FROM THE CROWE'S NEST

You Probably Won’t Get There

After summits, rallies, thousands marching in Washington, the unprecedented support of elected officials, and experts testifying before the House in support of more flexibility and accountability in fishing regulations, NOAA is marching deaf eared to their deadline.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, while trying to ignore the criminal charges against their chief enforcement officer, widespread opposition, and their recognition that the plan is incomplete, has damned the torpedoes and ordered the process full speed ahead.

Few doubt that what begins May 1 will change fishing in America. It will change America’s first industry, change the industry that has always represented a chance for the small operator to get ahead, and will therefore change the “real” American dream for many.

This regime has been described by those responsible for having it completed, as a “work in progress”. A book or a sculpture may be called a work in progress, but a law that is a work in progress is not a law, it is an end run around another law.

Inside critics have said the council and NMFS do not know where they are going with this regime. While they try to figure out where they are going fishermen will be driven out of business.

Rather than think outside the box, the box was sealed and guarded. Looking away from the NMFS process at one alternate view. The Department of Agriculture has for decades paid farmers billions to not plant crops. Why not pay fishermen far less to fish less for a few years. Save the fish, save the fishermen, save the fishing communities.

But it would take an act of congress. Right. The Magnuson Stevens Act and farm subsidies, are acts of congress. Congress authorizes the $300 million NMFS budget. What has that been buying us?

There is no comparing the congressional clout of American agribusiness to that of the American fishing industry. But alternate routes are already out there. Reallocation of tax resources can be a part of the fix.

Maybe the framers of this work in progress should have consulted the words of America’s yogi about what they were doing. If they had, they might have come across this from Yogi Berra. “If you don’t know where you’re going, you probably won’t get there.”