"The case was decided under the administrative review standard, which is very, very narrow. There is complete deference to a federal agency based on their record," Lang said. "Their record was built to support an action we didn't think was legal to begin with."

"We need a process that puts people under oath," he said.

Lang was irritated by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokespersons' continuing insistence that the imposition of catch shares and sector management was a three-year process that was ratified 15-1 by the New England Fishery Management Council on behalf of fishermen.

"We know the council is a pro forma instrument of NOAA," Lang said, calling the vote a "travesty."

"The council is staffed by NOAA. When they don't vote right, it's like the old Soviet chamber that says 'we may have to veto what you just did.' The idea that they would say with a straight face this was crafted with fishery input is not credible. They're trying to rewrite history.

"In 36 days they tried to educate the fishing communities around the Northeast how catch shares worked. In all honesty, they rolled it through. They weren't even ready with computers, they were so intent. The idea that this was a long-considered process defies any credibility," Lang said.

More than that, however, he and others believe NOAA has acted in direct contradiction of the Magnuson-Stevens Act's call for the protection of fishing communities against the side effects of harsh regulations.

"They turned fish, which is a natural resource, into a private commodity traded on fish exchanges. That was never contemplated by Congress. It's completely opposite of what Congress has tried to do," he said.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., issued a statement Friday saying much the same. Frank, who wrote the Magnuson referendum requirement in the 1990s, said: "I had succeeded in getting legal language to require a referendum on the type of quota programs that Amendment 16 utilizes, and I am especially troubled because NMFS's refusal to have a referendum is basically an acknowledgment that people in the fishing industry would have vetoed their plan."

He said Magnuson clearly must be amended to reflect and specify the intentions of Congress and stop NOAA from evading referenda. 

Read the complete story from The Standard-Times.