U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has announced that he will meet the 20 members of Congress from the Northeast on May 12. The members of Northeast have wrote a letter to Locke seeking relief from severe fishing limits being imposed on the fishing industry starting May 1.
The letter asked Locke to intervene and use what they said is his legal authority under the Magnuson-Stevens Act to amend fishing allocations on an emergency basis. There were many pleas to NOAA and to Commerce but the federal government was adamant not to change any thing in the existing fishing rules being launched this week. Now the fear is that the limits for certain “choke” species are set so low that they will be reached very early, forcing whole groups of boats, called sectors, to stop fishing for the year entirely when they are only months or weeks along.
The NOAA officials listened to what she, Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk and others had to say, but offered nothing of substance and little in the way of comment. As an attorney, Lafreniere said she is particularly vexed by NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco’s position that the agency won’t look back at its own prosecutorial record, which was heavily criticized by Zinser.
