Opinion Archives - Saving Seafood

RAMONA DENIES: Should Oregon Kill Sea Lions to Save the Salmon?

October 18, 2018 — Used to be, they’d show up at Willamette Falls around late November—beefy males here to bulk up and loll on the docks. Call it sea lion winter break; time off from California’s Channel Islands rookeries, beaucoup steelhead to eat, zero problems. (No pups, no ladies, no predators.) When it was time to head back south, a 400-pound sea lion might have doubled in size, having chowed down on, at minimum, three 15-pound Pacific Northwest salmonids a day.

Nowadays, these party boys are arriving earlier and staying later. And they’re not just loitering in Oregon City. They also mob the Columbia River, particularly around January, for chinook on their way to spawning grounds—eating, by one report, as much as 45 percent of some salmon runs, a feast season that now draws out through June.

“They’ve learned that in April and May there’s a pretty good buffet,” says Robert Anderson, a fishery biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Particularly over the past four to five years, there’s been a good uptick in the California sea lions that go to Willamette Falls.”

The result, warned Oregon’s Department of Fish & Wildlife in a 2017 study, is a 90 percent chance some of the Columbia River’s already struggling salmon populations will soon go extinct. And that’s causing some Northwest legislators to take aim at sea lions.

The irony here? Both species are protected by federal law—salmon (steelhead, chinook) by the 1973 Endangered Species Act and sea lions (California and Steller’s) by the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act. That means state, federal, and tribal agencies’ hands are tied when it comes to lethally removing hungry sea lions from river systems—like the mid-Columbia—where historically they’ve never been. According to Charles Hudson of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, that’s the choice we have to make: do we kill one species to save another?

Read the full opinion piece at Portland Monthly

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Proposed lobster rules not based on science

October 16, 2018 — A scientific paper that called for stricter regulations on Maine’s lobster fishery to protect endangered right whales plainly illustrates a two-sided problem.

We need policymakers who will rely on science. And they need science that they can rely on. If either side of the equation is missing, nothing works.

When we talk about climate change, we are used to politicians who ignore the science. But this time, it was the scientists who let us down.

A report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in advance of a big regulatory conference singled out stronger ropes, which, they said, are being used by Maine lobstermen and are entangling whales as they migrate through Maine waters.

The report’s authors proposed more gear changes and possible closures in some areas to respond to a rising number of whale deaths. They attributed the fatal entanglements to an unintended consequence of earlier regulations, which limited the number of vertical lines in the water, thus requiring longer strings of traps. “While this reduced the number of lines, it also meant that lines had to be stronger to accommodate the increased load of multiple traps,” the report’s authors wrote.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

ERIC REID: Northeast Canyon’s Monument Defenders Never Looked at Costs, Considered Alternatives

October 15, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016 was opposed by many in the East Coast seafood industry, on the grounds that the monument designation was not needed to support conservation aims. Further, the prohibition on commercial fishing was never scientifically justified.

Now the Trump Administration is proposing to revisit whether commercial fishing would harm the conservation purpose of the monument.

Opponents of this change have mischaracterized the economic impact of the monument.

The Rt. Rev. W. Nicholas Knisely, the Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island, alleged that reopening fishing in the monument would lead to overfishing, overlooking the fact that overfishing is already prohibited under U.S. law.

Others, like former White House chief of staff John Podesta, have argued that fishing closures can have long term benefits for fishermen – a claim questioned by leading fisheries scientists, who point out that there are much more effective ways to manage fisheries.

But most troubling are claims from environmentalists, such as the National Research Defense Council’s Brad Sewell, that the monument has not had any adverse impact on fishing. Any current analysis of the monument’s impact is incomplete at best because it does not include data from the lucrative red crab and offshore lobster fisheries, which will be kicked out in five years. These fisheries have traditionally relied on the Canyons and Seamounts region and will suffer under a ban.

Additionally, current analyses do not consider the impact on the highly migratory species (HMS) commercial handgear fishery. There are approximately 7,000 permits issued each year for this fishery, and NOAA has no data on how many of these permit holders fished in the monument, according to David Schalit, president of the American Bluefin Tuna Association. This is especially concerning because this fishery, along with the pelagic longline fishery, was banned despite the fact that its gear doesn’t come close to the deep-sea corals the monument was ostensibly created to protect.

