Maine U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe deserves credit for her challenge last week to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco regarding the absurd pending catch limits on New England’s herring fishing industry.
Indeed, Snowe’s letter to Lubchenco, citing the "woefully" outdated scientific data used to justify a 40 percent cut in the allowable herring catch, has touched on the rhetorical "gorilla in the room" for all of the debate surrounding NOAA’s and its National Marine Fisheries Service regulatory schemes. That’s the fact that, for all of the heavy-handed enforcement, all the tight-fisted regulatory tactics and all of the unjust, unilateral mandates imposed on Gloucester’s, New England’s and America’s fishermen, there is a single glaring problem at the root of all others:
The admissions among scientists that science and data used as a basis for all of these regulations just can’t be trusted as a basis for anything — let alone to effectively deny American fishermen the chance to make a living. That’s an issue on which all of our legislative leaders — from U.S. Sen. John Kerry and appointed Sen. Paul Kirk, to Congressman John Tierney and local state lawmakers Bruce Tarr and Ann-Margaret Ferrante — must demand accountability and correction before NOAA and NMFS take any more economic bites out of this time-honored industry.
Read the complete story at Newbury Port News.