“The Best Tuna Season In 37 Years – Toss Tuna Ban Petition In Trashâ€ff
12 October 2010
United States Source: Gloucester Times Last month, Gloucester-based Capt, Jimmy Santapaolo told Times columnist Peter Prybot that a recent trip to Georges Bank found the best bluefin tuna fishing he's seen in 37 years on the water.
“This is unbelievable,†he said. “The longest our baits have been in the water (before a tuna bit) has been 12 seconds.â€
Another captain, Brian Higgins, told of having tuna nearly “boiling in the chum†right off the boat; yet another, wondering how long it might take to even find tuna in the seas, described quickly spotting two tuna right off the boat’s stern, as if following the vessel.
Granted, the fishermen described in Prybot’s column had ventured to waters more than 100 miles off Cape Ann’s shores. But their findings are far from unique.
To our North, Newburyport harbormaster Paul Hogg said in August he had noticed a large “uptick†this summer in commercial “keeper†tuna — more than 73 inches long — and they were being landed close to home, with some up to 500 pounds.
Given that, one would think that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would recognize that admittedly anecdotal evidence suggests that bluefin stocks are relatively healthy and rebuilding.
As usual, when it comes to assessing NOAA positions, one would think wrong.
Instead, NOAA officials have resisted calls from Massachusetts congressmen Barney Frank and John Tierney to outwardly reject a truly embarrassing petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to declare bluefin tuna “endangered†and therefore ban its taking by commercial fishermen.
Instead, NOAA last month issued a preliminary finding that the endangered designation “may be warranted,†and the agency ordered a “status review†of bluefin in advance of making a final ruling on the petition next spring.
That, of course, is preposterous. And Rich Ruais, president of the American Bluefin Tuna Association, is right to recognize it as a truly “vindictive†action against American fishermen. That's particularly the case since such a ban would do nothing to help the health of the stock on a global basis; U.S. fishermen catch just 5 percent of the bluefin taken from the Atlantic each year.
NOAA officials may once again dismiss the front-line findings of Gloucester captains like Santapaola, Higgins and their colleagues as merely the observations of fishermen who know little about scientific data.
But let’s remember that this is NOAA — whose “scientific data†on pollock was so “accurate†that NOAA Fisheries later had to boost raise the New England allocation by a mere 600 percent, with Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke raising limits on other stocks kept wrongfully tight as well.
And remember that this is the NOAA still headed, in defiance of all good sense and justice, by Jane Lubchenco, the scientist and former Environmental Defense board vice chair who, as an example of credibility, has long stood by an almost laughable report suggesting 2048 will bring the end of virtually all marine life save for jellyfish. That’s a report whose primary author since admitted was merely “spun†to draw a crisis-level reaction.
The truth is, whenever NOAA officials have recently pooh-poohed the statements of “fishermen†— whether on the abundance of fish in the sea, or claims of wrongful regulatory enforcement by NOAA and its henchmen — it’s the fishermen who’ve been proven right, either through hikes in catch allocations or abusive enforcement findings by the Department of Commerce's own Inspector General's office.
And that’s something Jellyfish Jane and other NOAA officials should consider when evaluating the Center for Biological Diversity’s petition to designate bluefin tuna as “endangered.â€
Simply put, NOAA has only one credible choice: That’s to toss the Arizona-based enviro group’s tuna petition on the bureaucratic trash heap where it belongs.
It’s bad enough this “vindictive†anti-fishing petition has reached the level it has.
To let it go any farther would merely solidify NOAA’s vindictive attitude toward fishermen, too.
