U.S. Sen. Scott Brown Wednesday faulted NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco for overseeing an agency without accountability.

In a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson, Brown asked the Commerce chief to review and report on two new instances of unexplained actions — the brief solicitation for a "magician" to preside at a leadership conference, and a mass meeting of agency lawyers at a hotel in Philadelphia, a two hour ride from NOAA's Silver Spring, Md., headquarters.

"NOAA's continued disregard for being efficient and effective stewards of taxpayer dollars illustrates the rampant culture of waste at this agency, which has been fostered by Administrator Lubchenco's failure to punish obvious misconduct," Brown wrote. "NOAA's decision to seek an outside magician is just another troubling example.

"It has already been documented that Administrator Lubchenco previously retained an employee who made 80 percent of the agency's law enforcement files disappear in a 'shredding party' during an Inspector General investigation. This is the same well-paid NOAA employee who supported the purchase of a $300,000 luxury fishing boat, despite warnings from a NOAA procurement lawyer."

Brown was referring to a published solicitation for a speaker for a day at a leadership conference scheduled for June. The specifications for the speaker included mastery of magic as applied to inspire. The request for applications for the assignment was taken down after press inquiries.

The "shredding party" refers to actions authorized by the then director of law enforcement, Dale Jones, in November 2010, while the Commerce Department inspector general's teams were gathering evidence of abuse of the Asset Forfeiture Fund and making targets of fishing industry representatives. IG Todd Zinser reported the shredding event during sworn testimony Congress in March 2010.

Jones was reassigned to be a fisheries analyst, but remains on the NOAA payroll at a salary of more than $150,000.

The Inspector General reported that the Seattle NOAA office had gotten top-level sign-off in 2008 when Jones was still heading the Office of Law Enforcement for a $300,000 undercover cabin boat that was used as a party boat.

Brown and Congressman John Tierney each extracted the Inspector General's report on the boat in March using the Freedom of Information Act, and immediately provided the report to the press.

Brown and Tierney, who represents Cape Ann, have also repeatedly urged President Obama to replace Lubchenco.

NOAA has confirmed to the Times that the Office of General Counsel Lois Schiffer held the four-day conference in Philadelphia's Crowne Plaza Hotel for 135 lawyers and support staff, but has failed to release a copy of the agenda or a budget for the conference.

"NOAA's Office of General Counsel holds training sessions approximately every two years to provide essential, substantive and skills-based training to staff to increase understanding of substantive law and improve their work together in support of NOAA operations," said NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen. "All training sessions are planned with cost-effectiveness in mind, and NOAA strives to realize savings in overall travel and accommodation costs."

Brown, however, isn't looking at agency "savings."

"Wasteful NOAA conferences are also nothing new, ranging from the $109,000 trip to Norway, trips to Kuala Lumpur and the other roughly 40 international trips taken by NOAA officials, paid for on the backs of fishermen through the infamous Asset Forfeiture Fund," Brown wrote to Bryson. "I remain concerned about upcoming international travel by NOAA personnel to conferences that have produced little value for American fishermen in the past.

"With our budget deficit once again topping a trillion dollars," he wrote, "I ask that you provide my office with written justification for each of these upcoming trips."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or at rgaines@glouceztertimes.com.

The Commerce Department inspector general's office has notified NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco that the investigation sought by two Massachusetts congressmen into the influences of non-government organizations on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its regional fishery management councils is going forward.

Inspector General Todd Zinser agreed to the probe last October in a letter to Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank. They had requested the investigation in an Aug. 17 letter to Zinser.

Ann C. Eilers, principal assistant inspector general for audit and evaluation, indicated the investigation would be national rather than regional in scope in a Jan. 10 memo to Lubchenco, NOAA General Counsel Lois Schiffer, Bruce Buckson, director of the Office of Law Enforcement, and nearly a dozen other high officials the agency.

"Our review of fishery management councils and rule making will be conducted in phases and result in interim products produced at several intervals," Eilers' memo said.

It also said the first step would be an "entrance conference" followed by the "conduct of our review at the fishery management councils and other NOAA locations as necessary."

Zinser's office uncovered widespread abuse of law enforcement authority in 2010, which led to a cabinet-level apology to eight victims of justice miscarried and more than $600,000 in reparations in August 2010.

A special judicial master, retained by then-Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke — now ambassador to China, followed leads into the most egregious cases and has been investigating dozens more, with a second public report based on the follow-up batch of cases expected this spring.

The inspector general's new investigation, as it pertains to the New England Fishery Management Council, arrives as a federal lawsuit against the work of the council and NOAA in creating the catch share regimen for the groundfishery heads into the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

City as a plaintiff

NOAA and Commerce Secretary John Bryson are to file briefs in response to the plaintiffs, led by the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester.

