Bradley Louw, a commercial fisherman for 15 years, landed in Washington, D.C. during the week before the Memorial Day crush.
He had two days of 14 meetings scheduled with legislative offices and had bought a new shirt and tie, tag still on.
“It’s the only knot I don’t know how to tie,” the captain said with a laugh.
Before long Louw, tie just fine, was sitting in Congressman William Keating’s office, D-Massachusetts, talking about the challenges his industry faces.
Joined by Aubrey Church, policy director at the Fishermen’s Alliance and Ray Rowell, a former commercial fisherman who is now permit director at the Fishermen’s Alliance, the group talked about fishermen-driven science, climate-change resilient fisheries and the need to invest in working waterfronts. Louw’s focus was also on pushing the market price of seafood up.
Keating’s office has been working on ways to increase domestic seafood consumption. He recently signed onto a Congressional letter calling on the United States Department of Agriculture to buy more seafood from small-boat fishermen for food nutrition programs, which include schools.
“It’s really important for the future. We have to make our food chains more regional,” Keating said.
Issues Louw, Church and Rowell talked about were echoed by other groups in the national Fishing Communities Coalition, which the Fishermen’s Alliance is a founding member of.
“It’s so important for fishermen and their associations to travel to DC. Senators and representatives, and their staff, need to hear directly from the people about what’s at stake,” said Noah Oppenheim, coordinator of FCC. “There’s more to be done, but we had some truly eye-opening conversations about fishing businesses and we met with hard working Congressional staff who truly care. I came away more optimistic than I was before.”
