Saving Seafood

Opinion

RICK ROBINS & JEFF PIKE: Time for change in the Atlantic scallop fishery

September 23, 2020 — The Atlantic sea scallop fishery is a success story, at least in terms of stock rebuilding and biological sustainability. From an efficiency perspective, however, the fishery is off course.

The outdated management approach for the limited access scallop fleet of one boat-one permit-one allocation has tied the hands of vessel owners, increased operational costs, effectively barring captains and crews from the pathways to ownership that their predecessors enjoyed, and added unnecessary safety risks on the water. There are too many boats spending too few days on the water, leaving the scallop fleet hamstrung as it navigates the choppy waters of a global pandemic and lower predicted harvests.

A typical full-time limited-access scallop vessel harvests its annual scallop allocation in around 70 days, leaving vessels tied to the dock more than 80 percent of the year. The only growth option is to buy another permit, which means buying another vessel. This is a cost-prohibitive option for independent operators, since it forces them to take on steep capital costs and pay for ongoing maintenance expenses for a redundant vessel.

Although one vessel could easily harvest the allocation of two limited-access permits, the fleet has no flexibility to do so. With harvests predicted to decline, meaning even fewer days on the water, the lack of flexibility will only cost more and leave more boats tied to the dock for more days. What’s more, the current system means that if a captain or crew get sick (a serious possibility in the age of covid-19), a vessel breaks down, or some other calamity hits, there is no back-up plan to fish the allocation.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

JIM HUTCHINSON JR: What I’m Reading

September 22, 2020 — I received a regular email update (Atlantic Coast Fisheries News) from the ASMFC Communications Team on August 26th which contained an interesting section called What We’re Reading featuring links to various online articles that ASMFC staff finds interesting in their daily work.  You tell me if these stories are in any way related to bunker, shad, stripers or tautog. There’s a Wildlife Conservation Society story about statues at the Central Park Zoo in New York City, an appeal by Ocean Conservancy about COVID-19’s effect on marine sciences with instructions on “writing to your representatives” and a link to something called The Revelator about “The 10 Hottest Climate Change Books of Summer.”

ASMFC staff suggests an article from the NY Times entitled “Why Some Tropical Fish Are Gettin’ Squiggly With It” and another from the British tabloid The Guardian about visiting California’s Monterey Bay aquarium via the web.  There’s also a piece from the Canadian based publication Hakai about British Columbia fish farming, as well as a Mother Jones hit piece through a Seattle based non-profit called Grist about President Trump, Kanye West and the greater sage-grouse.

But from a private sector perspective, if you run a widget factory and learn your staff spends a good portion of their work day catching up on the NY Times best seller list or reading up on the indigenous people of Bolivia as spotlighted in the September 3 edition of Atlantic Coast Fisheries News, what exactly would you do?

Read the full opinion piece at The Fisherman

DREW CHERRY: America’s fisheries management has been a success. Now that’s under threat.

September 18, 2020 — Americans can be proud of their fishery management system over the past few decades, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, where one of the world’s single-largest stocks of fish, Alaska pollock, is harvested, bringing in some $2 billion (€1.7 billion) and tens of thousands of jobs.

It’s an incredible case study in how science and policy can combat poor regulation and lead to a full recovery of threatened stocks and improved management through meticulous science and shared commitment.

One example: If you’ve been on an Alaska pollock fishing vessel, you have seen the exhaustive monitoring systems that go into keeping track of salmon bycatch. Despite trawl nets that can bring up 200,000 fish in the space of an hour, each of the catcher processors plying the waters can — and by most accounts do — keep track of individual salmon that are caught to mitigate the impact on those threatened fish.

That kind of investment does not happen without the voluntary participation of fishing companies that are committed to science-based fisheries management.

Read the full opinion piece at IntraFish

MIKE DUNLEAVY: Protecting Alaska’s fisheries in a turbulent season

September 17, 2020 — Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Alaska has faced its share of monumental challenges. The testing of all incoming travelers, providing relief for devastated tourism businesses, creating a new unemployment program from scratch. Yet none compared to the challenge of protecting our critical seafood industry and the communities that rely on their economic production.

We commend Alaska’s seafood industry for successfully navigating the most difficult season Alaska has ever experienced. Captains, deckhands, processors and hatcheries worked tirelessly to protect coastal communities, jobs and the health of Alaska’s people and economy. Local leaders, health care workers, and state officials devoted countless hours to developing policies and reviewing community protection plans.

From the beginning, it was obvious this would not be an easy road. Many believed that holding a fishing season was simply not possible. To their credit, many skeptics later joined our effort, pitching in to work toward a common goal. The cooperation between industry, communities and the state was truly a bright spot in an otherwise bleak summer.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

SEAN HORGAN: The new fad diet

September 15, 2020 — Here’s a good story out of the South: As you might imagine fishermen in Louisiana and along the Gulf of Mexico have had a terrible time of it through the late summer, with tropical storms and hurricanes tearing up the landscape, disrupting fishing and adding to the general misery of life in the time of pandemic.

In North Carolina, the North Carolina Fisheries Association and True North Seafood decided to help their fishing friends in Louisiana by sending a truckload of supplies down to the bayou.

“We received more than 20,000 pounds of ice, fish and cleaning supplies,” Frank Randol, treasurer of the Gulf Seafood Foundation and owner of Randol’s Seafood, told Gulf Seafood News. “We are in the process of working with the United Way, Second Harvest Food Bank and others to get these supplies into the hands of those that need it the most. We need to keep the attention focused on the damage in the Gulf, and how it has affected our fishermen because they not only feed their families, but their communities and whole country.”

