reports on Feb 24th

[jackdaniels]

TINA HARBUCK | Florida Freedom Newspapers

http://www.newsherald.com/news/fishe...31-march-.html



WASHINGTON, D.C. — With signs in hand, stickers plastered on shirts and groups carrying banners, the message was the same — “I FISH, I VOTE.”

Those were the words shouted by the more than 4,000 fishermen and friends gathered Wednesday afternoon at one of the demonstration areas in front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Panama City, Mexico Beach and Destin were represented with more than 35 captains and deckhands, many who spent 18 hours on a bus traveling to Washington. About 20 of them had flown in for the rally.

“This is amazing,” said Capt. Mike Eller of Destin as he looked out over the crowd. “I think this is a clear indication at what kind of reach the Magnuson Stevens Act is having across America,” said Eller, who docks his charter boat Lady Em behind Harbor Docks in Destin.

“Two years ago, we were told you couldn’t change the Magnuson Stevens Act,” Eller said.

But in the last couple of days since he’s been in Washington, he said there is new hope.

Capt. Ken Anderson of Panama City’s Capt. Anderson’s Marina was of the same opinion.

He said they had received “a lot of positive feedback” in the last couple of days after meeting with legislators.

“And we’re excited about this crowd,” said his wife, Pam Anderson. “But they are here, because they need their jobs. It’s truly a nationwide problem.”

Capt. Mark Kelly of Panama City opened the rally with a prayer, and asked God for favor, as well as favor from the politicians.

“Give us a peaceful protest,” Kelly said, “but that our voice will be heard.”

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) was one of the first to speak, getting the crowd fired up.

“It’s time our voices were heard,” Schumer said. “We need to start caring about our fishermen as much as our fish,” which drew shouts and applause from the crowd.

“Rebuilding the fish stock is important, but not at the expense of our fishing communities.

“Shame on the Magnuson Stevens Act,” he said. “We need flexibility to be able to thrive. We need sound scientific findings. The fish stocks are getting healthy.”

Schumer promised flexibility from the Legislature, “so boats are not tied up at the docks,” he said.

“We want to thank you for voting with your feet by being here,” Schumer said. “And we’re not going to stop until we get what we want.”

Sen. George LeMieux of Florida encouraged the fishermen to go to the offices of their congressmen and tell them, “We’ve got to change this law.”

Congressman Adam Putnam, also of Florida, agreed, “when did flexibility become an ugly word … we’re not going to stand for it. We’ll be there and we’ll get it done.”

[jackdaniels]

N.C. fishermen express regulation frustration
http://www.newbernsj.com/news/fisher...-national.html
Sue Book
Sun Journal Staff

Five busloads of North Carolina commercial and recreational fishermen joined more than 3,000 fishermen on Capitol Hill on Wednesday in a display of solidarity in their mutual frustration with national fishing regulations.

Calling the rally “very successful,” Mikey Daniels, a commercial fisherman and member of the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission, said, “We’re asking for some flexibility in the Magnuson Stevens Conservation and Management Act.”

The act covering federal fisheries law was revised in 2007 to include more stringent quotas and size limits for catches and more restrictions on incidental catches.

“People can’t take it no more, they’re going to be run out of business,” said Daniels, a fisherman and part owner of Wanchese Seafood.

Daniels said U.S. Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., and U.S. Sens. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and Richard Burr, R-N.C., were among the national leaders listening at the rally that continued for more than three hours.

He said “the Gloucester, Mass., mayor told them that before tighter restrictions, they had 250 boats. Now they are back to 50 boats. Fishermen from Long Island Sound said it may be the last year they’ll be open.”

“The recreation fishermen were with us; this was a joint meeting,” Daniels said. “We agreed to working together. The same thing is happening to them. Things have got to change.”

In the caravan of fishermen from top to bottom of North Carolina’s coast, Morehead City fishermen filled two busses that joined one from Wanchese, one from Hatteras and one from Hampton.

“In a time like it is now, we need jobs,” Daniels said. “We’re not asking for money. We’re asking to go and catch fish and feed our families and feed the world.”

He said that in the Atlantic fishery in 1989, 40 million pounds of flounder were landed, 18 million of them off North Carolina.

New restrictions limit North Carolina’s share of the catch to 3 million pounds, Daniels said, and put “the price so high you can’t sell it to the processors to be frozen for the summer.”

“If our quota was doubled we could be processing the fish,” he said. As it is now, “we’re having to import from other countries to serve in our restaurants.”

“We talked about the turtles today, but this has nothing to do with the turtles,” said Daniels, who sits on the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission hit with a lawsuit this week by sea turtle advocates seeking to further alter methods and catch to help save threatened and endangered species.

“If that’s a big issue, why don’t we have a turtle hatchery on the Outer Banks,” he said. “It would help the species and be a good tourist attraction.

“But we’ve got to survive somehow. Human beings have got to live, too.”

Some of the Washington leaders listening Wednesday are among the co-sponsors of a bill called the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act of 2009, which Daniels thinks can help the plight of North Carolina’s commercial and recreational fishermen.

Sue Book can be reached at 252-635-5666 or sbook@freedomenc.com.

