WAKEFIELD — Big offshore draggers using their own and acquired catch share allocations have worked inside Stellwagen Bank for the past year — where they'd not been seen before — depleting a rebuilding stock of Gulf of Maine cod.

That was the testimony Tuesday from more than a dozen charter boat captains during a day-long meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council's Recreational advisory panel meeting held at a hotel complex in Wakefield.

A federal fisheries analyst also confirmed the presence, though not the impact, of the Stellwagen draggers.

Additional new fishing pressure on inshore cod stocks has come through boats operated by members of the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association longlining in Stellwagen, some charter skippers also told the panel.

The advisory panel reports to the council's Groundfish Committee, which will be involved in deliberations into 2013 to develop a new rebuilding program for the most important fish stock for the recreational sector and the inshore commercial fleet based in Gloucester and found in small ports along the entire coast of New England.

"This is the most troubling situation that I've ever had to deal with," said Capt. Barry Gibson of Boothbay Harbor, Maine, chairman of the Recreational Advisory Panel and who served on the council for nine years through 1995. "Ninety-foot boats (in Stellwagen) and no trip limits."

The boats were identified as hailing from New Bedford, Gloucester and Maine.

"There is some evidence that the big vessels moved inshore," Tom Nies, a federal fisheries analyst, told the meeting.

The catch share regimen introduced in May 2010 for members of commercial fishing cooperatives called sectors replaced the previous system based on days-at-sea and trip limits, with allocations of stocks that can be accumulated — acquired or leased — and no upper limit.

Three years after a benchmark assessment found inshore cod surging toward restoration, another benchmark assessment made public late last year undercut the optimism — and put the fishery into crisis management mode.

A 22 percent cut in the allocation for the fishing year that began May 1 was considered a reprieve while the federal government, starting with the council, decides on a new rebuilding plan that is expected to be more severe.

"I've seen as many as 20 huge draggers operating in Stellwagen," said Capt. Tom DePersia of Marshfield, who serves on the advisory panel.

"It's very clear draggers went out to the bank and scraped it clean," added Capt. Bruce Sweet of Boston.

"What the draggers are doing is like clear-cutting the land," said Capt. Mark Carlson of Pembroke.

Tuesday's allegations were not the first made involving big boats on Stellwagen. The Times began hearing complaints last summer, but the issue exploded into the limelight during the February council meeting with the testimony of member David Pierce, deputy director of marine fisheries for Massachusetts.

"Sector vessels are in a position to fish in the Gulf of Maine with no catch limits," Pierce said, "and so they can and do have (harmful) impact."

Ed Barrett — president of Sector 10, made up mostly of inshore dayboats — echoed the complaint.

"What's going on is an indictment of the catch share plan," he added at the council meeting.

The advisory panel approved a motion asking for catch reports for the past three years on Stellwagen.

It also urged the Groundfish Committee to look into "localized depletion" on the bank, which begins a few miles southeast of Gloucester and is framed by the borders of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. It also urged some form of zoning that would keep the big draggers off the bank.

Gov. Deval Patrick, based on scientific studies, last November urged Commerce Secretary John Bryson to acknowledge that the catch share system had produced a fisheries failure and provide emergency aid. There has been no response.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000 x3464, or rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

U.S. Sen. Scott Brown Wednesday faulted NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco for overseeing an agency without accountability.

In a letter to Commerce Secretary John Bryson, Brown asked the Commerce chief to review and report on two new instances of unexplained actions — the brief solicitation for a "magician" to preside at a leadership conference, and a mass meeting of agency lawyers at a hotel in Philadelphia, a two hour ride from NOAA's Silver Spring, Md., headquarters.

"NOAA's continued disregard for being efficient and effective stewards of taxpayer dollars illustrates the rampant culture of waste at this agency, which has been fostered by Administrator Lubchenco's failure to punish obvious misconduct," Brown wrote. "NOAA's decision to seek an outside magician is just another troubling example.

"It has already been documented that Administrator Lubchenco previously retained an employee who made 80 percent of the agency's law enforcement files disappear in a 'shredding party' during an Inspector General investigation. This is the same well-paid NOAA employee who supported the purchase of a $300,000 luxury fishing boat, despite warnings from a NOAA procurement lawyer."

Brown was referring to a published solicitation for a speaker for a day at a leadership conference scheduled for June. The specifications for the speaker included mastery of magic as applied to inspire. The request for applications for the assignment was taken down after press inquiries.

