Media gap

As our editor in chief, Jerry Fraser, mentioned in his Fish eNews editorial this week, it seems like a lot of media folks out there are hunting for the next big story in a 24-hour news world and coming up with: Was the gulf oil spill over-hyped?

I suppose that means that — despite the fact that the leak is not permanently capped and no one has yet taken a single water column to test the long-term damage to any single ocean-dwelling species — it's time to declare an end to this disaster.

Just two weeks ago, everyone I know got a hangdog expression when the subject came up. We all wondered when it would end, and after the actual spilling was over, what damages would follow?

Are those questions answered yet?

The spill is temporarily fixed; we hope it is permanent and that going from cap to backup well will be a smooth transition, but no one can say for sure. The folks at BP even in today's news are saying they can't guarantee that the backup well will work, because the water is so deep, no one's ever done it before.

Sound familiar?

Maybe the big news outlets are tired of talking to distraught fishermen and are eager to pack up their tents and move on to the agonizing tale of Lindsay Lohan's transition from jail to rehab, but we can't declare this story over until our brethren on the Gulf Coast can do the same.

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Jane, doh!

I have to wonder that if Jane Lubchenco had known how catastrophic this year in fisheries management would be, would she have taken the job?

She got off to a widely publicized start by rushing to the coast of Massachusetts to talk to fishermen there about what was not working in their industry. Their answer: A lot.

Her shine started to dull pretty quickly when it became apparent she was in her leadership role not so much to lead but to tow the administration's line toward catch shares.

Despite complaints of a total lack of readiness to implement this system for the Northeast groundfishery, NOAA pushed it through by the deadline of May 1.

Since then, all hell has broken loose.

Not only has the catch share system been a pretty miserable failure in terms of management, but fishermen joined forces to protest poor management practices in a huge D.C. protest back in March.

Next came the Deepwater Horizon spill in the gulf — a nightmare for thousands of fishermen today and who knows how many more to come.

Then the Northeast fishermen started really pushing for some answers as to their heavy fines. Lo and behold, they were right.

No more brushing off fishermen's conspiracy theories about draconian management tactics and fines. So far the evidence shows Northeast fishermen were being fined considerably more than fishermen from other regions, and the money has allegedly been misused as a slush fund for whatever managers fancied — cars, trips, a luxury yacht. All this while fishermen tried to keep their heads above water.

So what does Jane Lubchenco have to say about all of this?

I'm not sure. She hasn't spoken much publicly since the oil spill began, NOAA's slush fund of penalties was exposed or catch shares essentially imploded. But she is holding a summit on Aug. 3 in Washington — at which her constituents will apparently be at least severely underrepresented.

Is it any wonder members of Congress are calling for her ouster?

We've had one worthy shakeup at NOAA this year, when enforcement chief Dale Jones was tossed for allegedly shredding documents ahead of an investigation. It may be time for another.

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Won’t you come home, Bill Hogarth?

Tell me, do you miss former NMFS head Bill Hogarth?

I can’t say I was Hogarth’s biggest fan. NMFS was saddled with over 100 lawsuits when Hogarth took office. One of Hogarth’s first missions was to make the lawsuits go away.

And they did — largely at fishermen’s expense. It was hard to shake the feeling that NMFS was managing fisheries so that environmental groups wouldn’t sue the agency. 

Still, Hogarth was visible. He visited fishing ports around the nation and talked with fishermen. He gave keynote speeches at Fish Expo trade shows on both coasts. And he was available to talk to the media about fisheries issues.

Today, NMFS' role isn’t so clear. It's hard to even know what to call the agency anymore — is it NMFS or NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Serivice or NOAA Fisheries?

NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco is the one quoted in the media these days, not NMFS director Eric Schwaab. Lubchenco and NOAA, not NMFS, appear to be driving the U.S. fisheries management train. Neither Lubchenco or Schwaab, for whatever reasons, have been highly visible in the fishing community. 

If there’s a page they should take out of the Bill Hogarth playbook, that would be a good one to grab. Actually visitng with and talking to fishermen would be a good way of promoting communication and fostering greater transparency in NOAA/NMFS operations.

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Integrity tests may come up short

Today a BP official lauded the team who placed a sealing cap on the gusher in the gulf.

