August 2, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — An interstate panel that manages fisheries voted on Tuesday against a plan to try to preserve the declining southern New England lobster population with new fishing restrictions.
New rules to help southern New England lobsters up for vote
July 31, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A plan to try to slow the decline of southern New England’s lobster population with new fishing restrictions is up for a potential final vote this week.
The population of lobsters off Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts has plummeted in recent years. The regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering a host of new restrictions about lobster fishing at a meeting on Tuesday.
Proposed management tools have included changes to legal harvesting size, reductions to the number of traps and seasonal closures to fishing areas.
NOAA Fisheries Announces Common Pool Area Closure for Georges Bank Cod
July 28, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
We are closing the Trimester Total Allowable Catch Area for Georges Bank cod to common pool vessels fishing on a groundfish trip with trawl, sink gillnet, and longline/hook gear for the remainder of Trimester 1, through August 31, 2017.
The closure is effective today, July 28, 2017, at 0845 hours. The area will reopen at the beginning of Trimester 2, on September 1, 2017.
The closure applies to the following statistical areas: 521, 522, 525, and 561. See map below.
If you have crossed the vessel monitoring system demarcation line prior to 0845 hours on July 28, and are currently at sea on a groundfish trip, you may complete your trip in all or part of the closed area. If you have set gillnet gear prior to July 28, 2017, you may complete your trip to retrieve that gear.
We are required to close this area because the common pool fishery is projected to have caught 90 percent of its Trimester 1 Total Allowable Catch for GB cod. This closure is intended to prevent an overage of the common pool’s quota for this stock.
For more details, read the notice (pdf) as filed in the Federal Register and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.
NOAA Requests Comment on a Change to Bluefin Regulations
July 24, 2017 — CAPE COD, Mass. — NOAA is seeking public comment regarding a request from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance for an exemption from a regulation that prohibits having unauthorized gear on board while fishing for, retaining, or possessing a bluefin tuna.
In their application, the Alliance suggest that the use of electronic monitoring, already required by federal fishing authorities is a sufficient at-sea monitoring to verify that the catch of bluefin tuna occurred on authorized gear.
The regulation was designed to allow enforcement to not only verify that only the authorized gear type was used to catch the bluefin tuna, but also serves as an effort control for bluefin tuna as it limits the number of vessels that can actively pursue bluefin tuna to those with only authorized gear.
US fishing industry breathes sigh of relief as H-2B visa program expanded
July 24, 2017 — An announcement made last week by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to expand a guest worker program was met with a mix of cheers and frustration by seafood industry representatives and elected officials from key states in the trade.
DHS Secretary John Kelly said he agreed to expand the H-2B visa program through the rest of the fiscal year, which ends in September. The visa program, designed for temporary workers coming to the country to fill nonagricultural jobs, helps employers fill jobs they say would otherwise sit vacant.
Congress established a cap of 66,000 such workers this year, with 33,000 visas available during both halves of the year. However, in May, lawmakers gave Kelly the authority to consider a one-time extension in the program. Over the last couple of months, DHS officials worked with the U.S. Department of Labor to establish guidelines regarding the expansion.
In past years, the seafood industry benefitted greatly from the visa program. According to data from the Center for Immigration Studies, Alaska-based Silver Bay Seafoods employed 971 H-2B workers – more than any other employer in the country last year. Peter Pan Seafoods, Inc., received approval for nearly 400 H-2B workers at its Alaska operation, while in North Carolina, Capt. Charlie’s Seafood employed 200.
New protections for threatened dusky sharks taking effect
June 7, 2017 — New protections for a species of threatened East Coast shark go into effect this week.
Dusky sharks range from Maine to Florida and are down to about 20 percent of their 1970s population off the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico.
The sharks are in decline in part because of years of harvesting them for their meat, oil and fins. It’s already illegal to fish for them off the U.S., but they sometimes get caught as bycatch.
The federal government is rolling out new protections for the shark this week, starting on June 5. One measure requires longline fishing vessels that target fish such as tuna and swordfish to take new precautions when they accidentally catch a dusky shark and release it.
The environmental group Oceana is suing the federal government for better protection of the sharks. The group contends the new rules to protect dusky sharks don’t go far enough.
Warmer waters bring new rules for lobster fishermen
May 11, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — New restrictions are coming to southern New England’s lobster fishery in an attempt to save the area’s population of the crustaceans, which has dwindled as waters have warmed.
