Saving Seafood

Restoration projects seek to fight “tragic” decline in Gulf of Mexico oyster population

November 19, 2018 — Last week, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources officially moved to cancel the state’s wild oyster season, which would have run from November through April.

Exploratory dives at oyster harvesting grounds had revealed a continued steep decline in the number of oysters in the state’s waters. Last year’s season was curtailed after fishermen harvested just 136 110-pound sacks of oysters, down from 7,000 sacks in 2013, according to the Associated Press.

Scott Bannon, director of the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said the findings revealed the apparent collapse of the region’s oyster ecology.

“It’s tragic, to be honest,” Bannon told AL.com.

Numerous factors have dealt blows not just to Alabama’s oyster grounds, but those of the entire Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, hurricanes, disease, and changes in freshwater flows to Gulf rivers and streams have collectively damaged the fishery to the point where up to 85 percent of the gulf’s original oyster reefs no longer remain intact.

According to a new report by The Nature Conservancy, “Oyster Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico,” this dramatic decline has damaged the stability and productivity of the Gulf’s estuaries and harmed coastal economies.

Seth Blitch, the director of coastal and marine conservation in Louisiana for The Nature Conservancy, told SeafoodSource the oyster habitat and the oyster fishery “is not in a particularly good place right now,” which could spell bigger problems for the region.

“Oysters, to me, are a great proxy to a lot of things,” he said. “If oysters are doing well, that’s a good indication of good water quality and of the health entire near-shore estuarine system. When oysters start to fail, that’s good indication there are larger issues at play.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ENVIRONMENTALISTS SUE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IN TAMPA OVER OFFSHORE DRILLING

June 22, 2018 — Earthjustice, on behalf of three conservation groups, sued the Trump administration Thursday (June 21) alleging that it failed to complete a legally required consultation about offshore drilling’s harms to threatened and endangered species in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are required under the Endangered Species Act to complete a consultation with the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management on its oversight of oil and gas operations that could impact threatened and endangered species. The last time the agencies completed a consultation, called a biological opinion, was in 2007, three years before the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster which led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, according to Earthjustice.

With the lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Tampa, the Gulf Restoration Network, Sierra Club, and Center for Biological Diversity are challenging the agencies for unreasonably delaying completion of a new consultation and seeking a court order to compel them to complete it within three months. A new biological opinion likely would result in additional safeguards to prevent further harm to sea turtles, whales, and other threatened and endangered species from oil and gas operations in the Gulf.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Reporter

Trump just erased an Obama-era policy to protect the oceans

June 21, 2018 — President Trump on Wednesday ended an eight-year-old policy to protect oceans, which was created as hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well, covering more than 65,000 square miles, killing untold numbers of wildlife and devastating fisheries in several Gulf Coast states.

President Barack Obama mentioned the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the largest and costliest oil spill in the nation’s history, in the second sentence of an executive order that detailed the first national ocean policy and called on federal agencies to work closely with states and local governments to manage the waters off their coasts.

“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and resulting environmental crisis is a stark reminder of how vulnerable our marine environments are, and how much communities and the nation rely on healthy and resilient ocean and coastal ecosystems,” Obama’s July 2010 order said.

In contrast, Trump’s order does not mention the explosion that killed nearly a dozen workers and the spill of 210 million gallons of oil. The second sentence gives a nod to domestic energy production, the jobs it could provide and the financial rewards that can be reaped.

“Ocean industries employ millions of Americans and support a strong national economy. Domestic energy production from Federal waters strengthens the nation’s security and reduces reliance on imported energy,” his order reads.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Congressmen hear pitches on how to open up Alaska’s natural resources

August 18, 2017 — Alaska Rep. Don Young has spent the week guiding some of his fellow Republican members of Congress around some of Alaska’s natural resources, and the group said they’re ready to act to make drilling and mining more accessible in Alaska.

Young and four other members of the congressional Western Caucus joined with representatives of oil, gas, timber, fish, Alaska Native corporations and other industries in Anchorage on Thursday to discuss just what Congress could do to encourage more production in Alaska.

The industry representatives and Republican lawmakers agreed on the overall plan: Get the federal government out of the way. For the lawmakers, that meant naming names of troublesome bureaucrats.

