Saving Seafood

Obama creates the first US marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean

September 16, 2016 — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama created the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine monument Thursday, protecting an expanse of underwater volcanoes and canyons, along with the creatures that live among them, off the coast of New England.

“If we’re going to leave our children with oceans like the ones that were left to us then we’re going to have to act. And we’re going to have to act boldly,” Obama said during the Our Ocean conservation conference in Washington, D.C.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is an area roughly the size of Connecticut and falls 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass.

There, the steep slopes of the canyons and seamounts meet currents that push nutrient filled water from the depths of the ocean to the surface. Those nutrients mix with sunlight to spur the growth of phytoplankton and zooplankton. The microscopic life forms the basis of the food chain, drawing in schools of fish and the animals that feed on them — whales, sharks, tunas, porpoises, dolphins, sea turtles and seabirds.

Read the full story at Talk Media News 

Local fishermen upset about new marine monument

September 16, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — President Obama has created the first marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean saying it’s an effort to protect the planet from climate change.

The president said the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, located off George’s Bank, will help safeguard the oceans.

The monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles including three underwater canyons and underwater mountains.

While the decision makes environmentalists happy, many fisherman said the announcement is deeply disappointing.

“People have made business plans to use this area and then all of a sudden the rug is getting pulled out from under them,” commercial fisherman Al Cottone told FOX25. “How do you plan for the future when you can be basically be shut down with a stroke of the pen?”

The head of the Massachusetts Fishermen’s Partnership and Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association said these farmers can’t just pick up and move their operation.

“The ocean is huge but fish are not everywhere. Fish live in designated area by nature. Just like we live,” Angela Sanfilippo said.

Read the full story at Fox25

JOHN SACKTON: Are the Big NGO’s Winning the Marine Monument Battle, But Losing the War

September 15, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Coinciding with the opening of the Our Oceans conference in Washington, DC today, President Obama announced a new 5000 square mile marine monument on the southeast corner of George’s Bank, encompassing three submarine canyons and some seamounts further off the continental shelf.

The map of the monument closely hews to the proposed map put out by Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal in a letter to Obama in July.  It follows a letter at the end of June from the six senators representing Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, along with a host of environmental NGOs.

The argument is simple:  America has created a series of national parks on land.  It should offer the same protections in the marine environment.

NGOs have been urging Obama to use executive authority to create marine monuments under the antiquities act, which are designated as areas with no human economic activity except recreational fishing. (click image for larger version)

The Oceans Conference hosted by Secretary of State John Kerry has the same goal:  to put aside large areas  of the global marine ecosystem in a series of reserves or marine protected areas.

This is not a goal opposed by fishery managers or the industry.

You might be surprised to learn that currently 32% of US marine waters are in marine protected areas.  3% of US waters are in fully protected no-take reserves, such as the monument just created today.

The State Dept. says that at the inaugural 2014 Our Ocean conference, President Obama announced our intent to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument.  This expansion – to over 1.2 million sq km, or about three times the size of California – was finalized September 26, 2014, creating the world’s largest MPA that is off limits to commercial extractive uses, including commercial fishing.

Last month, the US expanded this monument by five times, to an area the size of the Gulf of Mexico.

“In total, governments attending the 2014 and 2015 Our Ocean conferences announced new commitments to protect nearly 6 million square kilometers of the ocean – an area more than twice the size of India.  NGOs and philanthropies attending the conferences also announced significant commitments to help establish and implement these and other MPAs.”

“The world has agreed to a target of conserving at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, including through effectively managed protected areas, by 2020.  Through the Our Ocean conferences, we seek to help achieve and even surpass this goal. ”

The reason that all of the fishery management councils, most state fishery managers, and a majority of the US seafood industry recently wrote Obama pleading to stop the expansion of protected areas without scientific review is that these managers and the industry already work with large areas that are protected, and yet also allow for non-destructive economic activity.

