Saving Seafood

Pelagic Data Systems honored as SeaWeb Seafood Champion Finalist; FISH-i Africa Wins Innovation Award

June 6, 2017 — The following was released by Pelagic Data Systems:

Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) was honored as a finalist at the Seafood Champion Awards, held yesterday at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Seattle. FISH-i Africa, a partnership of eight East African nations, was presented with the Seafood Champion Award for Innovation for their low-cost information-sharing solution to combat illegal fishing in the Western Indian Ocean.

“It is an honor to be recognized as a finalist among such innovative and forward-thinking organizations and individuals,” said PDS Chief Scientific Officer Melissa Garren. “Pelagic Data Systems thanks Mark Spalding and the entire SeaWeb team for bringing together such a passionate group of people united by a common goal of seafood sustainability. We’d also like to offer our congratulations to FISH-i Africa on their victory and their exemplary, collaborative work fighting illegal fishing.”

FISH-i Africa was established in 2012 when eight East African nations – Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania – united with the goal of halting large-scale illegal fishing. By bringing together national enforcement authorities, as well as technical and legal experts, FISH-i Africa is proving that regional cooperation and information-sharing can be powerful tools to stop illegal catch from getting to market.

This is the 11th year that SeaWeb has presented Seafood Champion Awards at its annual Seafood Summit. The Seafood Champion Awards program features four categories – Innovation, Vision, Leadership, and Advocacy – with four finalists in each category. The awards were created to honor organizations and individuals that promote environmentally sustainable seafood.

The Seafood Champion Award for Innovation recognizes those who identify and apply new solutions to ecological challenges, market needs, or sustainability barriers. In addition to PDS and FISH-i Africa, finalists included Karl Warr of Better Fishing, who has improved the sustainability of bottom trawling with a new cage mechanism, and Alan Lovewell of Real Good Fish, a California-based community-supported fishery (CSF).

PDS recently formed a partnership with Mr. Lovewell to outfit fishing boats working in his CSF with PDS’s vessel tracking technology. PDS’s technology provides Real Good Fish subscribers with a detailed look at where, when, and how their fish was caught.

About Pelagic Data Systems

Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) is the creator of ultra-lightweight vessel tracking systems for boats of all sizes. PDS’s innovative vessel tracking system is completely solar-powered and affordable, and helps fishers and regulators alike collect the fishing data that they value most. PDS is active in Southeast Asia, Africa, and throughout the Americas where its technology is being used to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and help fishers maintain their livelihoods.

Out at sea, under the watchful eyes of cameras, fishermen work as the government monitors catch

May 16, 2017 — Chris Brown has grown used to the five video cameras that record every move he and his two crew members make aboard the Proud Mary.

Since installing the equipment in January on the 45-foot otter trawler, whenever Brown steams out of Galilee in search of flounder and other groundfish in the Atlantic Ocean waters off Rhode Island, the electronic monitoring system kicks on.

And as Brown engages the boat’s hydraulics to haul in its nets, the cameras track everything he and his crew catch, all the fish they keep and all the fish they discard over the side.

The cameras may seem intrusive, but then Brown has an easy answer when asked about them.

“I’d much rather have a camera overhead than an observer under foot,” he said.

Brown is one of three Rhode Island fishermen who have signed on to a program that is testing out electronic surveillance as an alternative to human monitors that the federal government requires to be on board one in every seven fishing trips in the Northeast in an effort to stamp out overfishing.

The new program being led by The Nature Conservancy offers the potential for closer observation of commercial fishing, enhancing compliance with quotas and deterring misreporting.

Its supporters say it also provides more accurate data that will lead to better science and better regulations, all with the aim of supporting a fishing industry that is sustainable for years to come.

“There’s a mismatch between what fishermen say they see on the water and what the science says,” said Christopher McGuire, marine program director with The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts. “We’re trying to bridge that gap.”

Electronic monitoring on fishing boats is nothing new. It’s been in use in British Columbia, in Canada, for more than 15 years, was eventually adopted by American fisheries in the Pacific Northwest, and was tested by Cape Cod fishermen as far back as 2005.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

NMFS OKs new electronic fisheries monitoring system

May 10, 2017 — The Pacific Fishery Management Council on April 27 recommended new regulations governing the use of electronic equipment to monitor at-sea discards of target, non-target and prohibited fish for certain West Coast groundfish fisheries. If approved by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), this will mark the culmination of a four-year process to develop and implement regulations for electronic monitoring system use in these fisheries.

