Law

New fishing regulations by the federal government will lead to the collapse of New Bedford’s fishing industry this summer, Mayor Scott Lang said Friday.

Lang said he’s prepared to take the fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

See the video at WJAR 10.

 

 

 

 

 

Rolled out just a week ago today, the new system was vilified Friday in a pair of emergency meetings — one in Gloucester, the other in New Bedford, co-capitals of the New England fishing industry.

Angry fishermen and shoreside business operators described a chaotic introduction to the Obama administration's new regulatory scheme, with dysfunctional communications technology leaving boats uncertain whether they could leave port or unload, other boats held back from fishing to avoid exceeding allocations of specific species, jobs lost and fractional landings endangering supply systems.

A fisherman who lives across the street from Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk was laid off.

During the three years of government planning and development to create the catch share system — catching rights with hard limits and deterrent policies against excesses — most of the industry anticipated a debacle. But there were some who, without embracing the concept as promoted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Defense Fund, saw catch shares as inevitable and worth a try.

Any hints of interest or hope in the system were gone Friday.

"These are evil, evil, evil people," said Richard Burgess, who owns four boats and leads the gillnet sector, a guild-like business cooperative for the 40 boats that fish with fixed gear out of Gloucester.

Richie Canastra, co-owner of the New Bedford-based Whaling City Seafood Display Auction, said he heard not a peep of support for the government system in the two-hour emergency meeting called Friday afternoon by New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang.

"Gloucester and New Bedford are walking side by side on this one," said Canastra.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

 

 

 

 

 

The Obama administration has rejected a challenge to the legality and fairness of the 2009 New England Fishery Management Council votes that created an unlevel playing field in the allocation of fishermen's catch shares.

The reaction to a formal complaint filed by a member of the regional council could lead to a lawsuit aimed at blocking the May 1 rollout of a radical reorganization of the groundfishery with hard catch limits, severe conservation restrictions and a new business model based on fishing cooperatives.

The dispute resurfaced  after the administration announced it had approved a final rule, the so-called Amendment 16, which reinvents the way groundfishing is managed, organized and regulated.

The new system poses survival challenges to many fishermen who have expressed certainty that reduced cash flow from lower catch limits will render their jobs and businesses no longer viable.

In a letter, the new national director of the National Marine Fisheries Service found no legal fault in the decision of the council to employ different criteria in setting allocations within the groundfishery.

These effectively shift about 700 metric tons of cod and haddock, worth roughly $1 million, from the commercial sector to the recreational sector. Another disputed vote moved a smaller additional volume and value away from the general commercial sector to a small commercial cooperative based in Chatham on Cape Cod.

The letter from NMFS director Eric Schwaab to David Goethel — a member of the New England Council who voted against the unlevel playing field and filed a formal objection last August, weeks after the disputed votes — arrived within hours of the announcement by Schwaab that the new management system, more than three years in the making, had been formally and finally approved.

It introduces catch shares, hard catch limits, and tight allocations in aggressive conservation restrictions beginning May 1, unless it is short-circuited by legal action.

A court challenge to the decision by Goethel and the industry is considered likely.

"Now, we have a final rule and we have something to shoot at," said Goethel in a telephone interview with the Times.

The Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, like Goethel, also objected to the "inequity" of the allocation.
The council decided to use catch histories from 1996 to 2006 for the mass of commercial boats, but voted to use a five-year history, based on more fruitful times, to give the recreational sector and the Cape Cod cooperative a larger share of the whole than a universally applied measure would have produced.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

David Goethel's letter to the Adminstration directed to Secretary Locke on June 27, 2009

Obama Admistration response from Eric Schwaab sent ten months later on March 29, 2010

 

 

 

 

 

"The problem it became was a business decision," Ciulla said. "It was not prudent to spend that much money on litigation."

The settlement marks a new course for NOAA law enforcement. The negotiations were taken out of the hands of Charles Juliand, who heads the Gloucester office, and Deirdre Casey, who built the case against the auction. Instead, the talks were removed to NOAA headquarters where Lois Schiffer was recently installed as chief counsel.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

NOAA and Gloucester Fish Exchange, Inc. (owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction) agreed late yesterday to settle three pending enforcement cases.   From the outset, the Gloucester Fish Auction has vigorously denied all of the claims asserted by the National Marine Fisheries Service which had sought to impose fines totaling almost $400,000 and shut down the Auction for one hundred fifty (150) days based on incidents that occurred between 2004 and 2006. This sanction, if imposed, would not only have been detrimental to the Auction, but to the Gloucester fishing industry and the entire fishing community, which the Agency purports to serve.  The Auction has been scrupulous about establishing and maintaining procedures to ensure compliance with the law. 

In the settlement agreement the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction denies all liability in the three cases.

