FISHERMEN ON FISHING

Angela Orlando Sanfilippo –

President, the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association

Andrea Sanfilippo at a seafood cooking demonstration, Commercial Marine Expo, New Bedford, MA , June 10. ©Photo by Sam Murfitt

The fact that I have always been concerned about all through the years, you know it – it’s about the people. Magnuson does allow for people, the effects of the regulation has on the people, the effect on their lives and the economic effect on the people. These things are never done in a true and honest way, the way these things are supposed to be done with the right information. I’ll give you an example. In 1994, we opened the Fishermen’s Assistance Centers in Massachusetts and then there was one in Maine and we were open for 12 years. I knew this because I ran the Gloucester Fishing Assistance Center and I was committed to the one in New Bedford and the one in Hyannis. And we retrained, actually sent to school, more than 1800 people, plus thousands of other people that we helped in getting jobs or referred them to other agencies that their need was the cost of fishing. And we documented all this information. Our funds came from the Department of Labor. The Department of Commerce people, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) people, knew that there were these centers and that these things were happening. Never once in all these years did anybody came to me or to my superior and ask who are these people that have been affected, how have they been affected.

During those twelve years we wrote Amendment 5, Amendment 7, Amendment 9, Amendment 13 and now we’re in Amendment 16 (2009) because we closed the center in 2006. No one, but no one ever came to us and ask us about how did people get affected. All this information right now is packed in boxes and in some storage place somewhere and in a couple of years they are going to be destroyed. This stuff has not been documented anywhere. Because the consolidation that took place after 1995 to 2003-2004, it’s immense. We had the 50 percent consolidation of the New England and Massachusetts Fishing Fleet. Also, the other piece when we had the boat buyback program and people sold their boats, and at the moment seemed a very realistic thing to do and I might get myself out of trouble. That only worked for one or two years and once people end up with no more money, because after they sold their boats, they had to pay taxes and they didn’t get much left over and these people ended up not getting a job, because when you talk about a community like Gloucester or New Bedford, they have nothing else but fishing. These people, today, are on welfare and nobody has looked at these people. And in the ’90s the economy was great, we couldn’t train people fast enough to get jobs and in the 2000, there are no jobs.

Where are these people going to go to work once they have lost their jobs and there are catch shares? And now I get people who come in and see me almost daily thinking that we still have that program for retraining and they want to know how can I help them. There is nothing, there is nothing. A boat owner will sell his permit, will lease his permit, he will get a little bit of money but what happened to crew members whose been on the deck, worked boats for 30 years, they get nothing. Those issues have never been addressed. Actually, one time I asked Allen Peterson who used to be the divisional director and he said, “Well, my job is to save fish. Your job is to save fishermen.” So that’s what’s happening. And now they are admitting there are going to be lost jobs, but nothing has been done for them. And yet, under this economy, President Obama every day preaches about creating jobs. And in an industry with a rebuilt fishery, we are losing jobs. This is a serious problem that I think, when we talk about it, even some of our political people don’t take it that seriously and I am sorry to say it, but that’s the way I feel right now.