Saving Seafood

NOAA to pay for at-sea monitors through November

October 1, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries will continue bearing the cost for at-sea monitoring of Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels at least through the end of November, three months past the target date the agency initially set for the expense to shift to permit holders.

This extension — the second in as many months — is based on the same rationale as the first: with fishermen producing fewer fishing days because of slashed quotas and area closures, the money the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budgeted for at-sea monitoring for at least 24 percent of total fishing days is lasting longer than the agency expected.

NOAA initially said the money for at-sea monitoring — which runs to about $710 per vessel per day — would run out around Aug. 31 and then the responsibility for paying for the legally mandated at-sea monitoring would have to be borne by the fishermen.

In early August, NOAA said decreased effort by the fleet had reduced monitoring expenditures enough for the money to last through Oct. 31. Now that same reduction in fishing effort has given the fleet another month-long reprieve, but it has not solved the long-term dilemma of how to pay for the at-sea monitoring.

The issue certainly is not going away.

NOAA is adamant that it expects permit holders to ultimately assume the cost of monitoring, while fishermen flatly state that the additional expense — heaped upon already miniscule, if non-existent, profit margins — simply will sink the fleet.

In late July, NOAA flatly rejected the request of the New England Fishery Management Council to use its emergency powers to remove all at-sea monitors from groundfish boats for the remainder of the 2015 fishing season.

Instead, NOAA, as well as the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, advanced the idea that the cost of monitoring be covered by some portion of the $6.9 million remaining in the Bay State’s third phase, or Bin 3, of the federal fishing disaster assistance.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Senator Ayotte, fishermen meet with federal officials

September 18, 2015 — PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Fishermen aired grievances face to face with federal officials they say are ruining their industry, backed in person by U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who arranged the meeting at Pease Tradeport Friday.

Roughly 40 members of the fishing industry, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator John Bullard and a representative from U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s office joined Ayotte for the 2 p.m. roundtable.

Ayotte, seeking to be a voice for New Hampshire fishermen, called the meeting to address regulations NOAA has imposed on the Gulf of Maine fishery. The regulations are meant to help cod stocks rise from disastrously low numbers, but fishermen have said restrictions are strict enough to put them out of business.

Central to the discussion were at-sea monitors NOAA plans to force fishermen to pay for starting Nov. 1. The monitors would watch fishermen on 24 percent of each vessel’s fishing days to make sure they comply with the regulations. The cost is expected to be roughly $700 per day for each vessel, more than fishermen say they gross in a day.

Read the full story at Hampton Union

 

New Bedford Standard-Times slams federal at-sea monitoring decision in dual opinion pieces

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — September 15, 2015 — This past week, the New Bedford Standard-Times ran two opinion pieces criticizing current federal policy that will require fishermen to directly pay for the costs of at-sea monitoring. The first, an op-ed by fishing boat owner Carlos Rafael, notes that many of the remaining fishermen will be unable to afford the cost of the program, which is expected to cost the fishery an estimated $2.64 million per year. This will cause many to leave the fishery entirely and lead to further consolidation of the fleet.

The second piece, from the Standard-Times’ editorial board, argues that the policy on at-sea monitors is the latest in a series of rules and regulations from the federal government that have distorted the seafood market and do not properly take into account the economic costs imposed on fishing communities. The editorial calls for environmental groups to fund further studies to more accurately estimate the health of regional fish populations.

Excerpts from both articles are reproduced below.

Carlos Rafael: White House should heed call
on burden of at-sea monitors

In a show of bipartisan cooperation that’s all too rare in today’s politics, Massachusetts’ Republican governor and all-Democratic congressional delegation united late last month to call upon the Obama administration to reverse a particularly egregious federal policy: the current plan by NOAA to require the fishing industry to pay the full cost for at-sea monitors for the groundfish fishery. Fishermen will now be required to hire monitors from an approved short list of for-profit companies. This policy will impose a significant burden on area fishermen, and poses a threat to the future of a fishery that is already reeling from a string of onerous federal regulations.

Thanks goes to Gov. Charlie Baker, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and all nine of our Massachusetts representatives in Congress for giving voice to what fishermen have been saying for years: Forcing fishermen to pay for the observers who monitor their catch will be a financially disastrous outcome for the fishery. As their joint letter notes, ther National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s own analysis of shifting the cost of monitors onto the industry finds that 60 percent of the fleet would be operating at a loss if required to pay for monitoring. In just the first year, the program would cost fishermen an estimated $2.64 million.

Yet NOAA does not seem to fully realize how seriously this policy puts the fishery at risk. The $2.64 million that NOAA expects the fishery to pay in monitoring costs is $2.64 million that fishermen simply don’t have. The fishery still has not recovered from years of declining quotas and a federally declared economic disaster in 2012. Imposing another unfunded mandate on the fishery will force many remaining fishermen to exit the industry altogether.

The agency at least needs to look into alternatives to reduce the exorbitant price tag for the at-sea monitoring program, as well as look at ways to make the program more cost-effective. A program that is too expensive for the fishery and which the federal government refuses to pay for is not sustainable in the long term.

Read the full opinion piece here

New Bedford Standard-Times: Environmental groups’
misguided spending on oceans

In a free market, fishermen are going to see a net filled with sanddab and move to another part of the ocean. They’ll judge whether it makes more sense to spend labor on discarding the bycatch or to land the fish at a loss while pursuing a more valuable species.

This minutia of the market shows how poorly devised is the current regime of management tools. Our confidence in what good data would say notwithstanding, we would not advocate wholesale changes to policy based on our certainty. We also know that the government is hardly going to be convinced to reallocate scarce funds to measure the vast, unseen worlds below the surface.

Therefore, we would call on the most powerful advocates for ocean health to put their hundreds of millions of dollars to the highest use, that is, to count the fish. Environmental groups that for two decades have solicited and spent half a billion dollars trying to restrict fishing under the narrative that the oceans are in crisis owe it to their benefactors to determine how accurate their claims are.

The lower fish landings we count at the dock can be blamed on overfishing, but it’s far more likely that the cause is the changing ocean environment. Let’s find out for sure. Let’s see if one environmental group has the integrity to actually improve fishery science by supporting good work like that being done at UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology to improve the accuracy of stock assessments. Ironically, the environmental groups appear to have blamed fishermen and overlooked the true culprit of challenges in the fishery: climate change.

There is no indication that any stocks considered to have been “rebuilt” achieved that status as a result of regulations. Fish aren’t bouncing back, we would argue, they’re just swimming back. Environmental advocates have resources and leverage that could maintain sustainable fish stocks and fishing communities. It’s a shame that power is misdirected.