Pew group seeks tighter Mid-Atlantic fishing regs

The environmental arm of the well-endowed Pew Charitable Trusts has launched a campaign against "overfishing" in the mid-Atlantic that an official with the regional fishery management council says is not occurring.

And the official describes the Pew claim as nothing more than "propaganda."

The Pew Environmental Group announced its campaign against overfishing in the mid-Atlantic via the PRNewswire on Monday.

The Pew organization, its offspring and funded allied non-profit organizations are active in New England and nationwide in opposition to alleged "overfishing," using research carrying the name of marine biologist Jane Lubchenco, the nominee to head the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service.

"Regional fishery managers have a new opportunity and stronger legal and scientific tools to protect fish populations from overfishing," said the Pew organization's Bill Wolfe. "The Mid-Alantic Fishery Management Council needs to commit to improving fisheries management, end overfishing and rebuild stocks to healthy, sustainable levels.

"The time is now and the directive has never been clearer," Wolfe said.

Daniel T. Furlong, executive director of the council, a broad-based body of stakeholders and officials that makes policy and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service, disagrees.

"Propaganda, pure and simple propaganda," he said of Pew's claim.

"Overfishing is not a problem down here," Furlong told the Times in a telephone interview. His Mid-Atlantic Council advises NMFS and helps set regulatory policy from New York to the Carolinas, just as the New England Fisheries Management Council does for New England.

Agreeing was Willie Ethridge, a fifth-generation fisherman from North Carolina's Outer Banks, who operates a fish-packing company in Wanchese, N.C.

"I don't think there's one fish stock in trouble," Ethridge said in a phone interview. "There's more fluke out there than in recorded history."

Pew's formal letter — which Wolfe decried as simply a "fund-raising and membership drive" — included technical analysis and recommendations noting that the "Mid-Atlantic had no stocks subject to overfishing at the end of 2008."

But the letter referenced a 2007 report by the Lenfest Ocean Program, a Pew Charitable Trust funding recipient that was founded at the philanthropy in 2004, and last week help launch a report claiming that federal financial aid to the fishing industry was accelerating "depletion of once bountiful fish species."

Via Web sites associated with Pew, the 2007 Lenfest study — titled "Setting Annual Catch Limits for U.S. Fisheries" — links to another study published since the election of President Barack Obama by a hybrid organization of scientists, including Lubchenco, and past and present elected and appointed government officials.

That study, created by a working group under the auspices of two environmental groups with Pew funding — the Environmental Defense Fund and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute — as well as the World Wildlife Fund, was chaired by Bruce Babbitt, the former governor of Arizona and former U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and former Pennsylvania Congressman James Greenwood.

Titled "Oceans of Abundance: An action agenda for America's vital fishing future," the study began with the conclusion, based on "overwhelming evidence," that "the global oceans are being emptied of seafood. Scientists report that 90 percent of large fish — highly sought-after species like tuna and swordfish — have been removed from the oceans."

The report went on to say: "There is scientific consensus that fishing is fundamentally altering the ocean ecosystems, which are increasingly likely to yield massive swarms of jellyfish rather than food fish."

Lubchenco was a member of the working group that produced the "jellyfish" report. Nominated by Obama to head NOAA, the $3.9 billion agency that includes the National Marine Fisheries Service, she is a celebrated faculty member at Oregon State University.

She was a member of the Pew Ocean Commission, along with CIA director Leon Panetta and the recipient of a Pew Fellowship as well as a MacArthur ("genius") Fellowship.

Links of the "jellyfish" report to Lenfest and the broad Pew range of environmental influences are numerous.

University of New Hampshire Professor Andy Rosenberg served on the working groups that produced the "jellyfish" report and the Lenfest study advocating catch limits. Serving with him on the latter group was Elizabeth Babcock, of the Pew Institute for Ocean Science at the University of Miami in Florida.

Rosenberg was NMFS' regional administrator before Patricia Kurkul, who has come under intense criticism by the New England congressional coalition and the fishing industry for proposing a one-year "interim" regulatory scheme that effectively would close New England's southern waters to fishing and discourage it along the region's eastern coast. In addition, the proposed Interim Rule would cut 18 percent of fishing time off permits.

U.S. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry, Democrats of Massachusetts, and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Republicans of Maine, have announced a legislative initiative to negate the Interim Rule with more modest 12-month commercial fishing restrictions.

Kurkul and the New England council face a newly activated suit filed by Maine groundfishermen with Pew funding that seeks to bar the herring fleet from working inside areas closed to groundfishing boats.

Lubchenco's confirmation vote has been sidetracked by unidentified senators pursuing issues unrelated to her nomination. At her confirmation hearing last month, her Pew connections were overlooked, but she was questioned aggressively by Snowe, and conceded that the New England fishing industry had lost confidence in the federal regulators.

Lubchenco proposed to use credible science as a bridge between the regulators and the regulated.

In New England, Lubchenco's close association with Pew is viewed with suspicion in many industry circles.

"The Pew jacket on her — that scares me," Gloucester fisherman Russell Sherman said.

A spokesman said Lubchenco declined to be interviewed until after her confirmation.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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