribution list, who has read my columns in National Fishermen or on Saving Seafood, or has FishNet issues forwarded to them from someone on the list has not benefitted from some of them.

One of their most valuable contributions to the domestic commercial fishing/seafood industry has been to let “outsiders” know that someone is out there watching and reading and researching, and if they write anything that isn’t spot-on accurate or that is too far removed from the real world that we live in, they might get publicly called out on it. And they might get called out with well researched references, links, charts, and etc.

Below are links to mostly randomly chosen pieces I’ve written that are available on the web (I’m working on a compilation of what I’ve written on commercial fishing since the early days. It’s up to 2,500 or so pages and still growing). Take a look.

https://www.fishnet-usa.com/COVID19pt2.pdf (Written when, at the beginning of the still-ongoing Covid pandemic, NOAA/NMFS, which had tied their research fleet up, was trying to force on-board observers onto commercial fishing vessels).

https://fisherynation.com/fishnet-usaso-how-are-we-doing-2017-edition

https://fisherynation.com/fake-news-incomplete-inaccurate-reporting-intentional-misdirection-and-fishing

https://www.fishnet-usa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm (These are Different Perspective columns I wrote for National Fisherman ending in 2011. If there is any subject or situation that was important to you back then, use your browser’s “find” function to see if I addressed it. I’d recommend “black helicopters,” “barndoor skates,” “anti-fishing movement,” and “law enforcement” for starters. Or just browse round.

https://www.vikingvillage.net/post/where-are-all-of-the-self-styled-ocean-saviors The so-called Precautionary Principle, which had been one of the primary weapons employed by the anti-fishing activist individuals and organizations in their efforts to destroy the domestic commercial fishing industry, was left by the wayside in their rush to cozy up to the multinational mega corporations and their $billions.

Thanks to the Covid mess, and also thanks to what seemed to me to be some philosophical differences between me and some prior sponsors who were part of a commercial fishing consortium that was trying to get into the windmill business, my industry support has dwindled down to the point where the funds coming in just about cover my internet/telecommunications costs. Unlike just about all of our domestic fisheries, this is not sustainable.

Folks, I’ve been here for most of forty years, and I think that the threat the commercial fishing industry in the U.S. is facing today, the massive development being planned for what seems to be virtually all of our inshore/offshore areas, is greater than it’s ever been. This includes pre-Magnuson foreign factory trawler fleets in our EEZ, the mercury contamination scare, the anti-fishing campaigns by the enviro orgs and the accompanying demonization of commercial fishermen, the rampant bureaucratization (and the “greening”) of our federal and state management agencies, and anything else that we’ve dealt with.

There is a new organization that is working on some of these looming development-read that “ocean turf wars”-issues, and I salute the effort. But they’re going to need all the help that they can get, and then some.

I’ve built up a reasonable amount of credibility, and I’d like to continue to make that available to all of you in the future. But that’s not going to happen without your financial support. Look over the linked material above. We need more of that, and we need more people to see it. If you have a particular issue, contact me and if I’ve addressed it, I’ll let you know where and when. But I can’t work for free. That’s what I’ve been doing of late and it can’t continue.

I’ve done a lot for the industry, and I’ve addressed a lot of issues without your support, but that was then, and now is now.

If you are interested in helping to continue my efforts to continue to support you and your industry, please contact me at [email protected], or at 609 731 3368. If my phone doesn’t recognize your number, your call won’t be answered. (my car is still covered under the original warranty). Please leave a message.

It’s been suggested that I do a “go fund me” site for FishNet. If that would be convenient for you, let me know. Also, if you have any other ideas for making FishNet sound and economically viable, please let me know.

In addition to my regular distribution of FishNet, in 2019 the three websites that I created and maintain had 66 thousand visitors who downloaded 151 thousand pages. Ten years ago, if my memory is still working accurately, the sites had over 300,000 visitors annually. That’s a lot of eyes, particularly considering that I haven’t done anything to promote the sites for going on 5 years. This could be a tremendous starting point and I would like nothing better than to update and promote these sites.  The sites are FishNet USA (http://www.fishnet-usa.com), FishTruth (http://www.fishtruth.net) and FishingNJ (http://fishnetnj.org).

I designed the sites to allow quick and easy updates, and each would be a great tool to get messages to the masses-perhaps limited masses, but the people who visit are all interested in fish and/or fishing. They could be the start of a pro-fishing of people we should be targeting

Take a look at them, bearing in mind that they’re all a bit out of date. There’s a tremendous potential for growth there, but it will take a lot of work, and at this point that work is not going to get done.

PS – Thanks to the folks at Viking Village in Barnegat Light, NJ and at Fishery Nation.com for helping to disseminate my stuff. Viking Village has been a “founding supporter” of Fishnet USA from the beginning until this Covid mess and Fishery Nation has provided and continues to provide and invaluable (and too often unrecognized) service to our commercial fishing industry. And thanks as well to The Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative, Viking Village, Lund’s Fisheries, Atlantic Capes Fisheries, Saul Phillips, Marc Agger and a handful of other individuals and organizations for seeing the need for an electronic publication like FishNet USA, for getting it started and for keeping it going for 20+ years.

Thanks for your attention, Nils Stolpe

8-12-2020

A FishNet-USA User’s Manual

You have two Senators and one Member of Congress representing you in Washington. If you are concerned with the recent NOAA/NMFS decision to once again require their observers on board commercial fishing vessels in spite of the fact that so little is understood about the mechanisms by which Covid-19 is transmitted (and that NOAA/NMFS has tied up its own survey vessels because of the pandemic), you should let them know, and you should let them know ASAP, because according to the latest communication from the Feds the observers will be back and looking for rides on August 14.

I’m repeating below the contact information that I included in the last FishNet. Call each of the offices listed, ask to speak with the fisheries/environmental staffer, explain that you are a constituent, what the situation is, what the potential negative impacts of this premature resumption of the observer program could be and, if you think it appropriate, ask if you could email them some background information.

Don’t think that anyone else is going to do this for you. You live, work, spend and vote in his or her bosses’ district, and she or he is going to listen to you before they’ll listen to anyone else.

https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?OrderBy=state&Sort=ASC

https://www.house.gov/representatives

Best,

Nils Stolpe

More on Covid-19 – (Sorry for the length of the article, but it’s important)

We know that research cruises by the R/V Bigelow have been cancelled for (at least) the rest of this year. Unsubstantiated scuttlebutt is ditto for the R/V Lasker and the R/V Shimada. There must be a compelling Covid-19 related reason for this, and I’d suspect for the fact that NOAA/NMFS has been making it awfully hard to get solid info on where their research vessels are or aren’t deployed and what they are or aren’t working at  (and if this info is readily available but I’m just not aware of where it is, my sincere apologies to NOAA/NMFS).

It’s becoming more and more obvious that the more we learn about how Covid-19 is spread, the more we know that there’s a lot more that we don’t know. As the following article indicates, the indicators of infection that we’ve been relying on are pretty far from reliable, and it seems to me that the most “reliable” – though definitely not infallible – indicator we have is personal relationships with people. We know who to believe, we know who is reliable, we know who we can trust – and until tests are easily and cheaply available and are of known accuracy, that’s about all we’ve got. As it stands, an observer could talk to or stand next to or interact in we don’t know in how many other ways with, someone who is asymptomatic or presymptomatic. No matter what the observer, his or her employer, or NOAA/NMFS assures us of, when we share a boat with its really tight quarters with her or him for a trip, we don’t have anything approaching a guarantee that we and our families will be safe.

One could argue that this is the same story on any vessel with any crew, but that’s not the case. Captains and crew members know the people who work with them – generally personally, sometimes by reputation. They know who to trust and who not to.

But most importantly, they are first level, essential workers in a critical industry. Like all such workers, we need them, and we owe them as much support and as much protection as we can provide to them.

On the other hand, mandatory fisheries observers are about as far from necessary as one can get in this pandemic year. While they unknowingly will be putting fishermen at risk, in actuality all they will be doing will be providing government scientists with data points for them to add to data sets that in instances go back fifty years or more. NOAA/NMFS has effectively demonstrated the relative unimportance to the fisheries management process of missing a year of data by cancelling their own annual surveys. From the science perspective this isn’t ideal but it’s certainly workable. No scientist is going to throw his or her hands up in the air at the thought of being forced to “start all over again.” In reality all it means is that there will be some missing graph points, and statisticians have been effectively dealing with them for centuries.

