Congressman Barney Frank
Representing Massachusetts' 4th District

``BRIAN ROTHSCHILD: MAN OF THE YEAR'' -- (Extensions of Remarks)

SPEECH OF

HON. BARNEY FRANK

OF MASSACHUSETTS

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 07, 2009

• Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, after the congressional redistricting of 1992 and the subsequent election, I won the great responsibility and challenge of representing America's most prosperous fishing port--the City of New Bedford and the Town of Fairhaven. Over these past sixteen years I have worked very hard in conjunction with the people in the fishing industry to help create the conditions in which they can do their work which is so important not just to the region in which they are located, but to the entire country. As we stress the importance of people eating in a healthier manner, the role of seafood becomes all the more important, and preserving the ability of people in the fishing industry to perform this service they do for the rest of us is a major part of my job.

• In some cases, our advocacy can be fairly easy, as a matter of principle. But there are also cases in which mastering a very complex body of data is essential if we are to do our job right. We are of course in the Congress assisted in doing that by the extremely talented and dedicated people we are lucky enough to have on our staffs, but we are also in need of help from outside. In the case of the fishing industry, no individual during my career has been as important as Dr. Brian Rothschild of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

• Brian Rothschild combines in an extraordinary degree technical expertise, practical knowledge, political savvy, and an ability to understand all viewpoints and articulate his own that makes him an enormous asset to those concerned with the fishing industry. He is a model of how public policy discussions should be conducted. Not surprisingly, the New Bedford Standard Times recently named him their South Coast Man of the Year, an honor that is beyond dispute an extremely well deserved one.

• Madam Speaker, I ask that the article from the New Bedford Standard Times chronicling the extraordinary work of Dr. Rothschild and his importance to the fishing industry be printed here, since this is an industry which is greatly impacted by our activity and about which the Members should know a great deal. [From South Coast Today, Jan. 1, 2009]

A BIG FISH IN MARINE SCIENCE

Teacher, fisherman, furniture maker, marine scientist--there isn't much that University of Massachusetts Dartmouth professor Brian Rothschild can't do and do well.

Luckily for the city of New Bedford, sometime in the 1990s he set his mind on seeking ways to save the local scallop fishery. A little over a decade later, scallops have made the city the biggest fishing port, in terms of dollars worth of seafood caught, in the United States.

Around the same time that Dr. Rothschild, now 74, started studying scallops, he also started building up the faculty and facilities at the UMD Center for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST), making it into one of the nation's quality schools of ocean science. He was dean of the marine school from 1995 through 2006, the school's formative decade, when it first began attracting a world-class faculty.

For his efforts on behalf of the fishermen of New Bedford and the seafood economy to their fisheries, and for his efforts in making UMass Dartmouth a growing center of marine science and research, Brian J. Rothschild is The Standard-Times 2008 SouthCoast Man of the Year.

Nominations for the award came from the community and members of the newspaper staff. Recipients were selected by a newsroom committee.

``He's really made a big difference in the fishing industry in New Bedford,'' said Rodney Avila, the owner of two scallop boats and the city's representative to the New England Fisheries Management Council (a coalition of industry, conservation, and government officials that recommends regulations for the region's fisheries).

Dr. Rothschild and UMass Dartmouth professor Kevin Stokesbury developed a system of counting scallops by using an underwater camera to photograph their beds at the bottom of the ocean.

Previously, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) had estimated scallops by the numbers caught in fishing nets, a method that invariably led to undercounting, Dr. Rothschild said.

Dr. Rothschild and Dr. Stokesbury proved the government conservationists' methods of measuring scallops were wrong.

The underwater camera, in addition to being able to count scallops not caught in nets, was also able to count scallops in ocean areas that federal regulators had closed to scallopers. They found the scallop numbers in the closed areas were also greatly underestimated.

``I've always supported the idea of controlling fishing, but I also support the idea of the best science,'' Dr. Rothschild said. ``What we did was really good science.''

Jean MacCormack, the chancellor of UMass Dartmouth, noted the singular nature of Brian Rothschild convincing a federal regulatory agency to change its practices.

``It's pretty unusual,'' she said, ``to develop a methodology that NMFS accepted.''

``NMFS was saying there were no scallops and they proved them wrong,'' Mr. Avila said. ``That was one of the main components of the rejuvenation of the scallop industry.''

New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang is unqualified in his praise of Brian Rothschild.

``I think he's the difference between the scallop industry prospering, as they have in the last decade, versus being in the same situation as groundfish,'' he said.

The mayor was referring to the fact that the New Bedford groundfishing industry has suffered from stringent federal fishing regulations.

New Bedford was the nation's busiest port last year, for the ninth year in a row, with 60 million pounds of fresh seafood landed, with a value of $281 million, principally due to the scallop catch.

Dr. Rothschild stresses that he's a big supporter of conserving fisheries but, because fish live below the surface, they aren't easily measured. He thought that if he could improve the science, he could benefit both the fishery and the fishermen.