Also absent from any current analysis is the impact on the whiting fishery; the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association has estimated that fluke and whiting fishermen will lose $1.6 million annually from the monument designation.

Claims that the monument hasn’t hurt fishermen also ignore the opportunity costs of closing nearly 5,000 square miles of prime fishing grounds. Any loss of opportunity harms fishermen’s’ ability to target their catch, forcing them to travel longer and farther to do their job. Increasing time at sea also makes what is already one of the most dangerous jobs in the country even more dangerous. And there are additional risks that result from pushing fishing effort out of large traditional fishing grounds and concentrating it into smaller areas.

All of these ill effects are ultimately unnecessary because fishing can be compatible with the monument’s conservation goals. Environmental groups have hailed the monument area as “pristine” even though fishermen had been working there for decades before the monument was established, indicating that past fishing activities didn’t harm the ecosystem.

Moreover, fishermen have long supported efforts to protect deep-sea corals, like those in the Canyons and Seamounts Monument. They worked collaboratively with conservationists and regulators to preserve 38,000 square miles of ocean habitat in the Mid-Atlantic and extend protections to vulnerable coral reefs, earning an award for conservation for their efforts.

They also contributed to deep-sea coral protections in New England – protections which were done through a public process that included scientists, fishermen, environmental groups, and other stakeholders.

Conservation and productive fisheries can go hand in hand, but this requires well-informed input from all sides. That did not happen with the designation of the Canyons and Seamounts Monument, and critics continue to ignore the closure’s harmful impacts on commercial fishermen.

Fishing should be reopened in the area, and the collaborative fisheries management council process should be restored over the undemocratic monument process.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

EDWARD KRAPLES: We need more, not less, competition for offshore wind

October 15, 2018 — The offshore wind era in the United States is here. With no need to burn fossil fuel, to enrich uranium, to dam rivers, or to build thousands of acres of solar panels, offshore wind is the most benign form of bulk power available to mankind.

Plans to seize the potential of offshore wind already have powerful momentum on the East Coast. Between Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey alone, more than 8,000 megawatts of wind power is envisioned. Building out 1,000 megawatts entails up to $5 billion of capital investment, drawing the attention of developers far and wide. So far, European companies — mostly giant, state-spawned enterprises with deep experience in the offshore — have been quickest to recognize this enormous investment opportunity. This week the Danish firm Ørsted bought the only remaining independent US company with offshore wind positions, Deepwater.

Ørsted’s acquisition of Deepwater naturally diminishes the amount of competition for offshore wind contracts. Policy-makers in Massachusetts should immediately take two actions: first, Gov. Charlie Baker should ask the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to increase the number of planned offshore wind lease areas from two to three. Another lease area would assure that the loss of Deepwater as a competitive entrant will be offset by the emergence of a new lease owner off the coast of Massachusetts.

Second, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources should even more strongly promote an ocean grid that serves as a platform for multiple offshore wind developers. The first request for proposals that have solicited offshore power did not stipulate anything about the transmission that will take it to market. Naturally, extremely large and competent offshore wind generators dearly wish to own both the wind farms and the conduit to land and have advanced arguments to the effect that, they, and they alone, can get the job done right.

But letting each generator plan and build and own major transmission lines to shore is akin to letting Walmart plan and build and own the interstate that leads to its stores using its customers money. Bundling generation and transmission limits bidders to the few that have the capacity to do both. Limiting the offshore opportunities to only a few competitors is never good for those paying the bills.

Read the full story at Commonwealth Magazine

TIM BRADNER: Science-based management the key to Alaska’s successful fisheries

October 12, 2018 — One of Alaska’s great success stories is the resurrection of our salmon fisheries after a virtual collapse that occurred under federal management in the years before statehood.

When Alaska became a state in 1959, the fledgling state government immediately instituted science-based fisheries management using sustained yield principles. Improved management helped, but coastal communities and the state economy lagged as the slow recovery process took place. When salmon runs had failed to recover by the early 1970s, the Legislature took two actions. First, it enacted a limited-entry program to control overfishing. Second, in partnership with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, it created the framework for the state hatchery program.

