The Catch
Page 3 of 6
|
|
But the core of NOAA’s regulatory work is conducted by a unique and controversial set of eight regional councils whose makeup and methods seem intrinsically to favor industry interests over conservation. With appointees from both the public and private sectors, the councils determine every aspect of fishing in their region, functioning like a local quasi-independent authority. They spell out exactly which fish species can be caught, along with where, when, how, and how many. The councils’ distribution—from New England and the Mid-Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico and the North Pacific—reflects the fisheries themselves, which vary from place to place in U.S. waters.
Under the best of circumstances, with perfectly accurate and timely scientific data, and fishermen who are always wise and cooperative, it would still be tricky to balance the long-term health of the fish stocks, the economic interests of the fishermen, and the interests of the general public. But some long- standing characteristics of the councils make it difficult for them to overcome the decades-long legacy of overfishing.
Prime among these is the fact that most of the nongovernmental voting members of the councils are insiders, direct participants in the fisheries they’re regulating. Most are commercial fishermen, boat owners, seafood processors, or operators of recreational charter boats—people with financial interests. Consequently, the councils are dominated by the same industry that is exploiting the natural resource the councils are charged with conserving. No other federal regulatory agency works this way.
Under the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act (which was revised in 1996), governors of coastal states nominate the councils’ appointed members, who are supposed to be “knowledgeable regarding the conservation and management, or the commercial or recreational harvest, of the fishery resources of the geographical area concerned.” Of New England’s 12 appointed members, eight are from the commercial sector, three are in recreational fishing, and one is from an environmental group (the lone environmentalist in all eight councils). Of the North Pacific’s seven members, six are from the commercial sector.
If this doesn’t exactly amount to putting the foxes in charge of the chicken coop, it raises troubling conflict-of-interest issues. Curiously, the councils are legally exempt from government conflict-of-interest standards. The systemic vulnerability to conflicts troubles some voting members of the councils. Rip Cunningham, a first-term appointee to the New England Council and chairman of its important Groundfish Committee, has a lifelong interest in recreational fisheries as former editor of Salt Water Sportsman magazine. “I consider that I’m on the Council to represent the fish,” he says, conceding the dominance of the commercial interests in New England. Still, he notes that “the appointees are much more broad-minded than they were 10 years ago and willing to work together—but that situation varies from council to council.”
Not all council members are so sanguine. Attorney and recreational fisherman James Fensom served two terms as a Florida appointee on the Gulf of Mexico Council, including a 2002-2003 stint as council chair. Early in 2005, Fensom declined to serve a third term, writing a blistering letter to Governor Jeb Bush, who had appointed him. Noting that the Gulf Council had been singled out by many critics, he wrote that the next appointee “should not be in a leadership position in any fishing organization, should not be a commercial or recreational fisherman who generates income by harvesting fish, should not be an immediate family member of a scientist who receives grants from the National Marine Fisheries Service, and should not be a family member of an employee of the National Marine Fisheries Service.” Fensom added that during his two terms, “there has never been a member who has declared a conflict of interest on an issue and declined to vote,” and some members with a financial stake in the outcome of a vote “strain all logic and applicable science in an effort to maintain current [fishing] limits.”
