In
a recent Roll Call commentary (The Magnuson Act: It's a Keeper), former NOAA Fisheries staffers
Eric Schwaab and Dr. William Hogarth boast of their accomplishments while
employed by the federal government. As to
the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (Magnuson Act) introduced
in 1976 and reauthorized again in 1996 and 2006, Mr. Scwaab and Mr. Hogarth
proudly praise their own work in implementing key changes in the federal
fisheries law.
“As
former directors of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
Fisheries Service, we were both fortunate to have been present and helped
implement these key bipartisan reforms to the Magnuson Act,” noted Mr. Schwaab
and Mr. Hogarth collectively, adding “these reforms have demonstrably improved
the health of our oceans, sustainability of our fish stocks and the viability
of many local fishing economies.”
Sadly,
since the 2006 reauthorization of the Magnuson Act, coastal communities have
been anything by economically viable. A
recent NOAA Fisheries socioeconomic study showed the number of saltwater
fishing trips has gone down every year since 2008, due in part to debilitating
cutbacks to recreational fishing seasons because of a broken federal fisheries
law; yet in a rather staggering government revelation, while fewer Americans
are legally allowed to access coastal fisheries, their data shows job growth in
the recreational fishing sector skyrocketed 18% from 2008 to 2011.
This
of course is especially surprising when one considers that our federal
unemployment rate during the same timeframe jumped from 5.1% to 9.1%. While NOAA Fisheries and U.S. Department of
Commerce statistics show that income and sales growth in the recreational
fishing industry somehow managed to spike 40% between 2010 and 2011 with fewer
actual customers, reports from actual business owners show a stark reality
that’s much more in line with our recessed national economic numbers.
That
is of course why members of Congress have convened numerous hearings in
Washington DC since the last reauthorization of the Magnuson Act in 2006,
hearing first-hand how fish populations are improving while the overall state
of the fishing community is in economic disarray. Individual anglers and recreational fishing
industry leaders are appealing to Congress for assistance, despite the
double-talk from some double-dipping former bureaucrats.
The
collapse of the American recreational fishing industry was no surprise. As
Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries in September of 2007, Dr. Hogarth
himself sent a widely circulated memo about the Magnuson Act in which he warned
that “based on the language included in the most recent reauthorization, 2010
will be a train wreck.” He was
right.
And
under direct questioning by Congress a year earlier, Dr. Hogarth told members
of the House Subcommittee on Fisheries and Oceans that certain rebuilding
requirements in the law were “arbitrary,” and asked for some “flexibility” in
meeting some of deadlines. However,
instead of helping steer the fishing industry clear of the “train wreck” and
ensuing economic devastation, Dr. Hogarth left NOAA Fisheries in 2009 to take
over as Director of the Florida Institute of Oceanography.
In
addition to the restrictive regulatory controls written into the federal law at
the behest of environmental non-government organizations (ENGO’s), a comprehensive
data collection overhaul was mandated by Congress which called upon NOAA
Fisheries to implement a saltwater angler registry while making use of existing
data regularly compiled by the for-hire sector captains who run charter and party
boats. Specific language in the Magnuson
Act relied upon a key 2006 study from the National Academy of Sciences by calling
upon NOAA Fisheries to implement a robust new recreational data collection
methodology as of January 1, 2009.
After
Dr. Hogarth left this project in limbo, Mr. Schwaab took over as Assistant
Administrator of NOAA Fisheries in 2010.
In reporting on the delayed data collection rollout, Mr. Schwaab told a
national sportfishing publication in 2011, “while we would certainly have liked
to make this transition to the new approach more quickly, the process of new
survey design, angler registry development and transition to new methods
required more time.” Later in 2011, under questioning by the House Natural Resources
Committee, Mr. Schwaab described his agency’s handling of this particular project
as “suboptimal.”
