Saving Seafood

Fishing groups sue federal agencies over latest water plan for California

December 4, 2019 — The fracas over California’s scarce water supplies will tumble into a San Francisco courtroom after a lawsuit was filed this week claiming the federal government’s plan to loosen previous restrictions on water deliveries to farmers is a blueprint for wiping out fish.

Environmental and fishing groups sued the the National Marine Fisheries Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Monday for allegedly failing to protect chinook salmon, steelhead trout and delta smelt.

They believe the voluminous government proposal, known as a biological opinion, sacrifices protections for the imperiled fish without adequate justification so that Central Valley farmers and Southern California cities can have more water.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, charges that the government’s plan to boost agricultural deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta is an arbitrary and capricious failure to uphold the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle

Bumble Bee’s Chris Lischewski convicted of fixing prices of canned tuna

December 4, 2019 — Christopher Lischewski, the former president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, was convicted on 3 December, 2019, of helping to orchestrate a price-fixing conspiracy between Bumble Bee, Chicken of the Sea, and StarKist, the so-called “Big Three” players in the U.S. canned tuna sector.

Lischewski was found guilty of one count of price-fixing by a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and faces up to 10 years in prison and a fine of USD 1 million (EUR 900,000). His sentencing has been set for 8 April, 2020. Lischewski’s conviction may also open him up as a target of civil lawsuits filed by parties who overpaid for canned tuna as a result of the price-fixing, according to Eric Snyder, chairman of the bankruptcy practice at Wilk Auslander, a New York City-based law firm.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Crab Pot Could Help Reduce Whale Entanglements

December 2, 2019 — Oregon’s Dungeness crab season is coming up, but there’s a problem looming over this fishery.

The ropes and buoys that allow crabbers to collect their crab pots from the seafloor can injure and even kill whales when they swim into them.

Last year, 46 whale entanglements were reported off the West Coast, and crab gear was responsible for about a third of them.

According to Derek Orner, a bycatch reduction program coordinator with the National Marine Fisheries Service, this a growing problem in the spiny lobster and Dungeness crab fisheries.

“Were seeing increases in whale entanglements with a number of species that are listed under the National Marine Mammal Protection Act, in particular with humpback whales, gray whales, and blue whales,” he said.

His agency recently announced grants for several ropeless fishing gear projects, including a new kind of crab pot developed by Coastal Monitoring Associates of California.

Bart Chadwick, the company’s president, said when crabbers drop their pots in the ocean, the ropes and buoys can remain in the water column for days.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

CALIFORNIA: The secret Richmond lab where Bay Area crab season annually learns its fate

November 29, 2019 — Each year, the fate of Northern California’s Dungeness crab season is in the hands of a few scientists in a quiet East Bay lab examining a small container of tan goo.

At the California Department of Public Health lab in Richmond, the goo is viscera, or the internal organs of a Dungeness crab, and the scientists study it to determine whether a neurotoxin called domoic acid is present.

While the commercial Dungeness crab season is on hold for an entirely different reason — a lawsuit over whale entanglements that postponed the season until Dec. 15 — three of the last four commercial Dungeness crab seasons were delayed after domoic acid, which is poisonous to humans, was found in local crustaceans. The neurotoxin can become present in crabs when algal blooms caused by rising ocean temperatures linger in local fishing waters during crab season. And with California crab fishermen capable of grossing $95 million a year during an uninterrupted season, domoic acid has resulted in tens of millions of dollars in lost revenue.

Read the full story at the San Fransisco Chronicle

Bumble Bee tuna has filed for bankruptcy

November 27, 2019 — Something fishy is going on.

Bumble Bee Foods, LLC — renowned as for its Bumble Bee canned tuna products — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, years following a Department of Justice investigation which found evidence of a massive price-fixing scheme by the San Diego-based company.

Taiwanese fish supply chain company FCF Co. plans to put in a $925 million bid for the assets in a deal to be completed within 90 days, CNN reported.

