Saving Seafood

Management & Regulation

NOAA Fisheries Announces American Lobster Trap Transfer Program

June 9, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries announces a trap transfer program in Area 2, the Outer Cape Area, and Area 3 (offshore fishery from ME to NC).

This program allows qualified vessels to buy and/or sell individual traps up to a specified trap cap in these areas, giving lobster permit holders more flexibility. Federal lobster permit holders from other areas may also “buy in” to these areas by purchasing traps through this program.

NOAA Fisheries will accept trap transfer applications between August 1 and September 30, 2015.If approved, the new trap allocations will be effective for the start of the 2016 fishing year, on May 1, 2016.

Read our bulletin and Federal Register announcement about the new program, or download trap transfer applications, both available on our website.

Questions about the trap transfer program? Contact the Sustainable Fisheries Division, Regional Office, at 978-281-9315.

Observer plan riles Massachusetts lobstermen

June 6, 2015 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The specter of increased observer coverage on the decks of their boats is not sitting well with Massachusetts lobstermen, whose resistance to the NOAA Fisheries plan was in full flower at a public meeting Thursday night in Gloucester.

Resistance? It was more like rebellion.

“We don’t want to end up like the groundfish guys,” Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer, the longtime Gloucester lobsterman who serves as president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, told NOAA representatives at federal agency’s regional headquarters in the Blackburn Industrial Park. “I don’t need anybody to measure my lobsters. I can measure my own lobsters.”

That was one of the milder comments, as the audience of about 50 lobstermen from the North Shore and other Massachusetts coastal communities peppered NOAA representatives with questions and concerns about the regulator’s plan to expand its Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP) in the New England lobstering industry and as far down the East Coast as Maryland.

The lobstermen were particularly livid over two issues: what they perceived as National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s inability to grasp the extent of the safety issues that will be created by putting observers and their gear onto already-cramped lobster boats and the lack of definitive answers on whether boat owners will carry any of the financial liability if an observer is injured while at sea.

“I’ll get rid of my permit before I’ll let these guys on my boat,” yelled one lobsterman from the back of the crowd.

The NOAA team, which included representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard and the private MRAG Americas company that supplies observers to monitor the lobster industry, planned to give a visual and oral presentation and then open the floor up to questions.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Five years after ‘catch shares’ and ‘sectors,’ groundfish industry is on the rocks

June 7, 2015 — Five years have now gone by since the reshaping of the Northeast fishery, five years that the the Northeast groundfishing industry does the best it can under a new set of rules.

Five years ago, few knew the definition of the word “sector” as NOAA Fisheries was suddenly using it. Basically they are what most people would call co-operatives.  “Catch shares” were a bit easier; it’s another word for quotas. And it’s the catch shares, not so much the sectors, that many believe are at the root of the problem.

Sectors and catch shares have become common currency as the groundfish industry continues its long collapse, which in fact began years before  the new experiment was unveiled in 2010. And as it does, federal regulators and environmental groups cling to the system that many already consider a failure — failing to turn around the stubborn collapse of the Atlantic cod population as well as that of yellowtail flounder, in NOAA’s view.

There is no shortage of people who believe that shutting down fishing boats was the objective all along. Peter Shelley, senior attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation, said that some environmentalists use the term “fleet rationalization,” which to some means getting rid of boats that are not efficient. Squeeze them with tight quotas and it eventually becomes impossible to go fishing and make any money.

Johanna Thomas, director of planning and strategy for the Environmental Defense Fund, had a different take on what fleet “rationalization” is meant to describe.

The old system of “days at sea” regulation, with every boat for itself, was “a very irrational system of fish management,” she said. Sectors and catch shares were a way to organize the fishery in a way that involved fishermen cooperating with each other, with everybody following an understandable, rational, uniform set of rules.

“It doesn’t mean reduced capacity,” she said. “It  is helping fishermen make a viable, stable living.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Council cuts halibut bycatch in Bering Sea

June 7, 2015 — SITKA, Ala. — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council made its second controversial compromise of the year on June 7, again related to bycatch in the Bering Sea and again after lengthy, impassioned testimony.

The council passed an amended motion, submitted by Alaska Commissioner of Fish and Game Sam Cotten and amended by Washington State council member Bill Tweit, to cut the halibut bycatch rates for the Bering Sea groundfish fleet.

Amendment 80 cooperatives’ cap will be cut by 25 percent, Amendment 80 limited access by 40 percent, the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands Trawl Limited Access Sector by 15 percent, non-trawl groundfish sectors including hook and line Pacific cod vessels by 15 percent, and Community Development Quota by 20 percent.

Like the April decision to cut salmon bycatch for the Bering Sea pollock fleet, the council’s June cuts left both sides of the issue feeling punished for a situation they blame on the council itself, along with the International Pacific Halibut Commission.

