Saving Seafood

News for the Gulf of Mexico Region

LOUISIANA: Rep. Garret Graves: Federal aid for Louisiana fisheries delivered after nearly four years

August 28, 2o23 — After a long wait, Louisiana’s fisheries finally will receive $58 million in federal aid to offset disaster impacts, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves announced.

The Baton Rouge area congressman worked to secure the federal assistance in 2020 after multiple disasters affected the state’s fisheries in 2019.

Graves said in a news release the federal government has taken nearly four years to deliver the funding after it was awarded.

“There is no excuse for the bureaucracy to take four years for the disaster relief we secured to actually be made available, but these funds will be invaluable,” he said in the announcement. “We have promised the seafood industry we would not stop our fight to bring them relief while working to reform the broken fisheries disaster process. We will continue to work with our fishing community to cut through the red tape and make this program functional.”

Read the full article at Gonzales Weekly Citizen

MISSISSIPPI: Mississippi opens financial aid for fishermen affected by 2019 Bonnet Carré diversion

August 15, 2023 — Mississippi is accepting applications for financial relief from commercial fishermen hurt by the 2019 Mississippi Bonnet Carré Spillway disaster.

The spillway is designed to divert floodwater away from the city of New Orleans and into the Mississippi Sound, but the surge of freshwater spillover into the ocean can shock oysters, crabs, and other aquatic life. When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carré  Spillway twice in 2019 – the first time it was ever opened twice in one year – it severely damaged area fisheries.

In 2020, the Department of Commerce declared the 2019 spillway releases a fishery disaster, allocating $88 million to Gulf of Mexico fisheries in Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi to compensate for lost revenue from lower oyster, shrimp, crab, and finfish landings. Of that $88 million, Mississippi received $21 million.

The total was significantly less than the $500 million in financial relief the three states asked for. Louisiana alone estimated it suffered $258 million from the flooding.

Now, four years after the spillway disaster and three years after the federal government announced the relief, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources has launched for the 2019 Mississippi Bonnet Carré Spillway Fisheries Disaster Recovery Program to distribute the received USD 21 million in funding. Financial assistance applications for commercial fishermen, charter boat companies, and related businesses opened 9 August and will close on 7 September.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

LOUISIANA: Louisiana breaks ground on experimental project to rebuild lost wetlands

August 12, 2023 — Over thousands of years, the Mississippi River wended its way through the lush and dense wetlands of the Barataria Basin in what’s now south-central Louisiana. As it flowed south on its way to the sea, the river continually poured sediment into the basin, gifting it with fresh, nutrient-rich river mud that replenished the land and prevented coastal erosion. But 20th-century innovations like dams and levees stopped the river’s natural systems. This, in combination with recent sea-level rise and the constant battering of supercharged hurricane seasons, means the sea now gnaws steadily at the bottom of the state, causing gradual but catastrophic land loss. Since 1932, the Barataria has lost 17 percent of its land. It’s predicted to lose another 200-plus square miles in the next 20 years.

To combat this, Louisiana officials broke ground Thursday on an ambitious, $2.92 billion project to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into the basin, mimicking the natural processes of the river’s flow in an attempt to save the state’s disappearing coast. The initiative is the first step in Louisiana’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan, funded in part by a lawsuit settlement from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Though many laud the project, some worry it will harm existing wildlife in the basin, while taking a very long time to do its work.

The main event for the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project will be “punching a hole in the levee” that prevents the Mississippi River from regularly overflowing its banks and changing course, said Bren Haase, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The project involves installing a complex gate structure through the Mississippi River’s levee, allowing some water to flow into a channel, which will then empty out over the basin and wash into the sea, carrying mud, silt, and clay with it to create new land. It’ll take five years to build. Over 50 years, the diversion project should add 21 square miles of land to the basin, according to Haase.

Read the full article at Grist

LOUISIANA: A billion-dollar coastal project begins in Louisiana. Will it work as sea levels rise?

August 10, 2023 — Nearly $3 billion in settlement money from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that devastated the Gulf Coast and killed hundreds of thousands of marine animals is now funding a massive ecosystem restoration in southeastern Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.

The flat, sparsely populated land divided by the Mississippi River delta is marbled by bayous and bays. Farms, fishing camps and shrimp boats share the region with oil rig supply vessels and industrial storage. And it’s about to host a vast undertaking meant to mimic Mother Nature: Enormous gates will soon be incorporated into a flood protection levee.

The aim is to divert some of the river’s sediment-laden water into a new channel and guide it into the Barataria Basin southeast of New Orleans.

If it works, the sediment will settle out in the basin and gradually restore land that has been steadily disappearing for decades. State coastal officials call it a first-of-its-kind project they are certain will work, even as climate change-induced rising sea levels threaten the disappearing coast.

