12.07.15

Republicans Spend Entire Fisheries Hearing Ignoring Economic Impacts, Denying Climate Change and Rejecting Consumer Requests

Riverhead, N.Y.  – Natural Resources Committee Republicans took their climate denial show on the road today for the benefit of freshman Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.). At a just-concluded field hearing in Zeldin’s eastern Long Island district, Republicans and their invited witnesses criticized the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) efforts to promote ecosystem-based management and other precautionary management tools to ensure economically sustainable fisheries harvests in the face of climate change. Earlier this fall, Chairman Rob Bishop (R-Utah) criticized a NOAA fisheries climate plan as part of the Obama Administration’s “radical climate change strategy.” 

“Long Islanders have not forgotten about Superstorm Sandy, and they know that climate change is real. Fishermen who are seeing warmer water temperatures and the disappearance of species like cod and lobster from their waters need answers, not blank stares,” said Ranking Member Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, the committee’s top Democrat, of the hearing’s disappointing direction. “Instead of constantly casting doubt on the best available science, Republicans should work with us to develop more and better science to benefit fishing communities.”

Republicans today also criticized federal fisheries science and management more broadly, despite evidence that the Magnuson-Stevens Act is working to rebuild fish stocks in the mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere. H.R. 1335, their partisan bill to gut Magnuson’s important conservation requirements, has languished in the Senate after being forced through the House over the objections of Democrats and many in the fishing and conservation communities. House Republicans have continued an aggressive push for the bill despite clear evidence that U.S. fisheries have become more profitable under the law and despite NOAA estimates that rebuilding national fishery stocks would add $31 billion and 500,000 new jobs to the economy.

Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the Ranking Member of the Water, Power and Oceans Subcommittee who attended the hearing, renewed Democratic calls to scrap H.R. 1335, saying, “A strong coastal economy cannot be based on an empty ocean, and we must keep Magnuson strong and let science – including climate science – guide our fisheries management decisions.”

Minority witnesses echoed this message. Kerry Heffernan, the nationally acclaimed chef at Grand Banks in New York City, testified, “My business is sustainable seafood. If stocks are not sustainable, I don’t have a business.”

Patrick Paquette, a charter captain and fisheries consultant from Hyannis, Mass., agreed that weak fisheries management before passage of the 2007 Magnuson-Stevens reforms harmed fisheries: “The perfect real-world story of ‘flexibility’ is Gulf of Maine cod. There were warning signs of a collapse, and mandatory rebuilding should have been done, but we found more ‘flexibility’ and kept going…and the fishery collapsed. That’s a real hit to the economy. That’s what ‘flexibility’ did.”

Today is not the first time Chairman Bishop has brought his anti-science, anti-conservation show to the district of a new Republican Member who does not sit on the Natural Resources Committee. In August, Chairman Bishop held a field hearing in Homestead, Fla., which is represented by freshman Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), to criticize the National Park Service’s plan to protect a dying coral reef and other critically endangered resources in Biscayne National Park. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that climate change and chronic overfishing have decimated Biscayne’s reef, and that putting a small area of the Park off limits to fishing would have significant economic and environmental benefits, Republicans argued that the status quo should prevail. This message faced stiff criticism from many local fishing and conservation interests.

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