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Still frayed

By Jessica Hathaway

I have seen some trends in fishing news lately, one that gives me cause for hope and one that makes me wonder if the little guys will ever come out on top in the face of the power wielded by the federal government.

When NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement was discovered in 2009 to be doling out excessive fines in the Northeast, putting hardworking fishermen out of business, the industry took the opportunity to shine a light on the corruption the fishermen in the region had been facing for so many years.

NOAA’s own inspector determined that the OLE director led a shredding party in which a significant portion of the office’s documents were destroyed at the Gloucester, Mass., office before anything was handed over to the investigation. That is exactly the kind of crime for which we ought to use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a byproduct of the Enron scandal. Instead, we see this document-shredding law applied to fish. (Read more about the John Yates case on page 19.)

Can you guess what happened to the federal employee who allegedly led the charge to shred evidence? He was reassigned. Not fired. Not prosecuted. And what about the fisherman who was accused under Sarbanes-Oxley? He went all the way to the Supreme Court.

There are signs that the federal government is committed to focusing on halting illegal, unregulated and unreported seafood. My hope is that the feds continue to home in on foreign product and bona fide poaching stateside with appropriate penalties. One of the biggest threats to our industry is the influx of improperly labeled imports.

On the bright side, there does seem to be an increase in the understanding that we need to both preserve our historic fishing industry and ensure that we have healthy fisheries for generations to come.

Many environmental groups at long last seem to understand that fishermen want the best for their fishery, and that means clean water, healthy stocks and success stories to hand down to their children. NGOs can put their money where their mouths are by creating partnerships rather than establishing a divide.

We often say that we can look to Alaska fisheries to improve fishery management. But we cannot forget that we have so much to learn from the rich history of our oldest fisheries on the East and Gulf coasts. Let’s hope we can learn enough to preserve them before we let them slip away.

 

» Read more from Jes in her weekly Rudderpost blogs.2015 NFmay cvr

» Read more articles in our MAY issue.

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