Even Asymptomatic People Carry the Coronavirus in High Amounts – Researchers in South Korea found that roughly 30 percent of those infected never develop symptoms yet probably spread the virus.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/06/health/coronavirus-asymptomatic-transmission.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Health

By Apoorva Mandavilli

NY Times/Aug. 6, 2020

Of all the coronavirus’s qualities, perhaps the most surprising has been that seemingly healthy people can spread it to others. This trait has made the virus difficult to contain, and continues to challenge efforts to identify and isolate infected people.

Most of the evidence for asymptomatic spread has been based on observation (a person without symptoms nevertheless sickened others) or elimination (people became ill but could not be connected to anyone with symptoms).

A new study in South Korea, published Thursday in JAMA Internal Medicine, offers more definitive proof that people without symptoms carry just as much virus in their nose, throat and lungs as those with symptoms, and for almost as long.

“It’s important data, that’s for sure,” said Benjamin Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved in the work. “And it does confirm what we’ve suspected for a long time — that asymptomatic cases can transmit infection.”

Discussions about asymptomatic spread have been dogged by confusion about people who are “pre-symptomatic” — meaning they eventually become visibly ill — versus the truly asymptomatic, who appear healthy throughout the course of their infection.

The new study is among the first to clearly distinguish between these two groups.

“There’s been this big question pretty much since January, since data started coming out of China, about people that were asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic,” said Jason Kindrachuk, a virologist at the University of Manitoba who was not involved in the work. “What we haven’t really had any clue of yet is what role people who are asymptomatic play in transmission of disease.”

The new study measured the virus’s genetic material in the patients; the researchers did not follow the chain of transmission or grow live virus, which might have more directly confirmed active infections.

Still, experts said the results strongly suggest that asymptomatic people are unwitting broadcasters of the virus.

“They don’t look any different from the symptomatic population” in terms of how much virus they carry, said Marta Gaglia, a virologist at Tufts University in Massachusetts who was not involved in the work. “There’s no actual reason to believe a priori that they would transmit any differently.”

Dr. Cowling was more circumspect. Because asymptomatic people do not cough or sneeze, he said, it is possible that they are less efficient at expelling the virus than those who are clearly unwell.

On the other hand, Dr. Gaglia offered, people who feel ill tend to take to the bed or couch, whereas the infected but unaware may carry on with their business, sickening others along the way.

(The remainder of the article is linked above)

By Nils Stolpe, http://fishnet-usa.com/

On the heels of delaying its Northeast fisheries observer program this summer, the National Marine Fisheries Service cancelled three planned research surveys for the remainder of 2020 on the research vessel Henry B. Bigelow as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.

Anyone who is familiar with the NOAA/NMFS stock assessments realizes that the annual surveys conducted by the R/V Henry B. Bigelow in the Northeast and her sister ships in other regions (the R/V Bell M. Shimada, R/V Oscar Dyson, R/V Pisces, and R/V Reuben Lasker,  (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/node/231) are the backbone of the federal fisheries management process. This fleet of state-of-the-art fisheries survey vessels, which represent an investment of almost half a billion taxpayers’ dollars, is of an importance to the federal fisheries that it would be extremely difficult to overstate.

The NOAA/NMFS “Navy’s” at-sea surveys in the Northeast region were cancelled at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and will not be resumed for at least the remainder of this year. “Since March, we have been rigorously analyzing various options for conducting cruises this year and are taking a survey-by-survey, risk-based approach. After much deliberation, we determined that there was no way to move forward with these surveys while effectively minimizing risk and meeting core survey objectives,” according to officials at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in a statement issued July 10. (https://tinyurl.com/y2e9y9wd).

The Bigelow is 208 feet long, cost $54 million to build, has a crew of 24 and a compliment of 17 scientists (https://tinyurl.com/yxgoks6z ). There isn’t a commercial fishing vessel on the East Coast that approaches the Bigelow in size, in displacement, or in the amount (or comfort) of the accommodations for crew and scientists. Having her sitting at the dock in Newport, Rhode Island is going to have an incalculable negative impact on the fisheries management process and could cost the commercial fishing industry from North Carolina to Maine tens of millions of dollars when the scientists/statisticians at NOAA/NMFS are finished applying the precautionary principal to near-term future landings.

But mandatory on-board observers (https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/topic/fishery-observers) pose no COVID 19 threat to commercial captains or crew?

After a successful push by the commercial fishing industry (An East Coast Perspective on Coronavirus Impacts at  https://tinyurl.com/yy2rggf3), because of COVID-19 concerns, NOAA/NMFS put off plans for resuming the mandatory on-board observers program for one month. It is now scheduled to restart on August 1 (see Temporary Waivers on Northeast Observers, Monitors Through July 31, Resuming Coverage August 1 at https://tinyurl.com/yanxmkrq.) According to the announcement, “during the month of July, we (NOAA/NMFS) will continue to work with regional observer and at-sea monitoring service providers to finalize their observer redeployment plans, conduct outreach with industry, and finalize our internal programs and policies that will support the safe and effective redeployment of observers and at-sea monitors in the region…. as has been done throughout the rest of the country, it is the intent of NOAA Fisheries to begin redeploying observers as soon as it is safe and appropriate to do so.  While we intend to begin redeploying observers on August 1, we recognize that this public health crisis continues to evolve and changing conditions may warrant re-evaluating these plans.”

The assumption at NOAA/NMFS now is that it will be “safe and appropriate” for the crews, the observers, the crews’ families, the dock and handling/processing personal, and a whole bunch of other people to start redeploying observers on commercial fishing vessels as of August 1.

According to Chris Oliver (NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator) on July 16, 2020, “Observers and monitors, at-sea and shoreside, are an essential component of commercial fishing operations and provide critical information that is necessary to keep fisheries open and to provide sustainable seafood to our nation during this time.” This was in the build-up to his announcement that observer coverage was to resume – with minor procedural modifications – on August 1 (https://tinyurl.com/y484oumk). Apparently Mr. Oliver’s fleet of mega-yacht expensive, state-of-the art research vessels aren’t essential to commercial fishing operations nor do they provide critical information to keep fishermen fishing. But having a stranger armed with a measuring board, a scalpel, some jars and a clip board on board a small commercial fishing vessel, is and will.

Who sets the “importance to the management process” priorities at NOAA/NMFS?

“AIS Inc., a scientific services company headquartered in Marion, Mass., has been awarded a five-year, $50 million contract to provide fisheries observers for federal monitoring programs in the Northeast” (Press Release. Northeast Fisheries Science Center, June 11, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/y6kygnyd).

It sure isn’t the fishermen, their families, their neighbors, their colleagues or anyone else in commercial fishing communities.

I’d bet dollars to donuts that anyone with any experience in the fishery management process, at least anyone who didn’t work for NOAA/NMFS or one of the contractors that supply the observers, would be hard pressed to argue that observers on commercial fishing vessels are more essential or provide more critical information to that process than the trawl surveys that the government vessels and the scientists on them perform.

So continuing the surveys on these commodious NOAA/NMFS research vessels under the present – and obviously worsening – pandemic-spawned conditions can’t be done “while effectively minimizing risk.” Hence the survey cruises of the R/V Bigelow cancellations detailed above and others.

But the mandatory on-board observers are scheduled to be back aboard commercial fishing vessels come August.

What’s new in COVID-19 research?

Among the most recent publications on COVID-19 transmission was The implications of silent transmission for the control of COVID-19 outbreaks, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (07/06/2020) by a group of researchers from York University, the Yale School of Public Health, the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Florida. The abstract is below (with my emphasis added) and the full article is available at https://tinyurl.com/y8krtmh5.

Since the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), unprecedented movement restrictions and social distancing measures have been implemented worldwide. The socioeconomic repercussions have fueled calls to lift these measures. In the absence of population-wide restrictions, isolation of infected individuals is key to curtailing transmission. However, the effectiveness of symptom-based isolation in preventing a resurgence depends on the extent of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission. We evaluate the contribution of presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission based on recent individual-level data regarding infectiousness prior to symptom onset and the asymptomatic proportion among all infections. We found that the majority of incidences may be attributable to silent transmission from a combination of the presymptomatic stage and asymptomatic infections. Consequently, even if all symptomatic cases are isolated, a vast outbreak may nonetheless unfold. We further quantified the effect of isolating silent infections in addition to symptomatic cases, finding that over one-third of silent infections must be isolated to suppress a future outbreak below 1% of the population. Our results indicate that symptom-based isolation must be supplemented by rapid contact tracing and testing that identifies asymptomatic and presymptomatic cases, in order to safely lift current restrictions and minimize the risk of resurgence.