The settlement involves payment by the Exchange of $85,000 and a 35-day closure (non-consecutive) of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, over a three-year period.  Under the terms of the settlement, the Auction is allowed to choose the days of closure in order to minimize any economic hardship, impact on its customers and/or the vessels that employ its services.   

Larry Ciulla, President of the Exchange, said that "the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction settled these matters because we are a small, family owned business and, unlike the government, we could not sustain the enormous expenditures of time and money required to defend our position.  Despite having confidence that we would have prevailed if we could have had access to the unlimited resources needed to litigate the matter to the end, we had no choice but to put these matters behind us." 

Read the complete story at Ahab's Journal.

NOAA and Gloucester Fish Exchange, Inc. (owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction) agreed late yesterday to settle three pending enforcement cases that involved allegations of handling illegally caught fish and maintaining false records.

The settlement involves payment by the Exchange of $85,000 and a 35-day closure (non-consecutive) of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, over a three-year period under certain requirements. The days of closure will be coordinated in order to minimize economic hardship and customer burden. Under the terms of the settlement, NOAA and the Exchange further agree to dismiss all outstanding litigation involving these three cases.

“We are pleased to reach a settlement in this long-standing case and we are optimistic that we’ve entered a more constructive relationship going forward,” said Charles Green, NOAA Deputy Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement and Litigation. “NOAA will continue to work with the New England fishing community to build a sustainable fishery that maximizes benefits to coastal communities and the nation. Compliance with fishery laws and regulations is critical to the success of our joint efforts.”

In January, NOAA announced it is developing a comprehensive plan to ensure a fair and effective enforcement program and to promote fairness, transparency and accountability in its fisheries enforcement operations.

Read the complete story at NOAA News.

Under the guise of helping in the management of common resources, an agency of the federal government, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service, is transforming the open ocean into an enclosed field — a field one can enter only upon paying a considerable access fee.

Once in the field, strict control is exercised over any and all aspects of the fisheries: seasons allowed, days allowed, zones allowed, species allowed, amounts allowed.

These decisions are taken on the basis of obsolete science that is questionable at best, the linear and static conception of the food pyramid.

Modern science that is thought out in serious institutions of higher learning and is written up in the most respected journals, science that is dynamic and organic and reasons in term of cyclical predator-prey patterns, is not given any consideration.

Read the entire article at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Local fishermen have sued the National Marine Fisheries Service over deficiencies in the agency's method of monitoring the industrial Atlantic herring midwater trawlers. 

As per the available information Captain Peter Taylor of Chatham filed suit against NMFS for creating a loophole in a rule that will allow herring trawlers to dump uninspected bycatch in an area that has been closed to protect troubled groundfish stocks. In a press release, Taylor stated that herring trawlers should be held to the same standards as other fishermen, and that means they shouldn't be allowed to discard fish that the observers haven't inspected properly.

It is opined that the original rule proposed by NMFS was considered a reasonable approach to gathering more data about bycatch on midwater trawl vessels and received positive comments from the public according to the press statement issued by Earthjustice, whose attorney, Roger Fleming, is representing Taylor. But the final rule incorporated a change allowing the dumping. In addition, last Thursday, recreational fisherman Patrick Paquette of Hyannis, who represents several recreational fishing organizations such as the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association, filed a complaint under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain an NMFS video showing footage of federal observers aboard a midwater trawl ship.

Read the complete story at World Fishing Today.

Local fishermen are suing the National Marine Fisheries Service over deficiencies in the agency’s method of monitoring the industrial Atlantic herring midwater trawlers.

Last Wednesday, December 16, Captain Peter Taylor of Chatham filed suit against NMFS for creating a loophole in a rule that will allow herring trawlers to dump uninspected bycatch in an area that has been closed to protect troubled groundfish stocks. Closed Area 1, located southeast of the Cape and identified as a spawning ground and nursery area for juvenile cod and haddock, is currently off-limits to nearly all other fishing vessels.

In a press release, Taylor stated that herring trawlers should be held to the same standards as other fishermen, “and that means they shouldn’t be allowed to discard fish that the observers haven’t inspected properly. When I am observed, all the fish in my gear is counted, and I still fish with hooks. But herring trawl nets are massive, with way more impact, and to only observe part of their catch just isn’t right.”

Read the complete story at Wicked Local.

A nonprofit corporation formed by Rhode Island fishermen is working with a major Boston law firm on a legal and constitutional challenge to the recently voted federal groundfish management plan that would transform the commonly held resources of the sea into privately held fishermen’s catch shares.

Catch shares have become a bitterly divisive issue nationally, pushed hard by the Obama administration and many major environmental organizations, but resisted by many fishermen and at least one consumer group.

Tina Jackson, a Point Judith, R.I., fisherman and the president of the newly created American Alliance of Fishermen and their Communities, yesterday identified the firm formulating the Amendment 16 challenge as Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.

Read the complete story The Gloucester Daily Times.