November 2, 2020 — This week could be crunch time for negotiations on the EU’s future relationship with the U.K. In a sign that a compromise could be struck by the mid-November deadline, officials are close to breaking the deadlock on the access EU boats will have to U.K. fishing waters. The sides have two weeks to finalize an agreement and may pause this week to allow EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier to brief member states and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Prime Minister Boris Johnson to give one final push. Although important differences remain — particularly over state aid and the level playing field for business — a deal on fish would remove one of the biggest obstacles.
Ropeless gear gains new urgency in bid to save right whales
November 2, 2020 — The sight of a field of brightly colored lobster buoys bobbing on an otherwise featureless ocean is as ironically New England as a lobster roll. These buoys number in the millions, and are each connected by a line to the traps below creating a maze, in some areas a kind of wall, that whales, including the world’s most endangered great whale, must navigate in its search for food.
With over 80% of North Atlantic right whales bearing scars of entanglements in fishing line, the task is formidable, and eliminating some, if not all, of these buoys and lines has been the subject of lobster management and litigation.
For the past two years, it has also been the subject of intense research as scientists in the U.S. and Canada race to find an affordable and reliable technology that will allow lobstermen and other fixed-gear fishermen to find and retrieve their gear without running a line from the surface to the bottom.
Before the first ropeless buoy workshop in 2018, fishing without a buoy line was considered fantasy or science fiction, said Sean Brillant, manager of marine programs for the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
Rhode Island senators want a say in fishery rules
October 30, 2020 — Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, both D-R.I., introduced Senate Bill S.4804, the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Fairness Act. The bill would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the fishing law of this nation, to add Rhode Island to the list of seven states represented on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and eight regional councils manage fisheries in our federal waters.
The Senate bill would give Rhode Island two new voting seats on the council. Many of the fish caught off our coast are regulated by the Mid-Atlantic Council, yet Rhode Island has no representation on the panel.
Spiny dogfish and monkfish are both managed under joint fishery management plans developed by the Mid-Atlantic and New England Council. Many of the Mid-Atlantic Council’s managed fisheries are fished for in state waters, so the council works with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to coordinate management of summer flounder, scup, black sea bass and bluefish. All of these species are important to recreational and commercial fishers in Rhode Island.
ALASKA: Environmental group releases more secretly recorded ‘Pebble Tapes’ targeting the executive who remains in charge
October 30, 2020 — An environmental group on Thursday released two additional video recordings of Pebble mine executive Ron Thiessen discussing his political strategy for winning a federal permit for the mine.
The release is a follow-up to the damaging tapes the group released in September that became a flashpoint in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race and led to the downfall of Thiessen’s former colleague from the project, Tom Collier.
The Environmental Investigation Agency said in a written statement that the newly released video recordings, part of the same meetings originally recorded in August and September, highlight Thiessen’s role as head of the project.
The videos also underscore the financial benefit that companies he is involved in will receive if the mine is built, the group said.
Thiessen remains the head of Northern Dynasty Minerals, the Canadian-based parent company of Pebble Limited Partnership that’s seeking to develop the copper and gold prospect in Southwest Alaska. Collier last month resigned from his position as chief executive of Pebble Limited.
Tongass twisted: Alaska salmon habitat loses clearcutting protections
October 30, 2020 — As expected, the Trump administration has removed a 2001 Roadless Rule exemption for more than 9 million acres of Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
A notice posted in the Federal Register on Wednesday, Oct. 28, confirms the plans indicated in the final environmental impact statement, released in September, to open lands to the removal of old-growth trees and the construction of logging roads after nearly 20 years of protection.
“I’m disappointed,” said Seth Stewart of Yakobi Fisheries in Pelican, Alaska. “Exempting the Tongass National Forest and opening 9.3 million acres to old growth logging is a shot in the gut to fishing and tourism businesses in Southeast Alaska that have been driving the economy in Southeast Alaska for decades.”
The Tongass produces more salmon than all other national forests combined, according to Trout Unlimited, and the fishing and tourism industry supported by the intact forest account for more than 25 percent of local jobs in the region.
ALASKA: Reply All: Bristol Bay associations sign new letter to Dunleavy
October 30, 2020 — We’ll be setting our clocks back this weekend, but a passionate letter-writing exchange in Alaska is making this feel like a moment from the distant past. Unlike your average political correspondence, the parties involved in this exchange are laying pretty plain how they really feel.