As reported by ABC News on July 8 in Asymptomatic and presymptomatic people transmit most COVID-19 infections: Study (https://tinyurl.com/y78t42xe):

“Silent transmission of the novel coronavirus could account for more than half of infections, according to one new mathematical model by U.S. and Canadian researchers.

The researchers utilized data on asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission from two different epidemiological studies and estimated that more than 50% of infections were attributable to people not exhibiting symptoms.”

What this means is that if someone who is boarding a fishing vessel, for example a government mandated observer, has had any contact with ANYBODY who is infected during or after the observer’s two weeks of mandatory pre-trip isolation, there is a chance that they can infect the members of the crew with COVID-19. And there is no way of knowing if someone is a COVID-19 carrier short of an effective (whatever that means, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms) antibody test administered before coming aboard. According to this recent research, this is regardless of whether those observers are exhibiting any COVID 19 symptoms or not.

Most fishing communities are quintessentially “tight knit.” Virtually everyone is, if not directly related to, at least well acquainted with everyone else. And vessel captains attempt to hire crew members who they are familiar with or who come well recommended by colleagues, friends or family in the community.

Unfortunately the social distancing that the rest of us can readily employ to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19 infection is impossible on just about every commercial fishing vessel. This makes these personal relationships even more important than they usually are.  In spite of NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver’s assurance that “in general, observers create no more risk than a crew member,” I want to put my safety (and the safety of my loved ones) in the hands of someone who I – or those whose judgment I trust – have no reservations about.

Sorry Mr. Oliver, but a recent college graduate working on his or her first post-graduation job for a federal contractor doesn’t fill that bill. Nor do the contracting businesses that he or she is employed by. They might be somewhat interested in the well-being of the observers they employ, they are probably seriously interested in their corporate well-being, but how interested could they be in the well-being of the members of fishing communities they are coming in the closest regular contact with on an around-the-clock basis.

Particularly in view of this recent COVID 19 transmission research it appears that, short of effective and readily available testing to indicate exposure, this means having observers tested on coming aboard the host vessel and then being isolated until (if?) they are cleared of COVID 19 infection. But the risks of depending on the commonly accepted indicators of infection and on any form of less than total observer isolation for a period of two weeks (or apparently 10 days as per the most recent federal guidelines) are far too dangerous to fishing communities than any potential gain to the fisheries managers of a few more data points.

Let the NOAA/NMFS research fleet and the NOAA/NMFS researchers do the job that they were designed or hired for, and spare the fishermen – and everyone they deal with when they are in port – the added worry of what exposure to infected observers via “silent transmission” of the COVID 19 virus could mean to them.

If you wish to follow up on this issue with your Senators or Representative in Washington, please do so.

Find your Representative – go to https://tinyurl.com/y95wunja

Find your Senator – go to https://tinyurl.com/l8dydhd

Nils Stolpe http://fishnet-usa.com/ posted 04/12/2020
The case for Bureaucratic Monitoring Systems (BMSs)

A good friend of mine is a New Jersey gillnetter. An acknowledged highliner, he’s served and continues to serve on several state and regional advisory committees, has always participated in the management process, and has never received a NOVA or been convicted of violating any federal or state fisheries regulations. He’s the kind of fisherman the managers should try to accommodate in every way possible, because he and fishermen like him are the future of the commercial fisheries and the bureaucracy that has grown up around them.

Like every prudent fisherman, he tries to maintain every permit he can. One requires that he have a Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) operating 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year. This is so that the enforcement people will know he isn’t fishing in an area seven states away where the use of gillnets or longline gear is seasonally prohibited. The assumption is, as with all commercial fishermen, that he is de facto likely to violate the closed area/season regulations; and the burden is on him to prove he isn’t.

It’s impossible to know his VMS unit is operating correctly without an on-board computer. He doesn’t have one and his unit evidently stopped transmitting. How did he find this out? Not by a phone call from NMFS, or a casual note or email asking that he get the unit checked and repaired (remember that the closed season/area that his boat’s being monitored for is several months and hundreds of miles away). Rather, he received a registered letter that in part read “please be aware the vessel should not return to sea with gillnet, or pelagic/bottom longline gear on board the vessel without first correcting the unit’s reporting problem.” Complying would have cost him perhaps a week’s worth of fishing, but it’s apparent that the feeling in NMFS is that’s a negligible price to pay to be able to prove to The Man that you aren’t breaking any laws or ignoring any regulations.

The justification for this “guilty until proven innocent” philosophy is that harvesting public resources is a privilege, not a right, and that you should be willing to accede to any conditions that “the system” deems appropriate, no matter how onerous they are, for this privilege.

This got me thinking, and one of the things it got me thinking about was all of those bureaucrats paid from the U.S. Treasury. The Treasury would seem to meet the criteria of a “public resource,” wouldn’t it? And, accepting that people are only people, we can assume that bureaucrats are likely to lie, cheat and steal at about the same rate as fishermen.

Hence, wouldn’t it be reasonable, in order to protect us taxpayers who try to keep the Treasury filled, to make it the responsibility of bureaucrats to prove that they are performing their bureaucratic functions where, when and how they are supposed to? While I never kept any kind of tally, it sure seems that more bureaucrats every year are caught with their hands in various illicit cookie jars that are fishermen caught fishing outside the regs. And the potential cost to the public of bureaucratic shenanigans is certainly greater than the cost of any imaginable illegal fishing.

So why isn’t the wearing, or perhaps implantation if that is a practical alternative, of Bureaucrat Monitoring Systems (BMSs), required as a condition of public employment? Perhaps as ankle bracelets a la Martha Stewart, and to be worn 24/7, 364 days a year. Every government job has requirements: hours worked, number and duration of coffee and lunch breaks, number of sick and personal days, etc. With required BMSs, we would know whether a bureaucrat on “sick time” was at home, at the doctors, in a hospital or on the golf course. We would know when a bureaucrat had exceeded the permissible time in the employee lounge or out of the building for lunch. With vital signs monitoring, we would know whether a stationary bureaucrat was at the desk working, nodding off or taking a nap. A bureaucrat would be hard pressed to pass off three days spent on a beach in Bermuda as a family emergency. Were a bureaucrat anywhere but home at 3:00 am on a weeknight, there’s a good chance he or she was engaged in some illegal or immoral activity, with all but guaranteed negative effects on job performance.

And, of course, if a bureaucrat’s BMS was on the fritz, he or she would be required to remain in the office or at the work station until it was operational again. If not, how would we taxpayers know that we were getting our money’s worth?

Now all we need is a federal bureaucracy in which to implement an experimental BMS. Any suggestions?

(in National Fisherman) 11/02/05

Their master’s voice! by Nils Stolpe, 04/30/12

http://fishnet-usa.com/    http://www.fishtruth.net/

Measured by any meaningful criteria the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally held on the steps of the Capitol on March 21 was a stunning success. It was attended by thousands of fishermen from as far away as Alaska, twenty one Senators and Members of the House of Representatives, and at least a half a dozen other VIPs made room in their busy schedules to come out and address the people who attended. From the most conservative of the conservatives to the most liberal of the liberals, these politically divergent speakers had one message; fix the Magnuson Act and bring back the balance between conservation and harvest.

For the second time at the national level recreational and commercial fishermen – no matter what fisheries they participated in, no matter what their disagreements on allocation or lesser issues were, and no matter where they were from – were standing together and demanding a return to the original intent of the Magnuson Act; that independent fishermen regain the significant role they once played in Magnuson management which has been pre-empted by environmental extremists, the bureaucrats who seem to be at their beck and call, and their pet “fishermen.”

But, and this will come as no surprise to anyone with a knowledge of the hundreds of millions of dollars that a handful of charitable foundations have been shoveling into the coffers of what can only be described as anti-fishing ENGOs (for an idea of their contributions, visit The Big Green Money Machine at http://www.fishtruth.net), there were isolated voices raised both pre- and post-rally distorting the purpose of the rally and the single unifying message of Keep Fishermen Fishing. There was also a paucity of coverage in the main stream media, which might be understandable considering there were no crises involved (other than the manufactured world crisis in fishing), no angry confrontations and no civil or uncivil disobedience. Just a bunch of hard working people who invested their own time and money into trekking to Washington to voice their dissatisfaction with job-killing federal fisheries policies and their elected officials who have taken their dissatisfaction seriously and intend to do something about it.

Who were these people who objected to the rally?

