Last week's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel to essentially shoot down challenges to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's implementation of Amendment 16 and catch-share program is disappointing, to say the least.

Indeed, as Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk noted, Zobel's ruling seems to have taken "the government's positions at face value."

Yet, in generally upholding the regulatory scheme that now rules New England fisheries — and will rule all of America's fisheries if NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, carrying the water for her former fellow Environmental Defense Fund lobbyists, gets her way — Judge Zobel has thrown the ball into the courts of our congressional lawmakers. And that may be a good thing.

For while Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown, and Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, among others, can't be happy about Zobel's decision — and Kerry is already pushing an appeal to overturn it — the judge's ruling simply suggests the Amendment did not cross the lines of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

That can only mean that, as fishermen and their backers have noted in the past, that the Magnuson Act is flawed in and of itself, and are desperately in need of reform. That, of course, must be achieved legislatively — and that process should now begin with all due haste.

Reforming Magnuson-Stevens will not, of course, happen overnight. And there are steps that Congress should take in the interim. Those include:

Keeping, even tightening, the clamps on any NOAA spending to expand catch-share programs as outlined under the so-called Jones amendment, part of the spring congressional budget agreement.

To date, Lubchenco has pressed on with catch-share agendas even in the face of the amendment, showing her contempt for Congress by raking in catch share support through a public-private partnership called the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. That has to stop — now.

Sen. Brown has taken positive steps through filing his Fishery Impact Statement Honesty (FISH) Act, and, turning to NOAA enforcement, his Asset Forfeiture Responsibility Act. Other lawmakers should get behind those measures, and add new clamps as well.

Pushing for an independent investigation into what New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang and others see as the "corrupt" nature of NOAA's and the New England Fishery Management Council's process of setting these policies — and the undue influence held by high-powered lobbying groups such as EDF and the Conservation Law Foundation.

EDF President Fred Krupp dodged a Faneuil Hall Senate subcommittee meeting pulled together in large part last month by Sen. Brown, who sought to raise questions about his organization's role in working NOAA policy "from the inside," as a 2005 EDF document boasted. And Conservation Law openly fought — and sadly, won — earlier this year to keep its communications with NOAA and other fishery regulators shielded from public scrutiny. All of that is worth an full investigative look.

Finally, lawmakers should press anew for the ouster of Lubchenco as NOAA chief, following up on Congressman Tierney's rightful assessment last month that Lubchenco is indeed "the wrong person to lead NOAA in a new direction."

It would have been nice if Judge Zobel found that NOAA officials ran a fairly obvious end run around a Magnuson-Stevens requirement for a fishery "referendum" before implementing a catch share program that is already steering control of New England's fishing quotas to large-scale businesses and outside investors.

Instead, she found that NOAA regulators were within their legal rights to put in place policies that amount to an economic disaster for small, independent-dominated fishing ports like Gloucester and sending small boats the way of the family farm while converting commercial fishing into a virtual agribusiness of the seas.

Yet Judge Zobel's ruling has really just emphasized the need for our federal lawmakers to make the needed changes themselves, through legislative reforms that are long overdue.

Let's get that process started, pronto.

Last week's ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel to essentially shoot down challenges to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's implementation of Amendment 16 and catch-share program is disappointing, to say the least.

Indeed, as Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk noted, Zobel's ruling seems to have taken "the government's positions at face value."

Yet, in generally upholding the regulatory scheme that now rules New England fisheries — and will rule all of America's fisheries if NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, carrying the water for her former fellow Environmental Defense Fund lobbyists, gets her way — Judge Zobel has thrown the ball into the courts of our congressional lawmakers. And that may be a good thing.

For while Sens. John Kerry and Scott Brown, and Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank, among others, can't be happy about Zobel's decision — and Kerry is already pushing an appeal to overturn it — the judge's ruling simply suggests the Amendment did not cross the lines of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

That can only mean that, as fishermen and their backers have noted in the past, that the Magnuson Act is flawed in and of itself, and are desperately in need of reform. That, of course, must be achieved legislatively — and that process should now begin with all due haste.

Reforming Magnuson-Stevens will not, of course, happen overnight. And there are steps that Congress should take in the interim. Those include:

Keeping, even tightening, the clamps on any NOAA spending to expand catch-share programs as outlined under the so-called Jones amendment, part of the spring congressional budget agreement.

To date, Lubchenco has pressed on with catch-share agendas even in the face of the amendment, showing her contempt for Congress by raking in catch share support through a public-private partnership called the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. That has to stop — now.

Sen. Brown has taken positive steps through filing his Fishery Impact Statement Honesty (FISH) Act, and, turning to NOAA enforcement, his Asset Forfeiture Responsibility Act. Other lawmakers should get behind those measures, and add new clamps as well.

Pushing for an independent investigation into what New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang and others see as the "corrupt" nature of NOAA's and the New England Fishery Management Council's process of setting these policies — and the undue influence held by high-powered lobbying groups such as EDF and the Conservation Law Foundation.

EDF President Fred Krupp dodged a Faneuil Hall Senate subcommittee meeting pulled together in large part last month by Sen. Brown, who sought to raise questions about his organization's role in working NOAA policy "from the inside," as a 2005 EDF document boasted. And Conservation Law openly fought — and sadly, won — earlier this year to keep its communications with NOAA and other fishery regulators shielded from public scrutiny. All of that is worth an full investigative look.

Finally, lawmakers should press anew for the ouster of Lubchenco as NOAA chief, following up on Congressman Tierney's rightful assessment last month that Lubchenco is indeed "the wrong person to lead NOAA in a new direction."

It would have been nice if Judge Zobel found that NOAA officials ran a fairly obvious end run around a Magnuson-Stevens requirement for a fishery "referendum" before implementing a catch share program that is already steering control of New England's fishing quotas to large-scale businesses and outside investors.

Instead, she found that NOAA regulators were within their legal rights to put in place policies that amount to an economic disaster for small, independent-dominated fishing ports like Gloucester and sending small boats the way of the family farm while converting commercial fishing into a virtual agribusiness of the seas.

Yet Judge Zobel's ruling has really just emphasized the need for our federal lawmakers to make the needed changes themselves, through legislative reforms that are long overdue.

Let's get that process started, pronto.