The "Gloucester rally," as chief organizer Amanda Odlin terms the casually organized mass meeting tomorrow morning to vent grievances against the U.S. system of regulating fisheries, is expected to draw hundreds of working fishermen, but possibly not a single politician.
The police-authorized demonstration, scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. in the parking lot of the National Marine Fisheries Service at 55 Great Republic Drive in Blackburn Industrial Park, could last most of the morning.
Fishermen from as far away as central Maine and Maryland are headed this way, organizers say.
In addition to crowd control and security, Gloucester police are providing a platform for the 13 scheduled speakers, including 11 fishermen, a lawyer and researcher, but do not expect trouble, Lt. Joe Aiello said.
Organizers have agreed to eschew wooden handles for their signs and banners.
Odlin, a fishing boat co-owner, doesn't seem surprised and doesn't seem to mind that federal, state and local politicians — including Mayor Carolyn Kirk and Gloucester's state legislative delegation of Sen. Bruce Tarr and Ann-Margaret Ferrante, both stalwart friends of the fishermen — are not expected to be there.
Kirk and Ferrante, a Democrat, have announced their decisions. Republican Tarr earlier this week described himself as undecided and yesterday did not return calls seeking to learn if he had made up his mind.
Unlike previous fishermen protests in Gloucester, which were hatched in and organized from here, this one traces its origins to outposts far from Gloucester, America's original fishing port and still the Gulf of Maine's hub port — to places such as Scarborough, Maine, where Odlin and her fishing husband Chris live, to Harpswell, Maine, where fisherman Bill Doughty lives, and to Point Judith, R.I., where fisherman Joel Hovanasian moors his boat.
Doughty said he was sent into a fury when he learned what a mess NMFS made of his catch history, the basis for allocating his "catch share" limit under the new regulatory system set to take effect next year. Hovanasian is a longtime outspoken activist and critic of the regulatory regimes.
"It all started with my husband screaming," Odlin said, "and Bill Doughty and Joel H. out in Rhode Island saying, 'Let's get one going.'"
A novice organizer, Odlin said she chose the parking lot of the recently constructed regional headquarters of the NMFS as the staging area, because that's where the 200 or so employees of its parent, the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Adminstration, work, enforcing the laws, regulations and management schemes aimed at restoring the stocks of fish — and culling the size of the fleet.
Since last year's completion of the four-story, $25 million office building on one of the highest points on Cape Ann, fishermen have gazed up with anger as they steam back to port — when the effort control system of ever fewer days-at-seat allowed them to fish at all.
"The intimidating presence of the castle on the hill serves as a constant reminder of the total, blind, subservience demanded of all who toil under the oppressive heel of NMFS," said Gloucester gillnetter Paul "Sasquatch" Cohan.
The policy aggravations include a long-studied, but rapidly written, phased-in "catch share" program, which will end the historical understanding of fish stocks as common resources. They are to be transformed next spring into an allowable catch that is subdivided into shares and distributed as guaranteed rights to catch to the remaining members of the active fleet.
The purpose and universal impact of catch shares — fitted into a minority of U.S. fisheries — is to concentrate fishing capacity in a smaller number of hands, creating winners and losers.
Ultimately, according to Jane Lubchenco, the federal administrator for the NOAA, the system produces a healthier fishery — but a stronger, albeit smaller industry.
"A significant fraction of the vessels will need to be removed to make the fishery sustainable and profitable," a spokesman for Lubchenco told the Times last spring, soon after she was confirmed by the Senate.
Catch shares are at the top of a laundry list of protesters' grievances.
The decision by the New England Fishery Management Council last June to convert to catch shares was made "without economic analysis," Odlin said.
On Tuesday, David Goethel, a New Hampshire fisherman and member of the New England Fishery Management Council, made much the same point while testifying to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources' Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife.
Goethel told the committee that, in its rush to write a catch share plan, the council overlooked many problems that will come back to haunt the industry. These include an imbalance of high overhead costs for monitoring, which is required in catch share systems, and too little allocation to allow for a viable industry.
He alleged that the work was done without reference to a section of the Magnuson-Stevens Act that requires fisheries' policies to "minimize ... to the extent possible ... adverse economic impacts on fishing communities."
Vito Giacalone, a Gloucester-based industry innovator through the Northeast Seafood Coalition, agreed with Goethel's findings, and said he understood how Odlin and the protesters feel.
"I'm angry about that," he said. "The masses have the right speak out, they are family and hardworking people. It may come off crude but it comes from the heart," said Giacalone.
Odlin's e-mails make a laundry list of grievances and demands:
A buyback of boats and permits from fishermen being marginalized and intentionally pushed out of the business by the catch share program, similar to buybacks that were completed before catch shares were instituted on the West Coast.
Enactment by Congress of the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009, a bill that would removed some of the rigidity of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and allow more fishing while distressed stocks are rebuilt more slowly.
"Real science" behind policies.
A one-year delay to the phase-in of the catch share system.
"This is a must," one e-mail said of the year's delay. "We have a good shot at this with all the blunders they have made."
Odlin said a staff representative of U.S. Senate Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is expected to attend.
As to local political leaders, however, Kirk has said she was uncomfortable about the location of the protest and was not invited by an organizer, so decided to stay away.
Ferrante led the successful effort to generate an inspector general's investigation of improper police and prosecutional practices against fishermen by fisheries law enforcement — a report is expected soon — but said she had "just found out about the protest demonstration" and had been unable to "find out what the organizers stand for and where they want to go."
Ferrante said that, without that information and the opportunity to "run this past my constituency," she had decided to stay away.
Odlin shrugged at the decisions by the political figures.
Odlin said she hoped the demonstration would erase "common misconceptions" that fishermen are "violent and dishonest."
"I take offense at the idea," she said. "There are no wooden handles on sticks, just songs, slogans and banners. I have a bullhorn. It's weatherproof, portable," she said.
In a statement, Justin Kenney, communications director for NOAA, said Lubchenco's first act was to soften a regulatory interim scheme "to protect New England's groundfish fishery."
"She said at the time that we cannot and will not allow our proud and vital fishing industry to disappear," he added.
"She also pledged that NOAA will be a good partner with fishing communities, keeping the lines of communication open and listening to their concerns and needs," he said. "She looks forward to hearing the concerns expressed on Friday and responding to them."
A spokeswoman for NMFS' regional administrator in Gloucester, Patricia Kurkul, said Kurkul recognized the right to protest but had not been contacted.
The offices will be open for business Friday, said the spokeswoman, Maggie Mooney-Seus.
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com
