New Bedford Fishermen Now Have a Voice in Washinton
VANASSE
New Bedford Standard-Times
Ayesha Aleem
Boston University Washington News Service
Dec. 1, 2009
WASHINGTON—Robert Vanasse has returned to his New Bedford roots after decades of involvement in politics in the nation’s capital.
The New Bedford native and longtime Washington resident is executive director of The Project to Save Seafood and Ocean Resources, an advocacy group in Washington for the New Bedford fishing community. The group’s Web site, www.savingseafood.org, launched in February of this year, is the most visible part of the project.
He is, in short, the lobbyist for his hometown’s important fishing industry, with the goal of making a local issue one of national importance,.
“He loves his New Bedford roots,” said Michelle Jaconi, who studied with Vanasse in graduate school at Georgetown University and was a producer at NBC for 12 years before joining CNN earlier this year.
“It was always around in my family, to some degree,” he said of his interest in politics. “My mother moved to D.C. at 18,” after she graduated from high school. She worked here in the Treasury Department. A native of New Bedford, she eventually moved back to the city, married and gave birth to Robert, her only child, in 1962.
“I remember being on a tour of the White House when I was 13 years old and thinking, ‘This is really cool.’ Maybe it was in my blood,” Vanasse said.
Seated at a bar in Washington’s Woodley Park, Vanasse is dressed for an event he will attend later in the evening – gray suit and red tie. His order of scallops has arrived, and he cuts through the textured flesh with a fork.
Vanasse became involved with the Saving Seafood project in 2005, at a time when New Bedford fishermen had earned a reputation for being the “bad guys,” seen as intent on driving out the last fish in the water, he said.
With the help of Brian Rothschild, professor of marine science and technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and with an underwater camera that took photographs of the ocean floor, the Saving Seafood team was able to prove that scallops and other marine species were still thriving in New Bedford waters, contradicting warnings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that stocks of these species had been depleted.
The fishing industry was living through a 10-year-long “roller coaster ride” when this project was initiated, Vanasse said. Controls over the number of days fishermen could be at sea, among other rules, intensified. Fishermen complained that the stiffer regulations were putting them out of business.
Vanasse, after graduating from Bishop Stang High School in North Dartmouth, enrolled in Boston College. “I didn’t think I could get in to Harvard, I didn’t like Dartmouth and I wasn’t keen on Brown,” he said recently. “And then I visited Boston College and it felt like everything college is supposed to feel like.”
At Boston College, Vanasse became actively involved with College Republicans. “For a Republican, I hang out with Democrats an awful lot,” he said with a smile. Metal elephant-head bookends and coasters in Vanasse's living room suggest his Republican affiliation.
Vanasse’s first job after college was at Mercer Management Consulting as a research associate. He used the company’s tuition reimbursement program to enroll as a graduate student in politics at night at Georgetown University, he said.
While at Georgetown, Vanasse started taking classes with Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had served on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff and as his ambassador to the United Nations. She encouraged Vanasse to participate in a two-month international management program at Oxford University, which he described as “really cool.”
By 1992, Vanasse, who had been working as a congressional aide on science and technology issues, had a job lined up at the White House. But President George H.W. Bush was not reelected ending Vanasse’s job prospect. So he joined Cliftex a New Bedford-based garment manufacturer, working on a trade show project.
Vanasse returned to Washington in 1994, working this time for America Online for a while before concentrating on his own start-up political information Web site, www.voter.com. The venture was short-lived when the 2001 dot-com bubble burst and funds for the project dried up.
“When it ended, I was burned out. People say they couldn’t find me,” said Vanasse, who disappeared for a month to Switzerland. “I skied.”
Returning to Washington, Vanasse began using newly developed software to do freelance audio and video work. He created short movies for the 2000 election campaigns, and made a film about the installation of master chef Julia Child’s kitchen to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington in 2001.
On a friend’s suggestion to make a similar movie for the fishing industry, Vanasse’s relationship with the community was resurrected.
The Saving Seafood project is an effort to preserve the natural resources of the sea while providing quality seafood, with an emphasis on scallops, Vanasse said.
“The fisheries have been important to Massachusetts for as long as there has been a Massachusetts,” he said, and the sea is central to the character of New Bedford.
New Bedford is the country’s largest fishing port in value of catch, primarily for scallops, of approximately $206.5 million in 2004, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Fishing is a family occupation, the kind that spans generations. It’s a part of the cultural heritage of those who are engaged in it professionally, Vanasse explained.
In January, with sponsorship from the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford and the Boston Seafood Display Auction, Vanasse launched the Saving Seafood project.
Rothschild, who has been working with Vanasse for the past four months, said, "It is evident that he knows how to assemble information and does a terrific job of communicating the problems of New Bedford to the rest of the world."
At present, the project is looking for additional sponsors among corporations, Vanasse said.
“We want to work with the government and environmental agencies to be part of the solution; to develop a larger conversation that is more thoughtful than angry people ranting; to be the voice of reason in this cacophony,” Vanasse said. “I get viscerally angry when I see bureaucratic people make decisions in a vacuum that affect people’s lives.”
His inspiration, he said, comes from something he first heard from Rep. Barney Frank (D-4th) that one should not let perfect be the enemy of good but to do what is doable now.
What makes Vanasse suitable for this role? New Bedford “is my hometown,” he said. “I have a childhood background sufficient to understand the small fishing community in Massachusetts.”
Evidence of his connection to the sea can be found in Vanasse’s Georgetown home. The 19th century white town house has a whale tail front door knocker. There are fishing-related curios in the living room, like fisherman-in-a-boat bookends, for example, a large seashell in the bathroom, ocean-related art on the living room wall and a copy of Moby-Dick on his bookshelf. Boston College mementos hang on the stairwell wall.
Vanasse has never been married and has no children. Seafood, quite naturally, is one of his favorite kinds of food, he said.
Vanasse is also chief organizer of “game watches,” a Washington gathering of Boston College alums to watch his other love, the school’s football team, in action. “It’s notable, when I met Bob, he had studied overseas, worked in New York,” said Gordon Carr, who worked with Vanasse on the Cliftex project. “But Bob is a great testament to someone who remains tied to New Bedford in such a tangible way and finds opportunities to help local businesses. I just think that’s really cool.”
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