You may have noticed that we’ve had a slew of stories in the past few weeks on the various federal and state programs to financially assist fishermen and others in the seafood industry that have been crushed economically by the ongoing pandemic or had markets disappear because of retaliatory trade tariffs from U.S. trade partners. It’s a pretty confusing landscape right now, so we hope we helped clear up some of the details.

Last week, we wrote that the state Division of Marine Fisheries had finally mailed out the applications to commercial fishermen for funds allocated by Congress in the CARES Act. The state got $28 million in all to help mitigate the economic damage to its seafood industry from the COVID-19 pandemic, and commercial fishermen will split $11.8 million of that haul.

We mentioned the completed applications are due Oct. 10. What we didn’t mention — because the information was not available until after the story went to press — was when the successful applicants might expect to see their slice of the loot. Now we know.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: Trump administration’s deal to eliminate EU lobster tariffs a good haul for Maine

September 8, 2020 — It’s a good bet that Maine lobstermen have a deeper and more immediate sense of how policies impact their day-to-day work than politicians or pundits. But what are we to make of that impact when the lobstermen themselves can’t seem to agree on it?

On Aug. 25, Swan’s Island lobsterman Jason Joyce spoke at the Republican National Convention and explained why he is voting for President Donald Trump this November, saying that Trump has “followed through on his promises” to the Maine lobster industry.

Joyce highlighted the recent announcement that the Trump administration has negotiated an agreement with the European Union to drop its 8 percent tariff on live U.S. lobster imports and upwards of 20 percent tariff on frozen products for the next 5 years, with the potential of zeroing the tariffs out permanently. Joyce called it “great news for Maine’s lobstermen and women,” and it is.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

ANDY SABIN: The conservative case against developing Alaska’s Pebble Mine

August 28, 2020 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers this week warned that the proposed Pebble project — a vast gold and copper mine near the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay — was impossible to build without causing significant damage to the region’s pristine waters and salmon fishery.

The Corps stopped short of halting the mine but found the developer, the Pebble Limited Partnership, was unlikely to meet the level of mitigation that would be required under the Clean Water Act to offset the impact on wetlands.

The Trump administration has now done what the previous administration would not — it gave the proposed Pebble project full consideration under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). While the previous administration pre-judged the project with an unprecedented preemptive veto, the Trump U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and all cooperating agencies have given it a full review.

It is time for President Donald Trump to be the decider. Given an already strong conservation record, President Trump should instruct his agencies to declare the Pebble project unworkable. 

I am a miner and a fisherman. I am also a dedicated conservationist who believes that we have a duty as conservatives to leave this great land better than we found it. I am also a staunch supporter of the president and his policies.

Read the full story at The Hill

GREENBIZ: With a rush to mine the ocean floor, we need policy to prevent permanent damage

August 26, 2020 — Mining the ocean floor for submerged minerals is a little-known, experimental industry. But soon it will take place on the deep seabed, which belongs to everyone, according to international law.

Seabed mining for valuable materials such as copper, zinc and lithium already takes place within countries’ marine territories. As soon as 2025, larger projects could start in international waters — areas more than 200 nautical miles from shore, beyond national jurisdictions.

We study ocean policy, marine resource management, international ocean governance and environmental regimes, and are researching political processes that govern deep seabed mining. Our main interests are the environmental impacts of seabed mining, ways of sharing marine resources equitably and the use of tools such as marine protected areas to protect rare, vulnerable and fragile species and ecosystems.

Today countries are working together on rules for seabed mining. In our opinion, there is still time to develop a framework that will enable nations to share resources and prevent permanent damage to the deep sea. But that will happen only if countries are willing to cooperate and make sacrifices for the greater good.

Read the full story at GreenBiz

Why everything you’ve heard about ‘ropeless’ crab fishing gear is false

August 26, 2020 — Is the so-called “ropeless” fishing gear the silver bullet for solving the perceived problem of marine mammal interactions in California’s crab fisheries?

Several profit-driven environmental groups, including Oceana, would like the public and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to believe these baseless claims.

That’s because these groups are ramping up efforts to force California’s historic and economically most important fishery — which helps create $400 million annually for working families — to adopt expensive, impractical and unproven new fishing gear which would force most crab fishermen out of business.

But the problem is that neither the science, nor any other reliable data, support their false claims. “Ropeless” gear is not a silver bullet — in fact, it’s actually dangerous — and ironically, it still has ropes. Nor are marine mammal populations currently at any significant risk.

Francine Kershaw, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, has misleadingly asserted that “off the West Coast, the number of deaths of humpback whales caused by entanglements are now high enough for the population to slip into decline.”

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

GINA FRICCERO: Why risk the crown jewel of Alaska’s fisheries?

August 20, 2020 — This year has left a lot of us starving for good news. Well, I’ve got some: Once again, for the sixth year in a row, more than 50 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay, eclipsing any other wild salmon run on the planet.

What could be better than wild salmon that return in numbers vast enough to sustain the health of thriving Yup’ik, Alutiiq and Dena’ina communities; a $1.5 billion a year commercial fishing industry with 14,000 jobs; world-class sportfishing that people travel from around the world to experience; and a bear viewing industry that injects more than $34 million into the economy each year — especially since, if we can only prevent the destruction of the watershed that makes it possible, those benefits could last forever?

For generations, my family has been blessed to benefit from this incredible natural wonder. I started tendering in Bristol Bay in the summer of 1975. That was the year Limited Entry was going on the ballot. I got lucky and found a boat and permit for a good deal. I met my husband in 1980, we started fishing together in ‘81, and he has been running a boat in Bristol Bay every year since way back then. This season, he, our daughter and the rest of the Bristol Bay fleet again worked tirelessly to provide for our family and for America’s food security.

Read the full opinion piece at the Juneau Empire