The National Marine Fisheries Service report on commercial fishing revenues — hailing an increase in gross revenues as a sign that its new regulatory system is helping fishermen, even it fails to account for a penny of fishermen's increased costs — might be considered laughable if it weren't so painfully obvious that it's no mistake.
After all, in his report summary, NMFS chief Eric Schwaab, the former Maryland fish and gamer who's now caddy to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrator Jane Lubchenco, failed to even note a disclaimer in his own report — that the preliminary figures showing purported revenue gains over nine months of fishing under the catch shares format did not include any expense data that can shed light on fishermen's net revenues at all.
That's right; this glowing report, actually picked up by some news agencies as if it were credible, did not touch upon the costs fishermen have had to ante up for sector management while working in those cooperatives. And it didn't factor in the millions fishermen have had to shell out to lease additional quota to be able to make a living under the tightly limited catch.
Given those factors, Schwaab's report isn't worth the paper on which it's printed. That, however, isn't even the most serious issue raised by this bogus report.
That, once again, is the blatant dishonesty that shines through NOAA's and Lubchenco's gang of supposedly "green" supporters in their now-desperate attempts to convince lawmakers and other unknowing Americans that catch shares are a good deal for fishermen, when, in fact, the opposite becomes clearer every day.
What the report also fails to show is the documented concentration of those higher revenues in the hands of fewer big fishing businesses — those who can afford to lease and buy up more quota — while the smaller, independent fishermen and their crew members are forced to the sidelines and the unemployment lines.
In the end, this grossly misleading report provides just one more sign of how NOAA has become less and less a credible arm of our government, and more and more an inside lobbying tool of Lubchenco's former colleagues at the Environmental Defense Fund, the corporately backed nonprofit that has pushed the catch shares economic plan — not environmental, economic — from the start.
Richie Canastra, an owner of New Bedford's Whaling City Seafood Display Auction, and treasurer of the Northeast Seafood Coalition that is based in Gloucester, put it best regarding Schwaab's "revenue" report:
"If I went into a bank," he said, "and I said, 'My revenues are up, but I don't know what my expenses are and I don't know what my profits are,' they'd kick me out the door."
It's past time for our federal lawmakers to put a stop to this rogue agency's spin-doctoring, and give the bank's boot treatment to Lubchenco, Schwaab and their NOAA administration colleagues in the process. Enough is enough.
