F R O M T H E C R O W E ’ S N E S T
Change Could Be Possible
The problems facing the New England ground fishing industry continue to morph and compound in complexity. In the forty years since “management” has taken control of what they dubbed over fishing the problem has gone from apparently fewer fish to managing a federal bureaucratic behemoth, the growth of an entirely new analytical marine science, and the infusion of biological factors “almost” unknown 40 years ago.
Winston Churchill said of the Russian bureaucracy in 1939, “It’s a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”. Fisherman and council member Dave Goethel, in council comments last month described the failure of federal fisheries management over the last 40 years by referring to a statement often attributed to Einstein. “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting a different result.”
What is wrong with the resource? It becomes clearer every day, as more pieces of the ground fish puzzle surface, that at this point whatever is wrong it is far more complicated than simply fewer fish. Using the best computers, computer models and best scientists to run programs will not equal the best science until the best information is put into all of this. And that has not happened.
To date John Bullard, the new Northeast Regional Administrator at NMFS appears to be the most in tune administrator in the last 20 years to what the majority are saying about the ground fish resource.
Bullard’s background as mayor of New Bedford, as a teacher and his involvement in social programs in fishing communities could give him a better perspective.
Bullard is of course within the bureaucracy and may not be in a position to easily move it. That bureaucracy has not changed and moves slower than the ground fish resource is changing. It’s a bureaucracy that to most fishermen it impacts, is an enigma with an insane track record.
NMFS management has failed as an arbiter of fairness. Goethel also spoke of a tyranny that moves forward management measures that protect the powerful. NMFS’ pending failure before the federal 2014 deadline and the growing body of information that continues to undermine NMFS policies may bring the needed pressure for change.
Federal ships somehow never sink, but maybe as this one begins taking on water, those known to abandon ship will and change could be more possible.