Pew-backed nominee inches to NOAA post

The U.S. Senate confirmation of Jane Lubchenco, the celebrated and suspected icon of academia and the Pew philanthropies, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and adjudicate between the fisheries and the fishing industries has inched closer.

The Senate Commerce Committee which, on Feb. 12, conducted a congenial joint hearing on President Barack Obama's matched nominations of Lubchenco, a marine biologist from Oregon State University, and Harvard physicist John Holdren to head the White House Office of Science and Technology, decided last week to send the nominations to the full Senate.

But it was not clear whether the move, made informally off the floor of the Senate, signaled that the hold — or holds — on the nominations had been removed, according to committee sources.

News organizations and bloggers speculated wildly about the motive (or motives) of the holders.

Were they, as first speculated, holding up the nominations to make unrelated points, such as about Cuba? Or were they, as more recently suggested, perhaps to sensitize Lubchenco to the raw nerves of the fishing industry that awaits her takeover of a regulatory New England regional bureaucracy that has fallen into unprecedented isolation and mistrust in the time since her post-election nomination?

Lubchenco's confirmation could come at any time, or not, Senate staffers said yesterday.

Meanwhile, as if to reinforce rather than relieve the tension surrounding her nomination, a powerful coalition of environmental groups petitioned the Senate last Friday to let Lubchenco go forward even as new questions were raised at yet another regional fishery management council about the integrity of the "science" emanating from the Pew Charitable Trusts — the nominee's strongest and, in fishing circles, foreboding credential.

Lubchenco is a proud former Pew Fellow and a principle of multiple Pew-backed research projects and the influential Pew Oceans Commission.

As the Pew Web site proudly notes, "In the first thorough review of ocean policy in 34 years, the Pew Oceans Commission released a host of recommendations in 2003 to guide the way in which the federal government will successfully manage America's marine environment."

Founded with billions from the Sun Oil Co., Pew Trusts has become an environmental powerhouse and now with Lubchenco and Leon Panetta, who also has strong ties to the trust and serves as director of Central Intelligence, finds itself at a pinnacle of influence.

Twenty groups, half with Pew funding and half without, wrote to demand swift confirmation for Lubchenco "on behalf of our millions of members."

"As NOAA administrator," the environmental groups said, "Dr. Lubchenco ... will be leading efforts to preserve vital ocean and Great Lakes ecosystems and habitats that are threatened by acidification, Arctic ice-melt, overfishing and other stresses."

Among the signers was Andrew F. Sharpless, CEO of Oceana which, according to Pew databases, has received about $30 million in grants from the trusts since 2002. Earthjustice, another signer, was reported to have received $12 million in the same period. Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth and the World Wildlife Fund, among the other environmental groups to petition the Senate, showed no Pew investment.

The attack on "overfishing" cited in the message of the environmentalists is a problematic phrase to the fishing industry and many government fish policy-making professionals as it is used in the scientific and political documents coming from Pew and its many platforms with different names and funded allies.

The most recent complaint about how Pew uses the term came from Sean Martin, chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which makes policy and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service for the Western Pacific.

In a letter to all the regional fishery management councils - including the New England council, with its extensive role in Gloucester — Martin accused the Pew Charitable Trusts of publishing "egregious misinformation and blatant nonsense" while preaching the "imminent collapse of fisheries by 2048."

Published by the Pew Environmental Group, the document in question is called "Ocean Conservation and the End of Overfishing." It is long on pictures, and short on words, especially for the 17 footnotes, largely to work by the Pew Ocean Commission and Pew-financed scientists.

"The document uses alarmist language in quoting out of context the number of overfished stocks in the United States," Honolulu-based Martin wrote to Mary Glackin, who, as acting NOAA administrator, is essentially holding the seat for Lubchenco.

Much farther west in the Pacific, in the U.S. territory of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the governor, legislature, the indigenous population and the small subsistence and commercial fishing community were frustrated to lose control over their waters in January.

Outgoing President George W. Bush, supported by Lubchenco, approved a Pew plan to create a 115,000 square mile fishing free "marine protected area" around the islands that arc northwest from Guam.

Pew praised Bush for approving its plan for protecting the waters of the Marianas, and Joshua S. Reichert, the managing director of the Pew Environmental Group, predicted the action would leave Bush with a "blue legacy."

Although indigenous opposition was strong, Lubchenco authored a Nov. 18 opinion piece in The (Portland) Oregonian urging the ratification of the Pew plan. "These special places," she wrote, "are increasingly threatened" as more accessible areas are "overfished."

Last week, the Pew Environmental Group launched a campaign against overfishing in the Mid-Atlantic that an official with the regional fishery management council said was not occurring.

Daniel Furlong, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic regional council, described the Pew report as "propaganda, pure and simple propaganda," aimed at gaining new members.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes,com

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