Washington

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) April 23, 2013 — NOAA Fisheries today announced its FY2014 budget request.

Listen to the presentation from Assistant Administrator Sam Rauch

Listen to the presentation questions & answer session

 

 

 

April 22, 2013 — The $85 billion federal budget sequestration — a stopgap solution to the federal spending cut impasse between the White House and Democratic allies in Congress and conservative Republicans — will force a temporary and likely brief shutdown sometime after May of NOAA’s Northeast regional office, which employs about 200 people in Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park.

Globally, NOAA has 12,500 employees, including hundreds involved in weather forecasting.

The furloughs and the dates have not been finalized, said Allison McHale, a special assistant to Northeast Regional Administrator John Bullard. A NOAA source in Gloucester said the likely duration of the furloughs was four days. Who would be furloughed and whether some employees would be bypassed has not been announced, the source said.

“Continued fiscal uncertainty and tight budgets have required that many government agencies, including NOAA, make tough choices,” NOAA’s director of communications, Ciaran Clayton, said in an email Friday. “Unfortunately, after much serious deliberation, in order to help address current budget shortfalls, we are moving forward with union consultations in order to implement furloughs across the agency,”

“When looking at the budget situation for fiscal 2013, we faced some serious challenges. While we have implemented options to help offset this, including a hiring freeze, unfortunately, furloughs are necessary to help close the gaps,” she said. “NOAA has taken steps to ensure that this step will not impact life- and property-saving missions, or any other critical products or services the American public has come to rely upon.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

WASHINGTON — April 18, 2013 — U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile, said today he was pleased to see governors from the Gulf Coast states actively engaging in discussions on how best to manage red snapper fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Four of the five Gulf Coast governors – Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal, Texas’ Rick Perry, Florida’s Rick Scott and Mississippi’s Phil Bryant – signed a letter on Wednesday calling on Congress to allow their states to take control over management of red snapper from the federal government.

Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley was a notable exception. Bentley told AL.com today that the plan proposed by the governors allowed the federal government too much control over state fisheries.

Bentley said he supported legislation introduced by Bonner in March that would extend the state water boundaries of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

The bill, titled the Gulf Fisheries Fairness Act, would afford the states greater control over reef fisheries and open up more Gulf waters to fishing.

Bonner said he had concerns about the plan advocated by the Gulf governors in their letter to Congressional leaders this week.

Read the full story here

 

 

April 16, 2013 — Budget briefings for NOAA stakeholders are underway. Assistant Administrator Sam Rauch invites the public to learn more about the NOAA Fisheries' FY13 and FY14 budgets on Tuesday, April 23. Participants must register for the webinar in addition to calling in.

NOAA Fisheries FY13/FY14 Budget Briefing

Date: Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Time: 3:30PM – 4:30PM EDT

Conference Call info:
Dial-in Number: 888-989-6494
Access Code: 2010718

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/698526449

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

NOAA FY14 Budget Briefing
Dr. Kathy Sullivan, Department of Commerce's Acting Under Secretary for Oceans and Atmosphere, will host a briefing on the NOAA FY14 budget this Friday, April 19.

Date: Friday, April 19, 2013
Time: 1:00PM – 3:00PM EDT
Where: Department of Commerce Auditorium, 1401 Constitution Avenue NW. Please enter through the 14th Street, NW entrance.

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April 18, 2013 — A total of 26 members of Congress, including Rep. John Tierney, have urged the House Appropriations Committee to reject funding for new catch share fishery management programs in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico until the House Natural Resources Committee completes its rewrite of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The committee has held a preliminary oversight hearing on the law establishing the overriding principles of fishing governance by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Exclusive Economic Zone, which was created by the original Magnuson Act in 1976 and extends beyond state waters three miles from shore for another 200 miles.

But because of its size, complexity and fiercely debated elements, the completion of the rewrite is not expected anytime soon, and NOAA, after instituting a catch share program in the Northeast groundfishery in 2010, has a number of new catch share programs in various phases of rollout in the Northeast, the South Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

The Northeast groundfish catch share program, whose coverage includes Gloucester and New England, was created without an industry referendum and has mixed with new rigid requirements for the rebuilding of overfished stocks to leave the fishery in a statutory disaster.

