Saving Seafood

Management & Regulation

Red snapper frustrations boil over in Alabama as feds place strict limits on 2023 season

March 13, 2023 — In coastal Alabama, red snapper fishing lures in millions of dollars in economic impact to Gulf Shores and Orange Beach.

Tourists, who spend their vacations on the beaches, will often seek a charter boat captain and plunk down the cash to sail off for hours of deep-sea fishing in pursuit of red snapper.

But salty questions are being raised this year over Alabama’s reduced haul of the fish from last year. And the reduced aggregate weight of red snapper caught in 2022 resulted in the federal government slashing the state’s quota for red snapper fishing this year by such a considerable figure that some officials believe the 2023 season might have to end before summer vacations are over.

The latest dispute is part of a decades-long battle over the science behind red snapper assessments. It’s a scientific battle waged between federal and state bureaucrats that shows no signs of letting up any time soon.

“We need the federal government to get out of the way so all types of anglers can enjoy an abundant red snapper season,” said U.S. Rep. Jerry Carl, R-Mobile.

Some environmental groups are worried Alabama is overfishing its waters.

Meredith Moore, director of the fish conservation program at Ocean Conservancy, said 2022′s total pounds of red snapper caught in Alabama — at 463,892 pounds — was far lower than the previous two years. Recreational anglers caught up to 1.1 million pounds of red snapper in 2020.

“The local impacts to Alabama’s red snapper population are clear,” Moore said. “In 2022, despite the fishing season being open through the end of December, anglers weren’t able to catch anywhere close to as many fish as in the two previous years – a serious sign that fishing effort has been too high, and the local stock of red snapper has been depleted.”

Read the full article at AL.com

Officials consider new lobster size limits in Maine to protect young population

March 9, 2023 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering tighter rules on the minimum and maximum sizes of lobster that fishermen in Maine are allowed to catch.

Recent assessments show a troubling decline in young lobsters, commission and Maine Department of Marine Resources officials say, and because the state’s lobster catch is by far the largest and most valuable of any New England fishery, proactive measures might be necessary to protect the spawning stock.

Read the full article at CAI

Federal red snapper rules advance toward approval despite criticism

March 9, 2023 — New federal regulations on red snapper are on their way to final approval, and neither the people voting for the plans nor federal officials have much faith in them.

The Snapper-Grouper Committee of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) shepherded along Amendment 35, which is part of the SAFMC’s efforts to reduce overfishing of red snapper. Final approval is expected later in the week, despite its unpopularity among some Council members and from NOAA Fisheries.

“Bottom line for me is I don’t think (Amendment) 35 does anything for us,” NOAA Fisheries Regional Administrator Andy Strelcheck said at the SAFMC’s quarterly meetings on Jekyll Island, Georgia.

“I don’t think it’s a solution, I think it’s just going to create more anger with anglers, I think it’s ultimately not addressing the crux of the problem, which is, obviously, reducing discards and trying to shift discards to landed catch.”

The committee’s options at this point in the process were either to approve a proposal that significantly reduced catch limits, or approve one that shut down the fishery altogether, with the exception of those with exempted fishing permits.

Read the full article at Florida Politics

Environmental groups challenge government’s sale of Gulf of Mexico for oil drilling

March 7, 2023 — Several environmental groups including Healthy Gulf, filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court challenging the Department of Interior’s sale of 73.3 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas leasing.

As part of the federal government’s largest oil-and-gas lease offering in history, the Gulf of Mexico Lease Sale 259 was slated to take place last year, but was delayed along with other offshore gas and oil auctions, purportedly due to “conflicting court rulings.”

In August, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, included provisions for Gulf of Mexico oil leasing in Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in an effort to lower the cost of oil for Americans.

Despite the legislation’s efforts to invest in clean energy solutions and tackle climate change threats, Lease Sale 259 is expected to produce up to 1.12 billion barrels of oil and 4.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over the next 50 years. The environmental groups argue in their lawsuit that this will contribute “substantially to greenhouse gas pollution that will exacerbate the climate crisis worldwide, undermine national and international efforts to transition to clean energy, and increase harms to Gulf communities.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

NOAA data shows 2022 Gulf of Mexico shrimp catch at highest level since 2014

March 7, 2023 — Preliminary shrimp landings data from the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic for November 2022 have been released by NOAA, showing Louisiana made a comeback for the year while Texas numbers dropped.

