Saving Seafood

Opinion

Op-ed: Five myths about certified sustainable aquaculture

November 24, 2021 — Declining fisheries and pressures on marine ecosystems around the world have increasingly driven the demand for alternative, more-sustainable sources of seafood. In response, aquaculture has taken off.

Over the past few decades, aquaculture practices have markedly improved. Today’s most-reputable aquaculture operations are specifically designed to curb overfishing, protect wild fish populations and the surrounding natural environment, and produce nutritious foods. Likewise, organizations throughout the seafood supply chain are going to great lengths to ensure that seafood can be traced back to certified sources and is properly handled to deliver healthy, nutritious products to consumers.

Read the full opinion piece at SeafoodSource

Patricia Saiki: Hawaii Has Benefited From Kitty Simonds’ Leadership

November 17, 2021 — I read with interest Civil Beat’s recent series “On the Hook.” While I applaud the substantial research that went into the series, I must disagree with the criticisms — direct and suggested — of Kitty Simonds, the long-time executive director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

As the series noted, she has no shortage of critics. But what she has been, everyone seems to agree, is an effective advocate for Hawaii’s commercial fishing fleet. That’s an important part of her role as executive director.

The councils were created by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which was passed in 1976 to assure local participation in matters governing fishing in U.S. federal waters, specifically maintaining populations of fish and sustainability of fishing industries. This is a subject with which I have some personal experience.

When I served in the Congress (1987-1990) representing Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District, I was appointed to a seat on the House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. I sought that committee assignment because I knew how important its decisions were to Hawaii and its aquatic and fishing industries.

Read the full opinion piece at the Civil Beat

Salem News: Finding common ground on fisheries data

November 5, 2021 — Building consensus between commercial fishermen, conservationists and marine regulators is no easy task. But a long, patient effort led by Congressman Seth Moulton’s office seems to be making progress, and a substantial influx of federal cash may finally help the often-warring factions find common ground.

There can be little argument that there are dramatically fewer fish in the North Atlantic today, in large part because of overfishing in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, fueled by massive outside investment and lax oversight from regulators.

But how many fish are left now? What kind? Where are they and how do they move?

Those are questions Moulton’s Groundfish Trawl Task Force has been working to answer since its formation in 2015. The panel’s efforts got a boost last month with a $500,000 grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. At the heart of the effort is providing wider, more timely and more accurate data to decision makers. That in turn should go a long way toward rebuilding trust between fishermen and fisheries scientists.

Read the full editorial at the Salem News

 

JOHN FIORILLO: Are plant-based seafood labels really misleading? Judge for yourself.

November 4, 2021 — Imitation may be the sincerest form flattery, as the proverb says, but when it comes to plant-based seafood look-alikes, imitation is nothing but controversy.

The seafood industry does not find the continued growth of plant-based seafood alternatives, which the seafood industry says are intentionally masquerading as fish and shellfish to fool consumers, flattering in any way. Rather, it is outright fraud, say seafood producers.

The issue was thrust back into the spotlight last week when the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), the leading US seafood trade association, stepped up its call to stop plant-based seafood manufacturers from labeling their products as seafood and gaining an “unfair marketing advantage.”

NFI President John Connelly, speaking at the Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) annual meeting, said the issue is among the most frustrating he has dealt with in the seafood industry over the past five years.

I certainly agree that transparent and accurate labeling is a must for any product, and for sure many companies dance that fine line of marketing and misleading messaging.

Read the full opinion piece at IntraFish

David Goethel: A grievous assault on the lobster resource

November 4, 2021 — In recent years, the federal government in the form of the National Marine Fisheries Service has been expanding restrictions on fin fishermen throughout the U.S.  In the Northeast every aspect of a fishing vessel is controlled by regulation, from the size of the mesh in a net, to where and when and what you can fish for, to who is on your vessel and when you can leave the dock.

This has caused the fishing industry to shrink and the fin fishermen in New Hampshire have dwindled down to a handful.  During my lifetime, the fishermen in New Hampshire have had one commercial fishing organization.  We all meet together and work out our differences.  Compliance in all the New Hampshire fisheries is high and conflicts are few. After all, we are a community out on the ocean and need to work together.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portsmouth Herald

 

As tribal leaders, we urge collective action for Western Alaska salmon now

November 1, 2021 — This past summer, fish racks, smokehouses and fish camps across the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and Norton Sound region in the western part of our state stood empty. Chinook and chum salmon are critical to the lifeblood of our nearly 100 regional tribal communities and are central to our cultures. However, they did not return this year throughout much of our regions. Our people are now facing a winter without this essential food source and missing an essential part of our traditions and way of life.

While tribes along our rivers were not allowed to harvest a single salmon or were severely restricted in their harvests last summer, the largely out-of-state industrial Bering Sea pollock trawl fleet is allowed to catch vast quantities of salmon as bycatch. In 2021 alone, 12,000 Chinook salmon and over 500,000 chum salmon thus far have been caught as bycatch in the Bering Sea pollock fishery. Wasting is not acceptable according to our cultural values, which guide us to take only what we need and use everything we take. This level of bycatch – viewed by the industry as discarded salmon – is disrespectful and should not be allowed.

