Death of an Industry: The President's Impoverishment of America's Fishermen

Déjà vu: President Obama vacationed again on Martha's Vineyard.  While Barry lazed here last year, the fishermen of New England ran a full-page ad in the Vineyard Gazette titled "Mr. President, We Need Your Help."  The fishermen came to the Vineyard in their boats and paraded in the harbor to emphasize their plight.  The American Thinker ran a piece on the events.

The ad was in the form of a letter from Russell Sherman, the captain of the fishing vessel Lady Jane out of Gloucester, MA.  The letter was well-written, elegant in its simplicity and comprehensive in its content, befitting Captain Sherman's Harvard education.  It read in part:

My business is only one of hundreds facing extinction.  While there will be a small handful of "winners" under these new rules [Catch Shares], the vast majority of us will be losers.  And when we "losers" are forced out, jobs will be lost, coastal communities gutted, and crucial commercial fishing infrastructure gone forever.  ...

Mr. President, we desperately need your leadership. 

How much help did the fishermen get from the president?  None!  Nada!  Not even an acknowledgement of their efforts.  Not even a receipt from the White House for the copy of the letter they sent directly to the president by "Certified Mail, Return Receipt Requested."

And what has happened to the fishermen since?  How has the past year gone for them?  Badly!

• Catch shares (see Nils Stolpe's "Is this the future of fishing?") has worked to perfection -- if you are a malevolent, vindictive, bureaucratic eco-zealot. As Dr. Jane Lubchenco predicted, the fishing fleet has consolidated -- a euphemism for "most of the fleet has been driven out of business."

Ovide Lamontagne Is Running for Governor of New Hampshire

Ovide Lamontagne was already at the GOP Chili Fest and we got there early.  My wife Joan went right up to Ovide, grabbed his hand in both of hers, and said, "Tell me you are going to run." He said he was.  Good!  He will have our support for Governor.

The GOP Chili Fest was held in Stratham, NH, on Saturday, 10 September.  I took the picture.  Isn't that a great smile?  He is such a nice man, charming, knowledgeable, and a true conservative.  When he spoke at Hampton Airport a few weeks ago, he gave a powerful speech in which he allowed as to how he might run for Governor.  The Manchester NH Union Leader ran a piece on 25 August indicating that Lamontagne might soon announce for Governor.  SeaCoastOnline's 11 September report headline was "Lamontagne mum on gubernatorial run at GOP Chili Fest."

NOAA Fisheries Management -- Masters of Mendacity

The 2011 Annual Catch Limits (ACLs) for the New England fisheries go into effect on 1 May 2011.  They are essentially unchanged from the extremely low ACLs that virtually crippled the fleet in 2010.

NOAA spins things quite differently.  They put out a statement on 18 April titled "New England fishing season to open with higher catch limits."  The catch limits for 12 fish stocks are being increased.  They made no mention of decreases. 

In fact, some catch limits that are being decreased and the decreases are significant.  The catch limits for haddock, a major contributor to fishing revenues, are decreasing 25%.  The catch limits that are being increased are increasing marginally.  The total of the Annual Catch Limits for the New England fisheries will actually be about 10% less in 2011 than it was in 2010. 

On 20 April the Gloucester Daily Times revealed the subterfuge in an article and a blistering editorial.  The original NOAA statement received wide release, driven by NOAA and its environmentalist allies.  The subsequent "rest of the story" got play within the industry, but not by the major outlets that covered the original.

On 21 April, Patricia Kurkul, NOAA Fisheries Northeast Regional Administrator, responded to the Gloucester Times editorial with a piece that appeared on Bob Vanasse's SavingSeaFood.org website.  Ms. Kurkul implies that "publicizing the increases in limits for twelve smaller stocks rather than the decreases in three relatively large ones" was deliberate.  She claims that "[t]he catch limits, although lower than in 2010, are not expected to be much of a barrier to higher catch in 2011."

Ms. Kurkul seldom appears at public outreach events and seldom publishes outside of the agency.  A good plan.  How does that old cliché go?  You know the one, it ends in "remove all doubt."

The multi-species nature of the New England fisheries does result in low population species, the so-called choke species, restricting the landings of the more plentiful stocks.  The choke species problem is one of the issues with catch shares in New England.  It was stupid for NOAA to first launch their catch shares debacle in the complex New England environment.  But don't for a minute believe, as Ms. Kurkul would have you, that the 12 stock increases came about because of an altruistic NOAA's desire to help fishermen.  The increases were just the serendipitous consequences of the rather inappropriately termed best available science. 

And the new ACLs are still painfully low.

This post originally appeared in the American Thinker on 26 April 2011.