When it comes to monitoring and punishing fishermen for an errant fish caught in violation of complex, confusing regulations, NOAA has built up a deserved reputation as aggressive, ruthless — even, in some cases, criminal. When it comes to enforcing the regulations governing drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico? Not so much.
In the wake of the catastrophic oil spill continuing to flow from the bottom of the ocean after British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded on April 20, the Center for Biological Diversity announced last Friday that it intends to file a lawsuit naming Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as a defendant for failing to enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Among its complaints, it cites the authorization of more than 300 drilling operations in the gulf that were allowed to proceed by the Minerals Management Service without required permits from NOAA.
While the specific blame is pointed at Salazar and the MMS, it is not as though NOAA did not know about this.
NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco wrote a letter last September to the MMS, saying it had a pattern of understating the risks of a major oil spill in the gulf, and the frequency of such spills.
Yet NOAA — no doubt still busy cracking down on fishermen who mistakenly brought perhaps an extra dab into the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, or, horrors, failed to meet a deadline in filling out trip reports — did nothing to halt any of those drilling operations, even though it had the authority to do so.
That may be a reflection of Lubchenco's stated priorities. Last month, she was quoted in an interview on the Web site TakePart saying that, "at the global scale, probably the one thing having the most impact (on the oceans) is overfishing and destructive gear."
So, in her world, fishing is more of a threat to the health of the oceans than 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil pouring into the gulf every day.
Read the complete editorial at The Gloucester Daily Times.