BOSTON –Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) issued the following statement today in response to Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Eric Schwaab’sletter to Governor Patrick regarding the federal government’s decision to not act on behalf of New England’s fishing communities:
NOAA’s refusal to act on behalf of sustaining our fishing families and reconciling the science of fisheries management with practical reality is deeply troubling. This type of blind adherence to the status quo that leaves fish in the ocean that could be sustainably caught and insulates bureaucratic protocols by putting them beyond the reach of reasonable change is characteristic of the problems that have brought fisheries management in New England to a point of dysfunction and our fishing communities to a sense of desperation.
I urge Governor Patrick and our federal legislative delegation to take every available action to confront this decision and reverse it, and I pledge my efforts to support that course of action.