What fight?  The fight for our jobs, our way of life, and our livelihood.  The way we choose to live and to support our families.  The -- once upon a time -- respected and honorable profession of commercial fishing.  The Gulf is back in business -- for the most part -- and the government is continuing its ongoing alliance with the supposedly Non-Government Environmental Organizations to use flawed science, incomplete data and just plain bullcrap to shut us down and put us out of business.

We are currently getting ready for a major demonstration in front of NMFS St Pete on February 25th 9 AM till noon.  We are hoping for 1000 or more participants as the Recreational and Commercial sectors stand together on these issues.  Fix Magnuson -- manage the fisheries with better science -- stop taking away our jobs -- collect better data in a timely manner.  There is more information of the Fishing Rights Alliance website and we will bring you more information here as we get it.  Try to join with your fellow fishermen, both recreational and commercial, in a show of solidarity and a gesture of defiance.  We can't just continue to stand by while they close fishery after fishery, usually with no good reason, and we all slowly but surely go out of business and see our lifestyles taken away from us.

Hubbard's Marina on Madeira Beach will be participating by showing up on the water side of the NMFS offices with the MV Florida Fisherman II full of fishermen, unhappy fishermen who would much rather be fishing than demonstrating but who have been given no choice but to speak out and speak up.  If you would like to go on the Florida Fisherman II, we will be departing Hubbard's Marina at 7AM and returning at 3 PM.  Again, more info as we get it.

Click image to download printable .pdf file of flyer.  PLEASE DISTRIBUTE!

The answer is, "yes, she is as serious as a heart attack -- and twice as dangerous."

Since being installed as head of NOAA, which is the government agency that is over the NMFS, which is the government agency that is on a course to destroy the American fishermen, anti-fishing scientist and Pew Fellow Jane Lubchenco has never passed up an opportunity to heap blame on fishermen for anything and everything that has happened, is happening, or -- more often -- she imagines has happened in the Oceans and Gulf of Mexico.

Her latest?  It wasn't the oil that was on their bodies that killed 600 more turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, it wasn't the millions of gallons of Corexit sprayed into the Gulf by BP that changed their environment and ultimately caused their deaths, it wasn't the changes to the environment and food chain caused by the largest oil spill in history that hurt these poor turtles.  No, it obviously probably must have possibly been the fishermen, maybe.  In a perfect example of govenmental -- and Pew spew -- doublespeak, carefully worded so that she has wiggle room if she is ever called to task for her reckless attempts to blame a large group of working Americans for the monsters under the bed in her world, she states that animal autopsies (necropsies) "on more than half of 600 carcasses point to the possibility that a majority may have drowned in fishing gear."  Say what? "the possibility that a majority may have"?  What does that even mean in real-speak?

She then points out that "shrimp and fish - not a natural part of turtle diets - were found in their digestive tracts." begging a couple more questions. 

• One:  how does she think this happened?  Were the turtles eating the shrimp and fish while drowning in shrimper's nets?
• Two:  If they don't eat shrimp and fish, why is it that they have severely restricted an entire fishery (the Gulf bottom longliners) based on the fact fantasy that too many turtles were being drowned after eating too many of the longliner's baits.  Baits that are almost exclusively, err, fish.  C'mon Jane, you can't have it both ways.

Nils Stolpe, of fishnet-usa.com has written a much more complete article about this issue, which I'm reprinting below and which he says will be available on his website in a printable .pdf format.  Until you can download it from there you can read it below, create a pdf, print it or email it to your friends and fellow fishermen.  Like much -- all? -- of his writing it is spot-on and worth a few minutes of your time to read and share with others.  Nils also keeps a blog here, which is well worth reading and can be accessed from the right column of this website along with the two SOFA blogs and one from National Fisherman.

Dead turtles in the Gulf – another NOAA shell game?
Nils Stolpe / FishNet USA / January 5, 2011

Last year's BP oil spill resulted in one and a half to two and a half million gallons of petroleum products being released into the Gulf of Mexico every day for three months. It was the largest accidental oil spill that has ever been inflicted on any ocean anywhere. It resulted in floating oil slicks and subsurface oil plumes that were hundreds of miles in extent. Exacerbating a horrendous situation, with the blessing of the Feds the people at BP sprayed and injected millions of gallons of chemical dispersants, chemicals the use of which has been outlawed abroad because of their toxic environmental effects, into the gulf waters that they had already done such a thorough job of contaminating to "break up" the oil in some totally misguided effort based on "out of sight, out of mind."

Needless to say, none of this was particularly good for the flora or fauna of the Gulf. This fact was brought home by the 600 or so dead turtles that were collected from the areas affected by the spill and by the dispersants used to "control" it.

However, according to Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, in a statement in the Miami Herald on December 30, in her estimation it wasn't BP and the biggest accidental oil spill that the world has ever seen or the wanton use, with her approval, of toxic chemical dispersants that was responsible for the dead turtles. It was fishermen.

