Patrick to take fish fight to Capitol

NEW BEDFORD — Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday agreed to take up the cause of the fishing industry and lead a science-based political insurgency right up to the White House to rewrite federal fishery policies that have diminished the size of the fleet in the name of conservation.

Patrick crafted a working plan based on scientific research and the special access he has to President Barack Obama at the end of an impromptu brainstorming session with about 100 of the industry's leading stakeholders — as well as his own governmental fishing brain trust — in a harborfront restaurant following a tour of what's left of the state's once iconic fleet of big boats that venture out on weeklong trips into the open ocean.

Patrick set tight deadlines — a 30-day window for the research proposal from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth's School of Marine Science and Technology — and made urgent the demand for a funding and strategic game plan.

The issue is the tilt of policy. As the National Marine Fisheries Service has interpreted the Magnuson-Stevens Act, policy must not only end overfishing of the weakest stock but must restore it, with a mandate of having all stocks restored at once.

The industry and its political and scientific allies dispute the ideals as impossible to achieve and economically destructive, and question the reading of Magnuson.

Everyone agrees to the need to end overfishing, said Brian Rothschild, a professor in the Department of Fisheries Oceanography at the UMass Dartmouth. But, "we're concerned about jobs and revenue, too."

He said the approach in use left "$100 million" of authorized catch in the ocean, beyond the reach of a fleet because of effort controls such as daily catch limits, and closed areas.

"No guarantees; we'll try this," said Patrick, who had been invited to the meeting of the Mayor's Ocean and Fisheries Council. The session was hosted by Mayor Scott Lang and organized by Rothschild, who serves as the clearing house of ideas and connections between the industry, scientists and the political world, especially Barney Frank, the congressman for New Bedford.

After Patrick agreed to lead the campaign, Lang rejoiced. "You're the lawyer for the industry now," the mayor said.

Patrick said he was aiming high.

He identified the secretary of commerce (Gary Locke, the former governor of Washington) and the White House chief of staff (Rahm Emanuel) as primary contacts. "We know people," he smiled.

The effort will set off a struggle in the White House and Congress to establish the values and form of fishing policy for the new Democratic administration, and pit the practical politics of Massachusetts, the capital of East Coast fishing in the North Atlantic, with the conservation-heavy approach of the environmental movement, which achieved a high plateau when Obama put Jane Lubchenco in charge of oceans and fisheries.

Lubchenco is an academic and former Pew Fellow who shares the aspirations of the Pew Environmental Group to "end overfishing," rather than watch as the seas be left to "jellyfish," as a paper she helped author before the election graphically projected.

In an appearance a week ago before the New England Fishery Management Council, Lubchenco directed the group to waste no time approving a pending radical change in the regulatory scheme and business model, which is based on catch shares.

She also said her office would help underwrite the transformation with $16 million.

Mary Griffin, Patrick's commissioner of marine fisheries, said she believed the alternative science research would prove that NMFS' science is "not gospel," and suggested that Patrick could make a claim for some of the $16 million to fund the independent research into the health of the fishery.

No state has a stronger pull on the president than the ultra blue state of U.S. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry, and Frank as well as Patrick, the governor who lent Obama ideas and phraseology during the campaign.

For Patrick and the audience which came to him as a class seeking a class action lawyer, the discussion which went on for more than a hour in a second-floor restaurant with nothing but water on the tables; the problem was analyzed in the argot of lawyering.

Wearing running shoes, a V-neck sweater and a silk tie decorated with freshwater fish, Patrick, who had been counsel to Coca-Cola before winning the governor's job three years ago, described himself as "intrigued" to hear that SMAST, the marine science and technology school under the guidance of Rothschild, undertook its own scientific survey in the 1990s. That survey disproved findings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that scallops were so badly overfished that the fishery based here would need to be severely restricted.

The findings keyed the continuation of the lucrative scallop fishery, which underpins New Bedford's fishing industry. Its groundfishing boats, like those from Gloucester, Rhode Island and the northern states, have been in a perpetual downward spiral under harsh regulations imposed by NMFS.

In recent days have come from Lubchenco signs of more of the same kind of regulation that has driven half the boats fishing in the 1990s into retirement.

Lubchenco's announcement of the regulatory scheme for the next year, and the estimate that it would suck no more than 9 percent loss of revenue from the groundfishing sector was greeted with wry smiles and cynical asides.

The plan would cut fishing days by 18 percent and expand throughout a vast body of water south of New England all the way from Long Island, N.Y., to far into Georges Bank, the area in which a day's fishing counts for two.

Fishermen and fishing business owners Rodney Avila and Richard Canastra calculated separately to agree the program sounded like a 68 percent cut for the boats along the wharfs of New Bedford.

Patrick's aggressive intervention into national fishing policy won't be his first.

In 2007, from Mary Griffin's staff at the Division of Marine Fisheries was generated an economic impact statement that laid out the case that federal regulatory policies had created an economic disaster for the industry.

When the administration of President George W. Bush refused to authorize an emergency grant of $23 million, the Democratic delegation organized an earmark for $13.3 million that was distributed to the fishing permit holders last year.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

Fishing Industry Stories

Search Results

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us