Exactly one year after the implementation of sector management, it is impossible to say how the next few years will play out. But it's been a rocky start.

This is one in an ongoing series of stories examining the effects of new regulations on the region's fishing industry.







NEW BEDFORD — Mayor Scott W. Lang was boiling mad as he drove away from Thursday's meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council in Mystic, Conn.



NMFS had done it again: issued an arbitrary fishing limit with total disregard for the effect it would have on fishing communities — a direct violation, he said, of the Magnuson-Stevens Act that dictates the rebuilding of sustainable fisheries.



With nonsensically tight limits on an abundant fish stopping the herring and mackerel boats, some 120 jobs are gone at NORPEL in New Bedford and millions of dollars in catch is being left in the sea for no apparent reason, Lang said.



And almost exactly one year into the new world of sector management and catch shares in New England, the council blissfully ignored what has been going on politically and legally for the past year, he said.



"They were sitting there acting like they didn't understand that major changes are on the way and are coming," Lang said. "This situation still did not comply with the law. And I think this was a litmus test."



It was a litmus test of NOAA's recent and repeated promises to operate with fairness, transparency and cooperation with the fishing industry, all of which have been in short supply for many years.



Beset with investigations and court challenges, NOAA has responded by digging in on sector management and catch shares and keeping catch limits very, very low. It is shuffling personnel around amid scandals and assigning a delegate, it said, to bridge the gap between NOAA and fishing communities. A special detail of officials is visiting Northeast fishing ports to look at how to mitigate the economic damage that NOAA has largely failed to acknowledge.



Last week's vote, in Lang's eye, was a test of NOAA's sincerity about reform, and NOAA failed it.



It was one more disappointment after a year of disappointments for Lang and much of the fishing industry. There has been one false alarm after another about NOAA and the commerce secretary easing up on fishing restrictions and supplying help to fishing communities distressed by the contractions of sector management and catch shares.



It has reached the point where U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as Judiciary Committee chairman, might well use his clout to block the appointment of Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as ambassador to China. That's a maybe. It's a certainty that Congress will grill his successor to make certain that he or she is far more cooperative with the fishing industry and not so cozy with lavishly funded environmental lobbying groups with an animus toward commercial fishing.

Exactly one year after the implementation of sector management, it is impossible to say how the next few years will play out.



One wild card is the federal lawsuit filed last May by New Bedford, Gloucester and many fishing interests to challenge the legality of sector management. The central point is that NOAA failed to obey Section 8 of Magnuson-Stevens, which calls on the agency to examine — and mitigate — the damage that fishing restrictions will have on fishing communities.



The implication is that such a review would make it much harder to justify sector management, so the process was glossed over. The plaintiffs also argued that the new system should have been put to a vote.



Arguments in the case were heard in mid-March, and Judge Rya Zobel's ruling isn't expected for months.



But what happens if Zobel rules in favor of the fishing communities? She asked only one question about remedies in that case: The law's requirement that a referendum be conducted among the fishery before any kind of quota system is imposed. NOAA contends that sector management and catch shares do not constitute a quota system, but the plaintiffs argued that NOAA is playing with words.



Things would hardly end there, though. Whoever wins in federal court will face a challenge in appeals court, in all likelihood. And if a referendum is ordered (which could be years from now), what will it ask? Will it offer options? Would it be take-it-or-leave-it for sectors? Will days-at-sea come back? And who would be eligible to vote? Permit holders alone? What about stakeholders in shore support and fish processing?



Another open question: Why has the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had such a hard time finding a replacement for chief law enforcement officer Dale Jones, who resigned last year in a blizzard of scandal? The six-figure job was advertised once, and then again, the second time without mentioning academic credentials. Rumors are rampant that NOAA has a hand-picked candidate, but no one can be sure.

What is certain is that Jones isn't missed. Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser put him at the center of a law enforcement scandal in the Northeast office. Fishermen have been complaining for years about heavy-handed, unfair, and often vindictive fines and prosecutions for even the smallest infractions. The Gloucester Fish Auction was relentlessly targeted.



The inspector general also found that there was virtually no accountability for an asset forfeiture fund, paid into by fishermen's fines, that once contained tens of millions of dollars. A subsequent audit couldn't sort it out before the auditor's contract expired.



And to top it all off, Zinser revealed that Jones had shredded some 80 percent of his paper files while the inspector general was conducting his investigation.



With all of this, Jones was not fired but reassigned to another job at almost the same six-figure salary he was getting as head of law enforcement.



In the Northeast office, fisheries attorney Charles Juliand, deeply implicated in the Zinser reports, was also reassigned. Susan Williams, a criminal investigator assigned to the Boston/Chelsea law enforcement office of NOAA who was involved in the Gloucester Fish Auction prosecution, was reassigned in late December to the New Bedford NOAA office.



When word of that made Page 1, Mayor Lang and the industry threw a fit about NOAA's lack of respect; the assignment was quietly dropped without explanation.



Commerce Secretary Locke, under political pressure, appointed a special master, retired Judge Charles Swartwood, to look into the individual cases enumerated by the inspector general as examples of possible prosecutorial abuse. Swartwood conducted many interviews and filed his preliminary report last week, but Commerce is keeping it under wraps, rejecting Freedom of Information Act requests.



Ignored without explanation was Gov. Deval Patrick's December letter to his personal friend President Barack Obama, which came on the heels of Patrick's failed attempt to persuade Secretary Locke that rock-bottom catch limits needed to be relaxed to save the fishing industry in the Northeast.



After Patrick made that appeal, with help from fisheries scientists at UMass and the state's environmental agencies, two months went by without a word of explanation. And when Locke finally did reject the appeal, he didn't even justify his reasoning, in the view of Dr. Brian Rothschild of the UMass School for Marine Science and Technology.

The latest revelations and problems at NOAA, revealed, interestingly, by a December 2009 request from none other than John Pappalardo, outgoing chairman of the New England council and CEO of the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen's Association (members of the Fixed Gear Sector, which made out very well in the 2010 catch allocations, being given triple their history in permits).



Pappalardo had become frustrated at the council's bureaucracy and difficulty meeting the challenges of Magnuson-Stevens.



In a report released last week, the independent consultants commissioned by Fisheries Service Director Eric Schwaab described a litany of flaws, weaknesses and shortcomings in the way regulation is conducted in the Northeast. That was followed in short order by another report, this one co-authored by Rothschild, that detailed the management flaws and outdated and inefficient science and management at NOAA.



This one-two punch has already apparently resulted in one resignation: science center head Nancy Thompson emailed her colleagues to announce that she is leaving to pursue other opportunities at NOAA.



Schwaab used the occasion to visit New England last week, meeting with local leaders, including Mayor Lang, and expressing a determination to do better in NOAA rulemaking and relating with the industry. That only made Lang's frustration with the council in Mystic even greater, Lang said.



The review of NMFS management, conducted by Preston Pate, former chairman of the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission, contained so much harsh language that there is rampant speculation that more people will be reassigned at NOAA.



Pate described "a void in leadership, lack of clear direction on management priorities and philosophy, and poor collaboration with external partners."



After interviewing 179 people, including staff, Pate described morale as in decline, with distrust of the science and the research funding process.



Equally damning is Pate's finding that council staff "may have a tendency to overstep their authority by guiding policy instead of supporting an objective view."



That buttresses Lang's often-repeated assertion that NOAA rulemaking is opaque and suspect.



The meeting in Mystic didn't bode well for Year Two.