Furthermore, the people involved in creating the protected areas often know nothing about them.  For example, the Boston Globe this morning reports “Administration officials said that a study from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration showed waters in the Northeast are projected to rise three times faster than the global average.  In addition, officials said, climate change is threatening fish stocks in the region — such as salmon, lobster, and scallops — and the monument will provide a refuge for at-risk species.”

Lets unpack this absurdity.  Global warming is causing species to move, so they will move out of the protected areas and into non-protected areas.   Second, the examples given are so uninformed.  Lobster populations are the highest in a hundred years; scallop populations have rebounded under one of the most successful fisheries management initiatives on the East Coast.  And Salmon?  Why salmon have not been fished in quantity in New England for hundreds of years, and the designation of part of the continental shelf for protection has nothing to do whatsoever with salmon habitat.  They are not there, and never have been.   It is this level of ignorance that makes the fishery councils throw up their hands in despair.

Given the ease with which the NGOs can communicate the desire for no-take reserves, they demonize the alternative, which is managed areas for protection.  This is the way most of the US protected areas have been created: through a review and nomination process that is scientifically vetted, and through use of the essential habitat laws that are part of Magnuson.  In fact, in the examples above, it is precisely managed protection that has led to a huge abundance of scallops, lobsters, and preserved salmon runs.

NGOs are winning the battle on creating no-take marine monuments.  But to do this, they have to deny the validity of the scientific and public review that has led to the dramatic changes in global fisheries sustainability over the past twenty years.  It is no mystery why many wild fish stocks are rebounding.  It is because managers imposed the correct science of harvest control and protection of spawning areas.

It is precisely when they abandon arguments based on science-driven actions to protect areas where the NGOs may lose us the war.

By encouraging their supporters to devalue the existing protections (32% of US waters) because only 10% are full no-take zones, the NGOs also deny the validity of the scientific review process which fishery managers have used to bring back global fish stocks.

Protecting marine environments should be a joint goal our entire country, including the seafood industry, environmental activists, and the public at large.  The most effective way to do that is to constantly support the application of science driven decision making to questions about marine habitats and resources.

By undermining that approach, NGOs risk advancing those who will claim their uses of the marine environment don’t have to be analyzed for impacts.

Today, the political powers broadly support more marine protection.  In the future, political powers may broadly support increased jobs in the arctic or wherever needed, without regard to the impact on marine ecosystems.

It was the North Pacific Council, who put in place a moratorium on fishing in the arctic ocean, that took one of the most dramatic steps for marine protection in a changing environment.  They did this in the context of making the best scientific decisions possible, and they set up a review process that would curtail any reckless or damaging approaches to that marine environment.

The NGO’s, by failing to recognize the strong advancement of protections already in place, may end up weakening these protections in a future of warmer waters and fisheries crisis.  That will be precisely when we may need them the most.

Abandoning a public process of scientific review is a dangerous game because we do not know what the future will bring.  Yet the NGO’s are arguing that their emotional approach leads to the strongest long-term protection.

The actual results may be the opposite.

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

ABTA: Atlantic Marine Monument Says U.S. Doesn’t Support Its Own Sustainable Fisheries

September 15, 2016 — The following was released today by the American Bluefin Tuna Association, in response to President Obama’s decision to designate a new Marine National Monument off the coast of Cape Cod:

The American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) represents 27,000 commercial, charter/headboat and recreational fishermen who fish for Bigeye, Yellowfin, Bluefin and Albacore tuna. ABTA is deeply saddened to hear of President Obama’s decision today to designate a marine monument in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts. All of the aforementioned fish species are found and fished by our fishermen within the newly designated monument.

ABTA’s fishermen have the distinction of employing the most sustainable fishing methods of any oceanic fishery in the U.S.  ABTA’s commercial fishery is the U.S.’s only artisanal fishery, as defined by the United Nations Fish and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) and by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). ABTA fishermen catch one fish at a time, using handgear, with negligible bycatch and its commercial fishermen have the highest record of compliance with fishery regulations of any such fishery in the world.