“For many fishing operations, electronic monitoring will provide a more cost-effective way to meet 100 percent monitoring requirements. This will allow fishermen the flexibility to choose the monitoring method that makes the most sense for them while maintaining full accountability,” Council Member Dorothy Lowman said in a press release.

Under the council’s catch share program, every vessel must carry a human observer to help monitor catch that is allocated to each vessel owner, including discards that happen at sea. Each owner has a share of the total catch allocation and the program requires that each vessel have “quota pounds” to cover its catch of nearly all groundfish species. The catch share program relies on at-sea monitoring to ensure that discards are accurately identified with an estimated weight so that vessel quotas are properly tracked.

However, fishermen must pay as much as $500 per day for an observer, and must schedule deployment of an observer when a vessel is ready to fish. The electronic monitoring program is expected to increase flexibility while reducing operating costs for fishermen.

An electronic monitoring system collects video images of fishing activity with cameras, uses gear sensors to trigger recording and monitor use, and includes a Global Positioning System to collect location data. It then stores this information on a computer hard drive for review at a later date at a mainland facility, where a person reviews the video to monitor the fishing activity. Under the West Coast electronic monitoring program, the video images will be used to verify the species and amount of discarded fish that is recorded in a fisherman’s logbook.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

MAINE: Fishing surveillance bill amended

May 10, 2017 — A bill that would authorize the Department of Marine Resources to conduct surreptitious electronic surveillance of lobster boats drew mixed reviews at a hearing by the Legislature’s Marine Resources Committee in April.

But at a work session last Wednesday, the committee voted to recommend passage of an amended version of the bill.

Introduced by Rep. Walter Kumiega (D-Deer Isle) at the request of the Department of Marine Resources, LD 1379 — as initially formulated — would have given the DMR commissioner authority to approve installation of electronic tracking devices on lobster boats without first getting a warrant from a judge. The approval would have been based on an affidavit from the chief of the Marine Patrol that he had “probable cause” to believe that a civil violation of the laws regulating the placement or hauling of lobster gear had occurred.

At its work session last week, the committee scrapped the idea of authorizing the commissioner to approve installation of tracking devices and took a new approach.

According to committee Co-chairman Kumiega, the committee opted to make four kinds of conduct “associated with fishing over the limit” of traps allowed Class D misdemeanors.

As of now, these violations are civil offenses.

The reason for the change, Kumiega said, is that Marine Patrol officers could not obtain sealed warrants from a judge when the offenses were handled as civil violations.

As criminal offenses, that all would change. Marine Patrol officers would be able to obtain warrants without giving notice to the subject of an investigation.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

West Coast Groundfish Electronic Monitoring Pending NMFS’ Approval

May 1, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Pacific Fishery Management Council has recommended regulations governing the use of electronic equipment to monitor at-sea discards of target, non-target and prohibited fish for certain West Coast groundfish fisheries. If approved by National Marine Fisheries Service, this will mark the culmination of a four-year process to develop and implement regulations for electronic monitoring system use in West Coast groundfish fisheries.

“For many fishing operations, electronic monitoring will provide a more cost-effective way to meet 100 percent monitoring requirements,” Council Member Dorothy Lowman said in a press release. “This will allow fishermen the flexibility to choose the monitoring method that makes the most sense for them while maintaining full accountability.”

Under the West Coast catch share program, every vessel must carry a human observer to help monitor catch that is allocated to each vessel owner, including discards that happen at sea. Each owner has a share of the total catch allocation and the program requires that each vessel have quota to cover its catch of nearly all groundfish species. The catch share program relies on at-sea monitoring to ensure that discards are accurately identified with an estimated weight so that vessel quotas are properly tracked.

However, fishermen must pay as much as $500 per day for an observer and must schedule deployment of an observer when a vessel is ready to fish. The electronic monitoring program is expected to increase flexibility while reducing operating costs for fishermen.

An electronic monitoring system collects video images of fishing activity with cameras, uses gear sensors to trigger recording and monitor use, and includes a global positioning system to collect location data. It stores the information on a computer hard drive for review at a later date at a mainland facility, where a person reviews the video to monitor the fishing activity. Under the West Coast electronic monitoring program, the video images will be used to verify the species and amount of discarded fish that is recorded in a fisherman’s logbook. Observers may still be deployed on vessels to collect scientific data such as fish length measurements, interactions with protected species such as marine mammals and seabirds, and other data to support fisheries management.

The use of electronic monitoring systems would be voluntary and could apply to the midwater trawl fishery for whiting, the midwater rockfish trawl fishery, the bottom trawl fishery, and the fixed gear fishery.

