April 25, 2012 – A U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee has taken $119 million from President Obama's $5.1 billion request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the next fiscal year, and set it aside as requested by Sens. John Kerry for use on cooperative fisheries research, new stock assessment and other fishing issues.
The brief markup language in the budget bill that cleared the Senate Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Science and Justice last week limits use of the money to "fishery activities related to cooperative research, annual stock assessments, survey and monitoring projects, interjurisdictional fisheries grants, and fish information networks."
These were the authorized uses in the original Kennedy-Saltonstall Act of 1954, which called for providing 30 percent of seafood import tariffs for fisheries research and development, and in new legislation filed by Kerry and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe to reset the terms of the old law. Over the decades, Congress allowed the tariff money to go instead to NOAA operations.
The language was inserted into the NOAA budget by the subcommittee headed by Sen. Barbara Mikulski.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.