Frank not ready to give up the ship on fishing relief

By Steve Urbon
surbon@s-t.com
January 14, 2011 12:00 AM


NEW BEDFORD — It may still be possible to obtain some federal financial aid for the local fishing industry, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told the mayor's fishery advisory council Thursday.

He said he still thinks Commerce Secretary Gary Locke's denial of Gov. Deval Patrick's request for increased catch allocations was "offensive and stupid and wrong."

But in a conversation with Locke Thursday, Frank surmised that Locke was unaware of the total dismissal of economic help in a letter to the governor by Eric Schwaab, head of the National Marine Fisheries Services.

"I asked him if he read Schwaab's letter," Frank told The Standard-Times. Locke said "No."

And Locke then offered to negotiate the issue, he said.

Patrick had requested $21 million in assistance with sector management, which has added a new layer of expensive bureaucracy that Locke and Schwaab did not discuss even as they pointed to increased revenues.

On the subject of increased revenues, Dr. Brian Rothschild, dean emeritus of the UMass School of Marine Science and Technology, demonstrated that the increased revenues are due entirely to higher prices for the fish, not more fish. And the bulk of those revenues are going to the top 10 percent of boats, he explained.

Most of the 90-minute meeting of the mayor's fishery council was spent updating the 100 people present on the status of the campaign to repair some of the damage caused by sharp reductions in catch allocations and the steep costs and practical problems with sector management.

Rick Sullivan, the new secretary of the governor's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, attended the meeting to offer firm support for the fishing industry even as he learns the details of the issues.

In his recap of the events at the federal level, Frank declared that it was time to reshape the New England Fishery Management Council by having appointing authorities — mainly the five New England governors in states with coastlines — appoint representatives with the courage to withstand the pressure members receive from NOAA staff and the environmental lobbies, which are famous for their threats of lawsuits when fish management decisions upset them.

And he related the story of 1995, when a bold Commerce Secretary named William Daley bucked the environmentalists, beat their lawsuit and was proven right about the abundance of scallops, sowing the seeds of today's scallop bonanza. Daley is now President Barack Obama's chief of staff, and Frank is looking toward him to repeat the effort regarding groundfish.

"We're fighting the same people who fought us then," Frank said.

Much of the meeting was spent spotting the errors in the letters to the governor from Locke and Schwaab late last week. That included misinterpretations of the law and of what the governor asserted in his letter to Locke requesting help and supplying a scientific analysis of the data.

Rothschild, who was once a leading candidate for Schwaab's job, said the letters from Locke and Schwaab had "minimal substance" but much speculation. "Two months is a long time to speculate," he said, referring to the time it took to reply to the governor.

SMAST faculty member Steve Cadrin called the letters "a defensive reply without a stitch of scientific debate."