The industry groups spoke of reforming regulatory programs and paring back the power of agencies and environmental groups.

Young convened the group at the Dena’ina Center downtown after travels to the North Slope to check out facilities run by ConocoPhillips and BP, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Pump Station No. 1, start of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

The group also visited the Fort Knox Gold Mine outside of Fairbanks. Afterward, some of them headed south for a fishing trip this weekend.

Read the full story at the Alaska Dispatch News

Florida gets $32M more in oil spill money

November 16, 2016 — PANAMA CITY, Fla. — Florida will receive $32 million for four projects aimed at restoring natural resources damaged by the 2010 oil spill, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) announced Tuesday.

The money is part of a $370 million announcement to finance 24 grants, the foundation’s fourth and largest round to date. Louisiana will receive $245 million, Alabama $63 million, Mississippi $16 million and Texas nearly $12 million.

NFWF was awarded a total of $2.5 billion over five years in settlements and penalties from BP to repair natural resources damaged during the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, which is considered one of the largest environmental disasters in history. It began April 10, 2010, and lasted 87 days, releasing millions of barrels worth of oil into the Gulf.

In Florida, the latest round of grants will go toward conserving oyster reefs, building a sea turtle necropsy facility, better assessing stocks of Florida’s reef fish, and restoring shorebird and seabird populations.

Read the full story at the Panama City News Herald

BP oil disaster might have hurt Bluefin tuna rebuilding, study says

October 3, 2016 — The release of 4 million barrels of oil in the 87 days following the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010 occurred just as Atlantic bluefin tuna had returned to the Gulf of Mexico to spawn, and a small but significant percentage of the adult fish and their eggs and larvae were likely exposed to the toxic oil, according to a new study announced Friday (Sept. 30).

The study led by scientists with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service and Stanford University concludes that the oil cumulatively covered 3.1 million square miles where fish, eggs and larvae were present in the weeks immediately after the accident.

When combined with other stressors affecting this species of tuna — including overfishing and warming seas caused by climate change — the addition of the oil’s impact “may result in significant effects for a population that shows little evidence of rebuilding,” the study published in Nature: Scientific Reports concluded.

The study, funded by the Natural Resource Damage Assessment for the BP spill required under the federal Oil Pollution Act, made use of computer modeling based on information gathered from 16 years of electronic tagging of 66 tuna that kept track of individual fish locations, temperatures and oscillating diving patterns. The information was compared with satellite observations of the breadth of oil from the spill on the surface of the Gulf to estimate the potential impacts.

Barbara Block, a Stanford professor of marine scientists and expert on Atlantic bluefin tuna, said in a Friday interview that the tagging program took advantage of earlier tagging information that indicated many of the Gulf-spawning tuna migrate back and forth from the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada. Researchers captured adult tuna in Canada and installed the tags. When the fish returned to Canada a year later, the tags dropped off and were collected, and their data was added to a long-term database on fish movements.

The information collected from the tags helped the scientists confirm their theories about the spawning habits of the huge fish, which can weigh as much as 1,000 pounds at maturity, and begin reproducing about 10 years after birth.

Read the full story at the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Louisiana responds to report alleging misspending of BP money for fish testing

September 23, 2016 — KENNER, La. —The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is now reviewing a draft report by the Louisiana legislative auditor which blasts it for misspending money intended to test seafood after the BP spill.

The report says the department spent oil spill recovery money on things like cameras, iPads and boats instead of testing fish. It also alleges that some samples sat for weeks before testing.

The quality of Louisiana seafood was a major concern immediately after the BP oil spill, and the seafood industry felt the impact.

“We had a huge problem with perception after the spill,” said veteran seafood dealer Harlon Pearce with LA Fish.

Seafood sales dropped, and the industry went to great pains in a bid to ensure the fish weren’t contaminated.

“We closed a lot of areas ahead of time just to be sure,” Pearce said.

But six months after the spill there were reports of tainted seafood.

“In the oysters we collected there were up to 8,000 to 12,000  parts per million oil range organics, and they were not visibly oiled oysters,” said microbiologist Wilma Subra, speaking to FOX 8 in February of 2011.

At the time state fisheries officials vouched for the catch.

