May 6, 2020 — The following is a letter to Randy Blankenship, NOAA’s Southeast Branch chief of the Atlantic Highly Migratory Species Management Division.
I certainly hope all is well. I would think that our federal government is still operating under the Social Distancing Guidelines that our country is under till May 15. With this being said, I am extremely disappointed to be taking calls from my membership that our pelagic longline industry’s observer waiver has not been extended.
Aside from the inherent danger of traveling from all over the country, the inability to practice social distancing within the confines of our small pelagic longline vessels puts both our crews and observers at increased risk.
We have an observer program that operates at a high standard of safety and at-sea risk criteria. I would think the danger of covid-19 to any observer through improper social distancing is far greater than if a vessel’s flares were to expire in the middle of the trip.
NMFS not extending the observer waiver to our pelagic longline industry is a blatant disregard for the wellbeing of our individual captains, their crews, our observers, as well as the families they would be returning to. The Blue Water Fishermen’s Association and its membership will be holding the agency as well as observer program responsible for any negative results of this blatant disregard of the president’s social distancing guidelines.