The latter was part of a carefully developed plan to supplement wild stocks and offset wide swings in natural runs, particularly for pink salmon. Learning from the mistakes of the Lower 48, the program required hatcheries to be sited away from naturally occurring salmon stocks, required the use of only wild brood stock, and other steps to protect wild stocks. Stabilizing the salmon fisheries made it possible for harvesters to make a living, for processors to remain open, and for coastal communities to develop stable economies.

Nearly 50 years later, it is clear these initiatives have succeeded. Today, the state’s salmon enhancement program with its with science-based management by the Fish and Game department, have helped to grow statewide salmon harvests since those lean years before statehood. From a salmon harvest of 25 million in 1959, we now routinely have catches of more than 100 million, which support thousands of fishermen and fishery-dependent businesses across Alaska.

Despite this success, and the stability that the hatchery program has provided the state and coastal economies, hatcheries are now being criticized by some who argue hatchery-produced salmon are overloading the ocean capacity, resulting in less food for king and sockeye salmon. The Alaska Board of Fisheries now has proposals before it to reduce current hatchery production and will meet on the issue Oct. 16.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

WPRFMC: Billfish Amendment Targeted Pacific Island Commercial Fisheries with no Conservation Gained

October 9, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — HR 4528, signed into law by President Trump on Aug. 2, 2018, will have a big impact on Hawai‘i fishermen and wholesale businesses as well as potential markets for American Samoa, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands fisheries.

Introduced by U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, R-Fla., the bill had the seemingly benign title, “To make technical amendments to certain marine fish conservation statutes, and for other purposes.” In reality, the amendment to the Billfish Act of 2012 prohibits U.S.-caught billfish landed in the U.S. Pacific islands by U.S. fishermen from being sold to continental U.S. markets (including Alaska and the Territory of Puerto Rico). Swordfish is not included in the Act’s definition of billfish.

“It is disappointing that special interest groups were successful in lobbying Congress to eliminate sustainable U.S. Pacific Island-caught billfish sales on the mainland,” notes Kitty M. Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council. “The change will not have a conservation benefit and is inconsistent with the principles and standards of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service is currently deciding whether implementing regulations are necessary to enforce the law. The Council staff believes regulations are needed to clarify what is prohibited and what remains legal. Shortly after the law was signed, Council staff received numerous calls from the public about purchasing fresh billfish and value-added products in Hawai‘i to bring to the mainland for sharing or for personal consumption. Questions are also being asked about the exportation of billfish and value added products to foreign destinations.

In addition, seafood businesses on the mainland will need time to adjust and source new products to support their programs that have been built on using sustainably caught fish from Hawai‘i fisheries. Hawai‘i vendors have made commitments to mainland restaurants and retail groups to provide a variety of selections to support their “Fresh Hawaiian Catch of the Week” programs. They specifically choose Hawai‘i sourced fish because it is sustainable and traceable and has been regulated to have low environmental impacts.

It is clear that NMFS, industry and the public will need time to work through the complexities of this new rule. Given these issues, the Council wrote to Chris Oliver, NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, suggesting that NMFS develop a national education and outreach effort that corresponds to the rule-making process and that NMFS initiate enforcement after publication of the final rule. It was suggested that NMFS convene a meeting with the appropriate wholesale/dealer representatives in Hawai‘i and the Council to sort through the issues to be addressed in development of implementing regulations.

Prior to the bill’s passage, the Council received letters from both Oliver and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross stating that HR 4528 was unnecessary and would not lead to improved billfish conservation. Proponents of the bill said the 2012 Billfish Conservation Act had created a loophole in the prohibiting of all foreign imports of billfish into the United States by providing an exemption for U.S. fisheries landing billfish in Hawai‘i, American Samoa, Guam and Northern Mariana Islands. However, the exemption provided to U.S. Pacific Island fisheries in the 2012 legislation was clearly a preference by Congress to not negatively impact jobs in U.S. seafood markets, as the Congressional record indicates.