ABTA’s takeaway from the Administration’s decision to designate an Atlantic marine monument:

  1. This decision sends a message to the world that the U.S. does not support its own sustainable fisheries; that the U.S. is more interested in promoting the concept of marine protected areas internationally than it is in protecting its own fishing economy and food supply. Implicit in this action is the message that the U.S. does not trust the body of law that we have created and the democratic institutions we have empowered to enact that law in the stewardship of our oceans.
  1. This decision will most definitely result in the U.S. having greater difficulty in utilizing its fishing quota, as set by ICCAT, for certain species fished in this region; in particular, swordfish. There is a very real threat that the U.S. will have to surrender some or all of its unutilized swordfish quota to another ICCAT-member country who may not maintain sustainable fishing practices. This decision will also result in an unnecessary increase in fish imports.
  1. The proposed prohibition on all forms of fishing in the monument is simply punitive and completely unnecessary. The Canyons and Seamounts region is in very deep water, from 1,500 to 15,000 ft in depth. Much of the fishing in this region uses surface and sub-surface fishing gear, sustainable fishing methods in which the fishing gear never comes into contact with deep sea coral found on the sea floor. Prohibiting these forms of fishing is tantamount to prohibiting commercial airline flights over Yellowstone National Park for fear that trees will be knocked down.
  1. The notion that creating a marine monument will contribute to the sustainability of the marine species found there is a myth. All of the marine species harvested in this region are from healthy fish stocks and are sustainably managed by NOAA. Most of the marine species that are harvested in this region are highly migratory, highly fecund pelagic species whose habitat is the entirety of the tropical, sub-tropical and temperate regions of the Atlantic Ocean and its adjacent seas. These species do not preferentially inhabit this region for long periods of time. They swim in and out of the region constantly during certain months and migrate to the east Atlantic, West Africa or the east coast of South America regularly.

A negative message

Abandoning the open, democratic and thoroughly science-based process by which we undertake to establish protections for important marine attributes in favor of a monument established by executive fiat sends a negative message to those U.S. fishermen and shoreside industries who would needlessly pay for this monument by loss of income. It also sends a negative message to the majority of our fishermen who are committed to adhering to the processes and respect for regulation promulgated in accordance with the Magnuson Stevens Act. The decision is a clear denouncement of the democratic institutions that are charged with safeguarding the public interest as it pertains to oceanic marine matters. U.S. fisheries, in particular those fisheries that are found in the proposed area, are already the most highly regulated such fisheries in the world.

Absent strong, verifiable scientific support for such an action, creating a marine monument based upon vague and unsupported concerns “for the future”, can be likened to such expressions as “better safe than sorry” or “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. These are fairly vacuous guidelines for safeguarding the environment and for public policy in general.

David Schalit, Vice President

American Bluefin Tuna Association

RHODE ISLAND: Newport lobsterman opposes plan for marine national monument

September 14, 2016 — In a move that will rile at least one Newport lobsterman, President Obama is expected to designate the first marine national monument Thursday in a bid to preserve underwater mountains, canyons and ecosystems about 150 miles off the New England coast.

The president is expected to announce the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument at the third annual Our Ocean Conference, hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington D.C., according to the White House.

The offshore monument aims to protect 4,913 square miles of ocean ecosystems. The protected area includes three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon.

It also encompasses four underwater mountains known as “seamounts,” which “are biodiversity hotspots” and home to many rare and endangered species, according to the White House.

The “designation will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change,” says a press release.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Obama Closes Ocean Waters South of Cape Cod

September 15, 2016 — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will declare the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean today, barring uses including commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of waters southeast of Cape Cod.

Obama’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — in an area also known as New England Canyons and Seamounts — follows at least a year of concerns and opposition from advocates of the commercial fishing industry, including local elected officials.