Of
course, “suboptimal” data collection is in turn what the Department of Commerce
uses today to measure the socioeconomics of the sportfishing industry, hence their
rose-colored view of recreational fishing as a ‘growth industry’ while anglers
are continually forced off the water due to draconian federal restrictions. Perhaps the most quotable commentary ever
given by Mr. Schwaab though was in 2011 in a video interview produced by the
NOAA Ocean Media Center and posted at You Tube
in which the Acting Administrator explains “we will be judged not by our words
but by our actions.”
Like
Dr. Hogarth, Mr. Schwaab skipped out of NOAA Fisheries before completing his
pledged tasks, taking over as Chief Conservation Officer at the National
Aquarium in Baltimore, MD just last year.
The new recreational data collection methodologies have still not been
implemented, with current NOAA Fisheries staffers readily acknowledging that
neither the national private angler registry nor coastwide vessel trip reports are
being actively integrated into the federal data collection efforts. In 2006, the National Academy of Sciences
referred to this data specifically as “fatally flawed” – regrettably, it is
just as “flawed” today as it was during the tenures of Dr. Hogarth and Mr.
Schwaab.
In
addition to leaving projects incomplete and in total disarray, Mr. Schwaab and
Dr. Hogarth share another similar distinction with regard to their present
employers; both the Florida Institute of Oceanography and the National Aquarium
in Baltimore are heavily funded by philanthropic endowments, charitable
donations and ENGO grants. While neither of these former bureaucrats has to
answer to coastal anglers or industry leaders ever again, they do have to be
mindful of the wants and wishes of their wealthy benefactors in their new roles
as non-profit mercenaries.
Sadly,
many of these financial gift-givers are the same ones trying to influence
Congress away from listening to the pleas from the recreational fishing
community regarding federal fisheries reform.
Dr.
William Hogarth and Mr. Eric Schwaab had plenty of time to be judged by their
actions while in position of authority within the Department of Commerce; respectfully,
they gave up the relevancy of their words related to federal fisheries once
they walked away from their shovels and axes along that unfinished stretch of
railroad track, allowing the “train wreck” to occur while they were out
searching for greener pastures.
These
are the actions that anglers will remember most when it comes to judging
accountability inside our federal government; and the only words our
recreational fishing industry care to hear right now are from members of
Congress, in terms of honest pledges to fix a broken federal law and to hold
NOAA Fisheries to a certain standard of responsibility to the fish, the
fishermen and the recreational fishing industry.
On
May 29th, 2014, the House Natural Resources Committee voted 24-17 to move H.R.
4742, the aptly titled Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing
Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act” to the floor of the House for a
vote. In his opening statement on the
need to reform the Magnuson Stevens Act in Congress, committee Chairman Doc
Hastings (R-WA) said “One of the key messages the Committee has heard is that
while the 2006/2007 amendments to the Act were good, those requirements have
been hard to achieve in some regions without significant economic pain and that
some level of flexibility is necessary.”
“The
goal of HR 4742 is to strengthen and improve the Act through common sense
reforms that increase management flexibility based on science, ensure greater
government transparency, promote responsible fishing and prevent overfishing,
improve fish data collection, and provide predictability and certainty for
American jobs and local communities whose economic livelihoods depend on
fishing,” Chairman Hastings added.
Anyone
who watched the hearing (click here to watch the archived version of the
hearing) easily recognized the common theme among both democrats and
republicans; that the abject failure by NOAA Fisheries and the Department of
Commerce to meet certain statistical requirements under the present law was
forcing undue socioeconomic hardship on coastal fishing communities. Further, the wanton destruction of essential
fish habitat by the Department of Interior outside of the Commerce Department’s
jurisdiction had made a mockery of the government accountability process,
forcing Congress to write new laws to get the government off its ass.
In
other words, without congressional intervention, government lifers like Mr.
Schwaab and Dr. Hogarth would never get around to getting their work done.
“It
is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for
his actions” – that concept should apply to current and former bureaucrats as
well, pensioned or otherwise.