But don't get too excited, he warned, the oil giant is still conducting "integrity tests" to see if this cap will actually cap the well.

"People feel very good about what we accomplished in the last couple days," said BP Senior Vice President Kent Wells, according to a CNN report. "But the job is not over."

I'll say.

On the bright side, maybe once they finally get around to capping this well, we can move on to the job of conducting "integrity tests" on BP itself.

I still want to know more about those reports in the early days of the spill (which seem to have been glossed over, since we've all been rightfully more concerned with putting a stopper in this catastrophe) that indicated the chain of command ignored several signs that the rig was going to blow.

Not only do we owe the devastated people of the Gulf Coast a full investigation, but we cannot forget that 11 workers died on that rig.

A lot of the details can be lost in the chaos that is and will continue to be for who knows how many years or decades.

Let's not lose sight of how this happened in the first place and push our representatives to make some changes.

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Where will it end?

This week confirmed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is seeping into New Orleans' Lake Pontchartrain.

The lake got a lot of press when it flooded neighborhoods during Hurricane Katrina, and in the ’80s and ’90s when great efforts went into cleaning it up and transitioning it into fishing grounds and an estuary for commercial species.

The lake is no small potatoes for local fishermen. According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal this week, "Last year, the lake yielded more than 4.8 million pounds of blue crab, shrimp and fin fish valued at nearly $4.5 million for fishermen, according to the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. It often provides safe fishing when the Gulf is too rough."

Well I guess we knew fishermen on the Gulf Coast were running out of safe havens.

So now the question is what can we do for them?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know money alone is not going to solve this problem.

It's great to have a big fund to draw on, but just ask the fishermen in Prince William Sound if they are no longer heartbroken by the damages caused by the Valdez spill since they got their relatively meager settlements from Exxon.

At a meeting on the oil spill in Alaska this week, citizens called for drastic changes in our federal spill response management.

It is unacceptable that all we can promise right now is the hope that maybe this won't happen again.

Maybe.

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Congressmen seek Lubchenco’s resignation

Congressmen Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and John Tierney (D-Mass.) are stepping up their battle with NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco by calling for her to step down, citing what Frank calls her “hostility” towards the fishing industry.

Frank and Tierney say fishermen are being treated unfairly by NOAA/NMFS on a couple of fronts. For one, the protests of Northeast groundfishermen and state and federal politicians that catch share management is unnecessarily devastating their industry have failed to sway Lubchenco.

"For too long our local fishing community has dealt with unfair regulations, treatment, and practices from officials at NOAA," Tierney said in a press statement he and Frank issued Friday, July 9. "As issues continue to arise, we question whether Dr. Lubchenco and NOAA leadership have done enough to increase responsiveness to the public and Congress, hold agency representatives accountable, and take a critical look at unfair catch share regulations.”

Then there’s the report by the Department of Commerce’s Inspector General that questioned NOAA fisheries enforcement practices. A subsequent forensic audit conducted by the accounting firm KPMG revealed abuses of the $96 million Asset Forfeiture Fund, an account built from fishing fines.

Frank’s frustration in trying to work with Lubchenco has reached a boiling point, culminating in the call for her resignation.

"I have for sometime been disappointed in Dr. Lubchenco's stance towards the fisherman, which seems to approach hostility," Frank said in the press statement. "This latest report confirms that the agency has been badly run without clear initiatives from her to correct the egregious problems at NOAA, and that is why I have called for her removal."

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Frank and other state and federal politicians have been commendable in their efforts to support the fishing industry. The question is how will Lubchenco respond?

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Mainers reach out to Louisiana

As Fourth of July weekend approaches, what is more American than residents of a town reaching out to help a Louisiana fishing community that is suffering from the impacts of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill?

In Maine, a Bangor Daily News editorial this week relates the story of Down-East fishermen who found a way to help their Gulf Coast brethren, free of corporate or bureaucratic red tape.

Little Cranbury Island lobstermen organized a fundraising community dinner featuring local seafood donated for the dinner and an accompanying raffle. A true community effort, island residents turned out in full and raised $1,915.

