Saving Seafood

American Sword and Tuna Harvesters Respond to Hudson Canyon Marine Sanctuary Consideration

June 9, 2022 — The following was released by the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters:

The American Sword and Tuna Harvesters are concerned about the negative consequences to American citizen’s access to safe and sustainable seafood by a marine sanctuary designation of the Hudson Canyon. This decision was announced yesterday without warning or consultation with participants in the many well-regulated fisheries, operating under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, that depend on this area to survive.

Simply put, a commercial fishing ban in the Hudson Canyon, has the potential to cause the collapse of the East Coast commercial fishery.

This is another disappointing action from an Administration that claims to be committed to science, working families, and communities. But it is unfortunately not out of character. Our June 2021 attempts to arrange a meeting with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to discuss the harm to our fishers from reimposition of a commercial fishing ban in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument were rebuffed. Although acknowledged by staff via email, a terse, tardy, and condescending reply, did not come until January 2022, six months later, and three months after the ban was reimposed.

Yesterday’s announcement is, as the expression goes, déjà vu all over again: A cadre of tax-deduction funded environmental organizations working in secret with a friendly Administration orchestrates the unveiling of a far-reaching potentially negative action affecting America’s commercial fishing industry under the false banner of “much-needed” ocean protections. The details are distributed in advance under embargo to a wide swath of journalists. Then, when the proposal is simultaneously unveiled by its proponents and the White House, pre-written stories appear in numerous media outlets; filled with self-congratulatory quotes, without the inconvenience of input from our hard-working fishing families and communities.

This announcement comes on the second day of Capitol Hill Oceans Week, an annual gathering of environmental and conservation groups organized by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. In past years, our efforts to reach out to Foundation officials, both directly and through mutual contacts, to include commercial fishing voices in this event have been rebuffed. As can be seen in this year’s event agenda, with the exception of Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), there was once again not a single speaker representing domestic commercial fisheries. It would seem that the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation’s commitment “to a culture of diversity, inclusion, equity, justice, and belonging” does not extend to the inclusion of commercial fishing.

Tonight, in Washington, DC — in an action that can only be described as audacious, hypocritical, and exploitative — the Foundation will host a fundraiser featuring a screening of the film The Perfect Storm, which tells the story of the tragic loss of the Gloucester, Massachusetts fishing vessel Andrea Gail. This creates the false illusion that the Foundation is interested in the plight of domestic commercial fishing families.

We appreciate the Biden-Harris Administration’s stated commitment to equity, environmental justice, and workers’ rights, but at a time when the need for self-sufficiency and supply chain security should be at the forefront of our domestic agenda, the Administration should not support actions that are likely to incentivize the increased importation of often-illegal, underreported, and unregulated (IUU) seafood to the detriment of law-abiding American commercial fishers.
 
About American Sword and Tuna Harvesters
American Sword and Tuna Harvesters are experienced fishers, fish buyers, vessel owners and support businesses who represent a significant harvesting segment of the U.S. pelagic longline Industry. We strive for equitable, logical and science-based fishery management to maximize the harvest of the United States’ allocation internationally-determined highly migratory fish species, to supply the American public with a healthy and renewable food source.

Biden administration proposes Hudson Canyon marine sanctuary

June 9, 2022 — A new marine sanctuary off the northeast United States is proposed by the Biden administration, part of a suite of measures for public lands announced Wednesday.

The Hudson Canyon, the largest submarine gorge off the U.S. Atlantic at up to 2.5 miles deep and 7.5 miles wide, lies about 100 miles offshore of New York Harbor and runs 350 miles through the edge of the continental shelf.

The waters are home to federally protected whales, turtles and deep sea corals, and the scene of commercial and recreational pelagic fisheries. The sanctuary proposal raised alarms among East Coast longline fishermen, who worry it could restrict their swordfish and tuna fishery.

“Hudson Canyon’s grand scale and diverse structure – steep slopes, firm outcrops, diverse sediments, flux of nutrients, and areas of upwelling – make it an ecological hotspot for a vast array of marine wildlife,” according to a synopsis issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The American Sword and Tuna Harvesters, a group of commercial pelagic fisherman, said a Hudson Canyon sanctuary designation could set a course for a similar conflict again.