The Council’s decisions were informed by several years of collaborative work with the seafood industry, managers and others to test electronic monitoring systems using exempted fishing permits. An exempted fishing permit allows exemptions from some regulations in order to study the effectiveness, bycatch rate, or other aspects of experimental fishing methods.

“I want to thank the industry and other stakeholders, NMFS West Coast Region, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for their help in developing and testing this program, and especially NMFS headquarters for their policy and financial support for establishing the first large scale electronic monitoring regulatory program for U.S. fisheries,” Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy said in a statement.

Some electronic monitoring proponents are urging the expansion of the system beyond groundfish, to the highly migratory species sector, such as in the swordfish deep-set buoy gear proposed EFP. On a national scale, NMFS is exploring the use of EM in New England groundfish and herring/mackerel fisheries, Alaska small boat fixed gear fisheries and some party and charter boat fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico areas.

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

Pacific Fishery Management Council Recommends Electronic Monitoring Program for Some West Coast Fisheries

April 28, 2017 — The following was released by the Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council has recommended regulations governing the use of electronic equipment to monitor at-sea discards of target, non-target and prohibited fish for certain West Coast groundfish fisheries. If approved by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), this will mark the culmination of a four-year process to develop and implement regulations for electronic monitoring system use in West Coast groundfish fisheries.

Council Member Dorothy Lowman said, “For many fishing operations, electronic monitoring will provide a more cost-effective way to meet 100% monitoring requirements. This will allow fishermen the flexibility to choose the monitoring method that makes the most sense for them while maintaining full accountability.”

Under the Council’s catch share program, every vessel must carry a human observer to help monitor catch that is allocated to each vessel owner, including discards that happen at sea. Each owner has a share of the total catch allocation and the program requires that each vessel have “quota pounds” to cover its catch of nearly all groundfish species. The catch share program relies on at-sea monitoring to ensure that discards are accurately identified with an estimated weight so that vessel quotas are properly tracked. However, fishermen must pay as much as $500 per day for an observer, and must schedule deployment of an observer when a vessel is ready to fish. The electronic monitoring program is expected to increase flexibility while reducing operating costs for fishermen.

An electronic monitoring system collects video images of fishing activity with cameras, uses gear sensors to trigger recording and monitor use, and includes a Global Positioning System to collect location data. It then stores this information on a computer hard drive for review at a later date at a mainland facility, where a person reviews the video to monitor the fishing activity. Under the West Coast electronic monitoring program, the video images will be used to verify the species and amount of discarded fish that is recorded in a fisherman’s logbook. Observers may still be deployed on vessels to collect scientific data such as fish length measurements, interactions with protected species (marine mammals and seabirds), and other data to support fisheries management.

The use of electronic monitoring systems would be voluntary, and could apply to the midwater trawl fishery for whiting (sometimes called hake), the midwater trawl fishery for rockfish, the bottom trawl fishery, and the fixed gear fishery (which uses longlines with hooks and lines or pots).

The Council’s decisions were informed by several years of collaborative work with the fishing industry, managers, and others to test electronic monitoring systems using “exempted fishing permits.” An exempted fishing permit allows exemptions from some regulations in order to study the effectiveness, bycatch rate, or other aspects of experimental fishing methods.

“I want to thank the industry and other stakeholders, NMFS West Coast Region, Northwest Fisheries Science Center, and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission for their help in developing and testing this program, and especially NMFS headquarters for their policy and financial support for establishing the first large scale electronic monitoring regulatory program for U.S. fisheries,” said Council Executive Director Chuck Tracy.

The Council recommends management measures to NMFS for fisheries off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. It is one of eight regional fishery management councils managing fisheries in US. Federal waters (3-200 miles offshore). 

On the Web:

Lobstermen tired of conflicts support bill to allow GPS tracking of boats

April 25, 2017 — Lobstermen fed up with cohorts who violate fishing regulations testified in favor of a bill to allow Marine Patrol officers to secretly install tracking devices on fishing vessels suspected of illegal activity without first obtaining a warrant.

While a smaller faction opposed the bill, both sides agreed that Maine faces a growing “epidemic” posed by a small number of law-breakers fueling dangerous conflict and threatening the stewardship ethos within the state’s most valuable fishery. They also agreed that the Maine Department of Marine Resources needed more enforcement tools, but lobstermen differed on whether DMR’s commissioner should be allowed to authorize the installation of GPS tracking devices without getting a judge’s approval.