The plaintiffs, more than two dozen organizations and individuals, failed in U.S. District Court after arguing that the government had contrived to deny fishermen the right to a referendum on whether to adopt the catch share system by creating a limited access privilege program, a legal structure defined by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, while calling it something else.

Underlying the suit and the decision of the plaintiffs to take the case to the Court of Appeals is an explicit concern about undue influence of environmental non-government organizations — notably thee Environmental Defense Fund — that are financially fueled by giant foundations, including those derived from the success of the Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Wal-Mart corporations.

Fisheries journalist Nils Stople has produced research showing that the foundations have invested more than $500 million to influence and shape fisheries policy in recent years. Among the most pervasive ideas was the push for catch share systems that open the door to fishermen and groups buying, selling or trading shares of an allotted catch for each fish stock.

The net effect — including in New England, according to NOAA's own figures — has been to consolidate more quota and control in fewer hands, while driving many small independent fishing boats and businesses to the sidelines. NOAA figures show that the first year of catch shares essentially shut down some two dozen of Gloucester's then 95-vessel fishing fleet.

Lubchenco, then a board officer with the Environmental Defense Fund, helped obtain foundation funding for catch shares studies and helped write a policy paper for EDF that, financed primarily by the Walton Foundation, urged President Obama to transform U.S. fisheries into catch share markets without delay.

Obama then named Lubchenco to head NOAA and since she has pushed for catch share systems in New England and across America's three coasts.

Acceding to her demand, the New England council in 2009 quickly approved the system now under legal challenge, and put no accumulation caps on ownership of the industry.

Cod and caps

The cod crisis, which emerged surprisingly from a 2011 assessment of the inshore Gulf of Maine cod stock, has spotlighted the fissure in the industry between the big boats and the smaller vessels. A detailed allegation by David Pierce, the commonwealth's representative on the council, centers on the larger offshore boats effectively poaching cod from the inshore waters of nearby Stellwagen Bank.

These legal and industry pressures have induced the council to ask — belatedly — for advice on whether to put accumulation caps on quota to protect fleet diversity.

The deadline for filing advice with the council is Thursday. The earliest time for any limits to the system would be next year, council staff has said.

The Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the largest industry group in the region, and the platform for 12 of the 17 fishing cooperatives allowed to operate with and trade in catch shares, has put its weight against placing any controls on the catch share regimen.

If U.S. Commerce Secretary John Bryson, in cahoots with NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco and acting marine fisheries chief Sam Rauch, signs off on an interim cod catch limit of 6,700 tons, as Rauch signaled last week, there may well be some sense of relief even in some fishing circles that the reduction is not more severe.

There shouldn't be,

The fact is, that level of catch for the new fishing year, which begins May 1, is at the bottom rung of a range recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council. It would still represent a 22 percent drop from the figure for the current year. It will still bring significant new losses for fishermen, waterfront businesses and New England fishing communities such as Gloucester, New Bedford and so many others.

The reduction remains based on data that continues to draw a wide variety of serious questions concerning its credibility — from the trawling research crew's operation of its new boat The Bigelow, to its use of new collecting gear and the fact that, true to form, there were no true fishermen involved in collecting the data.

The simple fact remains: Given those variables, and given the sadly comic lack of credibility of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's "science" data that's been used to set regulations in the past, there is simply no reasonable way that Department of Commerce or NOAA can set any limits without a new assessment. And given the obstinate Lubcheno's refusal to do so, it's time for Congress to take emergency measures regarding the Magnuson-Stevens Act and to block any implementation of its "overfishing" triggers until the new data can be better verified through a new survey.

It is those triggers — initially geared toward a rebuilding the stock by 2014 — that have sent the industry into crisis mode. That's largely because, if the 2011 data is proven true, any hope of reaching those goals is already lost. That already means the industry could be facing a cut equivalent to a virtual economic guillotine in 2013.

While NOAA is, by most counts, ready to accept an "interim" limit for this year, it's important for everyone to get a grip on where this supposed "science" is coming from.

It's coming from the same job- and business-killing agency that, in 1999 and 2000, had to fess up that its trawling survey had grossly missed counting tens of thousands of fish because its nets were too wide — a fiasco now widely known as "Trawlgate."

It's coming from an agency that blindly accepted data so far off the mark that its own leaders had to boost the New England pollock catch by a mere 600 percent in 2010.

And it's coming from an agency that, while admittedly fouling up some fishermen's landings records used to allocate their catch shares, downright refused to fix the errors in timely fashion — threatening the fishermen's very ability to make a living if Lubchenco's job-killing catch share program didn't drive them into bankruptcy first.

Those are all reasons why elected officials from Gloucester's Mayor Carolyn Kirk and state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante to U.S. Sen. John Kerry have demanded a new assessment.

And while Lubchenco has blatantly shown nothing but contempt for Congress, inspectors general and anyone else who doesn't gulp down her green Kool-Aid, she simply cannot be allowed to stand by this data and stonewall her way to industry-killing limits based on what could well prove to be another case of agenda-driven, marine science fiction.

