Fishing group sets US agenda

A five-year-old industry advocacy organization was urged yesterday by a small but influential group from widespread elements of the national commercial fishing community to muscle up in an attempt to tell its story loudly, clearly and with effect.

Jim Ruhle, president of the Commercial Fishermen of America, said the board would meet today and announce its decision.

A North Carolina-based fisherman from a nationally prominent fishing family who also serves on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, Ruhle brought the board to Gloucester for what he described as a crossroads decision, whether to disband or expand.

His brother Phil, a gear innovator and industry reformer who had served on the New England Fishery Management Council, was lost last summer in a fishing accident.

Ruhle's advice yesterday came from a chorus in tight harmony.

"We're at a fork in the road," said Brian Rothschild, a professor of Marine Science at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, who serves as a connection between the congressional delegation and the state's fishing industry. "Unless we intervene, the industry won't achieve its objectives."

Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based business and lobbying nonprofit Northeast Seafood Coalition, urged the CFA to mount a national awareness and education campaign to inspire "appreciation and pride" in the community.

She said legal and political issues tend to be local, and differ from region to region around the vast coastlines around three sides of the country — but "a national campaign" to educate the public about the fishing community would "go far."

Mark Vinsel, executive director of the United Fisheries of Alaska, advised the CFA to "capitalize" on the "Deadliest Catch" series about Alaska crab fishermen on the Discovery Channel.

"It's the first positive image since 'The Perfect Storm,'" he said, "and that didn't have a happy ending."

"The show makes fishermen look like cowboys," said Rich Fuka, a Rhode Island fisherman and representative of the Rhode Island Fisherman's Alliance. But he added that, off camera, Sig Hansen, the celebrity captain of one of the boats, "opened up and spoke about fishing the way New England fishermen do."

Two Gloucester captains, Joe Orlando, and the retired Tom Brancaleone, gave improvisational tastes of what Fuka was referring to. Orlando summarized how waves of regulation devalued his investments, leaving him with the authorization to fish for 66 days from three permits that cost a total of $1 million.

"For $50 (the current fee for joining the CFA), where do I sign?" Orlando said. "If there's a bigger voice that can speak for me, God bless you."

"This is my dream to have this organization nationwide," said Brancaleone. "We have more coastline than the rest of the world combined, almost doubled, millions of miles, yet we import 85 percent of our seafood."

Niaz Dorry, a former organizer for Greenpeace, who now serves as director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a Maine fishing community advocacy organization, also urged CFA on, saying that public support could be mobilized by helping the public understand it as similar to family farming.

"The public gets that," she said.

"We could paint fishermen as green-collar workers," said Fuka.

The 21âÑ2-hour meeting unfolded informally in the community meeting room of BankGloucester, with Ruhle and Angela Sanfilippo, teaming up to preside. Sanfilippo is executive director of the Massachusetts Fishermen Partnership and president of the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association.

None of the roughly three dozen participants advised against the effort to build the CFA into a national voice for the commercial fisherman.

Ruhle is the older brother of Phil Ruhle, who was killed last summer when his Rhode Island based fishing boat went down off New Jersey. Instantaneously, his loss was signaled and mourned by fishermen and regulators around the world.

Born into a Long Island fishing family, both Ruhles came to be known for their activism, focused on efforts to improve the technology of the commercial fleet.

Phil Ruhle, three years younger than Jim who is now 61, helped expose a gear gaff that led to erroneous results in trawl surveys used by the National Marine Fisheries Service to formulate limitations on fish catches.

The episode became known as "Trawlgate," and for his generous reaction to the mistakes in the gear and methodology, the service crowned him an "environmental hero."

The admission by John Boreman, research director for NMFS, that "the existing survey gear has a number of design and operational problems" confirmed suspicions of fishermen and left the agency wide open for cheap shots, but Phil Ruhle resisted.

Yet, his frustration at the federal regulators — shared by his brother — was nearly boiling over last summer before he went fishing for the last time.

With collaborators, Phil Ruhle had invented a trawl design that dramatically minimized by-catch. The "eliminator," now known as the "Ruhle trawl" had won the inventors the $30,000 first prize in the World Wildlife Federation's 2007 international Smart Gear Competition. But NMFS was less than aggressive in pushing the better trawl into widespread use.

"This is yet another example of how ineffective the NMFS has become," Phil Ruhle steamed in his last e-mail to his connections that included congressional leaders and fishing folks.

He told his correspondents how much he appreciated their support for his effort to make fishing smarter, less wasteful.

Jim Ruhle said he hoped to use the CFA to foment for better and cooperative research with the federal government.

"The trawl survey," he said, "is a major issue."

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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