Saving Seafood

Opinion

Greg DiDomenico & Diane Pleschner-Steele: Senate MSA reauthorization a step back for fishing communities

August 21, 2018 — The following op-ed was originally published in The Hill and was written by Greg DiDomenico, the Executive Director of the Garden State Seafood Association, and Diane Pleschner-Steele, the Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association:

In July, the House passed H.R. 200 the “Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act,” a much needed update of federal fisheries law that allows for both sustainable fisheries management and the long-term preservation of our nation’s fishing communities. Unfortunately, its counterpart bill making its way through the Senate would likely have the opposite effect.

The Senate bill, S.1520, or the “Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act of 2018,” introduces changes to the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA)—the main law governing U.S. fisheries—that would impose increasingly burdensome regulations on American fishermen and undermine H.R. 200’s goal of increasing flexibility in fisheries management.

Of particular concern are provisions contained in Section 104 of the bill, “Rebuilding Overfished Fisheries.“ Rather than giving fisheries managers more flexibility in how they manage and rebuild fish stocks, these new requirements added to S.1520 make rebuilding requirements more stringent and onerous.

For example, one of the most disturbing changes is the requirement that Regional Fishery Management Councils achieve a 75 percent chance of rebuilding a stock if that stock has not rebuilt in as short a timeframe as possible. What that means in practice is that regulators will be forced to set quotas according to a rigid, predetermined timeframe, rather than one based around scientific evidence or biological necessity. This will lead to quotas that are much lower than they need to be to sustainably manage the species, and fishing communities being unnecessarily hurt in the process.

Read the full opinion piece at The Hill

 

THE EAGLE-TRIBUNE: Long-term solution needed for monitoring fishermen

August 17, 2018 — The New England fishing industry is enjoying a rare victory over federal regulators, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced earlier this week that it would pick up the cost of at-sea monitoring of boats this year. What’s more, NOAA will reimburse fishermen for some of their out-of-pocket expenses from 2017.

While that’s good news, there is still work to be done. There is no guarantee the new policy — less a promise of change than a one-time concession tucked in the federal budget — will continue past this year. And beyond the cost, the expensive, inefficient at-sea monitoring program, which spreads a limited amount of monitors among a large number of vessels for an undetermined number of trips, must be able to provide accurate information regulators and fishermen can trust.

First, credit where credit is due. It was New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen who tucked the $10.3 million into the federal budget to pay for the monitoring program, which is meant to ensure fishermen are adhering to regulations that limit how much and what type of fish they can catch. The boat is required to allow a NOAA monitor to tag along on trips and record what has been caught.

Read the full story at The Eagle-Tribune

DAVID BERNHARDT: At Interior, we’re ready to bring the Endangered Species Act up to date

August 13, 2018 — A modern vision of conservation is one that uses federalism, public-private partnerships and market-based solutions to achieve sound stewardship. These approaches, combined with sensible regulations and the best available science, will achieve the greatest good in the longest term.

Last month, the Trump administration took this approach to bringing our government’s implementation of the Endangered Species Act into the 21st century. We asked ourselves how we can enhance conservation of our most imperiled wildlife while delivering good government for our citizens. We found room for improvement in the administration of the act.

When Congress created the Endangered Species Act, it built a tiered classification for our most at-risk wildlife, designing different protections for “endangered” and “threatened” species. The act was designed to give endangered species the most stringent protections while affording federal agencies the authority to tailor special rules for lower-risk, threatened species on a case-by-case basis.

It may surprise most Americans, however, that the highest level of protection is often applied, regardless of the classification, through application of a “blanket rule.” The use of this rule by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service automatically elevates protections for threatened species to the same level as those given to endangered species.

But automatically treating the threatened species as endangered places unnecessary regulatory burden on our citizens without additional benefit to the species. The blanket rule reflexively prohibits known habitat management practices, such as selective forest thinning and water management, that might ultimately benefit a threatened species.

