Economic Impact

NEW YORK – July 20, 2010 – Consider the lobster: The population of the crustaceans is at such low levels along the East Coast that a regulatory agency is proposing a five-year ban on harvesting them between Cape Cod and Virginia.

"Long Island Sound, in particular, has been in poor health since 1999," said Toni Kerns, senior fishery management plan coordinator at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. "We had a die off in the fishery."

On Thursday, the technical committee of biologists for the Atlantic commission is meeting in Warwick, R.I., to discuss the proposal. They have the final authority to shut down lobstering in these coastal waters.

The ban, however, would spare Maine, where lobsters are thriving. Last year, fishermen pulled in 75.6 million pounds — the largest take in years, according to state records and estimates. The harvest raked in $223.7 million — although that was about $22 million lighter than in 2008.

Read the complete story from CNN Money.

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD – July 18, 2010 – County Tipperary in Ireland is landlocked, so when young Michael Francis Foley left the family home in 1906 to seek his fortune, opening a fish market was probably not part of his vision for conquering America. But when he stepped ashore in Boston that is just what he did and, a century later, the company he founded, Foley Fish, is still prospering in the hands of the fourth generation of Foleys.

The green Foley delivery trucks are a common sight in New Bedford as they roll in and out of the fish house in the South End, under the watchful eye of Laura Foley Ramsden, company president and the great granddaughter of old M.F.

Inside, the walls of the Wright Street office are covered with historic photos from the company's past and the display includes a flyer from 1936 advertising flounder for 20 cents per pound, cod for 15 cents and halibut for 35 cents.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

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Where are these people going to go to work once they have lost their jobs and there are catch shares? There is nothing, there is nothing. A boat owner will sell his permit, will lease his permit, he will get a little bit of money but what happened to crew members whose been on the deck, worked boats for 30 years, they get nothing. Those issues have never been addressed.

Actually, one time I asked Allen Peterson who used to be the divisional director and he said, “Well, my job is to save fish. Your job is to save fishermen.” So that’s what’s happening. And now they are admitting there are going to be lost jobs, but nothing has been done for them. And yet, under this economy, President Obama every day preaches about creating jobs. And in an industry with a rebuilt fishery, we are losing jobs.

The fact that I have always been concerned about all through the years, you know it – it’s about the people. Magnuson does allow for people, the effects of the regulation has on the people, the effect on their lives and the economic effect on the people.

 IIn 1994, we opened the Fishermen’s Assistance Centers in Massachusetts and then there was one in Maine and we were open for 12 years. I knew this because I ran the Gloucester Fishing Assistance Center and I was committed to the one in New Bedford and the one in Hyannis.

Never once in all these years did anybody came to me or to my superior and ask who are these people that have been affected, how have they been affected.

During those twelve years we wrote Amendment 5, Amendment 7, Amendment 9, Amendment 13 and now we’re in Amendment 16 (2009) because we closed the center in 2006.

Because the consolidation that took place after 1995 to 2003-2004, it’s immense. We had the 50 percent consolidation of the New England and Massachusetts Fishing Fleet.

When you talk about a community like Gloucester or New Bedford, they have nothing else but fishing. These people, today, are on welfare and nobody has looked at these people. And in the ’90s the economy was great, we couldn’t train people fast enough to get jobs and in the 2000, there are no jobs.

Read the complete story from Fishermen's Voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Certain fish stocks are diminishing. This has reduced fish landings, or catches, significantly. Plus, more of the work in the industry is being automated. Job opportunities in fish processing are shifting.

The fishing industry has been the livelihood of many coastal cities across North America. But when fewer fish are caught, everyone feels the effects. Coastal communities and processing companies everywhere are feeling the changes.

That doesn't mean everyone is suffering. Currently, the biggest area of job growth in food processing is for production workers — the largest group in the industry. That's because the sorting, cutting and chopping tasks of these workers have been very difficult to automate, says the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH).

Read the complete story from the College Foundation of North Carolina.

 

 

 

 

 

Tens of millions in fines levied against U.S. commercial fishermen held in an unrecorded account were used by the fisheries law enforcement division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to fuel extravagant purchases and foreign travel, according to a forensic audit for a U.S. inspector general made public Thursday.

Among the discoveries by the accounting firm KPMG, brought in by Department of Commerce's IG's office, was that NOAA police own more vehicles "by a substantial margin" than they have officers — 202 vehicles for 172 officers.

The audit also found multiple purchases on the same day from the same vendor, six-figure overseas' convention spending and the purchase of 22 vessels — including a $300,000 "undercover" vessel described by the manufacturer as "luxurious," with a "beautifully appointed cabin." All of those purchases bypassed internal review, the audit found.

