Monday’s Boston field hearing of the Senate Committee of Commerce, Science, and Transportation was good political theater. Senator Kerry and Senator Begich from Alaska, chair of the Committee, tried their best to create a constructive and positive atmosphere for the important session.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to conclude that any serious solutions were advanced other than Senator Kerry’s announcement of his Fishery Research and Conservation Investment Act, which would channel scarce federal dollars to areas of research vital to Massachusetts fishermen. The tenor of most of the questioning, or grilling, of NOAA and NMFS seemed focused on advancing personal vendettas against Dr. Lubchenco or on scoring debating points than on working together.
I continue to be surprised by the claim—repeated several times at Monday’s hearing–that the Amendment 16 sector program has produced a “massive” redistribution of fish revenues with the top 20% of the boats in the sector fleet making 80% of the revenues now, up significantly from their alleged 67% share in 2009.
The facts at this time just don’t seem to back up this claim. First of all, a relatively small group of fishermen have been landing the bulk of the groundfish in New England for more than a decade and likely well before that. Second, NOAA’s data from the 2010-11 fishing year suggests that sectors may have been more equitable in their distributional effects in 2010 than prior programs were.
Read the complete article from Talking Fish