From up and down the coast, commercial fishermen convened this morning at the regional headquarters of federal fishery regulators of the National Marine Fisheries Service to protest the influence of environmental lobbies on policies that were said to threaten the survival of the group and their colleagues.
The demonstration was organized informally from the Scarborough, Maine home of Amanda Odlin, who owns two fishing boats with the husband Chris.
Police estimated the crowd at 250 people, many coming from distant ports.
Cindy Kokell left Port Lookout, Long Island, at 2:30 a.m. wearing a Yankees hat to convene in Gloucester which, with New Bedford, serves as capital of the East Coast fishing nation.
From about a dozen speakers, amid strong denunciations of government policies from the parking lot of the federal fisheries offices at Blackburn Industrial Park came blurbs and reports showing the restored vitality of the fish stocks and doubts about the incoming regulatory scheme designed to consolidate the fleet and convert the common resources into a commodities market.
The crowd was restive and angry but restrained except for colorful and vivid banners.
Held by two people, the biggest, perhaps 10 by 3 feet, reprised a favored bumper sticker which said: "The National Marine Fisheries Service/ Destroy Fishermen and their Communities since 1976." That was the date on which the Magnuson Act was approved and the nation undertook a crusade to reverse the decline of the fisheries and bring them back.
The speeches, banners and a flatbed based float describing multiple lynching of fishermen by Jane Lubchenco, the federal fisheries administrator, scorned her and Patricia Kurkul, the regional administrator, as well as the Pew Environment Group and the Environmental Defense Fund, the two key environmental influences on fisheries policies.
David Lincoln, a scientist and fisheries activist, announced that Pew has spent "at least $135 million" to influence fisheries policy in the past decade.
The event was timed to occur on the day before a deadline set by NMFS for the submission of files correcting faulty catch histories, which will be used to allocate the catch shares as the new system phases in next May.
For full coverage, look to tomorrow's print and online editions of the Gloucester Daily Times and gloucestertimes.com.
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
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