Seafood.com

Let’s start out with John Sackton, editor and publisher at Seafood.com. In a video posted on March 19 on his website titled Recreational Fishing Alliance not a suitable partner for fisheries reform he states “recreational fishermen are not really a reliable ally when we think about sustainable fisheries or about reforming commercial fisheries laws. Too often the message of the Recreational Fishing Alliance is simply no regulation at all for recreational fishermen.” In this clumsy attempt at marginalizing the Recreational Fishing Alliance, it’s almost impossible to conclude that Mr. Sackton isn’t also attempting to marginalize all of the rally’s organizers and all of its participants.

In the first place, his “commercial fisheries laws” don’t need reforming because in the U.S. we don’t have commercial fisheries laws. We have The Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (for convenience The Magnuson Act), which applies to everyone who fishes in federal waters, and the probability of getting it changed in any way favorable to domestic fishermen or the businesses that depend on them without the support of recreational fishermen is remote at best.

As far as his alleged message of the Recreational Fishing Alliance, “no regulation at all for recreational fishermen,” I’ve followed the RFA for many years, have written about the RFA in not too complimentary terms for much of that time and for the last several years have gotten to know the people there fairly well. I can state unequivocally that nothing that I’ve heard or read from the RFA and the people who run it would make me leap to such a wild-eyed conclusion.

Mr. Sackton followed this up on March 21 with a column which was as about as far removed from factual reporting as anything from a commercial fishing/seafood industry source that I’ve ever read. He started out with a discussion of Pacific halibut management. Pacific halibut, because they are managed internationally, are exempt from Magnuson rebuilding requirements, but the fact that the fishery today is currently facing some dramatic challenges sure makes it a good example for anyone who doesn’t know that.

Then he states the obvious “fishery regulations are too important to be left to politics.” While there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that statement, fishermen all too often find themselves in untenable situations because of the success of the anti-fishing ENGOs in radically distorting the original intent of The Magnuson Act. And they have done that with the political (and public relations power) that their multi-billion dollar foundation backers allow them.

Finally, he focuses on a supposed estrangement of East coast fishermen, who he would have his readers believe were in charge of the commercial fishing part of the rally, and seafood processors. According to Mr. Sackton, “because over 80% of most US commercially sold seafood products are imported, there is often a disconnect along most of the East Coast between the major seafood sellers and local production. The exception are those companies that specialize in local fresh distribution to supermarkets, like North Coast. But on the Gulf, the West Coast and Alaska, a much higher proportion of sales comes from US harvested fish. Yet this is not where we have seen the main push for these rallies and the reform of Magnuson. Non-East Coast US seafood companies like Trident, Icicle, Pacific Seafood, Bornstein and others have a huge stake in successful US harvesting. Yet their issues – access to resources, fair treatment for processing investment, the ability to do their sales and marketing free of interference, are not part of the push to reform Magnuson.”

Rod Moore, Executive Director of the West Coast Seafood Processor’s Association, took him to task for this (reproduced courtesy of Saving Seafood – see http://tinyurl.com/7cqrqog). The West Coast Seafood Processors Association was one of the sponsors of the rally and Mr. Moore served on the rally steering committee.

For the second non-surprise of the day, John Sackton has worked for the Environmental Defense Fund – though he responded to an inquiry that he hadn’t done so for two years. The Environmental Defense Fund is a strong ENGO supporter of catch shares, as is Mr. Sackton, and has received millions of foundation dollars to “revamp” U.S. fisheries policies.

Environmental Defense Fund

Then we have The Environmental Defense Fund itself. In a blog (EDF Statement in Response to Today’s “Keep Fishermen Fishing” Rally”), Associate VP John Minimakis wrote in his condemnation of the rally “the focus should not be on gutting the law.” Of course the focus of the rally wasn’t on gutting the law, but why should that constrain what Mr. Minimakis was willing to imply?

He continued “we need to use the flexibility in the law and innovative management approaches to address the challenges we face. For example, NOAA is using this flexibility to address the looming crisis with Gulf of Maine cod, using the law’s emergency provisions to allow higher levels of fishing while open scientific questions are investigated further.” What do you think the probability of NOAA using “existing flexibility” in Magnuson would be were it not for a rally at which a bunch of Senators, Congresswomen and Congressmen (with a large proportion from New England) were supporting the amendment of the Magnuson Act to make that flexibility dependent on the law rather than on the whims of whoever is in charge at NOAA?

He then wrote “we can’t go back to overfishing….” No one associated with Keep Fishermen Fishing, none of the legislators or other folks who spoke at the rally, and no responsible fisherman did or would suggest that we should, but the implication is surely there, isn’t it?

Finally, “while many speakers at today’s rally pushed various bills that would impose top-down mandates from Washington, we believe fishery management is best decided at the council level where fishermen can directly influence how the resource they depend on is managed.” Right on, Mr. Minimakis. But the codfish “solution” that you were so intent on praising above isn’t going to be coming from the New England Council and it isn’t going to come from the affected fishermen. It’s going to come from NOAA in the form of an approved Emergency Action for year one and it’s going to come from Congress – if it comes – in year two and subsequently. Not much “top-down” at all in that, is there?

The Marine Fish Conservation Network

And when it comes to ENGOs, I can’t leave out the Marine Fish Conservation Network. The MFCN goes to heroic lengths to present itself as a group of fishing and associated organizations that are banded together to save the U.S. fisheries from the uncaring and short-sighted fishermen who don’t really know what’s best for the fish and, by implication, for themselves – or at least for some of them. They are part of a grass roots organization of the greenest sort, they would have you believe.

While their roots are surely green, in truth they are the green of the Big Green Money Machine (linked above). In fact, if you follow the “Marine Fish Con Network” link on the “Connections” page, you will find that the Network has taken in almost five million foundation dollars. I suspect that doesn’t classify them as a grass roots organization in anybody’s book but their own. (For more insight into the Network, see a column I wrote for National Fisherman in 2007 at http://www.fishnetusa.com/All%20Stolpe%20Columns.htm#Here%20Again.)

In an opinion piece dated March 20 and titled somewhat cryptically Fishing against the fringe, Network Executive Director Matt Tinning starts out on the right track, writing “fishermen are conservationists. They cherish the resource that defines their lifestyle, and they are willing to do the hard work it takes to sustain it. Many of the most significant marine conservation advances are driven by commercial fishermen concerned by what they see on the water, and by recreational anglers whose love of the ocean fuels their sporting passion. Their interest in securing healthy oceans and productive fisheries isn’t abstract or merely intellectual. For fishermen, it’s personal.” Mr. Tinning couldn’t be any more on target than that.

However, he proceeds to crash and burn in the subsequent several hundred word rant. He begins by faulting the Recreational Fishing Alliance with the words “in contrast with myriad other recreational fishing groups that have been built from the ground up through the shared commitment of individual anglers and small businesses, RFA was established by a big dollar investment from Viking Yachts.” Let me remind you here that these are the words of the Executive Director of an organization that has gotten well upwards of four million dollars from a small handful of huge foundations.

And he goes on, and on, and on… in a similar vein. But he gets it right again in writing “RFA will be joined at this week’s rally by a number of well-meaning and hard-working commercial fishermen and recreational anglers. Some will come to voice legitimate grievances, others to convey directly to lawmakers the economic challenges they face. Rebuilding and sustainably managing federal fisheries–while weighing individuals’ immediate economic needs, providing for access, and securing the long-term prosperity of coastal communities–involves inherently contentious policy choices.” Again, not too bad, but then “certain Members and Senators who take their representation of fishermen seriously will be tempted to grace the RFA with their presence and weigh in on these complex issues with an easy applause line.” He was right about certain Members and Senators. They weren’t only tempted to do so, they actually did grace the RFA and a whole lot of other fishermen – far more than the 300 that Mr. Tinning estimated to be there post-rally – with their presence, with their words and with their commitments to fix the mess that the Network and its foundation-funded partner ENGOs have made of federal fisheries management and of independent fishermen’s ability to effectively participate in it.

But Mr. Tinning didn’t stop there. One of the ground rules of the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally was that it was open to any fishermen, anyone in fishing dependent businesses, and in fact anyone who wanted to show their support for fishermen and fishing in general.