Sales of foreign-caught billfish in the U.S. and commercial harvest and sales of U.S. caught billfish in the Atlantic, where several species are overfished or experiencing overfishing, have been prohibited since 1988. For decades, a NMFS-administered Billfish Certificate of Eligibility (COE) has been required to accompany any billfish caught in the Pacific that is offered for commercial sale in the United States. The COE is meant to ensure billfish in the US market is not from the Atlantic or foreign fisheries by documenting the vessel, homeport, port of offloading and date of offloading. There was no loophole as alleged, and no evidence that foreign billfish were being laundered through Hawai‘i. Rather, the bill removed an exemption for domestic, sustainably caught billfish, as billfish populations in the Pacific are healthy. Proponents, on the other hand, believe marlins and other billfish should be caught only by recreational fishermen.

Sport fishing for billfish involves catch-and-release and retention for home consumption. Dozens of recreational billfish tournaments provide prize money for the largest marlin landed. Anecdotal information suggests a substantial amount of recreationally harvested billfish on the East Coast is sold through black-market channels.

Congresswomen Colleen Hanabusa, D-Hawai‘i; Madeleine Z. Bordallo, D-Guam; and Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, R-American Samoa, said the legislation “will negatively impact the livelihoods of fishermen in Hawai‘i, Guam and the Pacific Insular Areas by closing off the only off-island market for U.S.- caught billfish.”

They added: “We support needed-conservation efforts in the Atlantic, but do not believe that Pacific fisheries need to be targeted in order to achieve these goals.”

Unfortunately, their Congressional voices and the voice of reason based on best scientific information fell on deaf ears.

The enacted legislation, unlike its title, was not a simple technical amendment, but rather an arrow pointed at sustainable U.S. Pacific Island commercial billfish fisheries at the behest of largely U.S. mainland recreational fishing groups.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

ROBERT E. JOHNSON: Creating a ‘blue economy’ on the South Coast

October 5, 2018 — From the earliest days of the whaling industry, the ocean has run through the veins of the South Coast economy. Before anybody knew the term, the “blue economy” sustained families and communities along the I-195 corridor.

According to the World Bank, the blue economy is “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.”

Today, the challenge for business, government, and academic leaders is to create a new blue economy ecosystem along the South Coast, one that sheds the natural tendency toward parochialism, and is driven by collaboration and innovation.

With its location and resources, the South Coast is uniquely positioned to drive this process. The stakes are high: the average median family income in New Bedford and Fall River (where most SouthCoast citizens live) is about half the state average of $70,000. The unemployment rate is chronically higher than the state average and the educational attainment level is lower. We have a moral obligation to confront that economic reality.

Last April, UMass Dartmouth and the National Council on Competitiveness brought 100 leaders together to discuss the possibilities. From Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito to Congressmen Bill Keating and Joe Kennedy, from General Dynamics to the MF Foley Fish Company, and from the New England Council to the Mass. Business Roundtable, there was a consensus that the SouthCoast has the DNA to build a job-creating, income-increasing “Blue Economy Corridor” from Rhode Island to the Cape Cod Canal.

Read the full story at the Boston Business Journal

BOB JONES: USTR Announced Additional Duties on Chinese Seafood Imports

September 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Southeastern Fisheries Association:

Where will the seafood industry end up after the tariff war is concluded?

“Last night, at the direction of President Trump, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that a 10 percent additional tariff would be imposed on a massive amount of Chinese imports, including imports of aquacultured seafood products effective on Monday, September 24th. The USTR additionally announced that these tariffs would increase to 25 percent on January 1, 2019.”

US fishermen can’t provide more fish to the domestic market because NOAA and the Councils have taken most of the seafood away from the non-boaters.

For instance, we can only harvest under our quotas 18,000,000 pounds of fish from Virginia through the Keys while the anglers have been gifted with 40,000,000 pounds.

In the Gulf of Mexico it seems when the red snapper needs 6,000,000 more pounds, nothing is based on science or process but rather by a stroke of the pen, the Secretary of Commerce can issue a ‘temporary rule re-opening the private angling component of the red snapper fishery in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for the 2017 season on select weekend and holiday dates through Labor Day , September 4, 2017.’ (Page 1 of Motion for Summary Judgement between two environmental groups and Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce-Case 1:17-cv01408-ABJ)Basically Commerce could not be punished because their temporary rule expired before the case got to the judge so everything was moot. The recreational fishing industry’s powerful vendors won again. Not Rule of Law.