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[jackdaniels]

United We Fish' 20 lawmakers join up to 5,000 at Capitol rally
By Richard Gaines
Staff Writer
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/punew...055230045.html
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In the middle of a chilly mid-winter's week, a mix of men, women and children in the thousands from the fishing industry's northern and southern commercial and recreational sectors stood united yesterday with more than 20 members of Congress.

There were Alaskans in the crowd, along with 1,100 from the Florida Panhandle who had to travel 18 hours on chartered buses.

New York's U.S. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both Democrats, and Massachusetts' newly elected U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, a Republican — as well as Congressman Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., originator of the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act — headlined the speaking program.

Brown's appearance was a surprise. He embraced the industry's cause but also acknowledged the need to be briefed on industry issues.

But the appreciative cheering hardly discriminated, as one after another, congressmen and senators made common cause with the fishing folks, to cheers of thanks — and a few wisecracks.

Congressman Barney Frank, who represents the nation's No. 1 cash fishing port in New Bedford and found time for the fishing folks while presiding over a flight of hearings into the banking debacle, said he wished the banking regulators treated the financial industry "as harshly" as fishery regulators have treated the fishing industry.

The mix of industry protesters produced a raucous, at times angry, and sometimes humored yet always pointed show of solidarity — along with a vowed determination to win an uphill struggle for statutory relief from a rigid ecosystem recovery schedule for fishing stocks.

The requirement that all overfished stocks be rebuilt completely at once has been used by federal fishery regulators to crash down on catch limits even as stocks virtually across the board are surging back in health.

"In Gloucester, you can walk on the cod just like you can red snapper in Florida," said Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, who was one of the rally speakers. Others on hand included Gloucester's state lawmakers, Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante and Sen. Bruce E. Tarr.

Capitol police were inconspicuous, and offered no crowd figures.

But the consensus of the many unofficial estimators was of at least 5,000 and perhaps many more — enough fishing people to stand elbow to elbow in a 50-yard square, then drift out in less concentrated rings to the east of the Capitol — a couple of blocks from Union Station.

Event management specialists hired by the Recreational Fishing Alliance, the rally's lead sponsor, funneled train travelers toward the rally and the seat of power and focus of the appeal for redress of grievances.

The Recreational Fishing Alliance had been projecting between 3,000 to 5,000 would make the trek from far-away ports to energize the legislative insurgency. Most estimators believed the crowd exceeded the forecasts.

Longtime lobbyists, industry leaders and politicians agreed that they could never recall single-minded, public togetherness of this scale from traditionally fractious commercial and recreational sectors, which have tended to scuffle and spat in debilitating sibling rivalry for fishing opportunity.

It took the restrictions and requirements of federal law — namely the 1996 and 2006 versions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act — to spotlight a shared concern for survival that pulled them together in unprecedented numbers.

"Arbitrary deadlines have been wreaking havoc on communities that have been going strong since the American Revolution," said New York's Charles E. Schumer, lead sponsor of the Senate version of the Flexibility in Rebuilding American Fisheries Act. "It's time our voices were heard."

"You can't brush aside basic science," said Gillibrand, Schumer's New York colleague.

By the time the core of the rally wound down — about two hours after it kicked off at high noon with the stem-winding invocation by a Florida charter boat captain-preacher — the crowd that had been filtering in all week had its spirits buoyed with validations in a variety of political dialects.

"There are many issues in Washington that are hard to understand," said Congressman Frank LoBiondo, D-N.J. "This isn't one of those. This is about the right to fish."

"We're not here just to wave signs. We came to make a change here," Congressman John Mica, D-Fla., added in a bit of a drawl. "I've never seen a group abused like this."

Getting two dozen members to leave their chambers in the middle of a session to participate at a fishing industry rally was an accomplishment that will not be missed by the membership, this lawyer-lobbyist said 90 minutes into the event, which unfolded with casual informality within the basic structure established by the New Jersey-based recreational alliance.

An unexpected roiling factor in the political calculus was last month's report by the U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General into wrongdoing by law enforcement agents of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service. Based on a six-month national probe, IG Scott Zinser affirmed that chronic complaints of prosecutorial misconduct, including actions that demeaned fishing industry targets, were valid.

"We've got a report from the IG that will bust their butts," noted Congressman Walter Jones, R-N.C., who represents the Outer Banks.

One Washington-based lobbyist-lawyer who asked to remain anonymous said he believed the IG's report has had the effect of validating the fishing industry's view that Magnuson requirements are unnecessary harsh.

However, the newly appointed federal head of fisheries — who was denied a chance to speak by the organizers — strode around the crowd's exterior with a written statement supporting the need for keeping the rigid Magnuson-Stevens Act recovery deadline in place.

Eric Schwaab, a veteran Maryland fish and game official, was appointed to head the federal fishery management bureaucracy earlier this month by NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco.

Monica Allen, a communications specialist for NOAA, was handing out prepared statements of Schwaab's thinking in support of the 10-year rebuilding timeframes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

"I understand the criticisms of the ... rebuilding timeframes in Magnuson," Schwaab said in the prepared statement. "However, I believe Magnuson already contains the flexibility we need for rebuilding stocks by allowing certain exceptions based on biology and other issues."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.