THE ADMNISTRATION SEEKS TO SHORTCHANGE FISHERIES; RESPONSIBLE LEGISLATORS DISAGREE

I spent the last three days wandering around the nation’s capitol, visiting key legislators’ offices and asking them to reject the President’s proposed budget, which would cut the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget by 13 percent.

I wasn’t alone.  

Other New Yorkers, concerned with the health of our oceans, were working with me, and we were only one of a number of teams, made up of stakeholders from every coast, who were out conveying the message that our fisheries, and our oceans, should not be shortchanged.

Each of us brought our own concerns and experiences to the table, and came at things from a different angle.  For me, it was all about developing good fisheries science, using it to craft effective regulations, which are then adequately enforced.

All of that, in the end, requires a well-funded NOAA, and that’s something that we won’t enjoy if the President’s budget prevails.

The good news is that the power of the federal purse belongs to Congress, not to the President.  While the President’s budget is a policy statement, which expresses where the current Administration believes the nation should expend its treasure, only Congress can appropriate funds for particular purposes and actually fund federal agencies.

Congress and the President often have very different ideas on where that funding should go.  There are many members of Congress who are aware of the public benefits provided by NOAA, and who thus understand the benefits conveyed by a fully-funded NOAA far better than does the current Administration, which seems unable to comprehend the need for good science or the effective conservation of public trust resources.

Our mission was to assure such legislators, including Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY-15) and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY-17), that their long record of supporting adequate funding for marine conservation was deeply appreciated, and to encourage them to continue to support NOAA programs and to push back against the imprudent cuts in the Administration budget.

We were a diverse crew.  We came from many coastal states, and represented a host of interests, that were brought together by the common need for effective, science-based conservation and management of all of the nation’s marine resources.

Some of us were anglers, although I was the only recreational fishermen on the New York team.  Others on our team were educators, or represented researchers, aquarists, marine mammal advocates and other conservation interests.  Coastal zone management was a concern, as was marine debris, anadromous fish stocks and the impacts of a warming ocean on shifting fish populations.  But regardless of our particular concerns, we all were interested in preventing unwise cuts to the agency budget.

That being said, we each focused on the issues that we were most familiar with, and that were most important to us.  Naturally, I concentrated on fisheries matters.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I am an advocate for effective, science-based fisheries management.  So in every office that we visited, I discussed the critical role that the Northeast Fisheries Science Center plays in our local fisheries, and explained how badly both recreational and commercial fishermen would be hurt if the Center was forced to cut back on its capability to produce not only the definitive, benchmark stock assessments that come out every five years or so, but also the regular monitoring and the interim, “operational” assessments that provide snapshots of stocks’ health in between the benchmarks.

New York's Senator Chuck Schumer has long been involved with fisheries issues.  He has again introduced S. 908, the “Fluke Fairness Act,” which is intended to compel fisheries managers to consider the impacts of warming waters and a shifting summer flounder stock when managing the recreational and commercial summer flounder fisheries, and would provide New York fishermen with summer flounder catch limits that reflect the current abundance of fish in local waters. 

Thus, when visiting Sen. Schumer’s office, in addition to talking about the general need for good science, I singled out the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s role in researching the impacts of climate change on so-called “shifting stocks,” which include summer flounder.  For it is the climate-driven shift in summer flounder abundance that created the need for the Fluke Fairness Act, and it is the continuing shifting stocks research being conducted by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center that will demonstrate the merits of Sen. Schumer’s bill.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has co-sponsored the Fluke Fairness Bill, and has long reached out to New York’s fishermen; about 15 months ago, I had the privilege of being invited to a fishermen’s and farmer’s forum that she held at Stony Brook University, where she listened very carefully to, and was already largely aware of, fishermen’s concerns.  Thus, her office has long supported fisheries science, and adequate funding for NOAA. 

While there, I made a point of mentioning a science program that’s particularly important to me, the Narragansett Marine Laboratory’s Cooperative Shark Tagging Program, the largest and oldest cooperative fish tagging program in the world, which has leveraged its modest budget into a public/private partnership of scientists, anglers and commercial fishermen throughout the North Atlantic basin, who have tagged about a quarter-million sharks of 35 different species since the program began in 1962.  An atlas of sharks tagged between 1962 and 2013, which revealed some new and unexpected information on many shark species was recently released, and is just one more example of the quality science that NOAA produces,

When we stopped by the office of Nydia Velasquez (D-NY-07), who sits on the House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Water, Oceans and Wildlife, and is a member of the House Estuaries Caucus, we talked about adequate NOAA funding, including adequate funding for the two fisheries management bodies that have the greatest impact on New York fishermen, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.  

As we visited the offices of Grace Meng (D-NY-06) and Thomas Suozzi (D-NY-03), and in all of the other legislative offices visited by the New York team, I also concentrated on two very important truths:  That effective, science-based management leads to healthy and abundant fish stocks, that such abundance inspires greater angling effort, and that such greater angling effort results in greater economic benefits to fishing-related businesses; and also that the best science, which leads to the best-crafted regulations, doesn’t achieve very much if those regulations aren’t obeyed.  That can be a particular problem when federal regulations are being violated in federal waters—poaching striped bass in the EEZ is one particularly virulent example—where enforcement efforts are relatively limited.

Thus, I emphasized the need to continue adequate funding for joint enforcement agreements, that see federal funds transferred to state enforcement agencies, such as New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, which then conduct enforcement activities that support federal fisheries regulations.  It’s a program that benefits both state and federal enforcement efforts and, more importantly, provide real benefits for the nation’s marine resources.

As yesterday wore down, and I made my way back toward Washington’s Union Station and my train back to New York, I was slowly relaxing after spending much of the past few days thinking of little but fisheries issues.  The soles of my feet were a little sore from walking around on the Hill.

But I was happy, because I had been dealing with a lot of good people in a lot of legislators’ offices, who made it clear that they didn’t agree with the President's plan to irresponsibly slash the NOAA budget, and leave the agency unable to adequately conserve and manage the nation’s fish, its protected marine resources, its estuaries and coastal habitats. 

There are long fights ahead.  But I've also observed first-hand that there are also folks in the House and the Senate who are willing and able to win them.