The "shredding party" refers to actions authorized by the then director of law enforcement, Dale Jones, in November 2010, while the Commerce Department inspector general's teams were gathering evidence of abuse of the Asset Forfeiture Fund and making targets of fishing industry representatives. IG Todd Zinser reported the shredding event during sworn testimony Congress in March 2010.

Jones was reassigned to be a fisheries analyst, but remains on the NOAA payroll at a salary of more than $150,000.

The Inspector General reported that the Seattle NOAA office had gotten top-level sign-off in 2008 when Jones was still heading the Office of Law Enforcement for a $300,000 undercover cabin boat that was used as a party boat.

Brown and Congressman John Tierney each extracted the Inspector General's report on the boat in March using the Freedom of Information Act, and immediately provided the report to the press.

Brown and Tierney, who represents Cape Ann, have also repeatedly urged President Obama to replace Lubchenco.

NOAA has confirmed to the Times that the Office of General Counsel Lois Schiffer held the four-day conference in Philadelphia's Crowne Plaza Hotel for 135 lawyers and support staff, but has failed to release a copy of the agenda or a budget for the conference.

"NOAA's Office of General Counsel holds training sessions approximately every two years to provide essential, substantive and skills-based training to staff to increase understanding of substantive law and improve their work together in support of NOAA operations," said NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen. "All training sessions are planned with cost-effectiveness in mind, and NOAA strives to realize savings in overall travel and accommodation costs."

Brown, however, isn't looking at agency "savings."

"Wasteful NOAA conferences are also nothing new, ranging from the $109,000 trip to Norway, trips to Kuala Lumpur and the other roughly 40 international trips taken by NOAA officials, paid for on the backs of fishermen through the infamous Asset Forfeiture Fund," Brown wrote to Bryson. "I remain concerned about upcoming international travel by NOAA personnel to conferences that have produced little value for American fishermen in the past.

"With our budget deficit once again topping a trillion dollars," he wrote, "I ask that you provide my office with written justification for each of these upcoming trips."

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or at rgaines@glouceztertimes.com.

Scott Brown's U.S. Senate campaign Tuesday introduced a 30-second radio spot that synthesizes multiple complaints he and others in Congress have registered regarding perceived injustices to and federal mismanagement of the commercial fishing industry.

Since January, as part of the Republican's effort to win a full six-year term for the seat he took in a special election in 2010 after the death of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Brown's campaign has been running weekly radio spots on topics as varied as "Americans First," "military jobs," "tax," "jobs" and "the Red Sox."

Brown and the presumed Democratic nominee, Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, have been locked in a tight and high visibility race since the start of the year, when Warren became a national favorite of party activists and donors.

The gist of the Brown ad that began running Tuesday implicitly flails the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reprising and broadening a kicker Brown first enunciated last June 20 during a field hearing he organized in Faneuil Hall of a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee.

After he questioned the top appointee of NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco about the Commerce Inspector General's findings that the federal fisheries law enforcement system had been corrupt, Brown asked whether any NOAA officials had been subject to discipline; instead, key figures leaders had been transferred.

"What does it take to actually get fired at NOAA?" Brown asked at the hearing.

In his radio ad, which refers to NOAA only as "the agency," Brown's question is: "What does it take to get fired in Washington?"

The theme of the Brown radio ad asserts that "our fishing industry is dying, and Washington is to blame. Fishermen have been hit with crushing fines, unrealistic catch limits, and arbitrary enforcement.

"As a result, people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their way of life. The agency responsible for this crisis is completely out of touch and unresponsive."

The Warren campaign did not have an immediate response to the ad Tuesday.

NOAA administrator Lubchenco came to office carrying the agenda of the Environmental Defense Fund and the Walton Family Foundation to transform the largely mom-and-pop industry into an investor-friendly commodity market based on fishermen's catch shares.

The system has earned the enmity of elected officials of both parties and the repeated requests or demands of Brown as well as Democratic Congressmen John Tierney, who represents Cape Ann, and Barney Frank whose district includes New Bedford, that Lubchenco be fired.

Since she assumed office, the New England groundfishery, based here in Gloucester, has come under sharp consolidation, losing some 21 of its then 96 boats during the first year of catch shares, according to NOAA figures. Yet, a request for a fisheries economic disaster declaration filed in November by Gov. Deval Patrick has gone unanswered by Commerce Secretary John Bryson.

The Brown ad contains one inaccuracy. After noting that the agency was "out of touch and unresponsive," Brown adds, "Just recently, they bought a $300,000 party boat using funds meant to help fishermen. To this day, no one has been held accountable for these abuses."

The boat was actually acquired in 2008.

Richard Gaines can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3464, or at