At the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum the fishermen expressed their dissatisfaction over the new national ocean policy created last summer by President Barack Obama. The policy lays out a top-down management structure, they indicated, which likely will result in adverse impacts on fishermen.
David Wallace of Wallace & Associates, a seafood consulting firm in Salisbury, Md. said that they do not have the opportunity as fishermen to be directly involved in the process, and that concerns him. Federal officials said that the main purpose of the policy is to better coordinate the efforts of multiple federal agencies to plan and regulate activities in the country’s marine waters. The policy creates a Cabinet-level National Ocean Council and a regional approach to coastal and marine spatial planning.
Ron Beck of the U.S. Coast Guard’s energy and facilities branch in the Northeast district said the new policy will make agencies better prepared by not having them investigate marine planning and development issues only after they receive a development or permit application. Beck also said that alternative development sites will be better researched, he said, and input from other stakeholders will be gathered much earlier in the review process.
Eric Schwaab of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that fishermen will get the chance to weigh in on how the policy takes shape and is put into practice, especially at the regional planning body level. Schwaab said nine such bodies will be created after a national ocean policy workshop is held this May in Washington. The process, Schwaab acknowledged, was not set up to give fishery groups a formal role in coordinating the policy.
