Gloucester Daily Times

 My View; Inspector General's report shows NOAA has lost its way

My View
Stephen Ouellette

January27, 2010 05:50 am

The results of the Inspector General's investigation confirms concerns that many members of the fishing community have raised for 10 years with congressional delegations — the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is an agency out of step, if not outright adversarial with the industry it is supposed to be working to preserve and protect.

The abuses in law enforcement are but one, serious manifestation of the problem.

The IG's reports and NOAA's promise of a fix offer little satisfaction to those who have left or been forced from the industry by action of, or fear of action by,NOAA law enforcement and its Office of the General Counsel.

While NOAA has promised to review the law enforcement issue, this should not cloud the larger picture — the hostile atmosphere within the agency that allowed these abuses to occur for over a decade, and which threatens the viability of the entire commercial fishing industry and fishing communities.

NOAA ranks used to include many former fishermen and members of fishing families and fishing communities who brought to the agency the American values of hard work,respect for the resource and service to the community, dedicated to ensuring a continued supply of fresh, healthy fish for America.

While many of these committed individuals remain at the agency, doing their best to assist in their own way, the current management regime has fostered a hostile environment that ignores the practical impact of regulations — either in terms of complexity and costs of compliance, to the devastating impact of rules on small businesses.

Rather  than approach problems in a spirit of mutual cooperation, NOAA's management follows an arrogant pattern — making it appear NOAA has no interest in preserving industry or communities.

Fishermen are being excluded from regional fishery management councils — bodies that were created to ensure their participation in the management process — in favor of NOAA's selections that follow NOAA's politicized agenda.

NOAA pre-shapes council policy by effectively limiting options to those it creates.NOAA controls all aspects of the science, guarding some (its "closed area model") like proprietary secret, making it virtually un-reviewable, and thus violating a basic tenet of science.

NOAA downplays or demeans scientists who attempt to enlighten the councils. Where independent science finds flaws with NOAA's, rather than seek to welcome this independent assistance, NOAA seeks to squelch it or gain control of it. The pressure to commoditize the fishery through sectors or catch shares is but one aspect of this.

Seldomdo fishermen or fishing communities see the benefit of the rebuilding programs they are told to sacrifice for. In Amendment 13 to the groundfish plan, NOAA claimed that, by giving up significant landings in the short term, the fleet would see returns in every year afterward that would result in a break even point— albeit in 35 years. Five years later, fish stocks have recovered to the point that the scientists advised that the groundfish fleet could land 180,000 metric tons of groundfish. The fleet was limited by NOAA regulations to approximately50,000 metric tons — making one wonder if we will reach the break even point before the next millennium.

This is only one fishery where NOAA has squandered results of conservation, at the cost of thousands of jobs. This underfishing problem can be traced to NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service's absurd interpretation of the rebuilding requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which interpretation guarantees that rebuilt stocks will never be accessible to the fleet.

The NOAA administrator and congressional delegations need to understand that the IG's report reveals just one of the many causes — albeit one of the most troubling — of the agency's lack of credibility with its constituency.

Despite the outrage of politicians, the law enforcement issues have been complained of for more than 10 years. NOAA, and in particular NMFS, need to be restored to agencies that work cooperatively with industry and the public to achieve the statutory directive of getting America's commercial fisheries back to work and protecting fishing communities, with sound, rational common-sense conservation principals incorporating the needs of industry and fishing communities.

To accomplish this, the agency needs to reassess its commitment to the fishing industry and to either re-evaluate its interpretation of the Magnuson Act, or advise Congress of the impossibility of maintaining a viable fishing industry under the statutory language.

At the same time, the agency must re-engage the fishing industry and communities by assessing its core values, including ensuring that the agency staff reflects an understanding of a commitment to working with and preserving the fishing industry and fishing communities.

In order to rebuild fisheries, we must first rebuild the agency itself.

Stephen Ouellette is a Glouceste rattorney who specializes in East Coast fishery issues.

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