In a press release for the Marine Fish Conservation Network dated March 26 Mr. Tinning wrote “on Friday, a photo came to light confirming that Omega Protein was a central participant in the March 21 rally.” Omega Protein is a large corporation that catches and processes menhaden, a small forage fish common on the East coast and in the Gulf of Mexico, into fish meal and fish oil (for those of you who are interested in cardio-vascular and neurological health, oil from menhaden is one of the few sources of the most desirable form of omega 3s). He continued ranting “for our nation’s anglers to have to learn that a group who falsely claims to represent them (the Recreational Fishing Alliance) is teaming up with ‘public enemy number one’ is a disgrace.” Now I might have missed the point of his earlier screed, but he did devote considerable words to what he perceived as the RFA’s propensity to produce “bile.” Considering that the Omega Protein fishermen who attended the rally have been employed in a legal fishery and have been fishing in compliance with very rigorous regulations for at least two generations, I can’t help thinking that Mr. Tinning is far ahead of the RFA in raw biliousness.

I couldn’t do any better than to reproduce the RFA’s Managing Director Jim Hutchinson’s words responding to the Network’s other charges:

In response to recent criticisms leveled against the Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) by the Marine Fish Conservation Network’s executive director Matt Tinning on behalf of his members, RFA will offer no such apologies for its participation in the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally in Washington DC on March 21, 2012. Mr. Tinning’s outlandish claim that the Recreational Fishing Alliance “teamed up” with Omega Protein to convene the Keep Fishermen Fishing simply because representatives of Omega Protein attended the rally is completely absurd. Given that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and Marine Fish Conservation Network’s own executive director, and their own individual members, also attended the rally, by Mr. Tinning’s logic it must therefore be determined that both PETA and the Marine Fish Conservation Network also officially “teamed up” with RFA and the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally. The Keep Fishermen Fishing rally was a public event held on U.S. Capitol grounds, meaning that neither RFA nor official rally organizers were able to physically remove from the grounds any of those who would peaceably assemble to provide a counter-point to our reform Magnuson message. RFA supports efforts to reform the federal fisheries law, we do not however support any efforts to trample upon any American’s First Amendment rights, specifically “the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” RFA will never apologize for defending our members’ right to fish on healthy fish stocks, nor will we ever apologize for upholding the values of the First Amendment. Asking us to do either is un- American and a clear violation of our mission.

(Note – for a picture of Mr. Tinning’s “public enemies” at the rally that illustrates both the “central role” they played and the open derision that other participating fishermen greeted them with, see the pictures accompanying Julia Edwards’ article on the National Journal website at http://www.nationaljournal.com/pictures-video/fishermen-rally-on-capitol-hill-20120321.)

Natural Resources Defense Council

In his blog, David Newman, NRDC’s Oceans Program Attorney in New York, wrote that the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act “…the law that’s helped to bring America’s marine fish populations back from the brink of collapse…. is under attack right now by fishing lobbying groups that have organized a rally in Washington, D.C. today. Preserving the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) is the most effective way to keep fishermen fishing by ensuring that enough fish remain in the sea to spawn the next generation. Our work toward sustainable fisheries is not finished and challenges remain. But Magnuson-Stevens is proven to save fish species in danger, while keeping fishermen fishing at the same time, so our children can do the same. We need to keep what’s working in place and roll up our sleeves to improve what we have, rather than tearing it all down.”

In spite of Mr. Newman’s assertion, the goal of the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally wasn’t to do away with the Magnuson Act, and in fact wasn’t to do away with any major parts of it – which I assume he meant in writing “tearing it all down.” It wasn’t aimed at tearing down anything – other than, perhaps, a federal fisheries management bureaucracy that has become far too cozy with ENGOs like EDF, far too concerned with the welfare of fish and far too estranged from independent fishermen and what it takes to keep them working and to keep their businesses solvent.

Needless to say, the NRDC is well into the million dollars plus club of Pew and other megafoundation recipients.

Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations

The PCFFA stated in a press release on March 21“the root of the problem confronting the nation’s fishing industry is not the nation’s primary fishery statute – the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation & Management Act (MSA), which requires ‘science-based’ fishery management. The problem, rather, is flawed policies that fail to adequately fund critical fishery science, along with schemes to privatize public fish resources, and promote dangerous forms of fish farming.” PCFFA President David Bitts was quoted in the release that the problem “is not with a law that requires management to be science-based, but with policies that underfund or fail to fund the necessary science, along with policies that take money from scientific needs and apply it to political desires.”

Perhaps the PCFFA represents mostly small boat salmon fishermen, and if it does, then it’s possible that from their perspective the only problems with fisheries management are at the policy rather than the legislative level. However, and though inadequately funded – and interpreted – science is a problem, I’d venture to say that their narrow view is not shared by most fishermen.

The original intent of the Magnuson Act, to allow independent fishermen significant input into the federal fisheries management process, has been distorted by megafoundation-funded lobbying in recent years. The assumption today is that the science underlying management decisions is adequate and forces complete reliance on that science, allowing for no deviations regardless of the human impacts of an ever-increasing degree of easily demonstrated inadequacy (as discussed in the final section here on NOAA/NMFS, assessment science in the New England groundfish fishery – historically one of our most important fisheries and inarguably the recipient of more NOAA/NMFS attention than any other in recent years – has the Gulf of Maine cod stock going from good shape to wretched in three years, and the only thing that changed was how the assessment was done). Whether the science underlying a fishery management plan is good, bad or totally irrelevant, as long as it is judged “the best available,” it will be the sole determinant of what regulations are put in place and of what damage is inflicted on the fishermen and fishing dependent businesses in the name of “conservation.”

This is something that can only be changed by amending the Act.

The PCFFA, and the associated Institute for Fisheries Resources, has received well over a million dollars from the Packard Foundation.

The main stream media

There was an almost total lack of interest in the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally by the mainstream media. To set the stage, here we had a whole bunch of fishermen and a whole bunch of elected officials together, all on the same page, all concerned primarily about jobs and the economy (and their place in it), all being civil and with common sense suggestions for change. The speakers ranged from the most conservative of the conservatives to the most liberal of the liberals, and they were sharing the same platform and supporting the same legislative reforms.

What are the chances of that in Washington, DC in 2012? Yet it happened on the Capitol steps on March 21, but where were the reporters? Where were the camera crews?

Let’s take the Washington Post as an example. It would take a Post reporter and photographer perhaps 15 minutes to make the trek to the Capitol. They wouldn’t have to pack a lunch or a toothbrush, make reservations or anything much more complicated than going out the front door and walking towards the big golden dome well under 3 miles to the southeast.

Did anyone bother? If they did, nothing they wrote and no pictures they took turned up anywhere that I could find.

But like many stories, this one is kind of meaningless without context, and the unfortunate context of this one is that the people at the Post appear to be interested in fisheries issues only if they are a reflection of what the foundation folks think are important, in fisheries perspectives only if they are held by the foundation folks and only in fisheries experts only if they have financial connections to these few foundations. There sure weren’t any foundation folks participating at the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally.

Since the rally the Post has carried three fisheries articles. In Shark kills diver off southwest Australia on March 31 reporter Juliet Eilperin quoted 3 shark “experts:” Sonja Fordham, President of Shark Advocates International (a “project” of The Ocean Foundation which has received over a million dollars in funding from Pew and Packard); Matt Rand, who directs the Pew Environment Group’s global shark conservation program; and Rebecca Regnery, deputy director of wildlife for Humane Society International which partners with the Pew Environment Group on various issues. The article had little to do with the circumstances of the tragic death of the diver, Peter Kurmann, but focused on a recent international agreement to protect oceanic white tip sharks in the Western and Central Pacific. (Confusingly, Ms. Eilperin quoted Pew’s Rand as saying “of course it’s tragic every time there’s an accident with a shark. It is very rare” just three hundred words after her lead sentence “a diver was killed by a 13-foot shark Saturday off a beach in southwestern Australia, in the region’s fourth shark-related fatality since September.”)

In Little fish are most valuable when left in the sea, researchers say (April 1), Ms. Eilperin reports on an analysis by The Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force. Pew administers the Lenfest Ocean Program. In it she quotes Edward Houde, Ellen Pikitch and Dee Boersma. Pikitch and Boersma are both Pew Marine Conservation Fellows. Pikitch is the Executive Director of the Pew/Lenfest funded Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at Stonybrook University.

And in Some question whether sustainable seafood delivers on its promise Ms. Eilperin quotes Carl Safina (founder of Blue Ocean Institute and Pew Scholar), Daniel Pauly (one of the authors of the Lenfest/Pew sponsored report on “little fish” referenced above and recipient of multiple millions of Pew dollars through his fiefdom at the University of British Columbia), Rainer Froese, another Pew Scholar, and Michael Sutton, Vice President of the lavishly Packard funded Monterey Bay Aquarium who had previously worked for World Wildlife Fund, recipient of other multiple millions of dollars from the Pew, Packard and Walton foundations. She also included several quotes by a Florida fisherman who operates a small seafood business.

