September 10, 2015 — In a show of bipartisan cooperation that’s all too rare in today’s politics, Massachusetts’ Republican governor and all-Democratic congressional delegation united late last month to call upon the Obama administration to reverse a particularly egregious federal policy: the current plan by NOAA to require the fishing industry to pay the full cost for at-sea monitors for the groundfish fishery. Fishermen will now be required to hire monitors from an approved short list of for-profit companies. This policy will impose a significant burden on area fishermen, and poses a threat to the future of a fishery that is already reeling from a string of onerous federal regulations.
Thanks goes to Gov. Charlie Baker, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and all nine of our Massachusetts representatives in Congress for giving voice to what fishermen have been saying for years: Forcing fishermen to pay for the observers who monitor their catch will be a financially disastrous outcome for the fishery. As their joint letter notes, ther National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s own analysis of shifting the cost of monitors onto the industry finds that 60 percent of the fleet would be operating at a loss if required to pay for monitoring. In just the first year, the program would cost fishermen an estimated $2.64 million.
Yet NOAA does not seem to fully realize how seriously this policy puts the fishery at risk. The $2.64 million that NOAA expects the fishery to pay in monitoring costs is $2.64 million that fishermen simply don’t have. The fishery still has not recovered from years of declining quotas and a federally declared economic disaster in 2012. Imposing another unfunded mandate on the fishery will force many remaining fishermen to exit the industry altogether.
Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times