“It is coming to a point where violence will happen and I don’t want to see it happen,” Jason Joyce, a Swans Island lobsterman. “I’ve fished my whole life … the department is full of people who (committed to) criminal justice and they are not trying to impose anything on us as an industry. They are trying to help us out and they need the tools to do it.”

Critics raised concerns about giving the DMR commissioner – a political appointee – too much power and criticized what they said was overly broad or sweeping language in the bill.

“We need to help our law enforcement, yes, but the way the bill is written presently is not the way to do it,” said Rock Alley, a Jonesport fishermen and president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Union.

Lobstering in Maine always has been a rough-and-tumble industry where territorial disputes, personal conflicts or perceptions of wrong-doing can lead to sabotaged traps, sunken boats and occasional violence. But those tensions have risen to new levels in recent years, including the loss of more than $350,000 in gear during an intense “trap war” in the Swans Island-Stonington area last year, and one lobsterman’s boat being sunk at its mooring three times.

Maine lobstermen hauled in 130 million pounds of the crustaceans last year worth an estimated $533 million.

State law already allows Marine Patrol officers to obtain a warrant from a court to covertly install surveillance devices such as GPS trackers on vessels when officers have probable cause to believe the operator is engaged in criminal violations. But many serious crimes in Maine’s lobster industry – such as fishing more than the maximum 800 traps or hauling another fisherman’s gear – are civil violations that therefore require officers to provide targeted fishermen with at least 24 hours’ notice before installing tracking devices.

The bill under consideration in the Legislature, L.D. 1379, would allow the DMR commissioner to authorize the covert installation of a GPS tracking device in cases where Marine Patrol officers show “probable cause” of a civil violation.

Commissioner Patrick Keliher said conflicts between lobstermen are “indisputably” increasing as some lobstermen fish too many traps, set gear outside of their designated zone or fish “sunken trawls” without buoys to evade detection. Keliher, who called the bill “the most important piece of legislation” of his tenure as DMR commissioner, said he feared the actions of a few bad apples threatened to erode the conservation ethic of the industry.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

2016 fishing review highlights monitors —human and electronic

April 24, 2017 — NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Office released its annual year in review for 2016 and nowhere does it mention the ever-churning debate over Gulf of Maine cod and the yawning divide between scientists’ data and the primary-source observations of fishermen.

For the most part, the report is a four-color chronicle of what officials at Gloucester-based GARFO — which manages the nation’s federal fisheries from the Gulf of Maine south to Cape Hatteras and west to the Great Lakes — consider the agency’s most tangible accomplishments in 2016.

Still, the review gives some insight into some of the agency’s management priorities and policy areas where it may marshal its resources in the future.

It specifically mentions the office’s work in drafting a recovery plan for endangered Atlantic salmon and a five-year action plan for the species. It highlights its work with commercial groundfishermen — many of them from Gloucester — on potential changes to the small-mesh whiting fishery.

The report also highlights the agency’s transfer of the cost of of at-sea monitoring to permit holders.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Judge shoots down New England fishermen’s at-sea monitoring cost challenge

April 20, 2017 — A US federal appeals court judge has ruled against New England groundfish fishermen’s third legal attempt to do away with a law requiring them to bear the cost of at-sea monitors.

New Hampshire groundfish fisherman David Goethel as well as the non-profit XIII Northeast Fisheries Sector believe the law violates existing federal law.

Although Joseph Laplante, chief US district court judge, recommended further consideration of the fishermen’s plea — their second appeal attempt — he ultimately ruled the initial law suit was not filed in time to be legal.

Laplante ruled, on April 14, against fishermen “because we find that Goethel’s suit was not filed within the [Magnuson Stevens Act’s] thirty-day statute of limitations…” This upholds the reasoning of the previous appeal decision, also against the fishermen, dated July 29, 2016.

Goethel had argued that the 30-day salute of limitations embodied in the MSA does not apply to pre-enforcement review, whereas Laplante said it does, and that Goethel cited no authority permitting a waiver of that rule.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

UPDATE: Court rules in government’s favor in New England fishing monitor dispute

April 17, 2017 — An appeals court has found in favor of the federal government in a challenge by a New England fishermen’s group over the cost of at-sea monitoring.

The monitors are workers who collect data that help the government craft fishing regulations. The government shifted the cost of paying for monitors to fishermen last year.

A group led by New Hampshire fisherman David Goethel sued the government over the rule change. The fishermen lost in federal district court and appealed. A 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Boston agreed with the lower court Friday.

Monitors can cost hundreds of dollars per day. Fishermen argue it represents an illegal new cost burden they can’t shoulder in an era of tight quotas.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at NH1