Read the full article at Associated Press

US domestic shrimp prices stayed near historic lows in April

August 3, 2023 — NOAA recently released preliminary data on shrimp landings from the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic for April 2023, with the data showing the price of shrimp continues to sit near historic lows.

Across the Gulf of Mexico – which is listed by landings from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Western Florida, and compiled monthly by the Southern Shrimp Alliance from NOAA data – most states saw increases shrimp catches sitting above historical averages. Overall landings across the state, however, were down thanks to a lack of data from Louisiana, which historically has averaged over 884,000 pounds, or roughly 401 metric tons (MT), of shrimp landed for the month.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Texas one of several states included in critical sea turtle habitat proposal

July 31, 2023 — A new proposal aims to protect threatened and endangered sea turtles by preserving their habitat along critical areas of the U.S. coastline.

NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the plan mid-July, proposing 8,870 acres of coastline in California, Florida, Hawaii, North Carolina and Texas be conserved for green sea turtles basking, nesting, incubation, hatching and traveling to sea. The proposition also included the territories of American Samoa, Guam and U.S. Virgin Islands; and the commonwealths of the Northern Mariana Islands and Puerto Rico.

Read the full article at KETK

Letters: Pleas for help from Louisiana shrimpers fall on deaf ears

July 26, 2023 — The Louisiana shrimp industry is in crisis; putting our 15,000 jobs and $1.3 billion industry at risk.

During the legislative session, hundreds of shrimpers, dock owners and processors marched on the State Capitol to call out unwanted competition from imported shrimp.

Louisiana plays a significant role in the U.S. shrimp market, accounting for 25% of the nation’s demand. But imports from Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Ecuador are flooding U.S. markets, resulting in distressed prices for our product.

Absent an outright ban or a cap and control mechanism on imported shrimp, it becomes increasingly challenging to sustain our livelihoods. Additionally, imports raise concerns about cheap foreign labor practices and potential health risks.

Expanding testing and enforcing country-of-origin labeling are common sense solutions to ensure consumer safety and awareness. But our pleas for assistance to our federal and state lawmakers continue to go unanswered.

To add insult to injury, we face another threat by Louisiana’s recreational and for-hire charter fishermen who have suggested there need to be arbitrary and scientifically unsubstantiated limits on commercial fishing, including shrimping and Gulf menhaden fishing, to reduce incidental bycatch of speckled trout and redfish.

While conservation efforts of these stressed species are important, singling out the commercial fishing sector without addressing the root causes of reckless overfishing by the tens of thousands of unmonitored anglers off Louisiana’s coast is misguided. Louisiana’s commercial fisheries follow sound fisheries management practices.

We are heavily regulated, guided by science and sustainability. We will not allow others to selectively shift blame to us when they need to do more to preserve and protect their catch.

Failure to address these challenges will have far-reaching consequences, potentially resulting in the loss of not just our industry but a cultural heritage deeply intertwined with our coastal communities.

ACY COOPER

president, Louisiana Shrimp Association

Read the full article at NOLA.com

NOAA proposes new critical habitat in Gulf of Mexico for Rice’s whales, green sea turtles

July 26, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries has proposed designating critical habitat areas for endangered Rice’s whales and green sea turtles as part of its efforts to ensure the species’ survival.

The Rice’s whale critical habitat proposal is part of a settlement between NOAA and conservation groups Healthy Gulf and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sued the government for failing to designate critical habitat for the whales within the time required under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance Share Thoughts Following Offshore Wind Approval

July 25, 2023 — Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, an organization of commercial snapper and grouper fishermen in the region, released a statement following the Biden-Harris administration’s decision to approve offshore wind energy lease sale in the Gulf.

According to the organization, the major offshore wind news comes with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)’s decision to grant “bidding credits for companies and developers who commit to establishing or contributing to a fisheries compensatory mitigation fund.”

“These credits can count for 10% of the cash bid, allowing eligible bidders to put down slightly less upfront for the lease, with the guarantee that they will use an equivalent amount to develop or contribute to a fisheries compensatory mitigation fund for the Gulf commercial and charter/for-hire fishing industries,” the Alliance explained in its statement.

The funds will help offset the costs of gear loss, counterbalance reductions in fishing income, and reduce the cost of necessary upgrades to gear/navigational equipment and support fishermen’s involvement in the wind project.

The Shareholders’ Alliance said including the compensatory mitigation fund was a “sound strategy.”

“In offering these bidding credits, the Shareholders’ Alliance believes that BOEM has taken a positive step forward towards addressing potential adverse impacts of the offshore wind lease to the Gulf’s commercial fishing industry,” the group wrote.

It also said that it believes offshore wind holds promise for not only the Gulf of Mexico but the entire planet. It believes there is potential for a strong partnership between BOEM and fishermen. The group believes the industry and BOEM can create a “complementary rather than competitive” partnership.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com