Marine monument debates over the past year have involved balancing the preservation of marine life, ocean health and sustainable fisheries with potential oil and gas exploration, unsustainable fisheries, mineral mining, fishing-reliant regional economies and more.

Jon Williams, president of Atlantic Red Crab Co. on Herman Melville Boulevard, said in November 2015 that a monument designation “would be a big hit for the company,” which employs about 150 full-time workers in New Bedford and fishes several times a year in the affected areas.

Mayor Jon Mitchell acknowledged potential challenges for the commercial fishing industry Wednesday night.

“While I believe the industry generally was in a position to manage the implications of the so-called ‘seamount’ area of the monument, the inclusion of the ‘canyons’ area would have benefited from more industry input,” Mitchell said. “I appreciate that the White House sought out more input than is required, but these types of decisions should be subjected to the more robust regulatory processes under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which has successfully led to the protection of sea canyons in other parts of the Atlantic without unduly burdening the commercial fishing industry.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New England Fishermen Troubled by Marine Monument Designation

September 15, 2016 — WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Thursday that creating the Atlantic Ocean’s first marine national monument was a needed response to dangerous climate changes, ocean dead zones and unsustainable fishing practices.

The new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument consists of nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains off the New England coast. It’s the 27th time that Obama has created or enlarged a national monument.

Supporters of the new monument say protecting large swaths of ocean from human stresses can sustain important species and reduce the toll of climate change. Fishermen worry it will become harder for them to earn a living as a result of Obama’s move.

“We’ve been fishing out there for 35 years. It’s a big blow to us,” said Jon Williams, president of the Atlantic Red Crab Company in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

White House officials said the administration listened to industry’s concerns, and noted the monument is smaller than originally proposed and contains a transition period for companies like Williams’.

Williams said his company will survive, but the changes designed to address some of his concerns don’t sway him about the merits of the monument.

“I think the entire New England fishery is upside down over this,” Williams said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Obama designates the first-ever marine monument off the East Coast, in New England

September 15, 2016 — President Obama declared the first fully protected area in the U.S. Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, designating 4,913 square miles off the New England coastline as a new marine national monument.

Obama’s previous marine conservation declarations have focused on some of the most remote waters under U.S. jurisdiction, including last month’s expansion of a massive protected area in Hawaii. But the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument is more accessible, lying 130 miles off the southeast coast of Cape Cod.

Several regional fishing associations lobbied against the creation of a new monument, on the grounds that the federal government could reconcile environmental protections and ongoing fishing operations by regulating activities there under an existing fisheries management law.

Trawlers as well as offshore lobster and crab boat operators currently catch a range of species near the underwater canyons, including squid, mackerel, butterfish, lobster and Atlantic red crab. According to industry estimates, these fisheries are worth more than $50 million in total.

In an effort to lessen the economic impact, the administration will give lobster and red crab operators seven years to exit the area. Recreational fishing can continue around the three deep-sea canyons and four seamounts that are now protected, but seabed mining and any other extractive activities are banned.

Administration officials estimated there were six lobster boats operating in the area that will be protected, along with 20 other fishing vessels that move in and out of the area.

“The only user group that’s going to be negatively affected by this proposal is the fishing industry, period,” said David Borden, executive director of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, noting that the new protections will not affect oil tankers moving through the area or telecommunications cables lying on the seabed.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Obama sections off part of Atlantic Ocean

September 15, 2016 — President Obama will designate a section of the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Cod on Thursday as a national monument, banning commercial fishing in the area by 2023 in an effort to protect the region’s ecosystem.

The move, which the president will formally announce at the Third Annual Our Ocean Conference in Washington, won praise Wednesday from environmental groups but drew condemnation from the fishing industry.

But on Wednesday, the Southern Georges Bank Coalition, which has representatives from local fisheries and industry groups including the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, criticized the new designation off the Cape.

