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NOAA Shifting to Industry Control Over Fishing Observers
Death Knell for
Independent Monitoring of Marine Mammal and Over-Fishing Rules
WASHINGTON - September 24 - A plan to put substantially more fishing
observers under direct industry control precludes independent monitoring
and saps protections for shrinking fish populations, endangered sea
turtles and marine mammals, according to comments filed today by Public
Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Under the plan,
observers in the North and Mid-Atlantic, now under contract to the
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), would be industry
selected and funded – a move that greatly expands a much-criticized
model in use only for Alaskan groundfish monitoring.
Professional observers accompany commercial fishing vessels to ensure
compliance with catch limits, by-catch rules and regulations protecting
marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds and other non-commercial sea life.
Most of these observers now work under contract to the National Marine
Fisheries Service, a branch of NOAA, or through a direct contract
between the Service and the Observer Provider Contractor. But under a
plan whose public comment period ends today, approximately half of all
observers would work for the fishing fleets they are supposed to police.
“Placing the observers under industry control undermines vital
safeguards for marine mammals and other sea life by compromising the
reliability of any report resulting from observer data,” commented PEER
Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that professional observers are the
only independent source of information for what occurs on the high.
“This is like assigning investigation of white collar crime to corporate
rent-a-cops.”
Apart from the inherent conflict-of-interest for the observers on the
approximately 2,100 vessels covered by the plan, other concerns include
—
* Crippling already weak protections for observers facing interference,
intimidation and harassment. Observer reporting can have direct and
significant financial consequences for violating vessels, but the
ability of NOAA to act on complaints by purely private observers is
questionable, at best;
* Deemphasizing all observer activities not required for monitoring
by-catch limits, such as marine mammal interactions, fishing gear
entanglements and fishing quota limits; and
* Shielding much of the raw data from observer reports from review by
researchers and regulators.
Significantly, the Alaskan groundfishing program which uses a similar
industry funded system has been strongly criticized in evaluations
conducted by NOAA, the Commerce Department Inspector General and
independent experts. The Association of Professional Observers also
strongly opposes the latest plan, contending that the Alaska system
produces “lower wages, fewer benefits and inferior employee retention –
all of which ultimately affect the quality of the data collected by the
observers and the resulting science based on observer data.”
“Privatizing protection of ocean resources is precisely the opposite
direction of where we should be heading,” Ruch added. “While enlisting
market forces can be a powerful dynamic, this plan creates direct
economic incentives for the industry to evade monitoring and distort
data.” |
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