To the United States Congress & Senate:

We the signators to this document respectfully request that the Congress immediately request the resignations of:

Dr. William Hogarth; Director of the National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS)

Dr. Roy Crabtree; Director of the Southeast Regional Office of NMFS

Dr. Mauricio Ortiz: Staff Fishery Biologist for NMFS

We request these resignations based on the following:

Dr. William Hogarth has established a departmental atmosphere that has accepted and promoted the use of inaccurate and incomplete work.  His lack of direction at NMFS has resulted in the loss of millions of dollars to local economies.  His Fishery Management Plan success rate has been dismal and the largest three fishery regions under his control continue to fall far short of their intended goals.  He has failed to execute the duties of his job as has been evidenced by the recent losses NMFS has suffered in Federal Court.  He is an ineffective leader who has not lived up to the requirements legislated by the Magnusson/Stevens Act.

Dr. Roy Crabtree has been the director of 3 of the least successful Fishery Management Region in the country (The Gulf of Mexico, South Atlantic, and Caribbean).  He continually over steps his authority (evidenced in 2005 in the Law Suit over turning part of the Grouper Interim Emergency Rule).  His action have been directly responsible for the loss of several hundred millions of dollars to the economy of Florida.  As evidenced in the 2004/2005 Red Grouper fiasco, where he pushed through several measures and rules based on inaccurate and incomplete data that showed Red Grouper as being over fished or experiencing over fishing.  It has since been shown that Red Grouper has not been experiencing an over fished or over fishing status since 1999. 

Dr. Mauricio Ortiz has led the recent SEDAR 10 Gag Grouper assessment, which is riddled with errors and if used to base management actions upon will create an economic disaster for the state of Florida.  He over estimated the Gag discard mortality by several 100 percent (over 2 million pounds) and has implemented and untested depth sensitive release mortality function that has several errors.

During this process the two directors mentioned above and the researcher has consistently acted to down play these huge errors.  This has been a pattern with the leadership at NMFS; they have misused the data that they do have and then when called to question on it, they hide behind the statement that it is the “Best Available”.  “Best Available” or not, if it is shown to have errors then it is obviously not the “Best Available.

Based on this evidence provided in this petition we respectfully request that the Congress and Senate act upon the wishes of the signers of this document in a swift and effective manner.