Read the full opinion piece at The Washington Post

DON CUDDY: Sector reopening’s benefit to New Bedford remains to be seen

August 6, 2018 — The news emerged on July 19 that NOAA approved a plan that may now permit some New Bedford fishermen to go back to work.

It has been eight months in the making since the National Marine Fisheries Service shut down Sector IX last November after Carlos Rafael was convicted for falsifying landings and jailed. His fishing operation was so large that the closure impacted a lot of people in the business, both afloat and ashore.

In March, fishermen with quota in Sector IX moved to join Sector VII, which also operates out of New Bedford, but that quota remained frozen while the people at NMFS worked to determine how to correct for the “overage” — how much and of what species — that resulted from the fish caught and mislabeled by Rafael’s boats.

So while this decision is a small step forward for the groundfish industry here, it is not yet time to set the church bells ringing since the majority of the inactive quota is owned by inactive fishermen. When the catch share system was introduced in 2010 it gave all permit holders a slice of the pie — the “pie” being a share of the TAC, or total allowable catch, for the annual fishing year, which for groundfish begins on May 1. Individual allocations were based on a permit holder’s catch history over a ten-year period from 1998 to 2008, I believe it was.

This effectively means that all of the cod, haddock and flounder swimming around on Georges Bank, more than one hundred miles offshore, have someone’s name on their back, similar to a herd of cattle. And like cattle, these fish can be leased, sold or traded. So this allowed some fishermen to retire, stay home every year, and lease their quota. Also, you are not required to have a boat to keep a permit.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

JESSICA HATHAWAY: Bend rather than break

August 3, 2018 –The range of responses to the passage of the Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization in the House of Representatives on July 11 shows the diversity and breadth of this industry.

The biggest hold-up on coast-to-coast support for H.R. 200 was the inclusion of a recreational grab at snapper-grouper management in the Gulf of Mexico, which gets a leg up in the House version of the bill (a Senate version is TBD). In the end, most major South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico associations offered their support of the bill with an exception for this portion as well as the attempt to eliminate annual catch limits in recreational fisheries (see Mail Buoy on page 6).

The controversial flexibility clause has perhaps been the most talked about component of this reauthorization. The Fishing Communities Coalition — a group of small-boat fishery associations connected also by their relationships with NGO funding and catch share management — came out strongly opposed to the reauthorization largely because of the flexibility component and the hurdles the bill puts in the way of new catch share programs. These changes, they say, will erode the nation’s deep roots in science-based sustainable fishery management.

However, several provisions in the act aim to include more data points in fishery management, including cooperative data, stock assessment plans for all federally managed stocks and transparency in the council management process.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Maine lobster fishery doesn’t need a lecture on ethics from PETA

August 2, 2018 — One of the most interesting things about living in Maine is seeing all the people who come to visit us every summer.

But one group’s annual appearance is something that we don’t look forward to much – it’s the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and its annual attack on the lobster fishery.

This year, PETA has tried to make a splash by buying advertising at the Portland International Jetport, hoping to dissuade visitors from eating lobster while they’re here. It features a picture of a lobster that says: “I’m ME, not Meat! See the individual. Go Vegan.”

The question of whether lobsters see themselves as individuals separate from all other beings on the planet with a life that has a beginning and an end – in other words, whether they have consciousness – is too much to answer in this space. Let’s just say we strongly doubt it.

But as to the question of whether eating Maine lobsters can be considered ethical, we do have an opinion. It is.

The Maine lobster fishery is one of the most sustainable in the world. The men and women who bait traps have a history of self-imposed conservation measures and are governed by thoughtful regulations going back to 1879.

Read the full opinion piece at the Portland Press Herald

LAINE WELCH: Gender parity and the seafood industry

August 2, 2018 — Alaska appears to be an exception in terms of gender parity at all levels of its seafood industry.