“I have a very difficult time with catch shares,” said Massachusetts Congressman Stephen Lynch, who also signed the letter and is seeking the state’s U.S. Senate seat. “(Catch shares) favor multi-national economic fishing interests at the expense of the small family fisherman, and are largely driven by ideology,” he said added in a telephone interview Tuesday.

”Congress has an obligation to hear the concerns of our fishermen before new catch share programs are implemented,” the lawmakers’ letter said. “Job numbers indicate that commercial sector fishing jobs are reduced in fisheries that implement catch share programs. For Atlantic and Gulf Coast fishermen already struggling through difficult economic challenges, any additional job losses could be devastating to the industry.”

The Northeast groundfishery catch share program, which involves 20 interacting groundfish stocks, was designed to take get a “sizable fraction” of the fleet off the water, former NOAA chief Administrator Jane Lubchenco had said, and by that measure, it has been successful. But the effect on the fishing communities from New York to Maine has been severe and continues to wreak social and economic harm, without measurable improvement in the vitality of the community of fish.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

April 16, 2013 — The White House on Tuesday issued its final plan for managing the nation’s oceans, outlining a strategy that aims to coordinate the work of more than two dozen agencies and reconcile competing interests including fishing, offshore energy exploration and recreational activities.

While environmentalists as well as some fishing industry officials and state authorities have embraced the National Ocean Policy, it has infuriated conservatives, who describe it as an example of how the Obama administration is overreaching and seeking to limit the rights of recreational anglers and others.Nancy Sutley, who chairs the Council on Environmental Quality and co-chairs the group overseeing the policy, said in a statement the plan “embodies the type of efficient, collaborative government that taxpayers, communities, and businesses expect from their federal government.”

John P. Holdren, who directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chairs the National Ocean Council along with Sutley, said the plan “will help advance relevant science and its application to decision-making” regarding the ocean. Those measures include sharing data on severe storms and sea level rise, as well as melting ice in the Arctic.

Several House Republicans have predicted the policy will expand the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies to regulate land-based activities since water from there eventually flows to the ocean:

“The National Ocean Policy is just another example of this administration’s determination to spread deeper regulatory authority over land, sea, and air, said Rep. Steve Southerland II (R-Fla.) in a statement. “Protecting our resources and empowering the communities that enjoy access to them is not a zero sum game.  We can achieve both, but not by enforcing more top-down mandates from Washington.”

Read the full story at the Washington Post

 

 

April 11, 2013 — On November 16 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) declared a fishery disaster for the states of New Jersey and New York because of Sandy. That allowed Congress to ask for $150 million dollars in aid — but that promise was shot down as the money got tossed into budget battles in the House of Representatives.

Tom Hansen’s cash register at Grumpy’s Bait and Tackle in Seaside Park rung up zero dollars in November last year. His December sales were no different.

For a shop located smack-dab in the middle of prime fall striped bass real estate, it should have been hopping with surf fishermen buying clams and tackle on their way to the beach.

Instead Seaside Park was closed for 81 days and 14 hours after superstorm Sandy barreled through on Oct. 29 and turned the state on its back like a turtle.

“The fall season plus the Christmas season gets me into the black if I’m going to make it for the year,” Hansen said. “I lost both. And my business interruption insurance covered nothing.”

That’s money he can’t get back. And five months later sales aren’t much better. Hansen is open, but limping along as the Seaside beaches are still closed.

His story is echoed by many up and down the coast who make their living in the recreational fishing industry. With few exceptions, if Sandy didn’t damage or destroy a business outright, it caused long-term business interruptions and revenue loss.

“We got hammered,” said Jim Hutchinson Jr., managing director of the Recreational Fishing Alliance. “Everyone was devastated. We lost tons of bait, infrastructure.”

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

 

 

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [Seafoodnews.com] — April 10, 2013 –Senator Lisa Murkowski today responded to the news that an administrative judge has overturned the suspensions of two prosecutors in the ethics case against Senator Ted Stevens – deciding that the Department of Justice had gone against internal procedure in its punishment of the two attorneys in question, by saying:

"The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) decision to overturn the suspensions of prosecutors' misconduct in Senator Ted Stevens' case teaches us nothing we didn't already know: the Department of Justice's prosecutorial misconduct oversight was a mess before the US District Court Judge who handled the Stevens case and his independent master found misconduct and remains a mess today. Hard as it may be to fathom, the MSPB's ruling has only made a bad system worse – since we now realize that DoJ leadership may not understand their own internal rules.