In these three articles, all of which dealt with controversial (in the fisheries science world) topics, Ms. Eilperin consulted with and quoted nine experts who had direct and significant ties to the Pew Trusts, and one who didn’t.

Ms. Eilperin’s focus on (mainly) Pew- and other megafoundation funded researchers is quite a bit more profound than even her coverage of sharks, forage fish and “sustainable” seafood indicate. As I wrote in In the belly of the big green beast while detailing my singular experience on a Society of Environmental Journalists panel that she chaired (http://tinyurl.com/7ovs35o), “and then there is Ms. Eilperin herself, who while not in the Gaines/Pauly/Lubchenco/Baron tier of ‘connectedness’ to the Pew/Packard/Moore/Walton multi-million dollar gravy train, has managed a few dribs and drabs herself. She writes in the acknowledgements section of her recently published book on sharks ‘more than any other single group, the Pew Marine Fellows have helped educate me about the ocean…. I would like to single out (among others) Jane Lubchenco, Daniel Pauly… Nancy Baron deserves the credit for introducing me to these scientists.’ Ms. Eilperin also acknowledges the American Littoral Society as one of the two sources of “travel grants” for the book. The American Littoral Society has received almost $6 million from the Pew Charitable Trusts. Ms. Eilperin has also been a participant in COMPASS media/scientist confabs.”

Is this reporting or is it cheerleading?

It strains the bounds of credulity to think that Ms. Eilperin and the Washington Post are the sole beneficiaries of the Pew Trusts and other megafoundation efforts to convince environmental journalists to adopt their equivalent of tunnel vision when it comes to fisheries and oceans issues, and the lack of coverage in the other major newspapers (NY Times, LA Times, Miami Herald, Boston Globe, and on and on…) would seem to bear this out.

(I’ll note here that last Saturday at 8:30 pm Ms. Eilperin contacted me for information on who she could talk to in New England ref her article on seafood sustainability. When I saw her message just before 4:00 on Sunday afternoon I provided her the email addresses of two well respected individuals. They both responded to her. She didn’t use any of the information they provided in her article.)

And finally, we have NOAA/NMFS

As has been widely discussed in the media, a recent stock assessment has called into question the recovery of Gulf of Maine codfish from prior overfishing. In a few short years, the NOAA/NMFS scientists would have us believe, their ability to assess the strength of this particular stock has improved to such an extent that what was previously recognized as a healthy population growth trajectory is now recognized to be a precipitous decline into, once again, a severely overfished condition.

Naturally, this precipitous decline in the health of the stock would demand immediate (starting with the next fishing year) measures to meet the arbitrary rebuilding schedule for Gulf of Maine cod. These measures would in all probability include either drastic cutbacks in or complete closures of the cod fishery and of all of the other groundfish fisheries in the Gulf of Maine that take cod as bycatch. While difficult to imagine, these cutbacks would inflict even more pain on the New England groundfish fishery than our federal fisheries managers have been able to inflict on them up until now.

And lest there are any misapprehensions floating around out there, for the last several years the groundfish fishermen have been admirably toeing the line. They have been fishing exactly as they have been told to fish by the federal fisheries managers and the perceived lack of fish is the result of nothing more than the managers figuring out another way – they insist a more accurate way – to estimate the condition of the cod stock.

But NOAA/NMFS announced, days before the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally, that it wouldn’t have to impose those drastic restrictions on the groundfish fleet (and the onshore businesses and the fishing communities and etc.) that the Magnuson Act seemed to require because, mirabile dictu, the Act already allowed the flexibility that we were in Washington rallying for. Is that a coincidence or what? We don’t need to fix Magnuson, because it can already allow what we are asking for.

Or perhaps, stated a bit more accurately, the Magnuson Act can allow whatever NOAA/NMFS decides it can allow if doing so will keep the Act intact.

Of course, that new found “flexibility” still demands a 22% reduction in codfish mortality in the next fishing year, and even with that 22% reduction, the Magnuson mandates are going to demand even more drastic reductions for the following fishing year.

It appears as if the only thing that’s going to keep the groundfish fishery alive the year after next – unless NOAA/NMFS can figure out yet another way to count codfish in the interim – will be an act of Congress.

So does Magnuson actually permit enough flexibility so that when NOAA/NMFS commits another massive assessment blunder, a blunder which in no way can be blamed on the fishermen, the fallout of that blunder can be made manageable for the fishermen? If that’s what NOAA/NMFS decides to do, apparently it does. But only for a year. That’s all the leeway that NOAA/NMFS can allow under Magnuson. And NOAA/NMFS is in no way bound to do it for that first year and Congress is not bound to do it subsequently. That isn’t quite good enough for the fishermen, that isn’t quite good enough for all of the people who depend on those fishermen, and that shouldn’t be good enough for all of those seafood consumers who are being told that the catch of the day is now imported basa, imported tilapia or imported shrimp.

(Note that NOAA/NMFS seems to be in the midst of another New England groundfish fisheries “crisis.” In this one the stock of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder seems to have mysteriously plummeted precipitously. This is going to place yet another burden on the people, businesses and communities that depend on the New England fisheries.)

All that the Keep Fishermen Fishing participants and organizers were and are asking for

In spite of all of the apparently megafoundation spawned – or at least subsidized – hyperbole to the contrary, Keep Fishermen Fishing was (and is – go to http://www.keepfishermenfishing.com to remain up to date) not on a one way mission to make overfishing a way of life. Keep Fishermen Fishing was, is and will be committed to sustainable fisheries now and into the future And all of the Members of Congress who addressed the Keep Fishermen Fishing rally were and are committed to sustainable fisheries as well.

As I see it, underlying the Keep Fishermen Fishing campaign is one very simple question. As long as a fish stock is increasing, is it worth forcing fishermen out of it so that it reaches an arbitrary level of abundance next year rather than reaching that level two or three years later would allow the businesses that depend on that fishery to remain viable?

Recent events in New England point to another question that everyone who fishes – and anyone with an interest in our U.S. fisheries – should be asking (particularly in view of the growing New England groundfish crisis). Shouldn’t we be seriously reassessing the adequacy of the philosophic and scientific underpinnings of our entire fisheries management system? Obviously it isn’t just fishing mortality that’s impacting our fisheries, yet we’re still managing as if it were. Just as obviously, the science that our fisheries management system depends on, supposedly world class science, has proven woefully inadequate time after time. How many billions of dollars is this costing us? How much human suffering?

And finally, for how much longer are we going to be shouldered with a federal fisheries management bureaucracy that acts as if its marching orders originate not on the docks or in the Halls of Congress but rather in the board rooms of a handful of multi-billion dollar “charitable” foundations?

With a bit of prodding by some valued colleagues, I’ve decided to resurrect some of my past communications, primarily from my in-house efforts in FishNet-USA but also via other commercial fishing industry publications. Why? You might ask. The main reason is that in spite of my grinding out a surprising number of pages dealing mostly with challenges facing our industry, very little has changed, and some of those changes are for the worse.

But we’re not doing this for any “I told you so” reasons. Rather, we’re doing it so more people in the industry, as well as those folks who value the many significant contributions fishing has made to the character of our coastal communities, can better understand the forces that are – purposely or not – still at work undermining one of our oldest and most culturally significant industries.

As far as the format we will be loosely following, every two weeks either I and or one of my colleagues will choose something I’ve written, pen a brief introduction to it, and then we will either distribute it via email (as we’re doing with the following piece, which is kind of short and with no illustrations) or in cases where the file size could be prohibitively large for email distribution, with a link to the article instead.

While on the subject of links, many of the included links will no longer be operative – remember that changes to websites over the last twenty plus years might well be described as revolutionary. Rest assured that at one point they all worked. If you are really interested in tracking particular linked information down, Google (or any other effective search engine) could be invaluable. If not, send me an email and (with no guarantees) I’ll try to lend a hand.

As always, I’ll be eager to read any comments, either on what I’ve written or on what we are trying to do hear. And while the kudos are always nice to read, I’ve found that I can always do more with substantive criticism.

Thanks,

Nils Stolpe
March 2, 2020
_________________________

Yes Virginia, there is a fake news problem. And it’s a problem that’s been plaguing the commercial fishing industry since environmental activists decided that their financial future lay in the worlds’ oceans.