In a letter to Christina W. Goldfuss of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, attorneys for the coalition wrote that “millions of dollars of lost revenue are at stake” for local fisheries, and they questioned the legality of the move.

Some elected officials in Massachusetts have raised concerns about the plan, including Mayor Jon Mitchell of New Bedford, whose city is home to a commercial fishing port.

“While I believe the industry generally was in a position to manage the implications of the so-called ‘sea mount’ area of the monument, the inclusion of the ‘canyons’ area would have benefited from more industry input,” Mitchell said, adding that “these types of decisions should be subjected to the more robust regulatory processes under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which has successfully led to the protection of sea canyons . . . without unduly burdening the commercial fishing industry.”

His concerns were echoed by Senator Edward J. Markey, who called the president’s action an “important milestone” for conservation but said he was “concerned that the impacts of this marine monument designation on the fishing community in New England were not fully minimized.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

New England Fishery Managmement Council to Weigh New Marine Monument Impacts, Implications

September 15, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Managment Council:

President Obama today announced that he had used his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to establish a “Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument,” the first of its kind in the Atlantic Ocean. The New England Fishery Management Council, which has been working for several years to develop its own coral protection measures throughout a significantly broader sweep of this offshore area, will now turn its efforts toward analyzing the impacts and implications of the newly established marine monument and determining how the designation affects the work that already has been conducted under the Council’s draft Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment.

The 4,913-square-mile monument encompasses three deep-sea canyons – Oceanographer, Gilbert, and Lydonia – as well as four seamounts – Physalia, Bear, Retriever, and Mytilus – that also were proposed for additional protection under the Council’s Coral Amendment.

However, the Council will need to reassess its management strategy given these new developments. Next week, the full Council will meet in Danvers, Massachusetts and discuss “next steps” for how the Habitat Committee should proceed given that some of the actions in the Coral Amendment have been superseded by the monument’s establishment.

“The monument area does overlap some of the proposals in our own Coral Amendment,” said Council Vice Chairman Dr. John Quinn, who also chairs the Council’s Habitat Committee. “Since there’s no need for duplication of conservation measures, I expect those alternatives to be removed.”

The Council is expected to continue working on numerous other provisions within its Coral Amendment, which covers 15 additional deep-sea canyons on Georges Bank, as well as areas of the continental slope between those canyons.

Commercial fishing will be prohibited within the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, although the Administration is giving lobster and deep-sea red crab fishermen a seven-year exception to phase out fishing activities and exit the area. Other impacted fishermen, such as whiting and squid harvesters, will have 60 days to transition out. Recreational fishing will be allowed.

According to the White House, “The geographic boundaries of the monument have been narrowly tailored based on the best available science and stakeholder input.”

Acknowledging this statement, Council Chairman Terry Stockwell said, “The designation is smaller than proposals circulated earlier in the process, indicating an effort to at least partly address fishing industry concerns.”

The New England Council never took a formal position on any of the marine monument proposals that were put forward over the past year for this region. However, the Council was a signatory to the position developed last spring by the Council Coordination Committee (CCC), a body that pulls together the leadership teams of the nation’s eight Regional Fishery Management Councils.

The CCC, in a late-June letter to the President, requested that, in the event of a marine monument designation, the Councils be allowed to continue managing fishing and habitat related activities under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA), as has been the case since the Act was first passed by Congress in 1976 and implemented in 1977.

The MSA requires that fishery regulations be developed through a science-based, open, and very transparent public process where all stakeholders can participate in the discussion within multiple venues, including through advisory panel and committee meetings, workshops, scientific meetings, full Council meetings, and, these days, through webinars.

Chairman Stockwell said, “The position of all eight Councils is that we still prefer to be allowed to continue managing fishing activity and establishing essential fish habitat designations under the MSA.”

About the NEFMC:
The New England Fishery Management Council, one of eight regional councils established by federal legislation in 1976, is charged with conserving and managing fishery resources from three to 200 miles off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.