An Open Letter to Tom Nies from a Fishing Family Member

Dear Mr. Nies,

As Executive Director of the New England Fishery Management Council you should know how fishermen and the public experience the Council’s so-called “democratic process.” Based on your letter “Council responds to Tolley guest column” in the July issue of Commercial Fisheries News, I’m certain that you have no idea and are completely out of touch with the people you serve.

Two issues stand out in your letter:

1. You attempt to minimize the demonstration of public support for fleet diversity protections at the April 2015 Council meeting. You had to have seen the dozen or so people in the room with orange “Who Fishes Matters” t-shirts. But as seems to be the pattern, you ignored those working fishermen who showed up not just in April, but at Council meeting after meeting since 2010. You fail to acknowledge that those who showed up in April were a microcosm of those who have called for fleet diversity Amendment 18.

Through written testimonies, petitions, in-person testimonies, video testimonies, and other means, hundreds have come to the council to express their views. Often the fishermen have spoken up despite intimidation by the Council process, push-back from those in the industry seeking to protect status quo, and organizations that have openly advocated for the public give-away of our ocean commons. You wrote, “the council hopes that after 40 years of operation that its record of public participation speaks for itself.” Our experience and that of hundreds of fishermen and their advocates is that what you call “public participation” has been reduced to what we see in so much of the political system: whoever can buy their way into the policy process through lawyers and lobbyists wins over the everyday people who are showing up in hopes of exercising their democratic rights. What made the April Council meeting particularly problematic is the brazen dismissal of all public opinion brought to the Council and the way in which the Council chair chose to behave to make sure public opinion was suppressed.

2. Not surprisingly, you try to defend a broken process that has failed to incorporate numerous attempts to restore the “democratic process” and integrity of the Council. The Council’s 40-year record speaks poorly of public participation and we are not alone in this assessment.

In 2011, the Council requested a third-party review of its “public process.” The resulting Touchstone Report acknowledged serious problems and found that the Council’s governance process is too complex and discourages active participation; lacks collaboration or constructive dialogue; lacks any presence in the field or use of industry knowledge; requires overly burdensome reporting along with untimely feedback; uses overly complicated wording; is vulnerable to certain Council members “filibustering” in order to make meetings run late into the night; and lacks a vision or strategic plan to guide decision-making.

The Report also offered solutions including: create a more welcoming environment that fosters “service” to the industry; redesign meetings and provide more time on the agenda for collaborative working sessions that promote active participation and dialogue; change the meeting layout and format to be more collaborative; engage professional facilitators to encourage full participation from Council and audience members; minimize individuals dominating the conversation; work with fishermen to understand how, when, and what information they want to receive; and develop a strategic plan for New England fisheries.

The Report goes on to say that many have lost faith in the process. I can’t tell you how many fishermen I speak to feel this way. The responsibility is with the Council to show what it has done to adopt these recommendations since they were issued to restore their faith in the Council. Clearly, what we have experienced around Amendment 18 demonstrates that not much has been done in the way of implementing any of the report’s suggestions.

There is also the peer-reviewed article “The Discourse of Participatory Democracy in Marine Fisheries Management.” Written in 2001, the article concludes that despite official claims to the contrary, fisheries management – especially in New England – is not a genuine participatory democracy, fails to include stakeholders in substantive ways, and does not meet conservation goals.

The article recommends fisher-run workshops for state and federal employees, swapping a day at work periodically with someone in another area of fisheries management, centers for indigenous fisheries knowledge, and formally reconstituting the management process with internal mechanisms that decentralize authority and create authentic participatory roles for fishers and all other interested parties.

But none of those recommendations were taken into account by the Council, either. The truth is that the record of public participation at the Council doesn’t speak well at all of a democratic process.

Despite all this, I’m glad things have come to this point as the events of April and your letters have made the Council’s so-called “public process” a newsworthy topic. Being ignored at the Council or being publicly called an “asshole” by the Council Chairman doesn’t often make the news. Typically fishermen bring solutions, get ignored, and leave disillusioned because of the corrupt process. What the recent events have shown is how a defunct democratic process has made it easy for adopting fisheries management plans that are privatizing, consolidating, and corporatizing our public resource.

How can the Council ever rebuild the trust that’s been broken?

The path forward begins with a commitment to alter course. You must avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again while expecting different results. For trust to be restored among fishermen and the public, we need to see a public commitment from the Council to address these issues.

It’s time to restore a genuine participatory democracy for fisheries management.

– Brett Tolley