September 27, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD — In the closing hours of a picture-perfect day for the New Bedford Waterfront Festival, about 15 pretty important people were meeting in a stuffy, windowless third-floor conference room up three flights of stairs at the State Pier building.
This was an invitation-only chance for some locals involved in the fishing industry to meet the woman who is in charge of fisheries regulation for the entire nation, NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries Eileen Sobeck.
She was here at the invitation of Mayor Mitchell, and the arrangements were done pretty quietly. There was no announcement by the mayor’s office because, as he explained, this was an opportunity to open up some lines of communication between our fishing community and the persons in charge of regulating it.”
“It was civil and informative … a lot of progress was made that way,” Mitchell said after the meeting.
Former Mayor John Bullard was there because, as he is now regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries in the Northeast, Sobek is his boss. He deferred all questions to her.
Read the full story at New Bedford Standard- Times