November 26, 2013 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
Please note that the Groundfish PDT Conference Call scheduled for tomorrow is canceled. We will be updating our website accordingly.
Progress Made on Fight Against Illegal Fishing in Draft UN Resolution
November 26, 2013 — Informal consultations were held last week in New York, US, on the draft United Nations (UN) General Assembly resolution on sustainable fisheries.
Following an EU initiative and active collaboration with our partners, significant progress was made in the fight against Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU).
Basic principles and new tools have been agreed such as the need to work on catch documentation schemes, the need for States to consider rules on chartering and the recognition of participatory surveillance as a tool to enhance the sustainability of resources.
Read the full story at The Fish Site
Missing endangered right whales spark concerns
WOODS HOLE, Mass. — November 26, 2013 — Where does a 70-ton, 50-foot-long animal hide? What about hundreds of them?
Scientists are contemplating that question because, for the almost two years, most of the 510 remaining North Atlantic right whales have not shown up at their usual feeding grounds in the area from Buzzards Bay to the Canadian border.
"Years like this, we do scratch our heads and wonder, did they all go over the waterfall?" asked Tim Cole, a marine biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.
For the past 15 years, Cole has been part of research team that flies 175 feet off the ocean, covering hundreds of miles a day, looking to find members of the world's most endangered great whale species, then identify and catalog their locations and appearance.
The researchers fly so low that if they had engine trouble, they'd have just 30 seconds before the plane hit the water. The pilot and four scientists all wear survival suits equipped with air bottles, signalling mirrors and a flashing strobe-equipped device that sends a locator signal via satellite. Two scientists contort their bodies so that they can stare at the ocean for hours from plastic bubbles protruding from either side of the fuselage.
The information gathered on the flights helps scientists estimate the right whale population and its mortality rate.
"We spend a lot of hours looking at a blank ocean," Cole said.
That was disconcertingly true this past year when, during the survey period from November 2012 to July 2013, the 57 survey flights that covered nearly 13,000 miles from Buzzards Bay to the Canadian border found only 50 right whales. That compared with 419 whales in 58 flights the previous year.
This year's survey flights picked up where last year left off, Cole said. In 30 hours of flying in November, they've seen just one right whale.
Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times
Pew Environment: Protections Needed for Florida’s Shorebirds
November 26, 2013 — Those beautiful black skimmers gliding along our beach shorelines dipping their long, wide-open beaks into the water are dependent on the bait fish congregating in the shallows.
But many of the state’s imperiled and iconic coastal waterbirds, such as brown pelicans and skimmers, are vulnerable to declines in small fish populations, according to a new report by Audubon of Florida and The Pew Charitable Trusts.
The report, “Fins and Feathers: Why little fish are a big deal to Florida’s coastal waterbirds,” reveals there are few regulations limiting the amount of forage fish hauled out of Florida’s coastal waters each year, used for fertilizers and fish meal.Commercial fisherman, for instance, netted more than 9 million pounds of mullet in 2012, mostly for their eggs that are sold around the world as a delicacy.
What’s also troubling, Pew and Audubon point out, is a critical gap in conservation efforts.On one hand, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission drafted species action plans for 60 bird species warranting protection — including 10 species dependent on forage fish. Rules and permitting changes to protect these species will be completed by 2014, with the plans and rules slated for final adoption in 2015.
Read the full story at the Pensacola News Journal
Shrimp season may be a non-starter
November 25, 2013 — There is a real possibility that Gulf of Maine shrimpers, including those who work out of Gloucester, will be forced to the sidelines for the entire 2014 shrimping season because increasingly dire stock assessments indicate the stock was overfished in the previous two seasons.
In a report prepared last week, the Northern Shrimp Technical Committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said it will recommend a total “moratorium on fishing in 2014 to maximize spawning potential” of the Gulf of Maine shrimp population.
If accepted by the Northern Shrimp Section at its Dec. 3 meeting in Portland, Maine, that recommendation effectively would close down the entire 2014 Gulf of Maine shrimping season before it even begins.
That surely would incite opposition from many local shrimpers, who already criticize the scope and methodology of the technical committee’s stock assessments.
The Northern Shrimp Section will also hear a recommendation from its scientific advisory panel before setting policy for the upcoming season that would dictate both the fishing schedule and the total allowable catch. The section also has the latitude to adapt its policies even after the season opens, according to Marin Hawk, ASMFC fisheries management plan coordinator.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times
Judge Cites 1837 Treaty in Dismissing Poaching Indictments
November 26, 2013 — A federal judge in Minneapolis on Monday threw out the indictments of five American Indians arrested in a major fish poaching case on Indian reservations in northern Minnesota, saying the men were protected under an 1837 treaty.
The decision by Judge John Tunheim of Minneapolis appears to be directly opposite to rulings by U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle of St. Paul on Oct. 31, creating a legal tangle that will likely keep attorneys and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals busy well into 2014.
The contradictory decisions were described by several court observers as very unusual.
Former federal prosecutor Paul Murphy, who headed the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office from 1995 to 2005, said he could not recall two federal justices issuing opposing decisions in the same district and growing out of the same undercover investigation.
“Normally, in related cases, the court assigns all of them to one judge …,” Murphy said.