"All Alaskans need to know is that this decision has nothing to do with the merits of the case against the prosecutors and their behavior; it focuses solely on an ambiguous internal rule about how punishment inside the Justice Department is meted out – a rule that different offices within the Justice Department clearly don't understand or agree upon."

Earlier this week, an administrative judge overturned the suspensions of two federal prosecutors that the Justice Dept. had tried to discipline for misconduct due to failing to turn over evidence that might have helped the defense in the aggressive corruption trial against Senator Ted Stevens.

Last year, the department found that the two prosecutors had engaged in reckless – though not intentional – professional misconduct and ordered them to be suspended without pay. One, Joseph Bottini, was suspended for 40 days, and the other, James Goeke, was suspended for 15 days.

The legal team that defended Mr. Stevens, Republican of Alaska, called those suspensions “pathetic” and inadequate, saying the department had “demonstrated conclusively that it is not capable of disciplining its prosecutors.”

After the trial, it emerged that prosecutors had failed to disclose information, like conflicting statements by witnesses, that might have helped Mr. Stevens win acquittal. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. later asked the trial judge to throw out the conviction. Mr. Stevens died in a 2010 plane crash.

But the two prosecutors contended that the discipline was too severe and appealed to the federal Merit Systems Protection Board, an agency that hears disciplinary cases involving career civil servants in the federal government.

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

 

 

MIDDLETOWN, N.J. — April 9, 2013 — A new attempt to get Sandy storm damage relief for the fishing industry in New Jersey and New York is being organized by Rep. Frank J. Pallone Jr., D-N.J., this time based on a federal damage assessment that puts the uninsured losses at $198 million.

Commercial fishermen of the Belford Seafood Cooperative have been looking for that help for five months. Co-op president Roy Diehl says Sandy’s storm surge caused $1million in damages to their facilities, including their processing plant, restaurant and infrastructure.

“Half our electric is still out. We’re just trying to get back running,” Diehl said Monday when Pallone met with fishermen here.

“We’re not looking for anything special. We just want to get back to normal. We’re just a bunch of hard working guys trying to survive,” said Capt. Rich Isaksen, a fourth generation commercial fishermen.

“Our main thing is we feed people,” said Isaksen. “Every fish that comes across this dock somebody eats. All we’re asking for is a little help getting back going — that’s all.”

Proposed legislation from Pallone and co-sponsored by Reps. Jon Runyan, R-N.J., and Tim Bishop, D-N.Y., would authorize additional post-storm aid based on National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s figures from March that reported superstorm Sandy caused up to $121 million in uninsured damages to New Jersey’s fishing industry, and another $77 million to New York’s. The aid package would help both the recreational and commercial fishing industries of the two states. Watch the video above to see Pallone visit the Belford Seafood Cooperative.

NOAA declared Sandy to be a “fisheries disaster” and Congress had a proposal over the winter to fund $150 million in relief, which would have included help for other regions, like New England and Alaska, where environmental and biological factors caused fishery collapses in 2012. That drew fire from conservative factions who decried the package as “pork” unrelated to Sandy, and threw it into January budget battles in the House of Representatives.

Read the full story from the Asbury Park Press 

 

April 8, 2013 — U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) plans to urge federal lawmakers to give $193 million to New York and New Jersey for damages Hurricane Sandy inflicted on the fishing industry.

The congressman today announced he will introduce a bill tomorrow that will fully cover storm damage sustained by marinas, commercial fishing docks, tackle shops and fisheries throughout the two-state region.

Roughly $120 million of that amount would go to New Jersey, Pallone said during a press conference in front of the Belford Seafood Co-op, which was hit hard during Sandy, and the remainder would go to New York. The bill would not be part of nearly $60 billion in Hurricane Sandy relief funds approved early this year by the federal government, Pallone said.

Read the full story from The Star-Ledger