It is good that qualified members of the domestic shrimp industry are compensated from tariffs received from foreign countries. It is bad that the domestic seafood industry as a whole was supposed to have a dynamic seafood program in place from the tariffs collected under the Saltonstall-Kennedy legislation but somehow, most of these tariffs are used for salaries and upkeep on NOAA facilities instead of going to where they should go.

Senators Kerry and Snowe tried to fix this in 2012 and it needs to be tried again. Tax money the anglers bring in from foreign tackle go to their issues. NOAA needs to do what the original act demands.

“The Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Act directs 30% of the duties on imported fish products to a grant program for research and development projects to benefit the U.S. fishing industry. It is estimated that for 2010, the total duties collected on the imports of fishery products was $376.6 million. The S-K Act directs 30% of that total to be transferred to the Secretary of Commerce. In 2010, that equaled $113 million. Of that $113 million, $104.6 million went to NOAA’s operations budget, and only $8.4 million was used by NOAA for grants for fisheries research and development projects. We believe that we should follow the original intent of Senators Leverett Saltonstall and John F. Kennedy and restore this funding to help the fishermen and communities for whom it was originally intended.”
https://californiawetfish.org/fishingnews/tag/saltonstall-kennedy-act/

Ample S-K funds for honest stock assessments and for treating the “providers of seafood for non boaters i.e. commercial fishermen” as an important and vital sector of the society. We have been oppressed by NOAA policies for too long.

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Moving NOAA research center to New Bedford is a good idea

September 24, 2018 — Most SouthCoast residents are well aware that relationships between local commercial fishermen and government regulators are frequently tense.

This newspaper alone regularly documents disagreements between them on issues as diverse as how endangered specific fish species are, how effective groundfish catch-share systems are, and who is financially responsible for at-sea monitoring.

Whatever the concern, it’s not surprising when the two groups approach an issue from opposing points of view.

So the city’s proposal to improve dialogue between fishermen and government scientists by bringing them together to coexist on the New Bedford waterfront is a welcome one and one that has the potential to build trust where very little has existed in recent years.

The idea to relocate NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center from Woods Hole to New Bedford was first proposed two years ago, when NOAA announced it would review its aging and increasingly out-of-date Woods Hole facilities and consider new sites. In response, Mayor Jon Mitchell, the Economic Development Council, harbor officials and others sent a detailed letter to then NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan to consider the many benefits of moving its research center to the nation’s highest grossing commercial fishing port.

The city’s argument was that by placing both groups in close proximity, NOAA “could at last begin to break down barriers to communication, and repair the distrust that has plagued the relationship between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the fishing industry in the Northeast for decades,” according to the city’s proposal.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: BOEM should do ocean study before awarding NY wind leases

September 24, 2018 — Sometimes big issues seem to appear as if out of nowhere.

Residents of SouthCoast may have been feeling that way this week upon learning that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is about to decide on the future of some of the New Bedford scallop fleet’s prime fishing grounds just next month, in October.

Mayor Jon Mitchell and others gave their testimony to BOEM Tuesday about the plans of New York state to award wind turbine leases in a 2,300-square-mile section of ocean known as the New York Bight. The area just happens to be the spot where 40 to 50 percent of the scalloping grounds fished by New Bedford’s fleet are, according to scalloper Eric Hansen.

The federal agency has indicated to developers that 80,000 of the 1.5 million acres contained in the region would be a reasonable turbine size but local officials are worried.

Mitchell called for a scientific study and analysis of where the turbines should go, and recommended against a hasty awarding of leases.

“These decisions are permanent,” he said, explaining that the North Atlantic is far larger and more complex than the areas of Northwest Europe where previous wind turbine studies have been done. There needs to be a hard assessment of the cumulative effects of the wind farms and the locations of the scallops, squid and other species.

In just one area where a lease is being considered, over the last five years New Bedford has taken an annual average of 56 million scallops. That’s a good chunk of the 354 million scallops the city fleet has taken on average over the last five years.

“This is a big deal,” Mitchell told the BOEM officials.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times