Data shows more than 9 million pounds of shrimp landed in the Gulf and South Atlantic in November 2022. NOAA’s reporting indicated landings in Louisiana jumped significantly in November 2022, compared to 2021, with the state catching 4.22 million pounds in the month – a significant jump from the 2.375 million pounds caught in the same month in 2021.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Proposed Management Measures for the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery for 2023 Fishing Year

March 3, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

  • • Set management measures for the scallop fishery for the 2023 fishing year (April 1, 2023 – March 31, 2024), including the annual catch limits for the limited access and limited access general category fleets, as well as days-at-sea allocations and sea scallop access area trip allocations.
  • Implement specifications that would result in projected landings of 34 million lb, a 6 million-lb reduction from the fishing year 2021 projected landings. This is due primarily to a decrease in harvestable biomass and a lack of significant scallop recruitment in recent years.
  • Incorporate the new specifications-setting methodology and other changes developed in Amendment 21 into the fishing year 2023 specifications.
  • Maintain the existing seasonal closure in Closed Area II to reduce bycatch of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder and northern windowpane flounder.
  • Close an area on the New York Bight to fishing to protect small scallops and promote scallop recruitment in the mid-Atlantic

State and federal officials for the first time allow ropeless lobstering in areas closed to protect right whales

March 2, 2023 — For nine years, Rob Martin spent winters with most of his 800 traps stacked in his front yard, struggling to stay solvent over the long three months when regulators closed the region’s lobster fishery to protect critically endangered whales.

Over the years, the 58-year-old lobsterman has attended countless public meetings, pleading with officials to find a way that would allow him and others to resume fishing during those hard months.

Now, after years of controversy, state and federal officials are allowing Martin and more than a dozen other lobstermen to fish in closed areas off Massachusetts. The only caveat: They must use a new kind of fishing gear that uses limited amounts of rope and aims to eliminate the threat that lobstering poses to North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Offshore Wind Shot Summit Heavy on Wind Support, Short on Seafood Industry Concerns

February 28, 2023 — Last week’s inaugural government-led Floating Offshore Wind Shot Summit was expected to be dominated by voices supporting the offshore wind industry and include cheering support for offshore wind, but some in the seafood industry viewed it as nauseatingly frustrating.

The Departments of Energy, Interior, Commerce, and Transportation convened federal, state, Tribal, community, labor, industry, and community leaders, all virtually, to discuss significant progress toward development of floating offshore wind in the United States and decreasing the cost of floating offshore wind — the most expensive type of offshore renewable energy — by more than 70%.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm kicked off the summit and announced efforts to jumpstart West Coast offshore wind transmission planning and research and partnerships.

“We see floating offshore wind as one of the clean energy technologies with the most upside potential for deployment in the coming decades,” Granholm said in a press release. “This Energy Earthshot is about so much more than just adding clean energy to the grid, this is about investing in American innovation and bringing supply chains home. It’s about creating jobs from sea to shining sea, and it’s about making America more energy secure and more energy independent.”

Read the full artixle at Seafoodnews.com

Offshore wind halt urged by Native Americans seeking sway

February 27, 2023 — The National Congress of American Indians on Thursday called for a moratorium on offshore wind development along U.S. coasts, insisting the Biden administration do a better job protecting tribal interests.

The decision by the largest lobbying group for tribes in the U.S. follows a plea Tuesday by 30 New Jersey mayors to halt offshore wind activity so government officials can investigate recent whale deaths. And even before those moves, developers were confronting a slew of economic challenges, from inflation-stoked costs to supply chain woes, that are making it harder to build the nation’s first large commercial wind farms.

Native Americans have complained about being cut out of the planning, permitting and contracting process as developers seek to build more than a dozen wind projects along both the West and East coasts, despite vows by President Joe Biden and top administration officials to consider indigenous knowledge in government decisionmaking. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the nation’s first Native American cabinet secretary, also has put a new focus on environmental justice and indigenous rights as head of the department that oversees offshore wind.

Read the full article at the Press of Atlantic City

NOAA Rejects Wespac’s Proposed Fishing Rule For Hawaii Marine Monument

February 27, 2023 — LeBoeuf said NOAA will begin to develop its own regulations instead but would consider a revised proposal from Wespac.

Efforts to designate waters surrounding the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands as a national marine sanctuary began in November 2021. The designation would be an overlay of the monument, which President George W. Bush established in 2006 and President Barack Obama expanded in 2016.

In December at its most recent meeting, Wespac recommended that the National Marine Fisheries Service — an arm of NOAA — authorize noncommercial and Native Hawaiian subsistence fishing from 50 to 200 nautical miles around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

Read the full article at Honolulu Civil Beat