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Ocean Nation loses an icon

By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
Published: August 10, 2008

Nine days before he died — lost in a stormy sea off the New Jersey coast at the wheel of his 80-foot dragger Sea Breeze — fisherman extraordinaire Phil Ruhle Sr. was hard at his related professions: industry innovator and government watchdog.

From his computer on July 14 came a terse, pointed, aggravated advisory regarding yet another in the skein of bureaucratic false steps, counterproductive acts and ham-fisted blunders that have seemed to back up on one another into a distracting pile.

Increasingly, he had paid more attention to government machinations and less to those of the fish, which had been the life that was the legacy of the great Ruhle fishing clan, which was rooted in Oceanside, Long Island, before spreading north and south along the Atlantic coast.

"Here is the problem," his memo began bluntly. It was written in the all caps-style of old teletype machines that were the cutting edge of ship-to-shore written communications when a three-year-old Phil Ruhle first went fishing some 55 years earlier with his father, himself a second-generation fishing Ruhle.

In their rigidity, he explained, the fishery's federal regulators had decided the boats in the Eastern U.S./Canadian sector in August would get to use a trawl separator that is far inferior to the one that he, son Phil Jr., brother Jimmy, a team from the University of Rhode Island Fisheries Center, headed by Dave Beutel and netmaker Jon Knight, had invented to reduce the "by-catch."

The "eliminator," which won the inventors the $30,000 first prize in the World Wildlife Federation's 2007 international Smart Gear Competition, was not allowed in during the first two weeks of fishing in the sector this year.

In the value system of the Ruhles and most principled people, as Jimmy Ruhle discussed with the Times last week, this inadvertent, wasteful taking of unintended fishing targets is tantamount to a sin, and also the inevitable result of the present, counterproductive approach to fishery management under the Magnuson-Stevens Act that requires the government to balance preservation of the resource and the industry.

So, it wasn't surprising that Phil Ruhle was furious that the National Marine Fisheries Service had professed an inability to aggressively steer the transition to less wasteful gear in the federal waters that NMFS policies now that it is available.

"This is yet another example of how ineffective the NFMS has become," Ruhle steamed. He expressed to his correspondents appreciation for their support for his effort to make fishing smarter, less wasteful.

"Thanks to all Phil Ruhle" he signed off without punctuation.

It was the last contact for most of the more than 30 people on his wholesale e-mail list — fellow fishermen, business people, reporters, editors, congressional staffers, elected officials, even regulators — with one of America's best, most admired and, as their addresses together denote, influential fishermen.

Philip Ruhle Sr. was, after all, an "environmental hero." He had been officially since he was so designated in 2003 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the parent agency of NMFS, for his "cooperative" approach to being regulated by people who knew quite a bit less than he did about the ways of the oceans.

Both the influence and nature of the man were displayed in the months before he was formally appreciated. That came after he helped expose important flaws in the way the government gathered the baseline fish census data on which the regulatory limits were set.

The event immediately became known as "Trawlgate." 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 Ruhle resisted.

"I have to give him credit," Ruhle said. "He stood up and did the right thing."

Scott Ryder, chief of staff for NOAA during Trawlgate, was one of the confederation receiving Ruhle's last mass e-mailing. He messaged the Times: "I was sure Phil and others were going to beat us senseless ... (Instead), he praised the organization for making the right changes. I was amazed. It said a lot about the man — he wanted to do the right thing."

In a telephone interview last week, William Hogarth, NOAA's chief fishery regulator during Trawlgate, now dean of marine science at University of South Florida, said Ruhle "understood fishing; he even understood every fish." Hogarth went fishing for the first time with Ruhle's father.

As news of Ruhle's demise rippled out over the Internet and the media following his July 23 death, tributes poured into the family from points up and down the coast, were posted on blogs and Web sites and introduced into the Congressional Record.

The "eliminator" trawl was lauded by his friend, U.S. Congressman James Langevin, D-R.I., for its ability to reduce "by-catch of cod and flounder, permitting a faster recovery of depleted stocks and benefiting the entire nation."

In an e-mail to the Times, Mary Hope Katsouros, a marine issues and science consultant, said she worked closely with Ruhle to raise money for Gulf Coast fishermen whose lives were affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Ruhle's family home was in North Kingstown, R.I., and he fished from Newport, but he seemed an unfettered citizen of the Ocean Nation, and was at home on the water and wherever fishing rules and law were being made, fishing tactics were in dispute and the supporting science was being argued and tested.

That includes Gloucester, cited by Jimmy Ruhle as the "cultural and historical" capital of the Ocean Nation. Gloucester's Vito Giacalone, a brother of Ruhle's in the fraternity of fishermen that chose also to engage the government in the semi-permanent struggle over fishing regulations, described Ruhle as "an icon," and noted with bitterness how the political stratum above the NOAA bureaucracy had washed their hands of Phil Ruhle, who was replaced last year on the New England Fishery Management Council.

The lack of official position hardly muffled his raspy voice, though his dismissal from the council hurt him, his brother Jimmy said in an interview.

Last spring, Ruhle and three fishing colleagues complained in writing to Conrad Lautenbacher, the undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, that the research arm of the fishery service was ignoring valid scientific advice on how to conduct accurate trawl surveys. In an e-mail to Ruhle on April 29, Lautenbacher promised to "dig into your concerns."

Then in June, Ruhle suggested that fishery be entirely shutdown in response to a scientific finding that stocks of most fish, especially flats, were recovering more slowly than assumed.

"I suggested they shut it down completely," he told the Times, explaining that the ever increasing constrictions were strangling the industry. He said it might recover better if given a chance to make a clean break and retool.

At 60, Jimmy Ruhle — who serves on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, and made a ticket of advocates with brother "Philly," who was 57 — said they learned from their father and were motivated by the desire to leave a fishery to provide for the fourth and fifth generations of Ruhles.

They both knew the risks. He noted that, long before the Andrea Gail went down in 1991 and was immortalized in "The Perfect Storm," Phil for some time captained the swordfishing long liner, but gave it up because "she didn't feel right to him," Jimmy recalled.

Last month, in the water for three hours before being rescued by the Coast Guard, the two crew members of the doomed Sea Breeze told reporters that they believed Phil Ruhle was struggling to right the boat, low in the water, heavy with catch, when Sea Breeze capsized and went down. Ruhle was never seen again.

Jimmy Ruhle said that, after a meeting in Peabody earlier this year, he came to Gloucester, "went to the Man (at the Wheel statue) and looked at the 5,000 names."

He said, "We can accept this. We don't go out to purposefully drown."

But Jimmy Ruhle also said the he and his brother told each other "a thousand times, our sons and grandsons don't have a chance unless we can fix the system.

"It's going to be harder now," he added.

Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com

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