MRAG Americas, Inc. - St. Petersburg, Florida

FV Miss Mary

MRAG Americas, Inc., headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, is registered as a consulting firm with the Department of Commerce (US). The Marine Resources Assessment Group (MRAG Ltd), headquartered in London, UK, is registered as a consulting firm with the Department for International Development (UK), European Commission (EC), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gordon-and-betty-moore-foundation-supports-evaluations-of-catch-share-management-systems-2012-01-05

CaptBobBryant

All observer positions require a minimum of a Bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 30 semester hours of biology courses to qualify for the government training. In addition, the NMFS AK Groundfish (North Pacific) program requires one course in math and one course in statistics. MRAG requires completion of a course that included field work using dichotomous keys and experience with computers. We consider experience at-sea an important qualifier.

Here in lies a big problem
One course in Math...maybe Liberal Arts Math for the basket weaver and one course in Stats again applied stats for the basket weaver.

These are data collectors and as such shoudl have a keen background in statistical practice, data collection and sampling.

Having a bunch of biologist is what got us into this mess in the first place.

Tom Hilton

Who is the President of MRAG Americas? Andrew Rosenberg, former director of NOAA Fisheries Northeast Regional Office, who helped Jane Lubchenco write the nation's catch share policy as vice-chair of the Environmental Defense Fund board before she became head of NOAA.

MRAG got a $6.5 million contract to provide monitors on boats for the sector program in 2010.

MRAG wrote the Catch Share Manual for the Environmental Defense Fund.

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation announced today a $2.7 million grant for five years to MRAG Americas, Inc. for annual, objective, publicly available assessments of the performance of the New England and Pacific groundfish catch share systems. Findings from these assessments will be compared to projected results with respect to ecological, economic, and social goals. Additionally, the evaluation will assess performance of the catch share systems against these goals from a pre-implementation baseline through five years of operation.

Objective?

Yeah, right.

The revolving door of people in our federal fisheries management doing the bidding of enviro corporations while in position to affect fisheries policy, then going to work for those same enviro corporations such as Environmental Defense or starting up their own company as Rosenberg did to receive millions of dollars in contracts/grants to further promote the EDF agenda, needs to stop. Another example is Dave McKinney, former top LEO for NOAA Fisheries Enforcement Office "retired" a couple of years ago to go to work for Environmental Defense. Now, he is just a "consultant" for Environmental Defense.

Since Rosenberg is Crabtree's counterpart at the NE Regional Fisheries, it should be interesting to see if Crabtree follows suit and where he goes to work after he "retires" from his federal position.

Capt. Thomas J. Hilton