Pardon my observation

(from the January, 2007 issue of National Fisherman)

You’ve probably read about the former observer who admitted to falsifying reports for 59 trips he had supposedly made. According to NOAA, following a plea deal he “was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to pay restitution of $29,541” The restitution was reportedly the salary he was paid for the trips. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of embezzling / having received public money that he was not authorized to retain as salary, failing “to conduct fishery sampling trips aboard federally permitted fishing vessels while still accepting his salary” in 2001 and 2002.

According to an article in the Atlantic City Press, the ex-observer attempted to make his trip reports look authentic “by marring them with coffee stains and blood.”

So what? You might ask. He got caught with his hand in the cookie jar and got his wrist slapped. It happens all the time, and few of us are surprised to learn that government employees are as capable of breaking the law as anyone else.

Contrast that to the case of the operator of a Woods Hole commercial fishing boat who was issued “an $82,500 civil penalty and 136-day permit sanction after he allegedly ignored instructions to fish with a NOAA Fisheries Service Observer aboard during an upcoming trip.” He was selected to carry an observer, but was told that his boat did not meet “safety requirements needed to carry an observer, and the vessel was prohibited from fishing until the requirements were met.” He went fishing anyway, and NOAA Special Agents boarded his vessel when it returned to port. The boarding also resulted in a catch seizure with a total value of more than $2,675.”

Both of these cases were reported, with that air of smug self-congratulation, in NOAA Office of Enforcement news releases.

There are few people who are as important to particular fisheries as federal observers. What they report has a direct bearing on the future of the fishery, or its lack of a future. While it won’t be news to most of you reading this, if too many “interactions” with the wrong kinds of critters are reported by these observers, the subject fishery can be severely restricted or shut down (and, of course, Oceana’s lawyers will be there with an open checkbook to ensure that the maximum amount of fishermen’s blood is spilled in the bargain).

By the same token, the fisheries management system mandates that there are few fishermen’s responsibilities as important as complying with the requirements of the observer program.

This is where the unsettling part comes in.

The NOAA bureaucrats in all probability justified the harsh treatment accorded the fisherman because he dared to interfere with the observer program. Otherwise, all he did was go fishing (and he evidently had a legal catch, if not he would have been hit with another huge fine). They couldn’t let a fisherman flaunt their system, so they socked him with a big fine and permit sanction.

But what about the ex-observer? Wasn’t what he did at least as damaging to “the system?” Yet all he had to do, according to NOAA, was pay back the salary that he had received but hadn’t earned.  How much faith should any of us put in an observer system where the observers aren’t 100% reliable. After this episode there are some monkfish gillnetters in the Mid-Atlantic who are severely skeptical of federal observers and all of their observations. Shouldn’t they be? Shouldn’t we all?

I don’t know all the details in either case. They were pursued in different jurisdictions and there might have been extenuating circumstances in either or both. But regardless, think of NOAA’s message. Another fisherman gets dragged through the coals because he’s guilty of nothing more than threatening the smooth running of the bureaucracy, while a fellow bureaucrat, one who it appears did much more to threaten the actual functioning of the bureaucracy, gets off with what seems to be a slap on the wrist (restitution doesn’t really equate to punishment).

Nils E. Stolpe