Much has been made of the coordinated apologies and associated media machinations of Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and NOAAchief Jane Lubchenco for specific enforcement abuses targeting mid-Atlantic and New England fishermen and associated businesses. Ditto for the return of some fines wrongfully levied as a result of these abuses. I was left with the distinct impression that they felt that after their not quite mea culpas they would be able to move on, leaving a whole bunch of satisfied fishing industry folks in their wake.
I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but they weren't even off to a good start. Sure, some of the industry people who were most egregiously impacted by what it now appears were agency encouraged goon squads – both on the streets and behind the desks – got something back, but are they whole after their individual ordeals? Not hardly. What of their legal fees? Their loss of business? Their personal suffering and that of their families and their employees?
I can only hope that the aggrieved fishermen and business people find what the Obama Administration has offered them as inadequate as I do and have the wherewithal to seek full compensation for what they've suffered.
But significant as these federal agency depredations were to the 11 people and/or businesses that were singled out by the Special Master for at least partial payback, they are only a small part of a sordid story that continues to plague the domestic fishing industry and the consumers who depend on it for fresh local seafood.
These out-of-control agents, attorneys and judges didn't just arise spontaneously; they were products of a still ongoing devolution of NOAA/NMFS from an agency primarily concerned with supporting fishermen in catching fish into one that is focused on nothing beyond protecting the fish from fishermen. This devolution has peaked with the current leadership at NOAA/NMFS – Ms Lubchenco is on the record with, "at the global scale, probably the one thing currently having the most impact (on the oceans) is overfishing and destructive fishing gear," and her oft-stated goal is fewer boats and fewer fishermen – but this devolution has been going on for most of two decades.
It's impossible to believe that the cops and robbers mentality that was behind law enforcement behaviour so repugnant that it occasioned a public apology from a member of President Obama's cabinet could have so blatantly flourished in anything other than a "fishing and fishermen are bad" culture that percolated down from the leadership cadre at NOAA/NMFS. An apology and the return of a few hundreds of thousands of ill-gotten dollars out of a slush fund a couple of hundred times larger isn't going to change that.
How many press releases in the same vein as one dated June 19, 2009 titled, NOAA Notifies Gloucester Seafood Display Auction of 10-day Sanction by NOAA/NMFS have bombarded fishermen over the last decade? The trumpeting of these discredited NOAA enforcement actions by NOAA/NMFS press offices, actions judged as unacceptable by the Department of Commerce's own Inspector General and a Special Master brought in from outside the agency, has done incalculable harm to the public perceptions of fishermen and fishing. Should we assume that this was unintentional and spontaneous?
And what about "research" such as that carried out by Professors Jon Sutinen and Dennis King and funded by Pew/Lenfest? The conclusion of their article, Rational noncompliance and the liquidation of Northeast groundfish resources, is that the supposed sorry state in the New England groundfish fishery was in large part due to fishermen and those running fishing businesses breaking the law. I did a critique of Sutinen's and King's efforts in a column for the Saving Seafood website, but hadn't mentioned that their "special thanks" went to, "the staff of the NOAA Office of Law Enforcement and NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service regional officers who provided researchers with enforcement data." That's not data that I or anyone else should be willing to hang a mortarboard on, but is this research going to be redone in view of the shambles that NOAA law enforcement in New England was in at the time? Is anyone at Pew or Lenfest going to correct the public record?
How much regulatory overkill did this institutionalised (in NOAA/NMFS and a handful of universities, ENGOs and the foundations that enabled them), "you can't trust fishermen" myth cost those fishermen, the businesses they supported, the consumers they supplied and the US taxpayers? The people and organisations that manufactured and perpetuated the myth all profited handsomely, and those profits came out of the holds of US fishing boats and the pockets of US seafood consumers.
"Fishermen and fish dealers believe that they are treated like criminals…. The regulations are complex, complicated, constantly changing, and in some cases, contradictory…. these occurrences can result in a violation, which in turn, can result in a substantial monetary penalty or permit sanction. Either may be enough to put a fisherman or fish dealer out of business…. This is the plight of the regulated…. in practically every case a pattern of assessing high monetary penalties in order to force a settlement…. The fisherman or fish dealer has no option but to settle because as previously pointed out in this report and discussed later, they have no confidence that they could get a fair de novo hearing before an ALJ (Administrative Law Judge)."
– Hon. Charles B Swartwood, III ret., Report and recommendation of the Special Master concerning NOAA enforcement action of certain designated cases, April, 2011.
The people in charge at NOAA/NMFS had to know that judges presiding over their in-house courts were in the position of benefiting from the penalties they assessed; that their enforcement agents and judges were acquiring luxurious yachts, personal automobiles and exotic foreign travel more easily and with less oversight than should be acceptable; that they were overseeing a force that consisted almost entirely of highly paid criminal agents who were involved almost entirely in civil violations; that data supplied to researchers with the intention of indicting fishermen was, in the most charitable way I can phrase it, suspect. Or if they didn't, they were more grossly incompetent than anyone getting paid with public dollars has any right to be. But it was all ok at NOAA/NMFS because they were catching bad guys who thought fish were there to be caught. In fact, if they were good enough at catching fishermen, NOAA enforcement people got bonuses – bounty hunters with federal "get out of jail free" cards.
If Ms Lubchenco and Secretary Locke are really interested in changing things at NOAA/NMFS, or if Congress is really interested in seeing that things are changed, the job has to begin with changing this increasingly pervasive agency attitude. What would be the condition of our agriculture industry if the USDA looked at farmers the way the NOAA/NMFS leadership so obviously looks at fishermen? Along with importing 80 percent of our seafood we'd be importing 80 percent of everything else we eat. If the Secretary of Agriculture announced that his goal was to get rid of farms and farmers he'd be looking for a new job posthaste.
Ask a farmer if the federal government is on his or her side and I'll bet dollars to donuts that you'll get an unqualified yes as an answer. What are the odds of getting the same answer from a fisherman?
The woman in charge at NOAA, the parent agency of the National Marine Fisheries Service, has publicly acknowledged that fishermen are on her hit list. The Secretary of Commerce, her boss, is willing to apologise to a handful of fishermen when a bunch of his fish cops get caught with their hands in the cookie jar but has yet to address Ms Lubchenco's "get rid of fishermen" fixation. And need I write yet again that we've reached the point of no overfishing with rebounding stocks in spite of all of those boats and fishermen that she's committed to getting rid of?
So how much do you think the in-house attitude towards fishermen has changed at NOAA/NMFS? Using a Titanic analogy, we've heard the captain and first mate telling us that they are shifting crew from job to job, messing with the paperwork that keeps everything running about the way it has been, and giving new fake books to the orchestra, and their ship is still unsinkable. They would be telling us this on April 16, 1912 (the ship sank on April 15).
Nils E Stope for IWMC World Conservation Trust