An arm of the interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted on Tuesday to pursue new management measures to try to slow the decline of lobsters in the area. Management tools will include changes to legal harvesting size, reductions to the number of traps and seasonal closures to fishing areas.
The board’s move was “a recognition that climate change and warming water temperatures play an increasingly role in lobster stocks, especially in southern New England,” said Tina Berger, a spokeswoman for the commission.
The board’s goal, approved on Tuesday, is to increase egg production in the area by five percent. Decreasing the amount of fishing pressure will give the lobsters a better chance to reproduce, scientists working for the commission have said.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Sentinel & Enterprise
NOAA Fisheries Announces the Final Rule for Amendment 5b to the 2006 Consolidated Highly Migratory Species Fishery Management Plan
April 3, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA:
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) announces the final rule to implement Amendment 5b to the 2006 Consolidated Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan (FMP). Amendment 5b implements a range of management measures to prevent overfishing and rebuild overfished dusky sharks. These measures are based on the 2016 dusky shark stock assessment update that determined dusky sharks are overfished and experiencing overfishing.
Who is affected?
Amendment 5b could affect:
- Any commercial fishermen with HMS permits.
- Any recreational fishermen who catch sharks of any species.
- Any dealers who buy or sell sharks or shark products.
What will it do?
The final rule, which will publish in the Federal Register on April 4, 2017, and related documents, including the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) may be found at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/.
The management measures implemented by this final rule (which were analyzed in the Amendment 5b FEIS) are listed in the table below. Amendment 5b is designed to meet the objective of ending overfishing and rebuilding the dusky sharks, building on measures adopted in 2008 as a dusky shark rebuilding plan. NMFS considered a full range of alternatives in the FEIS, which can be found in Chapter 2 of the FEIS. After considering comments on the proposed rule and DEIS, NMFS is implementing final measures, as follows:
- NMFS has added and preferred Alternative A6d, which would require the use of non-offset, non-stainless steel circle hooks by all HMS permit holders with a shark endorsement when fishing for sharks recreationally south of 41° 43′ N latitude, except when fishing with flies or artificial lures. This alternative is preferred instead of Alternative 6a in the DEIS, which would have required the use of circle hooks by all HMS permit holders with a shark endorsement when fishing for sharks recreationally, defined as when deploying natural bait while using a wire or heavy (200 lb test or greater) monofilament or fluorocarbon leader;
- Preferred Alternative B3 has been modified based on public comment to recognize safety concerns, specifying that fishermen with an Atlantic shark limited access permit with pelagic longline gear onboard must release all sharks not being retained using a dehooker or cutting the gangion less than three feet from the hook as safely as practicable.
Groundfisherman fear more federal regulations
March 23, 2017 — STONINGTON, Conn. — Groundfishermen at the Fishing Fleet in Stonington, those who catch flounder and a dozen other bottom feeding fish, fear federal regulators are trying to sink their livelihood by mandating more regulations.
“We don’t need somebody on our back every day to watch what we do. Now they want to put cameras on the boat,” said Bob Guzzo, of Southern New England Fisherman & Lobsterman’s Association.
Guzzo has been fishing the region for nearly four decades.
He said the New England Fishery Management Council wants to increase at-sea monitoring of groundfish, in order to verify what they catch and release.
Guzzo said the added cost of paying someone to monitor what happens on the boat, or even watch remotely by camera, doesn’t help them or the industry but only increases the cost of doing business.
Proposed regulations irk lobstermen
March 23, 2017 — Bay State lobstermen fear that a new proposal — meant to save lobsters in warming southern New England waters — could hurt business by barring them from harvesting in prime summer months and putting tighter restrictions on the size of their catch.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will present a plan in New Bedford tonight on ways to maintain or increase the number of lobsters in waters from southern Massachusetts to Delaware.
“Over the last 15 years we’ve seen a decline in lobster abundance, and we think that’s by and large a response to warming ocean temperatures,” said Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.
“That’s the challenge that we have — it’s trying to preserve lobster but doing it in a way that the industry can survive,” he added.
Yet Massachusetts lobstermen argue that their pots are full and don’t see what the fuss is all about.
“Southern New England as a whole is not doing very well, but where we are, it’s doing pretty well,” said lobsterman Jarrett Drake, who has lobstered out of New Bedford for more than 30 years.
The plan ropes in Massachusetts waters south of Cape Cod in with states like Rhode Island and as far away as New Jersey, where lobster populations are extremely low. It considers banning lobstering from July to September — peak tourist months for restaurants — as well as new restrictions on the size of lobsters fishermen can keep, and how long their traps can stay in the water.
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