"I won't play into this hand. This work is for the lawmakers," said Fuka. "Any time NOAA has a desire to reach out to fishermen, it's just to upgrade their intelligence against us. Especially on the eve of a lawsuit, you just don't sit down and tip your cards to the people you're taking to court."
The fishing communities of New England, New York and New Jersey — angry, bitter and deeply alienated from their government and now in virtual revolt against it — find themselves today in passionate debate while strategizing the next phase of the battle.
That phase entails a series of public meetings for "feedback" and "training" planned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration over its latest regulatory scheme.
The first session is scheduled for New Bedford on Thursday, with Gloucester's meeting a week from today at NOAA's regional headquarters in Blackburn Industrial Park. Others will go on through early July, from Maine to Montauk, N.Y.
Based on Internet chatter, each one promises a mix of participation and rejection, with fishing activists taking different sides over a number of questions: Should fishing people attend and speak their minds again? Should they boycott to demonstrate their perceived disenfranchisement? Or should they try to do both, and somehow get the media's attention?
As of Sunday, there was no apparent consensus.
"No more meetings. Get rid of (NOAA chief Jane) Lubchenco and her Pew (Pew Environment Group) folks in the agency and fix Magnuson," Donofrio wrote. Those references are to pending bills in both houses of Congress to write statutory language into the Magnuson Stevens Act explicitly directing NOAA to balance economic and social stability against fish conservation.
Two federal lawsuits were filed last month on behalf of fishing interests up and down the coast, based on constitutional flaws in the new regulatory format called Amendment 16. The cities of Gloucester and New Bedford have joined in one of the suits.
NOAA's professed aim in the coming meetings is to get "feedback" and provide "training" for dealing with Amendment 16 — which, on May 1, introduced the catch-share regulatory format to New England.
Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.