Local leaders set fishing talks in wake of buyout plan

With the commercial fishing fleet struggling under unprecedented restrictions and reportedly facing widespread insolvencies, Gloucester's elected political leaders have called a Friday morning meeting with industry representatives to examine a $150 million emergency economic aid proposal from U.S. senators, led by John Kerry.

Because the aid package includes a buyout component — a one-way ticket out of the commercial fishing business — the proposal is seen by some as helping some individuals while weakening the parent port economy, possibly threatening the survival of essential elements of the infrastructure.

In addition, many advocates of the buyback component in the package — now, merely a political idea rather than legislation or a fleshed out economic plan — privately acknowledge worrying that the initiative suggests surrender to the Obama administration's fisheries leadership.

There are also critics of the plan who see in it disengagement from the fight over fisheries policy, indeed providing Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with an assist at achieving the subtraction from the fleet of a "significant fraction of the vessels" that she has said was needed to reduce capacity."

The senators' letter seemed to go along with the idea that capacity reduction is a desirable goal.

"Reducing capacity will also reduce the pressure on our fish stocks and enable them to rebuild more rapidly," they wrote.

Industry leaders, however, have consistently refuted this point by noting that the fleet is landing a small fraction of its government allocation.

The Times reported last month that NOAA's own statistical reports indicate that, through the first 21 percent of the fishing season (May 1-July 17), landings by boats operating under the catch share system that Lubchenco has declared national policy were just 6.5 percent of the annual allocation.

The Aug. 5 letter to President Obama — from Kerry, Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, and Sens. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, and Charles Schumer of New York — anticipated that problem, asserting that "we recognize that the best way to help our fishing communities is by saving and creating jobs, not by providing direct financial assistance."

The coalition — which did not include Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York — argued the administration has brought about the need for a buyout of permits and boats and the need for direct economic assistance in multiple forms by hewing to conservative allocations.

Brown and Gregg filed a separate request for a buyback package in the spring, but proposed taking money to support it directly from the NOAA budget rather than using new funds.

All or nothing

But the senators' letter to Obama asking for the buyout contains provisions that many fishermen find troubling.

These include the all-or-nothing provision — to accept the cash for the boat and permits requires the surrendering of all permits and a complete exit from the industry.

The Friday meeting here — one in a series hosted by Mayor Carolyn Kirk and state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante and Sen. Bruce Tarr since the May 1 start of the new fishing season and regulatory scheme — is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 12:30 in City Hall's Kyrouz Auditorium.

After more than a decade of ever-more draconian cutbacks in allowed days of fishing, the low allocations and mixed stock nature of the groundfish caught in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank — as well as new restrictions written into Magnuson by Congress in 2006 that force fishing to stop when any allocation is reached — have pushed many small boat based businesses to or into insolvency.

In Rhode Island, whose fishing industry is based in Pt. Judith, Richard Fuka, president of the Rhode Island Fisherman's Alliance, reports that as many as one third of the 90 commercial fishermen "have received eviction notices from the state for unpaid dockage fees."

Fuka said that, while the buyout and aid are necessary, he is conflicted — concerned that the exodus from the industry would provide the enviros with what they wanted, a smaller fleet and "sacrificial lambs."

"On the other hand," Fuka said, "there are a lot of Rhode Island fishermen who can't sell their boats any time soon, and many are ripe for retirement."

'A last resort'

Ferrante, the daughter of a retired fishermen, said she was "very familiar with those in the industry and the industry itself."

"I support a limited boat buy-back program as a safety net for those fishermen who have been regulated out of the fishery and whose families, as a result, would be facing financial ruin and devastation," she said. "I have always seen buyouts as a last resort."

Tarr used similar language.

"My philosophy is that a buyback is the last resort when all else fails," he said, "and when people need to get out and are being crushed (by regulatory policies).

"The issue is where (a buyback) fits in the priorities," he added. But the plight of the fishermen "dictates some sort of a program."

The buyback and emergency aid proposal was not the first of its kind this year. In April, a similar set of proposals was sent to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, Lubchenco's direct superior, by a coalition of 23 U.S. senators and congressmen. It marked the first symbolic act of abandonment of hope for working cooperatively with Lubchenco.

Lubchenco was not even "cc"ed in that federal lawmakers' correspondence.

Later, congressmen Barney Frank, John Tierney — who represent New Bedford and Gloucester, respectively — along with Republican Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina's Outer Banks, petitioned Obama to sack Lubchenco. But Frank essentially backed off that call a day later, saying he been assured by the White House that the administration could address the industry's concerns with Lubchenco still in place.

The policy conflicts federal lawmakers have with Obama, Locke and Lubchenco overlap their fury at Lubchenco for protecting Dale J. Jones Jr., the discredited former chief of the oceans police force, who stands accused by the Commerce Department's own Inspector General of destroying documents and allowing the asset forfeiture fund of fines paid by fishermen to be used for travel and purchases in violation of federal policies and possibly law.

Lubchenco's administration let it be known in March that Jones was no longer the federal fisheries police chief, but only last month confirmed that Lubchenco had kept him on the payroll and intended to transfer him to a different job.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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