``There was some resistance from the fisheries service. And some of the conservation groups thought our estimates were in error, but it's a solid scientific process we went through,'' he explains.

Dr. Rothschild subscribes to a view of ocean ecology that the fishermen, and their fishing efforts, are themselves an integral part of the ocean ecology of a given area.

``You have to look at a balance between the substantial effects that humans have on the (fish) populations and the productivity of the populations. That's what conservation is in this day and age.''

Because fishing species, under certain conditions and to a certain extent, proliferate in the wake of a fishing effort, Dr. Rothschild set out to balance the maximum amount of fishing effort needed to benefit human beings with the maximum amount of fishing effort needed to benefit the population of fish species.

Currently, SMAST is studying counting methods for groundfish (which unlike scallops, move around in the ocean). The objective is to obtain more accurate counts of the groundfish (haddock, cod, yellowtail flounder) in the New England fishery.

Because the federal government's currently accepted methods of counting groundfish counting show the stocks are depressed, NMFS intends to further restrict the fishing effort--which is already a barely profitable industry--next year.

The failure to find a better method for integrating the effects of fishing and groundfish proliferation has had devastating effects on the local industry, Dr. Rothschild said.

``You can see all this happening in New Bedford. The (fish) populations are being managed biologically yet there's a tremendous amount of economic grief,'' he said. ``The societal grief won't be realized until these contemplated cuts (in the fishing effort) take place.''

People will be displaced from their jobs and end up on government ``welfare,'' dependent on the taxpayers, he said.

In addition to his professional fields of expertise, Dr. Rothschild is an active advocate for area fisheries and his research on important government and quasi-government boards and commissions. He worked for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the 1970s as a senior policy adviser so he well understands how the regulatory bureaucracy works.

Presently, he chairs New Bedford's Ocean and Fisheries Council (an advocacy group for the city's fishing interests), co-directs the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute (a research partnership between UMass Dartmouth and the state Division of Marine Fisheries) and chairs the Scientific and Statistical Committee of the Mid-Atlantic Fisheries Management Council.

The goal is to bring fishing regulations more into line with statistics that better reflect ocean science, including in the economics of the fisheries, he said.

``One measure of performance is overfishing, another is optimal yield (of fish), another is minimal angst among the people that are regulated,'' he said. ``I think we could do a much better job so we need to increase the dialogue with the agency. (That's) a step that Barney Frank and the mayor and I have been involved in.''

Congressman Frank, who along with Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy, has long advocated for the city's interests in Washington, said Dr. Rothschild has been very helpful in making the scallop industry more successful.

``The beauty of Brian is that he knows the scene better than anybody else,'' he said.

Dr. Rothschild's reputation as a scientist has given his studies credibility with the federal government, said Mayor Lang.

A former professor at the state universities of Maryland and Washington, Brian Rothschild is the author of nearly 100 papers and books and is an acknowledged expert in fish population dynamics, biological oceanography, and natural resources policy. Next year, in collaboration with several West Coast fishery scientists, he will publish a book on the future of fisheries science in North America.

Mayor Lang calls him the perfect expert on the Magnusson-Stevenson Act that governs American fisheries.

``He understands how it relates to species and he understands how it relates to human beings,'' he said.

Dr. MacCormack noted that even though Dr. Rothschild has an international reputation as a scientist, he is completely at home with the fishermen and fishing boat owners on the New Bedford docks.

``When you see him present a paper to academics, he speaks their language, but he can go to the fish auction and speak their language, too,'' she said.

Boat owner Rodney Avila gave a similar assessment.

``He doesn't talk down to fishermen, he talks with them. That's important,'' he said.

``He's a good, all-around man,'' said Mr. Avila.

Brian Rothschild has dug deep into New Bedford in the 13 years he's been at UMass Dartmouth.

He and his wife, Susan, have refurbished one of the long-neglected Victorian houses in the city's West End and he has a studio in the North End where, in his spare time, he builds replicas of 18th century furniture.

He has traded in the sailboat he first came to New Bedford in for a 40-foot ``Novi,'' a recreational fishing boat where he and Susan fish for local fish that make good eating: stripers, fluke and whatever else in local waters that might taste good.

His wife, like himself, loves fishing and ocean studies so it makes for an interesting crew, he said, the dry sense of humor he's well known for coming through.

Dr. Rothschild said he hopes his New Bedford legacy will be the use of ocean science to continue the revival of the fishing industry, and he hopes that SMAST can continue to build the quality of its faculty so it becomes one of the nation's elite marine science schools.

It may be, however, that Dr. Rothschild's biggest legacy will be tied to the people of New Bedford themselves.

He admits that his survey is unscientific but he says the city has changed since 1995 when he first arrived, sailing his own boat from Maryland to the city, passing Cuttyhunk and then finally coming up a foggy Acushnet River.

``When I moved here, the houses were, in general, in a state of disrepair. The economy looked bleak,'' he said. ``As the economy and the fish auction developed, the community seemed brighter and better furbished and more prosperous.''

That's not a bad legacy, for an ocean scientist who sees local fishermen as part of the sea's ecology.