“Simply put, a commercial fishing ban in the Hudson Canyon has the potential to cause the collapse of the East Coast commercial fishery,” the group said in a statement early June 9.

“This is another disappointing action from an administration that claims to be committed to science, working families, and communities. But it is unfortunately not out of character,” the group said. In June 2021 “our attempts to arrange a meeting with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to discuss the harm to our fishers from reimposition of a commercial fishing ban in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument were rebuffed.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Biden administration may reinstate Northeast marine monument restrictions

June 16, 2021 — The Biden administration could reinstate commercial fishing restrictions on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument – and bring a new court challenge from the fishing industry, just months after Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts indicated he would be open to hearing a new case.

Reports Monday in the Washington Post and New York Times described a recommendation from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to restore boundaries of the Bear Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which were established by former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and cut back by former president Donald Trump in December 2017.

At the urging of ocean environmental groups, Obama imposed commercial fishing restrictions after establishing the 5,000-square mile Northeast marine monument in December 2018. In June 2020, Trump issued a new proclamation lifting those rules.

Within hours of President Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20, environmental groups pressed him to reimpose fishing restrictions, and fishing advocates mobilized, hoping to head that off.

How Biden decides this could set the stage for a new challenge to presidential authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906, which critics say has expanded far beyond its original intent.

“A commercial fishing ban serves no conservation benefit,” said James Budi of the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters, which has urged the Biden administration to hold off on renewing restrictions.

Officials at NMFS themselves say “pelagic longline gear used to catch swordfish has no impact on habitat,” said Budi. “Fishing impact on the monument below us is like a bird flying over the Grand Canyon.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Haaland recommends reimposing fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

June 14, 2021 — Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has recommended in a confidential report that President Biden restore full protections to three national monuments diminished by President Donald Trump, including Utah’s Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante and a huge marine reserve off New England. The move, described by two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it was not yet public, would preserve about 5 million acres of federal land and water.

A broad coalition of conservationists, scientists and tribal activists has urged Biden to expand the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, which were established by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, respectively, to their original boundaries. Trump cut Bears Ears by nearly 85 percent, and Grand Staircase-Escalante almost in half, in December 2017. A year ago, he permitted commercial fishing on the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which removed most of the monument’s protections.

The White House is still deliberating, according to these people, but Biden favors the idea of overturning Trump’s actions. Employing the 1906 Antiquities Act, which gives the president broad latitude to protect threatened land and water, ranks as one of the easiest ways for Biden to conserve areas unilaterally.

All three areas have been embroiled in legal fights for years. Fishing operators challenged Obama’s 2016 decision to restrict commercial activities for 4,913 square miles off Cape Cod, Mass., which banned seabed mining and some fishing activities immediately while giving lobster and red crab operators seven years to stop fishing there. The region is home to many species of deep-sea coral, sharks, sea turtles, seabirds and deep-diving marine mammals, as well as massive underground canyons and seamounts that rise as high as 7,700 feet from the ocean floor.

“This area is very important to us,” Jim Budi, an official with the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters, said in an interview. He added that his members brought in about 25 percent of their annual catch from the region last summer after Trump lifted commercial fishing restrictions. They’ve sustainably caught swordfish by staying below limits set by federal regulators, he said.

Reviving the Obama-era limits, Budi said, “doesn’t do any conservation good, whatsoever.”

Still, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. gave some conservatives hope three months ago when he sharply criticized the expanse of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. Noting that the law was initially aimed at protecting Pueblo artifacts in the Southwest, he said the accompanying protected land must “be confined to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected.”

“A statute permitting the President in his sole discretion to designate as monuments ‘landmarks,’ ‘structures,’ and ‘objects’ — along with the smallest area of land compatible with their management — has been transformed into a power without any discernible limit to set aside vast and amorphous expanses of terrain above and below the sea,” Roberts wrote, as the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of a lower court decision on the monument. “The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument at issue in this case demonstrates how far we have come from indigenous pottery.”

Atlantic Red Crab Company owner Jon Williams, who has intervened in an ongoing lawsuit to defend Trump’s changes to the monument, said he wouldn’t hesitate to challenge the administration should it reimpose restrictions there.