Now anyone who has followed Ms. Lubchenco's career, either before or since taking control at NOAA, wouldn't be surprised to discover that she would be willing to hold fishermen responsible for anything bad that's happened since the day that primitive humankind discovered that fish were good to eat. But her attempt to pin the blame for the dead sea turtles on fishermen is stretching the bounds of credulity farther than she's ever stretched them before (and that's up to and including the prediction that our oceans would be populated with nothing but jellyfish at some point in the future because of fishing.)

Her statement about the turtle deaths and fishing was "while nearly all the rescued sea turtles were visibly oiled, to our surprise, most of the dead stranded sea turtles had no observable oil on their bodies and were in good health prior to their death. Necropsies (autopsies on animals) on more than half of 600 carcasses point to the possibility that a majority may have drowned in fishing gear. The evidence is that natural causes of death were ruled out, and that shrimp and fish - not a natural part of turtle diets - were found in their digestive tracts."

First off, what does "the possibility that a majority may have" actually mean? Those seven words have clearly earned a place near the top of the list of the world's greatest bureaucratic non-communications.

This is followed by "the evidence is that natural causes of death were ruled out." I guess so. Dumping a quarter of a billion gallons of petroleum products and chemical dispersants on top of any critters' neighborhood would probably rule out all of the natural causes of death.

Then we get to the part where the dead turtles had ingested shrimp and fish - not a natural part of turtle diets according to Ms. Lubchenco, but not according to numerous web sites (search on "sea turtle diet"), which label them as "opportunistic" feeders. meaning they'll eat whatever they can get. Are we to assume that the fishermen force fed the turtles before they done 'em in? That the turtles choked on those shrimp and fish that they were forced to eat? Or that as the turtles were drowning in the fishermen's nets, they were busy gorging themselves on the shrimp and fish that were in there with them?

Or how about that the turtles were feeding on fish and shrimp because everything else that they could eat had either died or skedaddled because of what BP had done, with the federal government’s approval, to their particular part of the Gulf of Mexico? Or that the turtles were forced out of their normal haunts and away from their normal food by all that oil and Corexit and had to try to feed on what was available? Nah... it couldn't be any of that, could it?

So we have thousands of Gulf fishermen who, because of BP’s actions and the government’s lack of effective oversight, lost their markets and at least half a year's worth of fishing and were actually getting some well-deserved public sympathy. Ms. Lubchenco appears unwilling to put up with that, so with the careful use of words that no one will be able to hold her accountable for she seems to be doing what she can to stop that sympathy its tracks.

And, as an added benefit, she'll probably be able to get rid of even more fishing boats, and fishermen, in the bargain.

As is becoming increasingly evident, it’s well past the time when the powers that be in the Department of Commerce, in the Obama Administration and in Congress should give serious consideration to the real-world implications of having someone with such a profound bias against fishermen and fishing as Ms. Lubchenco so obviously does at the helm of NOAA. After decades of demonstrating that they are world leaders in the conservation of species after species, our fishermen deserve more from Washington than a target painted on their collective backs.

Happy New Year from our friends at NOAA!

Gulf Almost Completely Open

The worst seems to be over.  Some of the fishing boats in the Southeastern Gulf have been having successful trips and now NMFS has opened the rest of the Eastern Gulf, those waters to the East of DeSoo Canyon that have been so productive for so long are all open again.  We'll keep listening to what the returning fishermen have to say after their trips and report back with what we hope will be good news and a hopeful outlook for our futures.

Click Image To View or Print Larger Version

NMFS has scaled back the closed area so that most of the coastal areas and the primary fishing grounds for the bottom fishing fleet in the Gulf is now open.  The latest re-opening gives us back the area off the panhandle of Florida and leaves only a relatively small block directly surrounding the site of the BP incident.  Hopefully they are going to be able to have the entire Gulf open again before too much longer.

Right now, things look good.  The fishing grounds are open and boats are returning to port with good catches, but it may take a long time, years, before the full impact of this disaster on the economy, ecology and fisheries of the Gulf of Mexico is known..  There are a lot of questions still to be answered and a lot of legitimate concerns about how the oversight of the offshore oil industry, and industry that is important to the economy of the Gulf States, particularly Louisiana and Texas, let everyone down.  However there are many legitimate concerns about the ongoing safety of the Gulf waters and the possibility of even greater harm being done to the Gulf and the entire coastal waters of the U.S. if the safety regulation that are in place aren't stringently adhered to and possibly upgraded.

We are pleased the fisheries are back in operation.  We are pleased that the well is capped and the oil spew has been stopped.  However, we really don't want to see this happen again and hope we can rely on our government to show even half as much interest in regulating and overseeing the oil industry as it has demonstrated in regard to the fishing industry for many years.