When the names of new state delegates to the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council were announced in June, representatives of both commercial and recreational fisheries cried foul. Even the council’s executive director and New York’s director of marine resources seemed puzzled. East Hampton Town officials plan to protest.
Critics have said this was a new strategy by well-funded environmental groups to unnecessarily curtail landings and reduce the size of East Coast fishing fleets by circumventing the grassroots approach to choosing delegates to the federally empowered management council.
Stuffing council seats was the latest effort, they said, by groups including the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Environmental Defense Fund to paint an unrealistically dark picture of the ocean’s resources at a time when both fishermen and the government’s own scientists report robust stock recoveries.