“I’m already standing by,” he said. “And we’ve already been given a road map to the Supreme Court.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

American Sword and Tuna Harvesters Call For Department of State to Help Imprisoned Captain Michael Foy

August 17, 2020 — American longline fishing boat captain Michael Foy has been imprisoned in the British Virgin Islands since June 8.  It’s now been months since his arrest, and now the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters are calling for the all relevant agencies of the United States Government to step in.

For those that haven’t been following the story of Foy, the captain, who lives in Puerto Rico, left on May 29 for a fishing expedition. He was detained in the British Virgin Islands on June 8 for reportedly traveling into BVI waters during the coronavirus border closures. Officials not only arrested Foy, but held his foreign crew without charge, and confiscated 8,000 pounds of tuna and swordfish worth more than $60,000.

Read the full story at Seafood News

American Fishermen Call on State Department to Help Captain Illegally Detained in British Virgin Islands

August 14, 2020 — The following was released by the American Sword and Tuna Harvesters. The American Sword and Tuna Harvesters are fishermen, fish buyers, vessel owners and support businesses who represent a significant harvesting segment of the U.S. Pelagic Longline Industry. We strive for equitable, logic and science based fishery management that results in maximizing the harvest of the United State’s allocation of highly migratory fish species to supply the American public with a healthy, renewable food source.  

During the week of June 8, the government of the island of Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), detained the documented U.S. fishing boat Rebel Lady, arrested Captain Michael Foy, held the foreign crew without charge, and confiscated 8,000 pounds of tuna and swordfish valued at more than $60,000. Captain Foy was initially denied bail by the local magistrate, Later today, the Tortola High Court will decide on his appeal of that decision. Captain Foy has been imprisoned 67 days as of this writing.

The American Sword and Tuna Harvesters urge all relevant agencies of the United States Government, and specifically the Department of State, to take all possible actions to obtain justice for Captain Foy.

On June 8, the Rebel Lady was drifting outside Tortola territorial waters for several hours, awaiting permission to enter Road Town as she has done more than 9 times in the past year, most recently on April 27th. The purpose of the visits was to fulfill the U.S. Government visa requirement that the foreign crew “go foreign” every 29 days. The Captain and crew do not disembark for this formality. The protocol is: documents are submitted, including COVID-19 health certificates, passports are stamped, and the vessel departs.

On June 9, Captain Foy was instructed to follow a Customs boat into port. There, he was arrested on charges of illegal entry, arrival at a place other than a Port, and operating an unlicensed and unregistered fishing vessel. The Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) requested and received a denial of bail. In addition, DPP is seeking $511,000 in fines, seizure of the vessel, and up to one year imprisonment for Captain Foy. The catch was seized “to be forfeited and resold to benefit the government,” the DPP wrote in a circular.

Captain Foy, who has fished five different oceans and has never been accused of a fishery or customs/immigration violation in his forty years at sea, has been kept in a rat and cockroach infested prison with a court date set for September. Dinners are a piece of bread and tea. Upon initial detainment, Captain Foy was not afforded the bare necessities – a shower, toothbrush and toothpaste, or even a change of clothes – for almost two weeks.

Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Congressman Andy Kim (D-NJ) have beseeched BVI Deputy Governor David Archer Jr. for fair treatment and humane detention. Humanitarian groups such as Amnesty International, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and Human Rights at Sea were contacted to investigate the squalid conditions of the Indonesian crew.

The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Law Enforcement in St. Petersburg, Florida monitors all U.S. flagged fishing vessels with mandatory Vessel Monitoring System (VMS) records. These hourly GPS readings have been made available and are believed to indicate the exact location of the Rebel Lady outside of Tortola’s territorial waters. Additionally, NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Fisheries Office in Gloucester, Massachusetts has authorized the release of the mandatory camera surveillance records from the Rebel Lady, which indicates where the boat was fishing. Captain Foy’s family and friends are confident this technology will prove his innocence.

The Acting Chief of Customs, who was contacted by the Rebel Lady‘s friend and agent in San Juan the day prior to the boat’s arrival, has refused to comment on the case.

PRESS CONTACT:

Jim Budi
jbudi33@gmail.com