F R O M   T H E   C R O W E ’ S   N E S T

 

Congressional Investigation



Offering up thanks, and no thanks, seems appropriate in the run up to our national day of giving thanks.

The thanks for the Maine lobster fishery goes to the fishermen’s oversight of the resource and a stable management structure backed by a lot of first class science. The Maine DMR manages the lobster fishery. It is staffed by Maine people, the governor appoints the DMR commissioner, many DMR employees live on or near the coast amid the resource. The $300+million lobster fishery supports a lot of families in Maine from the family of the 75 year old Cushing lobsterman with 150 traps to the commissioner’s family.

Our fellow ground fishermen, whose Gulf of Maine pot of golden cod caught the world’s attention nearly 300 years before modern lobster markets developed, appear to have fallen on hard times, but they were pushed. Unlike lobster, groundfish are managed not by neighbors with similar interests and concerns, but a top down absentee bureaucracy characterized by detached careerists spinning through the Department of Commerce’s revolving door to have their resumes stamped and their government job ratings upgraded.

About their 40 years of failure to restore the groundfish stocks federal managers would say “we were only following orders.” Both the reality and the problem, it begs the question, who’s orders. Whatever it’s current condition the groundfish resource remains a self-regenerating multi-billion dollar pot of gold. Influential commercial interests are about in the industry, just as they are in healthcare and munitions, scheming to have things their way.

If the groundfish stocks are failing so miserably and NMFS’ negative predictions are to be believed why are groups like the Environmental Defense Fund lobbying fishermen to bring their permits into sectors? Why are fishermen getting direct mail promoting groundfish consolidation from these private and well-funded groups with “environmental” tags? What’s in it for them? For NMFS it’s not community and family, it’s career and following orders.

For ENGO shills and speculators it’s the goose that keeps on giving the golden groundfish quota, which they want to own and roll out to the highest bidder forever.

Manipulating the sale of the public trust through undermining the rights of fishermen and buying up their fishing permits to create a monopoly after a decades long propaganda effort deserves not thanks, but a congressional investigation.

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