“We got screwed,” said Myron Melovidov, chairman of the Central Bering Sea Fishermen’s Association. “Plain and simple.”

Groundfish fishermen in the so-called Amendment 80 fleet, for their part, insist the cuts are deeper than they are equipped to handle.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce 

 

NEW JERSEY: Governor Chris Christie sues to block ocean blasting in Rutgers seismic study

June 5, 2015 — NEW JERSEY (AP) — The Christie administration is trying to again block a Rutgers University-led research group from blasting sound waves on the ocean floor, saying it will harm marine life and disrupt the state’s $1 billion commercial and recreational fishing industry.

In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court on Friday, the state Department of Environmental Protection says the study that began this week off the coast of Long Beach Island violates federal laws protecting marine animals such as humpback whales making their spring migration up the East Coast.

The study, which received federal permits last year, intends to collect data about sediment on the ocean floor to determine historic trends of sea level rise along the Jersey Shore dating back 60 million years. In the wake of Superstorm Sandy, Rutgers researchers have said the study could be used to help make decisions on where to elevate houses, build protective barriers or relocate critical infrastructure.

Read the full story at The Record 

 

Labor Abuses in Thai Shrimp Industry Among Agenda Items for This Week’s G-7 Economic Summit

FRANKFURT — A Burmese migrant worker is sold by traffickers as a slave to the owner of a Thai fishing boat. The catch of the boat is used to make fish meal to feed farmed shrimp. The shrimp wind up in supermarkets in the United States and Europe.

Issues of security and economics tend to attract the most attention at Group of 7 meetings. But when President Obama and other leaders of the nations in the group meet at the Bavarian spa resort of Schloss Elmau on June 7 and 8, one of the items on the agenda will be related to those Thai shrimp.

The leaders plan to discuss so-called supply chain standards — ways of ensuring that everyday products like food, electronics and jewelry do not come packaged with human misery as a hidden ingredient.

Abuses in the Thai fishing industry have been well documented and were the subject of hearings in the United States Congress in April. The Group of 7 countries — Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States — represent 45 percent of global economic output, which gives them considerable power to push for better working conditions not only for Thai fishing crews but also for miners in Democratic Republic of Congo and textile workers in Bangladesh.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Maine Regulators to discuss options for collapsed shrimp fishery

June 8, 2015 — Interstate fishery regulators will meet in Portland, Maine, this week to identify management options for the shuttered Northern shrimp fishery.

Regulators shut down the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery in December 2013 over concerns about population levels. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Advisory Panel and Section will meet on Friday to review public comments about the fishery and consider options for the fishery’s future.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

 

FLORIDA: Take the Marine Fisheries Survey today

June 4, 2015 — The following was released by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission:

We want to hear from you! 

The FWC Division of Marine Fisheries Management is conducting a short survey to help determine priority areas for marine fisheries management projects. 

Marine fish and invertebrates are your resources. This is your opportunity to assist in the management of your resource. 

The survey will be available online through June 25. One survey per person.

Have questions? Call Marine Fisheries at 850-487-0554 or email Marine@MyFWC.com.

Take the survey. 

 

 

Mediation Hearing today as 20 Alaskan Companies Seek Access to MSC Certificate for Alaskan Salmon

SEAFOODNEWS.COM  by John Sackton  June 8, 2015 — Twenty companies seeking access to the Marine Stewardship Council’s certification of the Alaska Salmon fishery, along with the existing Silver Bay client group that has denied access, will meet with a mediator today in Seattle.

The Mediation was sponsored by the MSC after the companies appealed to the MSC Board of Directors that the existing client group in Alaska, the Alaska Salmon Processors Association, had illegally under MSC rules denied additional companies access to the MSC certificate.

At present, twenty companies, including  Alaska General Seafoods, Alaska Glacier Seafoods, Bering Pacific Seafoods, Big Creek Fisheries, Deep Sea Fisheries, Great Pacific Seafoods, Icicle Seafoods, Icy Straits, Kwikpak Fisheries, Leader Creek Fisheries, North Pacific Seafoods, Ocean Beauty, Pacific Seafood, Pavlov Fisheries, Peter Pan Seafoods, Snug Harbor Seafoods, Taku Fisheries, Triad Fisheries, Trident Seafoods, and Yukon Gold Fisheries, and possibly other eligible participants, seek access to the MSC certification awarded to the entire Alaska salmon fishery.

The applicant companies said in a statement that “A mediation between Alaska Seafood Processors Association (ASPA), the client group for the Alaska salmon MSC certificate, and the applicants seeking access to the certificate in time for 2015 harvests is scheduled for Monday, June 8. The mediation has been arranged at the request of MSC, and the purpose is to reach agreement on sharing of the costs incurred by ASPA and its predecessors in acquiring and maintaining the MSC certificate.”

The mediation proceedings are confidential.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.