What a Mess
My cynical gene is acting up again, in fact it has gone into overdrive.
The National Marine Fisheries Service is charged with protecting the fish and regulating fisheries of the United States. While they sometimes seem quite zealous in their protection of the fish, they also seem determined to regulate the fisheries out of existence. How does this benefit the public? Well, they also appear to have another plan. They are seeking to replace the American commercial fishermen with American Commercial Fish Farmers, taking the right to produce fish for the American consumer away from the group who have developed and worked in the fishery and handing that right over to a small special interest group.
In the case of the Gulf Council of NMFS, they have decided at their January 2009 meeting to take away five months of production from the producers of most of the wild caught red grouper, Florida’s commercial longline fleet. This is being done based on incomplete science and the outcry of alarm from several conservationist groups. They now appear set to hand over production of grouper, amberjack and other species to a small special interest group, (a group that incidentally includes one of the voting members of the Council). They are moving ahead with this plan despite the fact that what science there is on the subject suggests there can be huge problems involved and despite the fact that it has generated an outcry of alarm from many of the same conservationist groups they seek to satisfy by putting the fishermen out of business.
Why this double standard? Why, when it comes to the American commercial fishing industry is the Council willing to apply policies of close down, limit, and over-regulate, yet when it comes to special interest groups that include one of their own voting members they adopt a policy of moving ahead with little knowledge of what they may be permitting could do to the ecology of the Gulf and sure knowledge that what they are considering allowing will be economically devastating to the American fishing industry?
Why indeed.