"My question is, why are these people not in jail?" said attorney Stephen Ouellette, who maintains an Atlantic Coast fishing and maritime practice and began documenting violations of individual rights and high seas police excesses in letters to Congress dating back a decade.

"There're not very nice people, are they?" said Lawrence Ciulla, president of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, the family business that keys the fishing port economy in Gloucester.

"This latest in a series of reports by the Inspector General appears to be yet another vindication of allegations the industry has been making for several years, namely that NOAA enforcement agents and general counsel are perversely incentized to seek fines and forfeitures grossly disproportionate to relatively minor or technical violations of complex and ever changing regulations," said auction defense attorney Paul Muniz.

Congressman John Tierney said yesterday he intends to introduce legislation to prevent future misuse of the NOAA Asset Forfeiture Fund and support fishermen who have been cleared of wrongful allegations by NOAA.

"Today, we received further evidence of the NOAA's misuse of authority," Tierney said. "It is essential that we end this culture of no accountability at NOAA and take the appropriate steps to ensure fairness and economic stability for our fishing community."

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Dave Marciano sold his federal groundfishing permit earlier this year — putting him on the outside of a way of life that had given him the chance to work for himself, something that looked pretty darn good to "a guy with a high school diploma."

Marciano, 45, said the extremely low allocations of fish, imposed to achieve full recovery of overfished stocks by a 10-year deadline, left him the option of buying another permit or selling the one he had. But permits he found to buy were going for $250,000.

"If your home is not paid for, and the boat's not paid for and the kids' education is not paid for …," he said, his voice trailing off. "That's out of my league. If I bought, I'd be servicing debt for the rest of my life."

Instead, Marciano said he would sit and watch how the fishing season plays out under the new catch share system.

"I'm going to sink some money into the boat, then put a 'For Sale' sign on it, and dabble with tuna and lobstering this summer and see what happens," he said.

Read the complete story at the Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Since the 1994 publication of a troubling, landmark study, the United States has led the way in the effort to reduce "bycatch."

Bycatch is the term used to described fish hooked or netted inadvertently, fish of lesser or no value to the commercial fisherman, fish of a species that puts the boat over its limit or of a species protected by "no-catch" rules.

In simple terms, bycatch is a byproduct of the legal catch and is wasted — typically just shovelled overboard. The waste has troubled Gloucester for a long time.

Here in New England waters, bycatch became illegal on May 1, under the catch share regime ordered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If industry analysis proves correct, that change in the rules threatens to put some fishermen out of business.

The rules require the landing of all legal-size fish caught in federal waters, including those landed by accident.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

When the National Marine Fisheries Service reduced the catch quota for groundfish to achieve full recovery of overfished stocks within the mandated 10-year deadline, a fisherman named Powell began having serious doubts he could make it through the summer.

For Powell, the problem is compounded by the government's inaccurate record of his 10-year catch history, the sole determining factor in determining his share of the quota.

Powell has his own records, plus dealer records, that prove he caught about 1.2 million pounds of fish in the four years between 1996 and 1999. But the government computer shows no fishing at all for Powell during these years.

Without those years, he is short about 120,000 pounds of his proper annual share. The shortage is worth, by conservative estimate, about $120,000 — which could mean the difference between fishing with his crew or putting the boat up.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON—The BP oil spill has hammered the fishing and tourism industries along the Gulf of Mexico. But it appears the economic damage to the rest of the nation will be limited.

Analysts say the spill will reduce economic growth by only about one-half of 1 percentage point this quarter, and even less during the second half of the year. Even for an economy as large as the United States' — $14.6 trillion — a $73 billion cut is barely a nick.

Here's why:

— Spending on tourism is moving elsewhere. Beachgoers who might have headed for Pensacola, Fla., for example, are looking toward Atlantic coast sites such as Myrtle Beach, S.C. Gulf hotel rooms going unused by tourists are being booked by cleanup crews.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A sold out Commercial Marine Expo, a major marine trade show, held in New Bedford for the first time this year helped put the city on the conference and trade show map, according to city officials.

The expo brought thousands of pepole, mainly in the marine trades, to State Pier and was highly praised by attendees. It was the first year the show, formerly named the Fish Expo Atlantic, was held in New Bedford, having moved there from Providence.

Show director Ted Hugger told the Standard-Times that the city turned out to be perfect for the show.

"People kept saying this is where it ought to be," he said. "You look out at any of the doors here and all you see is fishing boats."

About 2,500 and 3,000 attendees visited the expo over the two days it ran, an increase over past shows.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today [subscription site]

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