It's time our federal lawmakers all stood up and put an emergency clamp on using Magnuson-Stevens to implement any new limits on the Gulf of Maine cod catch until a new study can affirm the findings at the root of this supposed "crisis."

There's no time to waste.

The deputy director of Massachusetts' marine fisheries has charged that the federal groundfish catch share system has allowed big trawlers designed for offshore fishing to pillage cod from the inshore waters of Stellwagen Bank.

David Pierce, who is also a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, made the allegation during the Wednesday afternoon session of the council meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., where the panel had been struggling to come to grips legally, economically and politically with the findings of a new NOAA Science Center assessment that inshore or Gulf of Maine cod stocks are collapsing.

The intense pressure on the inshore cod population by boats of more than 70 feet has been one of many mutually inclusive theories for how the most important food fish for the region's commercial and recreational industries seems to have gone from robust to threatened in a matter of three years.

The council approved a compromise motion that urged the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to institute cutbacks in inshore cod landings in the range of 10 percent to 23 percent.

NOAA officials promised a quick decision, but also announced a second meeting next Friday in Portsmouth for an industry and NOAA working group on the cod crisis.

The Times, on multiple occasions over the past year, has referred to unattributed claims by small boat owners that offshore trawlers were taking enormous quantities of cod from Stellwagen in single tows while on the way in or out of the ports of Gloucester and New Bedford.

The dire 2011 inshore cod assessment repudiated the previous assessment from 2008, which showed the stock all but fully rebuilt.

Pierce on Wednesday described multiple schemes — made legal or viable in the catch share management system put in place beginning May 2010 — that have put enormous fishing pressure on the cod stocks of Stellwagen and other inshore fishing grounds.

These include the trading or selling of fishermen's catch shares from inshore to offshore boats and across gear types, and the accumulation of quota by the biggest and best capitalized owners.

"We need to address the transfer from small to larger boats," said Pierce, who argued that the system worked to tilt the playing field in favor of the best capitalized and major corporations.

"Sector vessels," members of fishing cooperatives that are allowed to participate in the catch share system, "are in a position to fish in the Gulf of Maine with no catch limits and so they can and do have (harmful) impact," he added.

Pierce's points were corroborated at the meeting by several members of Sector 10, which encompasses day boats in ports south of Gloucester to Cape Cod. They described big boat "pulse fishing" on Stellwagen in response to word that the cod were in.

"What's going on is an indictment of the catch share plan," said Sector 10 President Ed Barrett, who predicted that conservation measures in response to the cod crisis "will ensure that no small boats will be fishing next year."

Catch shares have been held out as a panacea to overfishing by NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco; the Environmental Defense Fund, where she had been a board director prior to taking the reins of NOAA; the Walton Foundation, organized by Wal-Mart heirs; and other nonprofit foundations funding the transition to catch shares.

A closely related problem is the council's preliminary work gathering input on whether it needs to establish ownership limits on catch shares and other policies designed to encourage fleet diversity between large and smaller fishing businesses.

In Gloucester on Monday night, Pierce and a council colleague heard the leadership of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition and the separate but closely related Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund urge the government to let the catch share system solve problems of fleet diversity and consolidation.

Joe Orlando, who owns and operates the mid-sized trawler Padre Pio out of Gloucester and serves on the coalition board, said any limit to the trading of catch shares between small and large boats would freeze up the market.

"I should be able to buy and sell just like any corporation," said Orlando.

Jackie Odell, executive director of the coalition, which organized 12 of the 17 sectors in the catch share groundfishery, and Vito Giacalone, policy director of the coalition and president of the preservation fund permit bank, said the system created by NOAA for the groundfishery was not a bona fide allocation of the fishery and didn't involve the required referendum. So worrying about consolidation and accumulation caps under the current system makes no sense.

Pierce, however, referred them to National Standard 4 in the Magnuson-Stevens Act which requires all fishery plans to avoid allowing individuals, corporations, or other entities to acquire "an excessive share" of fishing privileges.

At Wednesday's council session, Odell and Giacalone supported a majority of councilors who overwhelmingly rejected Pierce's motions to urge NOAA to add to any interim cod provisions limiting boats to fishing in only one geographic region — either inshore, offshore or Southern New England.

In an emailed Thursday report to coalition members — a report leaked to the Times — Odell also noted that the observed and controversial practice of the big offshore boats starting their trawls outside the Gulf of Maine in Georges Bank — albeit landing fish from inside the Gulf and then reporting them to be Georges Bank fish — was legal.

"The law indicates that the fish caught be reported in the stock area where the fish is hauled up," she wrote to members. "If the council sees this as being a problem, then the regulation which directs this reporting should be revised."

In his presentation to the council, however, Pierce called the practice "misreporting."

"(It's a) misreporting of Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod," he said.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.