Women comprise roughly half of the world’s seafood industry work force, yet a report released last week revealed that 61 percent of women around the globe feel they face unfair gender biases from slime lines to businesses to company boardrooms. The women’s overall responses cited biases in recruitment and hiring, in working conditions and inflexible scheduling.

The findings were based on 700 responses gathered in an online survey from September through December of last year. Thirty percent of the respondents were men; 27 percent of the total responses came from North America.

In my view, Alaska doesn’t fit the picture.

Based on “empirical evidence” spanning 30 years as a fisheries writer, I always have encountered women at all levels of seafood harvesting and processing, business, management, education and research, as agency heads and commissioners and in top directorships in industry trade groups and organizations. While women may be outnumbered by men in the state’s seafood industry overall, they are highly visible and valued throughout the workforce hierarchy.

Read the opinion piece at the Juneau Empire

KIMBERLY HAMILTON: Maine has an opportunity to be a global player in aquaculture

August 2, 2018 –Maine is resilient. As former economic sectors decline, we find new ways to market our natural resources, provide jobs for Maine families, and support local and regional economies.

Today, Maine is on the cusp of another economic resurgence — this time in aquaculture. Not one, but two significant projects are under development in midcoast Maine, both slated to raise Atlantic salmon in state-of-the art facilities. One of them, Whole Oceans in Bucksport, will redeploy paper mill infrastructure at the former Champion International mill site. The other, Nordic Aquafarms, will add to the growing industry in Belfast, once a chicken production capital of the world.

Aquaculture is the fastest growing food producing sector, growing at 5 percent annually between 2003 and 2016, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2018 State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture report. By 2030, aquaculture will account for 60 percent of global fish food consumption, helping to preserve our fragile wild fish population. By these measures, it’s not surprising that aquaculture holds the power to transform economies.

If Maine plays its cards right, we can capture a significant portion of this transformative energy, competing with Scotland, Norway and Canada to meet the expanding global demand for nutritious fish protein. Importantly, Maine stands to gain more than 2,000 new jobs over the next 10 years as a result of growth in the aquaculture sector, according to FocusMaine’s own extensive research. The growth of related jobs would push this number even higher.

Read the full opinion piece at the Bangor Daily News

Gloucester Times: So, be nice to your oceans

August 1, 2018 — This is why we can’t have nice things. Because we’re human and we tend, over time, to spoil most of the wondrous things we touch. You need only look at big league baseball, which, despite the historic season unfolding for the local nine, has become a soulless slog through the barren desert of analytics, home runs, strikeouts and pitching changes.

And then there are the oceans. We’ve really left our smudgy fingerprints all over them.

According to a new study that offers the most exhaustive mapping of the Earth’s ocean wilds, there is virtually no corner of the planet’s oceans that has not suffered human disruptions or the ill effects of human-created climate change.

“Nowhere is safe,” James Watson, an author on the study published in the journal, Current Biology, told The Washington Post via a video abstract of the study.

Perhaps more alarming, the study calculates that only 13 percent of the planet’s oceans could still be classified as “wilderness” because of the unceasing onslaught of humans trekking around the planet.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times

 

CHARISE JOHNSON: The newly endangered species of the Trump era is the Endangered Species Act

July 24, 2018 — The Endangered Species Act itself is currently endangered, as a result of predation by lobbyists, conservatives in Congress and President Donald Trump.

Last week, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service announced proposed revisions that would change the way the agencies implement the Endangered Species Act – actions that could lead to the destruction of essential habitat and otherwise preventable species extinctions. And President Trump’s allies in Congress are preparing their own additional attacks on the law, pushing bills in both the House and the Senate that would demolish the scientific foundations of the law.

Speaking to the New York Times, Richard Pombo – a former member of Congress notorious for his hostility to environmental laws who is now paid to lobby for mining interests – says that the Trump administration and Congress are offering “probably the best chance that we have had in 25 years to actually make any substantial changes” in the law.

Read the full opinion piece at NBC News