This series of missives between Gov. Mike Dunleavy and two state legislators, Reps. Bryce Edgmon and Louise Stutes, is one component of the fallout of the controversial Pebble Tapes, in which activists posed as potential mine investors and recorded Pebble and Northern Dynasty executives Tom Collier and Ronald Thiessen bragging about the mining conglomerate’s use of the governor’s office to launder communications for the White House.
“Your letter does not address Pebble’s blunt characterization of you and others within your administration as acting behind closed doors on Pebble’s compensatory mitigation plan,” Edgmon writes in an Oct. 26 reply to the governor, which started with a September message from Edgmon and Stutes. “Similarly, we note that your letter does not address Tom Collier’s admissions that he interfered in Alaska’s election process. Silence on these points undercuts the integrity of state government in ways that go far beyond Pebble, and we urge you to speak to them.”
The letter recognizes Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan for making direct statements against the project after the Pebble Tapes called attention to their tendency to fade into the background when it came to Pebble.
PFMC: Call for data and information – Essential Fish Habitat Review for Coastal Pelagic Species
October 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:
The Pacific Fishery Management Council, National Marine Fisheries Service, and the NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center have initiated a review of essential fish habitat provisions in the Coastal Pelagic Species Fishery Management Plan. This call for data and information is intended to support the review. Information and data sources can include published scientific literature, unpublished scientific reports, information from interested parties, and previously unavailable or inaccessible data. Information relevant to the CPS EFH review should be submitted no later than Monday November 30th, 2020.
Please see the “Call for data and information” announcement on the Council’s website for further details..
MASSACHUSETTS: Lobster Stocks Found in Steep Decline, With Future in Doubt
October 30, 2020 — Southern New England lobster stocks, once robust, have declined to record lows in recent years according to scientists and regulators, jeopardizing the future of a storied fishery even as Vineyard lobstermen continue to report strong seasons on the water.
In a benchmark assessment released late last week, an interstate regulatory agency found that lobster populations in southern New England are “significantly depleted,” reaching their lowest levels on record and threatening the lobster industry from the southern Cape through Long Island Sound.
But some Vineyard lobstermen said that despite the decreasing abundance in the entire southern New England region — which stretches from south of New York to Monomoy and Nantucket — their catch around the Island remains healthy.
And interestingly, just as lobster populations have declined in more southern waters in recent years, scientists have seen a historic boom in the Gulf of Maine, where lobster abundance and fishery performance have reached record highs, according to the report. The Vineyard sits just south of the halfway point between the two American lobster stock units, which are divided by geography and small differences in the biology of the crustaceans.
ALASKA: Meeting season nears amid COVID-19 complications
October 30, 2020 — Many Alaska fishermen are likely to be involved in regulatory meetings next spring instead of being out on the water. And Alaska legislators will be distracted by hearings for hundreds of unconfirmed appointments as they tackle contentious budgets and other pressing issues.
New dates have been set for state Board of Fisheries meetings that were bumped from later this year due to COVID-19 concerns. During the same time, along with four unconfirmed seats on the fish board, the Alaska legislature also will be tasked with considering nominees for 137 state boards and commissions named by Gov. Mike Dunleavy during the 2020 session. State lawmakers were unable to do the usual in-depth vetting of appointees when the virus forced them to adjourn early.
The upcoming round of board meetings focuses on management of subsistence, commercial, sport and personal use fisheries at Prince William Sound, Southeast and Yakutat, as well as statewide shellfish issues and hatcheries.
The meeting dates of March 4, 2021, for the hatchery committee and March 5-10 for shellfish issues remain the same as originally scheduled. The Prince William Sound meetings, set to be held in Cordova, are now set to occur from March 30-April 5; for Southeast and Yakutat, the dates are April 17-29 with the meetings scheduled to be in Ketchikan.
ALASKA: Environmental group releases more secretly recorded videos of Pebble Mine executive
October 30, 2020 — Two new secretly recorded videos of Northern Dynasty Minerals CEO Ronald Thiessen discussing the financial aspects of the Pebble Mine project have been revealed by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group.
In September, the EIA posted a series of videos it surreptitiously recorded of conversations with Thiessen and Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier, which led to Collier’s resignation on 23 September.