We’ll be depending on Congressman Frank and his colleagues in the House and Senate to make sure that representative members of the fishing industry are full participants in the process that Secretary Locke has set in motion. If that’s the case, we can all look forward to a fishing future far less bleak than the one that we are now facing.
First off, I have to salute Congressman Barney Frank, not just for his unflagging support of the fishing industry in his district and nationally, not just for the central role he has played in getting the Secretary of Commerce to pay attention to the fishermen as well as the fish – something that NOAA head Jane Lubchenco has been unwilling to do – but also for recognizing that there are, in his terms, “extreme anti-fishing groups” involved in fisheries management. If you have an interest in fish and fishing, I can’t recommend too highly that you invest 9 minutes in listening to Phil Paleologos’ October 15 interview of the Congressman on WBSM radio’s Saving Seafood show and use it as a gauge of what effective political support is all about (the “extreme anti-fishing groups” quote is at 4:52). Later in the interview (7:44) he states “whether it takes a fish stock thirteen years or nine years to replenish is not a great moral issue.” These words should be carved into Mt. Rushmore, or at least displayed by every restaurant and fish market whose manager’s are tired of trying to explain what pangasius and tilapia are and trying to describe where they come from to customers who want local fish.
Then, like everyone else who thinks fishermen are as important as the fish they catch, who recognizes the value of fishing communities up and down our coastlines and who is opposed to the blatant takeover of our national ocean agency by ENGOs and the billion dollar foundations that support them, I applaud Commerce Secretary Gary Locke’s commitments to the commercial fishing industry in the Northeast and nationally as he set them forth in a letter to Congressman Frank in a letter on October 14 . Needless to say, the announcement of these commitments was accompanied by much fanfare by the industry, as it should have been.
However, this is one of those instances where the devil is definitely in the details.
Read the complete opinion piece from Fish Net Lite.