Next, they got to work to determine how and where to send the money. A little Internet research led them to the fishing community of Dulac, La., which is about the size of the Little Cranbury Island community of Isleford. Isleford’s postmaster then contacted Dulac’s postmaster to inquire where to send the money.

The answer was to send the funds to the Dulac Community Center, a mission project of the United Methodist Church, which provides help to the area. And that’s just what they did. 

According to the editorial, the Isleford residents hope that other Maine communities will follow suit. We do, too. In fact, let’s widen the effort.

There are fishing communities on all coasts that have the same kind of heart Isleford does. If such a movement catches on in fishing communities, then it can catch on in more landlocked towns, too. 

And if enough towns follow Isleford’s lead, then Gulf Coast fishing communities could receive some sorely needed assistance — not to mention a little love.

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Celebrate the Fourth! (With these shackles)

It's the Fourth of July again already!

To celebrate this year, the salmon fishermen of Bodega Bay, Calif., will have an eight-day season.

Despite the fact that few boats are likely to be participating after two years of complete closure and little enthusiasm for the slightly more than weeklong season, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has gone to the trouble to add California and Oregon wild salmon to their "avoid" list.

No doubt there are some gung-ho folks out there whose response to this move, "What took you so long?"

My response is: If there is no California and Oregon salmon on the market (I think you'll have an easier time finding South African lion-burgers than California salmon), why bother to steer people away from it?

This is my biggest complaint with lists like this: They give fisheries a bad rap while they are recovering. And when they've recovered, people remember the big, red AVOID and keep on avoiding.

Bad press is far more memorable than good press.

So let's be careful putting salmon fisheries in the red.

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America ‘Catch’-ing on

Fishermen have longed to get their story out to the American public for years. “Deadliest Catch,” the hit Discovery Channel reality television series, is helping them do it.

The show has done an incredible job of giving the general public a real taste of what it’s like to be an Alaska crab fisherman. Viewers finally get to see fishermen in their element — and the elements alone are enough to make fans shake their heads and tip their collective cap to the crabbers for doing so.

Viewers see what fishermen’s jobs are like, and how hard the work is. But more importantly, they get to know the captains and crew members. Suddenly, viewers understand these guys aren’t just fishermen, they’re real people.

That the message is getting through to the American public became clearer to me this week. The latest episode of “Deadliest Catch” caught the attention of a nationally broadcast sports talk radio program, The Dan Patrick Show.

Patrick and the show’s four-member crew, known as “The Danettes” normally talk about the latest sports stories of the day. But they found time this week to discuss the latest “Deadliest Catch” episode. The season’s final six episodes deal focus on the passing of Cornelia Marie captain Phil Harris, who this season suffered a stroke that eventually claimed him.

Patrick’s executive producer, Paul Pabst, who on the show’s Website lists “Deadliest Catch” among his favorite TV shows, called the episode “powerful television.” And his fellow Danettes likewise expressed their admiration for the dangerous, demanding work the crabbers do.

They only touched on the episode for a minute or two. But even a brief mention on a radio show that’s heard nationwide (it’s also shown on DIRECTV) raises the profile of commercial fishermen tremendously. So just think of the positive effect a full 60-minute episode of “Deadliest Catch” is having every week.

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Fresh shrimp does not come from a pond

I know the gulf oil spill has a lot of folks worried about supplies of local seafood and risk of contamination.

While I must admit that if forced to eat farmed shrimp, I'd prefer "freshwater" prawns from Indiana over any product from overseas (for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the distance Asia-raised seafood has to travel to reach my plate), what I can't stomach is the idea that farmed seafood is inherently safer than wild seafood simply because it's raised in captivity.

According to Indiana shrimp farmer Tim Connor, as quoted in the Indianapolis Star, "With the situation in the gulf, people will want this quality," Tim said. "They know it's safe."

Granted, no one wants to eat oil-contaminated seafood. But the chances that petroleum-marinated shrimp will end up on your shishkebab are slim to none.

Shrimp farmers use pesticides and antibiotics in their "freshwater" ponds. That doesn't sound so fresh to me.

Shrimpers in the gulf are still fishing uncontaminated waters. Get it fresh and wild while you can.

If you happen to be in southern Indiana, find yourself a fried chicken dinner with biscuits, slaw and apple butter. Go local and stick with what you know.

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