“What we’ve seen are low base levels. All seafood has natural levels,” said Randy Pausina with the LDWF.

But a new draft report from the legislative auditor obtained by the Associated Press calls into question state tests. The report says the LDWF misspent a portion of $10.5 million BP provided for a seafood safety program, alleging that money intended for testing was spent on unnecessary items.

“It always concerns you when people say money was spent wrong. That concerns me,” said Pearce.

He said he never saw any bad seafood. In fact, six years after the spill, his Kenner fish house has added 10,000 square feet to ship Louisiana seafood to half the U.S.

“We probably added two million pounds a year since the expansion,” Pearce said.

The draft report says the LDWF engaged in insufficient sampling after the spill, but Pearce said from his perspective, that wasn’t the case. While he couldn’t comment on  the quality of the tests, he said between the state and the Food and Drug Administration, he remembers more sampling of seafood than normal.

Read the full story at KSLA

BP oil spill cost fishing industry at least $94.7 million in 2010

June 28, 2016 — The BP oil disaster cost the Gulf of Mexico’s commercial fishing industry $94.7 million to $1.6 billion and anywhere from 740 to 9,315 jobs in the first eight months, according to a new study by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The $355,888 study measured the effect of the Macondo well blowout from May through December 2010, the same period of time that is being used to calculate claims being paid to fishers under a 2012 court-approved settlement agreement between private parties and BP.

The authors of the study, conducted by The Vertex Companies of Boston, say the economics of the commercial seafood industry in the Gulf of Mexico are complex, and that a variety of factors contributed to the low and high estimates in their study. In some cases, dramatically reduced catch was partially offset Gulf-wide by price increases driven by both the oil spill and by other factors, such as a disease that limited the availability of foreign farm-raised shrimp.

Louisiana’s commercial fishing industry bore the brunt of the costs of the spill, compared to  the four other Gulf states, said the report, released Wednesday (June 22). The highest costs affected the catch of shrimp, oysters, crabs and menhaden.

For instance, the study found that in May 2010, 65 percent less shrimp was landed in Louisiana than in the previous year. Louisiana also saw a 54 percent decline in oyster landings in 2010, compared to 2009, the report said. And the state’s oyster revenue also dropped dramatically, by 51 percent over the previous year.

The report linked the significant oyster decline in Louisiana, in part, to the state’s decision to open freshwater diversions along the Mississippi River. The freshwater killed oysters, even though many oyster beds were in no-harvest zones set by state officials after the spill.

Read the full story at the New Orleans The Times-Picayune

BP Drops $1 Billion Seafood Industry Spill Payments Fight

May 3, 2016 — After fighting for more than two years to avoid paying almost $1 billion in oil spill damages to Gulf Coast shrimpers, oystermen and seafood processors it claimed didn’t exist, BP Plc has thrown in the towel.

“We have withdrawn our claims seeking an injunction against payments by the Seafood Program so the program can be concluded,” Geoff Morrell, a BP spokesman, said in an e-mail Tuesday. The company will keep pursuing fraud claims against lawyer Mikal Watts and his firm, Morrell said. Watts was indicted for allegedly making false claims in connection with the BP spill.

A federal judge in New Orleans Monday allowed BP to drop its bid to avoid paying the second half of $2.3 billion in compensation promised to seafood interests harmed by the blown-out well. The subsea gusher pumped more than 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, closing fisheries and blackening the shores of five states.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

US Judge OKs $20B Settlement From 2010 BP Oil Spill

April 6, 2016 — A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst offshore spill in the nation’s history.

The settlement, first announced in July, includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years. The U.S. Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as $20.8 billion, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history as well as the largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.

U.S District Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, had set the stage with an earlier ruling that BP had been “grossly negligent” in the offshore rig explosion that killed 11 workers and caused a 134-million-gallon spill.

In 2012, BP reached a similar settlement agreement with private attorneys for businesses and residents who claim the spill cost them money. That deal, which didn’t have a cap, led to a protracted court battle over subsequent payouts to businesses. A court-supervised claims administrator is still processing many of these claims.

BP has estimated its costs related to the spill, including its initial cleanup work and the various settlements and criminal and civil penalties, will exceed $53 billion.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News