Writing of which, this is my response to an opinion piece that tries to build a mountain out of what is significantly less than a mole hill. It is built on wrong assumptions (sea scallops are the same as bay scallops), faulty data (sea scallops are overfished), a poor – perhaps non-existent? – understanding of marine biology/ocean systems, an identifiable level of personal pique (Ms. X couldn’t have scallops for dinner), and unjustified and totally erroneous conclusions (Ms. X couldn’t enjoy a scallop dinner because there weren’t enough sharks in the ocean), but in spite of all that the writer, indicts an entire fishery.

As you will see as we continue to discuss past (and current) articles, columns, videos, etc., this is far from an uncommon set of circumstances. Supposedly legitimate journalists, authors, academics, bureaucrats and lay people writing for supposedly legitimate outlets are capable of getting what should be elementary facts wrong when “covering” fisheries issues. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort to bring this to light.

But the struggle still continues, and in spite of the best efforts of too few of us, gross distortions of reality continue to plague the commercial fishing industry, and fish and seafood industry continues to pay the price for those distortions.
(Please note that here I substituted the name of the column’s author to Mr. X)
NS
_________________________

THERE’S WRONG, THERE’S REALLY WRONG AND THEN THERE’S BEING A VOLUNTEER INTERNET “JOURNALIST”
New Jersey Newsroom website gets it all wrong on East Coast scallop fishery.
October 9, 2012

The New Jersey Newsroom website was formed by journalists and ex-journalists, primarily from the Newark (New Jersey) Star Ledger, with collective experience adding up to “over 1,000 years.” On their site those journalists wrote “our contributing writers, driven by passion and purpose, contribute as volunteers who believe in the cause…. NewJerseyNewsroom.com’s goal is to provide high-quality news for New Jerseyans and not just about New Jerseyans. We will do our best to gather all the stories you want, regardless of the original sources.”
Impressive sounding, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, at least judging by a recent article on the scallop fishery off the East coast, the content on the site doesn’t come close to living up to its billing. With particular reference to the “contribute as volunteers” quote, an article posted on their website on September 27 is about as good a demonstration I’ve seen of the old adage “you get what you pay for.”

In Jaws for hire: Fewer sharks mean fewer scallops at the Jersey Shore, Mr. X (name purposely withheld) came to some startling conclusions and yet another undeserved and inaccurate indictment of commercial fishing based on 1) a graphical depiction of a marine foodweb from an article referenced in the current edition of Scientific American, Ecosystems on the brink, and 2) his wife not being able to order scallops at Poor Henry’s restaurant (in Montvale, NJ) because, as related by the server, they didn’t have any that day.

From this beginning he crafted an article in just under 800 words that laid out a plausible sounding argument for the fact that an increase in the price and a decrease in the supply of scallops, as so convincingly demonstrated by his wife’s failure to have her first choice entrée at Poor Henry’s, was due to the unregulated slaughter of oceanic sharks.

Citing the Star Ledger he writes “it’s a near-innocuous business story. Good news about fishing off Cape May, wherein that port has been named the second most prosperous on the East Coast because rising scallop prices have offset diminishing catches of shellfish.”

But, he continues “increased revenues are due to the growing scarcity of scallops, in turn attributable to a complex change in the predatory food chain off the coast of New Jersey.” The argument is so plausible, in fact, that as of this writing it has accumulated 153 Facebook “likes.”

Starting out with Scientific American, the foodweb that impressed Mr. X was derived from research reported in 2007 and 2009 that purportedly showed that a decline in scallop stocks was attributable to a decline in large sharks due to overfishing. (What else would we expect from Scientific American?)

When this research was first published in 2007, there were a few problems with it (see my 2007 National Fisherman column Of sharks and scallops and questionable science at http://www.fishnet-usa.com/natfish_sharks_rays.htm). Regardless of the validity of the conclusions reached by the team of researchers, however, the research very clearly dealt with East coast bay scallops, Argopecten irradians. These are small scallops that, as their common name clearly indicates, live in estuaries.

Getting back to Poor Henry’s and poor Mrs. X, who had to settle for her second choice for dinner, a visit to the restaurant’s website shows that the scallops served there are “Bedford scallops.”
As Mr. X accurately relates in his article, the value of landings by commercial fishermen in New Bedford, Massachusetts has led all other commercial fishing ports in the U.S. for quite a few years, and the reason for this is because of the concentration of scallop vessels there. Hence, I assume, Poor Henry’s geographically focused menu item.

Mr. X informs us that “according to Wikipedia, by far the largest wild scallop fishery in the world is the Atlantic sea scallop (Placopecten magellanicus) found off the northeastern United States and eastern Canada.”

The scallops landed in New Bedford, Cape May, Barnegat Light and other fishing ports on the East coast, the scallops that make up the most valuable fishery in the U.S., are those very same sea scallops.

Not surprisingly, sea scallops spend all of their time – from egg to adult – in the ocean.

Then he writes “according to the (National) Marine Fisheries Service, this wonderful resource is in sad decline.”

Just how much of a decline is the sea scallop fishery experiencing? The below chart, taken from the National Marine Fisheries Service commercial landings online database, shows that landings have been remarkably stable for the last decade. Reductions in allowable landings are currently being considered for fishing years 2013 and 2014, but the fishery is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring.

East Coast Sea Scallop Landings
Year Metric tons Value
2001 21,053.10 $172,582,812
2002 23,891.70 $202,092,361
2003 25,386.80 $229,096,518
2004 29,079.30 $320,038,726
2005 25,685.20 $432,514,317
2006 26,768.20 $384,758,496
2007 26,512.80 $386,044,356
2008 24,215.30 $370,057,384
2009 26,178.90 $374,022,276
2010 25,876.90 $450,965,800
2011 26,618.00 $580,907,132

In fact, the most recent surveys (see New Survey of Ocean Floor Finds Juvenile Scallops are Abundant in Mid-Atlantic at http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/press_release/2012/SciSpot/SS1208/) have shown that sea scallop recruitment this year was at or near the maximum recorded off the Mid-Atlantic States.

The northeast sea scallop population, at least in terms of large, marketable scallops, appears to be lower that it has been, but measures will be put in place to protect the recruits in the mid-Atlantic, the opening of scallop-rich areas off New England that have been closed to scalloping is being considered, and any reduction in scallop landings will be of a temporary nature.

While Mr. X did manage to get the part about rising scallop prices right, they are higher than they have been because, most knowledgeable people agree, of the rapidly developing middle class in China and the corresponding worldwide increase in the demand for high quality seafood. They prices have been elevated for the last several years, and as the above chart shows, there has been no decline in the harvest up until 2011. This is a definite contradiction of his “increased (scallop) revenues are due to the growing scarcity of scallops.”

The Scientific American food web that Mr. X based his argument about Atlantic sea scallops on dealt with bay scallops and the supposed impact that shark overfishing had on their abundance. Confusedly, Mr. X supports his thesis that shark overfishing has brought about his “sad decline” of sea scallops, not bay scallops. There is no relationship between the abundance of bay scallops and the abundance of sea scallops. There is no relationship between the price of bay scallops and the price of sea scallops. There is no relationship between the abundance – or lack thereof – of large sharks and the abundance of sea scallops, and there is no relationship between the abundance of cownose rays – the assumed predators on bay scallops and the assumed prey of the supposedly missing large sharks – and the abundance of sea scallops.

As a relevant aside, the fisheries for large sharks in U.S. waters has been so stringently over-regulated that the commercial fishery has all but disappeared. This is one of those bothersome facts that Mr. X neglected to mention. Another is that the practice of finning sharks, which he certainly didn’t neglect, has been illegal in U.S. fisheries since the passage of the Shark Finning Prohibition Act in 2000.

But he has provided one of the best illustrations I’ve come across of a little knowledge going a long way. Unfortunately it’s going in a host of completely wrong directions.

Other than as a prime example of inadequate research and even more inadequate fact checking, what’s the big deal about this article and the dozens of others of similar slant that get “published” on the web each year? Do a Google search on “sharks scallops” and on the first page of results is a link to this article. It’s on the first page for “scallops New Jersey” as well. Search on “Poor Henry’s scallops” and it’s the second listed link. How far and wide will the misinformation in this article spread, and for how many years?

To give you an idea, there is an article on summer flounder (aka fluke) that I posted on the New Jersey Fishing website (http://www.fishingnj.org) in 1999. I haven’t done a thing with the page in the intervening 13 years. That page was visited 1586 times in June of this year. The search strings that got these visitors there was some variation of “fluke fishing.” Assuming that the number of visitors has increased steadily over 13 years, the average per month would be around 700 people. In the years that page has been up on the order of 120,000 people have visited it – a page on a website that has not been promoted for over a decade. That’s the curse, of the internet. Once it’s posted it’s there forever, regardless of how close to reality it actually is.

