Breaking the cycle

Fishermen complain that the science government uses to regulate their industry produces results that do not match what they see out on the ocean. Government regulators dismiss those complaints as being driven by unfamiliarity with the long and exacting scientific process. Conservation groups charge the regulators with dragging out the process to avoid making difficult and controversial decisions.

That is the vicious cycle – a needlessly antagonistic and litigious cycle – American marine fisheries have been in for much of the last quarter century. Now, thanks to a scientific blunder and a thoughtful judge, there is opportunity to break it.

The blunder, revealed in a rather embarrassed and belated confession in September by the National Marine Fisheries Service, is that the net on one of the two primary fishing vessels government scientists use to survey populations of critical species on the East Coast was improperly rigged – in a way that practically guaranteed low catches – and had been for two years. That error, combined with the support it gave to the industry’s long-standing claim that the government uses antiquated equipment that also would skew fish counts, turned the old argument upside-down. Perhaps fishermen are not exaggerating the abundance of fish in order to get relaxed regulations. Perhaps scientific data, even at its best, is not enough when it comes to making decisions that can dramatically affect the lives of tens of thousands of people and hundreds of coastal communities.

The thoughtful judge is Gladys Kessler. After potential significance of NMFS’s error, the Washington, D.C., federal judge this week ordered an eight-month postponement of new fishing regulations – called Amendment 13 – that will be based upon NMFS data. The delay in implementation, from next August 2003 until May 2004, will give a panel of independent scientists time to review the data and to see if there is a way to salvage the NMFS data, to compensate for the error to gain more accurate results.

This is not the first time Judge Kessler has demonstrated good common sense on this issue. Last spring, she ruled in favor of five conservation groups that sued NMFS for not implementing strict measures to rebuild declining fish stocks. After reviewing the devastating economic and social impact of those measures, in particular the drastic cuts in days-at-sea, Judge Kessler reversed herself a month later and re-instated a more moderate compromise that had been worked out by the fishing industry and the Conservation Law Foundation. This balance between fish conservation and human concerns has long been needed.

It is crucial, though, that episode does more than cause a delay in implementing ruinous regulations and the re-opening of hostilities. It gives Congress, with Sen. Olympia Snowe a strong advocate on this point, time to re-examine the process by which federal fishing policy is set and the quality of the science used – and, most importantly, to remove the impediments and objections that have prevented fishermen being treated as partners and that allowed the cycle to grow so vicious.