In a strongly worded memorandum filed Monday, attorneys for two Red Lake Indians whose indictments were not dismissed by Kyle — Thomas Sumner, 55, and Brian Holthusen, 48 — appealed to Kyle to reconsider his position in light of Tunheim’s “careful analysis.”
Read the full story at the Star Tribune
WBZ-TV BOSTON VIDEO: Jonathan Elias reports “Fishing Industry At Risk Of Disappearing In New England”
November 25, 2013 — Jonathan Elias of WBZ-TV, CBS-4 Boston, reports that the industry that built New England is at risk of disappearing. Fishing has always been a mainstay, but things have drastically changed. Environmentalists say global warming has depleted fish stocks. Fishermen argue there are fish, and regulations that defy common sense.
One fisherman told WBZ-TV that everybody has their boat up for sale. Another said, “A lot of the regulation I see serves no purpose other than to put me and my fellow fishermen out of business.”
Ten years ago feds told fishermen to catch less cod. They did.
They were told to buy permits that were hundreds of thousands of dollars. They did.
Feds installed black boxes to track every boat. Fishermen even had to ask permission to go fishing. They did that too.
All because they were told by 2014 the fish would be back and all would be well. Not true. Because federal scientists now say the cod is gone.
“You base all the management on best available science, now does that mean perfect science, of course not there is no such thing as perfect science,” says John Bullard of NOAA.
“There’s no cod out there,” says Bullard. “It’s not about science being right or wrong.”
As a result they have cut the catch limit for fisherman by 78 percent.
Massachusetts senior Senator Elizabeth Warren recently held a hearing to listen to fishermen and scientists plead their cases. “I’m not comfortable at all with the science,” Senator Warren said. “We are in a crisis here, and we should have had disaster relief nearly year ago.”
Declared a disaster last year, yet fishermen say they’ve seen not one penny of aid. Instead a new regulation that they say only hurts them more. NOAA wants observers to go on board all fishing boats, and want the fisherman to pay $600 to $800. Joe Orlando says on a good day he only makes $300.
Bullard says, “There’s documented science that says if you don’t have observers the information you get isn’t the correct information.”
Watch the video and read the full story at CBS Boston
US-CARICOM trade council called on to reject queen conch petition
WASHINGTON — November 23, 2013 — The Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), has made a formal request on behalf of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to the United States-CARICOM Council on Trade and Investment, to reject the petition of WildEarth Guardians, an environmental NGO based in Denver, Colorado, calling on US authorities to list the queen conch (Strombus gigas) as a “threatened” or “endangered” species under the USA Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Speaking at a meeting of the Council held in Washington, DC, on Friday, November 15, CRFM executive director, Milton Haughton said: “We oppose the petition to list the queen conch as an endangered or threatened species on the ground that the petitioner’s information is unreliable and obsolete.”
The queen conch is a high-value species, in high demand on the international market. Haughton noted that such a listing could restrict or prohibit Caribbean imports of queen conch to the US.
At the meeting of the US-CARICOM Council on Trade and Investment, senior officials discussed, among other things, the removal of barriers to bilateral trade as important work to be done under the recently inaugurated US-CARICOM Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA).
“If queen conch is listed as threatened or endangered under the ESA, conch exports from the CARICOM States to the United States market would be prohibited,” Haughton noted. “This would result in significant social and economic hardship for thousands of Caribbean fishermen, fish processors/exporters and their families, and fishing communities, and undermine peace and stability in coastal communities that rely on the queen conch resource, because it will effectively deprive them of their source of income and livelihoods.”
NEW YORK: Long Island Fisherman and Fish Dealer Sentenced for Wire Fraud and Falsifying Records
WASHINGTON — November 22, 2013 — The operator of the dragger F/V Norseman and an associated fish dealer were sentenced today in federal court in Central Islip, N.Y., for criminal violations stemming from their role in systematically underreporting fluke (summer flounder) that was being harvested as part of the federal Research Set-Aside Program, the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division announced.
On Aug. 15, 2013, Wertz pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and two counts of falsification of federal records for knowingly submitting 137 falsified dealer reports from May 2009 through December 2011, and 70 falsified fishing logs, known as fishing vessel trip reports (FVTRs), from May 2011 through December 2011, as part of a scheme to defraud the United States of overharvested and unreported fluke. C&C Ocean Fishery Ltd. pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud and three counts of falsification of federal records for its participation in the scheme, which included aiding and abetting the submission of falsified dealer reports and FVTRs.
C&C Ocean was not only aware of the false Norseman FVTRs, but it aided and abetted the perpetration of the FVTR scheme through its preparation of federal dealer reports. As a federal dealer, C&C Ocean was required to prepare and submit federal dealer reports to NOAA.
Read the full story at eNews Park Forest
Atlantic Herring Fishery; Adjustments to 2014 Sub-Annual Catch Limits – Public Comments due Dec 9
November 22, 2013 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Today, NOAA Fisheries announced that it is proposing to reduce the 2014 quotas in three Atlantic herring management areas (Areas 1 B, 2 and 3) to account for overages that occurred during the 2012 fishing year. It also intends to increase the quota in one management area (Area 1A).
The deadline for public comments on this action is no later than 5 p.m., EST, on December 9, 2013.
Read the proposed rule from NOAA Fisheries