Tribes and communities have been doing our part to help protect and restore our salmon runs by foregoing our subsistence harvests, engaging in research, and testifying about our experiences amid this salmon collapse. Earlier this month, we called on the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council to do their part by reducing this bycatch to zero for 2022 and taking strong steps towards a long-term solution to eliminate salmon bycatch and restore salmon runs to abundance.

Read the full op-ed at the Anchorage Daily News

Remembering a pair of Alaska titans through the eyes of a fisherman

October 27, 2021 — Alaska, and the seafood industry, saw the passing of two giants in the past few weeks: Clem Tillion and Chuck Bundrant. The news articles about them were great and provided good insight into the men, their accomplishments and their passions. I had the pleasure to know and work with both for several decades. I loved both of them. This is my effort to share some behind-the-scenes observations of them as human beings.

Both Clem and Chuck shared many similarities. They were visionaries, keenly intelligent, tenacious, canny. They had endless stories and great memories, especially for people. They each had a great sense of humor, did everything possible to succeed — and succeed they did, albeit with a few broken eggs in the process. They both created legacies that will outlast them and benefit us for generations to come

I first met Clem on an early Sunday afternoon after I had finished processing crab at Juneau Cold Storage. It was January 1977. I was walking down the street in my soiled clothes when I encountered a tall, red-headed, husky man. He stopped me, asked if I was just getting off work at the cold storage and introduced himself, “I’m Clem.” We started talking fish. One thing led to another, and the next thing I knew, we were in his office in the Capitol Building. That was when I found out he was a state senator.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

On the water, a different view of menhaden fishing

October 26, 2021 — In his recent op-ed (“Fish spills renew concerns about menhaden management,” Oct. 2), the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Chris Moore gives readers a picture of a menhaden fishery that I and my crew do not recognize.

I’ve fished menhaden here in Virginia for most of my life. The view of the fishery expressed by Moore and the CBF of a distant Canadian conglomerate that doesn’t care about the health of the bay or the future of this fishery, could not be further from the truth. It is ignorant and insulting to hundreds of hard-working, blue-collar menhaden fishermen.

Much has been made, both in Moore’s op-ed and elsewhere, of the fact that Omega Protein, Virginia’s oldest and largest fishing company, now has a Canadian parent company. But menhaden fishing has been a Virginia institution since 1878, and there has been a menhaden fishery operating out of Virginia’s Northern Neck continuously since then. I’m a local, my crew are all locals, and many of them come from African American families who have fished menhaden for generations. The majority of these families have been fishing in Virginia long before CBF has even existed.

A corporate address in Canada does not erase the deep Virginia roots of this fishery and the fishermen who are part of it.

Read the full opinion piece at the Virginian-Pilot

 

Federal rules are sinking Maine’s lobster industry

October 25, 2021 — As a lifelong Maine lobsterman, I understand the inherent dangers of my job. I keep watch on the forecast knowing that sudden weather changes can make the difference between a successful day at work and putting my crew’s life at risk. These days, however, the hazard posed by Mother Nature does not compare with the perfect storm of regulations coming out of Washington that threaten my job, our way of life and may eventually sink a fishery that has supported communities and generations of families here in Maine.

In May, National Marine Fisheries Service released a nearly 1,000-page document outlining a 10-year plan that mandates a seemingly unreachable goal to reduce risk from our industry to the endangered North Atlantic right whale by 98 percent. This not only affects me, but nearly 10,000 other men and women who make their living hauling traps.

The fisheries service rolled out the first phase of this plan in August, requiring new gear modifications to add more traps to each buoy line while simultaneously making each line weaker. These measures reduce risk by removing a lot of rope from the ocean and help any entangled right whale to break free from the lines that remain, but they will most certainly make a lobsterman’s already dangerous job even more so.

Recently, a federal judge in Bangor temporarily delayed a seasonal closure of more than 950 square miles of prime lobstering ground off Maine. While we are relieved with this decision, the proposed closure reflects just one in a long line of decisions in the government’s plan that is supposed to protect right whales. The problem is this misguided plan takes aim at the wrong target and may destroy our industry while doing little to help protect the whale.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

 

Judge is right that more data needed before part of ocean put off limits to lobster harvesting

October 22, 2021 — A federal judge’s order last week to temporarily stop the planned closure of a large swath of the Gulf of Maine to lobster fishing is welcome news to Maine’s lobster industry, but also to those who believe that data should guide decisions about protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales.

In August, federal fisheries regulators announced new rules for lobster fishing gear and the closure of 950 square miles of ocean about 30 miles off the coast from Mount Desert Island to Casco Bay to traditional lobster fishing from October to January. Ropeless fishing, a new and largely untested way of setting and retrieving traps using a smartphone, would still be allowed in this area under the rules. The closure was set to go into effect this week.

The new regulations came despite years of pleas from lobstermen, Maine elected officials and this editorial board that any decisions about measures to be taken to protect the whales needed to be made based on actual data about where and how whales are being injured, entangled and, too often, killed.

Without better data, Maine’s lobster industry was being asked to make substantial — and costly — changes that may not have addressed the biggest threats to right whales. Other threats include collisions with shipping vessels.

Read the full editorial at the Bangor Daily News