The U.S. Secretary of Commerce should quickly declare Massachusetts' groundfish fleet an economic disaster, caused by federal Commerce Department regulations, and open the way for federal aid, the state's congressional delegation said yesterday.
Massachusetts' two senators and 10 congressmen wrote a letter to Secretary Carlos Gutierrez urging him to approve Gov. Deval Patrick's request to declare the state's fleet an economic disaster, caused by recent strict rules that have reduced the amount of time fishermen may fish inshore.
"The changes have been devastating to the groundfishing fleets of Gloucester, New Bedford and the Cape and islands of Massachusetts, since more than a quarter of these vessels fish exclusively inside areas where the new regulation orders each day at sea to be counted twice," the delegation wrote. "As a result, many of these fishermen now have just 24 days to fish during a season."
The congressmen said the state's fleet has been in contraction, falling from 572 vessels in 2000 to 400 in 2005.
Patrick's report to Gutierrez, sent Monday, cited a $22 million loss in fishing communities from the institution of two regulations - one a temporary emergency rule and the other a permanent change - that sharply reduced the number of days fishermen can spend harvesting inshore waters. That figure also factors in harm to related onshore businesses.
"Massachusetts fishermen need immediate relief to survive new restrictions and to avoid a total collapse of the groundfish industry," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. "The state has made a compelling case to support a fishery disaster declaration, and I urge the Department of Commerce to provide the declaration as quickly as possible, so that immediate steps can be taken to remedy the economic losses."
An economic disaster was declared in the Northeast in 1994, paving the way for $55 million in disaster relief. Another $5 million in aid was given to state fishermen from the federal government in 2000, though it did not formally declare a disaster.
Kevin Allexon, a Commerce Department senior policy adviser, called the request "awkward" because it asks the federal government to declare its own rules flawed. He said there's never been a disaster declared as "the result of government regulation. We have to evaluate whether this particular circumstance qualifies as a disaster."
Congressman John Tierney, D-Salem, told the Times on Monday he is not prepared to talk about what Congress can do should the request be denied.
"We have to give (Gutierrez) the opportunity to not decline it," said Tierney. "We have to impress upon them how important this is and how necessary it is."
Framework 42, which took effect Nov. 22, 2006, counts each day a fisherman spends in an area that stretches about 30 miles off Gloucester and runs from Cape Cod to just north of Portland, Maine, as two days at sea. Between May and November, an emergency regulation, in place while the New England Fishery Management Council completed work on Framework 42, counted each actual day as 1.4 days toward a fisherman's allocation.
State Attorney General Martha Coakley will continue to pursue a lawsuit filed against the federal government by her predecessor, Thomas Reilly, and New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, that claims Framework 42 is unfair to New England fishermen and would deny them access to 13 healthy fish stocks that are not being overfished.
That lawsuit is pending in federal court.
A Massachusetts Fisheries Recovery Commission report released in December found that fishing employment fell 22 percent in Gloucester, as well as in other Massachusetts ports, with the implementation of restrictive federal fishing rules in the 1990s.
That study also said that following the implementation of Amendment 13, a major rule change, in 2003, as many as 49 jobs and $3.5 million in wages were lost in Gloucester and similar losses occurred in other fishing cities.
