May 6, 2021 — For all the controversy and high-strung emotion that can accompany fisheries decision-making bodies, the federal council that manages fisheries in the North Pacific says it hadn’t ever received public comments with explicit language… until last month.
North Pacific Fishery Management Council members like Bill Twiet said at the council’s April meeting they worried that crude language and personal attacks could prevent people from speaking up.
“We lose collectively — the council loses, but also the council family loses — when people choose not to engage with us because they look at some of that testimony and they think ‘If that’s the cost of speaking up, I don’t want to,’” Tweit explained.
Council members say five of the nearly 600 comments submitted to the council last month contained vulgar language or personal attacks. The council’s executive director says his staff reached out to the commenters and asked them to resubmit, sans swearing. One did.
But those five comments were apparently enough to prompt changes to the council’s written comment policies. That includes a profanity filter, tighter deadlines for submitting comments and some discretionary power for Council staff to move — or remove — off-topic comments.
And that’s prompted outcry from longtime fisheries advocates. The head of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association Linda Behnken says she’s never seen the council move like that: “I mean, never seen them bring something up, take action, boom, done without more opportunity for meaningful engagement.”