Needless to say, as soon as I read Mr. X’s article I posted a comment on the New Jersey Newsroom web page and sent a message to him via the “contact us” page there. In my message to him I invited him to call me. He hasn’t, and the article is still on the New Jersey Newsroom website as it was written, blemishes and all.

I’ll let you know if that changes. But in the meantime, it’s incumbent on everyone in or connected to the commercial and recreational fishing industries to let the publishers, editors, producers, webmasters, writers, bloggers, journalists, etc. know when anything is broadcast, printed or posted that unfairly and inaccurately faults fishing. Fishermen have been the victims of this undeserved assault for over a decade, and it’s well past time that we started to collectively do something about it.

Visit FishNet-USA

Nils Stolpe

I know that a lot of commercial fishing industry people receive FishNet-USA, but I don’t have a solid handle on what gets done with it after it’s received. I hope that you all read it. I know that some of you do because I’ll get an email or two after every issue complimenting me on it, but I don’t have much of an idea what happens after that. Accordingly I’ve put this note together to let you know what I think you should do with it after you read it – assuming that you agree with at least some of what I’ve written, and that you’d like to have other folks read it.

First, and in my estimation most importantly, federal legislators should be made aware of positions on various issues which you and I agree on. But the probability of a Member of Congress sitting down and wading through several thousand words on fish and fishing is approaching zero. They pay their staff for that.

The probability of a Congressional staffer reading anything not coming from a constituent is almost as low.

That’s where you should focus. First off, you should know who your Senators and Representative are. That’s easy. For Senators go to https://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and for your Representative go to https://www.house.gov/representatives/find/. Then call each of their offices (either state, district or DC) and ask to speak to the staffer who handles fishing/environmental issues. When you get to the right staffer introduce yourself, tell him or her where you live, where you work, what you do, and that occasionally issues come up that you want the Congressman/woman or Senator to be informed about. Ask for the staffers’ email address, then forward relevant information you are concerned with – like Magnuson reauthorization – to him or her with a note that you’d like to discuss the issue via a phone call (and include your phone number and address).

For example, consider our coastal and inshore waters crisscrossed by a network of electrical cables, each of which comes with its very own electromagnetic field. Consider that many of our coastal critters – invertebrates, amphibians, fish and marine mammals – migrate every year. Consider that there are very few marine species for which we have the slightest understanding of the importance of the earth’s (undisturbed) magnetic field for their migrations. Then finally, consider that in spite of almost zero knowledge of the impacts induced electromagnetic fields will have on these migrations, permits are regularly being granted for inshore and offshore power generation and the accompanying power grids (I’ll note here that construction of the windmill installation off Cape Cod hasn’t been stopped for environmental reasons, but because of politics and economics).

Is this something that we should sit back and accept or should we be demanding that the same precautionary approach be applied to ocean energy developments as NMFS and the ENGOs demand that fishermen apply to fisheries?

Establishing a personal relationship with appropriate staffers and then “imposing” on them (don’t worry, that’s what they are there for) is the most effective way of getting a Federal Legislators attention – and it’s also something that few other people can do as meaningfully as you can*, but please be selective with the issues you contact them about. And also, if you get the idea that they aren’t going to be interested in reading three or four (or more) pages of fish stuff, put together a brief synopsis focusing on how you and their other constituents will be affected and get that to them.**

*Without singling him out, from my Congressman, Ron Desantis representing Florida’s 6th Congressional District, “I value all feedback from residents of the 6th Congressional District of Florida.” What this is generally taken to mean is that if you’re not a potential registered voter in my district or a well-connected lobbyist, don’t bother me or my staff. Every Member’s website that I’m familiar with asks for similar information.

You should do the same thing with reporters, producers, etc. who cover fishing/ocean issues in the print and broadcast media. At this point they are all looking for issues. They’ve got 24 hours a day of space/time to fill (and if it’s controversial, so much the better).

The people and the organizations who are working against your interests have a lot of resources, a lot of time, and a lot of influence with the pols, the media and the public. We could have as well, but we’re only going to if more industry people make a concerted effort to do so.

**In early January I’ll be looking for more sponsors for FishNet so that I’ll be able to prepare and distribute a few hundred words on each issue for distribution via PR Newswire – which goes to thousands of media people. It’s a bit expensive but definitely worth it. I’ve also got a FishNet USA Twitter Account and Facebook page and intend to begin using them to get more people interested in what I write. I’m hoping that with a 260 character Tweet I can get readers to the PR Newswire article or the FishNet USA Facebook page which should entice some of them to download and read the full FishNet USA piece, but it’s going to take some increased support to do all of that.

Like always, this is going to be largely up to you. It’s you who the people in Washington are supposed to be representing need to communicate with directly.
You’ll be hearing more about this early in 2018.
Happy Holidays and best wishes for the New Year.
Nils E. Stolpe
FishNet USA

Ps – I’ve put together a bunch of stuff I’ve written over the last two decades, It isn’t properly indexed yet but it’s all available at http://www.fishnet-USA.com/25_Years_Stolpe.pdf . You can get to issues you’re interested by using your PDF reader’s “search” function to find specific topics.

Nils Stolpe, www.fishnetusa.com

July 3, 2017

“New research shows that industrial fisheries are responsible for dumping nearly 10 million tons of perfectly good fish back into the ocean each year—enough to fill 4,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This news comes at a time when nearly 90 percent of the world’s fish stocks are threatened by overfishing.” (Dvorsky, G., A Staggering Amount of Fish Is Wasted Each Year, Gizmodo.com, 6/27/2017) click here to read

This is from the latest bit of “fishing is ruining the oceans” alarmism, this time in a paper published in Fish and fisheries reporting on research funded by the Pew connected Sea Around Us (see http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/about/events/2014/the-sea-around-us-taking-stock-of-our-fish-oceans-and-people). click here to read

Sounds kind of awful, doesn’t it? Thousands of “Olympic-sized” swimming pools filled to the brim with dead and dying fish and shellfish, totally wasted and evidently rotting in the sun.

But as is so often the case, with a little bit of perspective the truth isn’t anywhere nearly as catastrophic as the anti-fishing claque would have you believe.

By the numbers, the area of the world’s oceans is 140+ million square miles. If the fish and shellfish in those 4,500 swimming pools were equally distributed in our oceans that would be 10 tons per140 square miles, or 1 ton (metric, I assume) per 14 square miles, or 157 pounds per square mile. A square mile being 640 acres, all of those swimming pools of supposedly wasted sea life would equal on the order of 4 ounces – a small sardine can – per acre of the world’s oceans.

Some stagger! Some crisis!

But then it’s apparent that a bunch of impressionable alarmist reporters who are “covering” this tempest in a sardine can aren’t aware of one of the most rudimentary facts concerning the world’s oceans and the organism’s in it, which is how quickly dead and dying critters become dinner for other critters. From the action around fishing boats when the crews are culling their catch, this transformation from dead or dying protein to living, swimming around protein happens awfully quickly. Food for dolphin and turtles and fish and shellfish, how wasteful is that?

And then there’s the contention that these are “nearly 10 million tons of perfectly good fish.” Perfectly good is one thing, saleable is another. Were those “perfectly good fish” saleable as well, they would be kept and then sold by the fishermen, ‘cause that’s what fishermen do. I wonder if anyone at Pew’s palatial digs in Philadelphia or DC has ever considered funding research into turning all of those swimming pools – or sardine cans – filled with fish into incentives to the fishermen to keep and sell them?

And finally, and most tellingly, they assume that fishermen are indifferent to unnecessarily killing critters they can’t use. From what I’ve seen and heard, nothing could be further from the truth. When you get right down to it, fishermen are as concerned with – if not more so –the health of the ocean ecosystems than your average citizen because that’s what their chosen way of life depends on. Besides that, every animal that gets caught inflicts wear and tear on the gear it was caught with, it wastes fuel and it wastes crew time in dealing with it. Bycatch, even if it amounts to only a sardine can per acre of ocean, is expensive to deal with and takes time and effort that could be invested in catching more saleable product.

For more in crisis mongering see Pew/Oceana’s latest exercise in crepe hanging (http://www.fishnet-usa.com/MorePew_OceanaCrepe.pdf) click here to read  and going back to 2006, Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing at (http://www.fishnet-usa.com/then_now.pdf ). click here to read

That sky keeps on falling. Apparently the anti-fishing foundation funding doesn’t follow suit.