State and Local

May 24, 2013 —  Ocean City officials are set to reopen the landmark fishing pier that was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy.

Mayor Rick Meehan will make the ceremonial “first cast” from the reconstructed Ocean City Fishing Pier on Friday morning.

The resort town sustained minimal damage during the historic storm that battered the New Jersey shore last October. But the fishing pier, first built in 1907, collapsed into the ocean.

The nearly 500-foot pier has now been rebuilt and will be open to visitors for the busy Memorial Day weekend.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Post

 

 

May 24, 2013 — The N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries will hold a meeting June 4 to discuss possible management strategies to address issue impacting the state’s commercial summer flounder fishery.

The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources Regional Office, 943 Washington Square Mall, Washington.

At this meeting, the division will seek stakeholder feedback on how to best use the state’s summer flounder quota, including:

What trip limits and landing windows best meet fishermen’s market needs.

How much quota should be reserved for the fall fishery.

Under what circumstances the state should allow North Carolina’s quota to be landed at fish houses in other states.

Summer flounder is a migratory fish that is jointly managed by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a federally-authorized board that coordinates fishery management in state waters between the East Coast states, and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, one of eight federal regional councils that manage fisheries in federal waters.

An annual commercial quota is allocated to the states from Maine to North Carolina based on historical landings. North Carolina receives 27.4 percent of the coast-wide commercial quota, the highest percentage of any state.

Read the full story at Cape Fear Business News

 

 

May 24, 2013 — Mayor Carolyn Kirk’s “bridge plan” for modernizing and retooling America’s oldest fishing port was never presented for comment or criticism to the city’s own Fisheries Commission she created to advise her on fisheries issues, or to the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the region’s largest and most influential industry group.

”Individual elements were distributed,” said Harbor Planning Director Sarah Garcia in a telephone interview Thursday. “The final one was not sent out.”

The plan was cobbled together and released in a five-point proposal last Friday by harbor and waterfront activist Valerie Nelson and Garcia from ideas generated from a workshop they organized in April, attended by a cross section of industry stakeholders.

Nelson has also traveled to Washington to lobby for support for the plan which is a work in progress, according to the mayor.

With more than 250 members, the seafood coalition, founded in 2002, represents more than half the boats in the Northeast . And, through its registered lobbyist Glenn Delaney, has for many years been active in lobbying Congress, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its science policy advisory arm, the New England Fishery Management Council.

The recent organization of the Nelson-Garcia solutions workshop and subsequent lobbying effort behind the evolving proposal has befuddled and in some cases angered fishermen, the coalition and political leaders.

Among the ideas cited in the “bridge plan” that struck the industry and its allies as especially troublesome were these two:

To “retool the industry through investments in sustainable, innovative businesses”; and, to “shift from a high volume, low-value fisheries to a high-value, low-volume fisheries with a lighter economic footprint.”

Gloucester has been the primary port for landings of groundfish from the Northwest Atlantic since the 17th century, and due to the volume of fish landed by boats working Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine, it remains the only port in the region that has refused to diversify and continues to process the bulk of landings from boats home ported in Maine and along Massachusetts Bay.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

May 23, 2013 — When the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission announced earlier this year it would buck the federal government's authority and establish a state-specific red snapper season in waters it's not sure it really owns, the regulatory board awarded anglers an extra fishing day on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends.

That means rather than being limited to Friday, Saturday and Sunday, anglers this weekend will also get to harvest red snapper on Monday.

That is, of course, unless they choose to obey federal law. In that case, throwing a red snapper in the ice chest any day this weekend will be highly illegal, punishable by something just short of drawing and quartering.

Dr. Victor Lunyong can tell you all about it. An avid red-snapper angler, he was elated when Louisiana announced it was making the fish accessible to anglers in expanded state territorial waters for 86 days this year.

He's watched the snapper population soar over the last several years, and knew he'd have no trouble catching his limits when capricious spring winds let him get out near the 10.357-mile line the state was now claiming.

"I have made four or five trips already this year out of Empire, and have been catching nice-sized red snapper within the state waters," he said.

But Lunyong's fun screeched to a halt on April 27 when he became the first serf sacrificed in the government's game of Storm the Castle. The neonatal intensive care unit doctor was harassed and ticketed for doing something the state says was well within his legal rights.

Read the full story at the New Orleans Times-Picayune

 

May 23, 2013 — These are challenging times for New England fisheries, with stocks of cod and haddock falling, federal regulations tightening, and many veterans giving up their boats all together. The question: how to reinvent an industry that helped build our region?

Tonight Anthony Everett reports that the answer may depend on skate, hake, dogfish, polloch and welk: so called trash fish that Americans so far refuse to eat in great numbers.

Read the full story at Boston WCVB 

 

May 22, 2013 — Sen. Mark R. Warner says he's introduced legislation that would better track the restoration of the Chesapeake Bay.

The Virginia Democrat says the legislation he introduced Tuesday would require the Office of Management and Budget to compare costs and the performance of restoration activities by various federal agencies involved in the massive environmental endeavor. The multi-year effort to clean up the bay involves at least 10 federal agencies, Virginia, West Virginia, four other states, the District of Columbia and more than 1,000 local governments.

Read the full story at The Times-Dispatch 

 

May 22, 2013 — A law to help protect consumers from being victims of seafood fraud was signed into law this week in Washington state by Gov. Jay Inslee.

The bill requires all fresh, frozen or processed fish and shellfish to be labeled by its common name as defined by the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife. If the name of a particular fish species is not defined by the department, the market name as outlined in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s guidelines can be used.

The bill comes in response to a push by advocacy groups such as Oceana to have more straightforward labeling of fish. Oceana and other groups and media outlets have conducted studies showing up to one-third of all the seafood sold in the U.S. in supermarkets and restaurants is mislabeled, either intentionally or unintentionally.

“This bill is a win for seafood processors, fishermen, consumers, and, ultimately, healthy and productive oceans,” Whit Sheard, a senior advisor with Oceana, said in a statement.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

 

May 22, 2013 — New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. is encouraging coastal fishing businesses harmed by Hurricane Sandy last fall to apply for available funding through New York State’s recently approved coastal fishing industry grant program.

Under the program, eligible businesses will be able to apply for grants up to $50,000 to cover uncompensated losses.

“Hurricane Sandy caused widespread destruction to New York’s fishing industry,” said Thiele. “The East End’s commercial and recreational fishing industry was not spared. This industry, which is critical to the local economy and community, must rebuild. I thank Governor Cuomo for directing these federal funds to the fishermen in such great need.”

Read the full story at the Sag Harbor Express

 

 

May 20, 2013 — A bill to criminalize Texan fishers who possess or sell a shark fin appears to be dead in Senate waters.

Sponsored by Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, House Bill 852 was approved by the Texas House but was taken down after being introduced Monday morning. As the main ingredient for the delicacy shark fin soup, fin meat is the most valuable part of the shark, and yields up to $700 per pound. The act is also federally illegal and has been deemed inhumane, as it results in a heightened number of dead sharks.

Read the full story at The Houston Chronicle