“It’s been a challenging time for our company but today’s actions allow us to move forward with minimal disruption to our day-to-day operations,” Bubble Bee president and CEO Jan Tharp said in a statement.

A staple of American kitchen for over a century, the Bumble Bee brand has been in troubled waters over the past few years.

Read the full story at The Daily News

Most Recent Amendment to the Groundfish Fishery Management Plan a Rare Source of Agreement

November 27, 2019 — On November 19, 2019, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued Amendment 28 to the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery Management Plan (Amendment 28). The Pacific Groundfish fishery is one of the most diverse fisheries that NMFS regulates and also one of the most litigated. The fishery includes over 90 bottom-dwelling fish such as rockfish, cod, and flounder. This amendment closes a large amount of new areas to bottom trawling, and re-opens certain other more limited areas. These changes will also protect sensitive deep-water habitat and deep-sea corals from bottom fishing.

Amendment 28, which was developed by the Pacific Fishery Management Council over a five-year period, contains three major provisions:

  1. Defines new areas as Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) conservation areas for both groundfish and non-groundfish species, such as California habitat, in which bottom trawling is restricted.
  2. Opens certain areas previously closed to bottom trawling.
  3. Defines a new deep-water area closed to all bottom-contacting fishing to protect deepwater habitats.

In making changes to Groundfish EFH, NMFS closes over 12,000 square miles of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and opens over 200 square miles to bottom trawling. These closures are intended to protect certain ocean floor types, such as submarine canyons and deep sea corals. While the rule closes EFH areas up and down the Pacific Coast, the largest area to be closed is off the coast of Southern California, surrounding the Channel Islands. In the final rule, NMFS claims that the areas that are reopened have lower sensitivity than those that are being closed and will recover faster. Most of these lower sensitivity areas are off the coast of Central California. NMFS also claims that the closures will have a “minimal” impact on fishing communities because very little groundfish landings actually occurred in the closed areas.

Read the full story at The National Law Review

Marin Voice: Huffman’s interest in fisheries act is commendable

November 26, 2019 — A once-in-a-decade opportunity for everyone to weigh in on the management of our fisheries has been put into motion.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the primary federal law that governs all management of marine fisheries in federal waters of the United States. The act governs both commercial and recreational fishing sectors. First enacted by bi-partisan legislation in 1976, it has been reauthorized and amended by Congress in 1996 and 2006. The intent was to update and reauthorize the MSA every 10 years. Obviously, a reauthorization in 2016 did not occur and the MSA has remained essentially unchanged since 2006.

U.S. Representative Jared Huffman has set a goal to have the MSA reauthorized in the spring of 2020. To that end, he is holding a series of roundtable meetings throughout the country to gather input from all stakeholders as to how they feel the MSA can be updated and improved. I attended, as an audience member, the roundtable that was held in San Francisco on Oct. 7.

Congressman Huffman presided over a panel of 11 people who represented organizations concerned with commercial and recreational fishing. Congressman Huffman set the tone by stating that he was there to listen and gather information and opinions from all parties. He also stressed that he will try to garner bi-partisan support for the reauthorization process. He took extensive notes and asked questions for clarification. No conclusions or rebuttals were offered. It was truly an information-gathering atmosphere.

Read the full story at The Marin Independent Journal

November 2019 Council Decision Summary Document

November 26, 2019 — The following was published by the Pacific Fisheries Management Council:

The Pacific Fishery Management Council met November 15-20, 2019 in Costa Mesa, California. The November 2019 Council Meeting Decision Summary Document contains the highlights of significant decisions made at that meeting. Results of agenda items that do not reach a level of highlight significance are typically not described in the Decision Summary Document.

Federal managers extend comment period for humpback whale critical habitat decision

November 25, 2019 — A comment period over designating critical habitat for some of the humpback whales that swim off Alaska’s coastline is being extended by the federal government.

Coastal waters from southern California to the Aleutian Islands could be listed as habitat critical to sustaining three distinct populations of humpback whales. The move by the National Marine Fisheries Service could require future consultation for activities that are permitted, funded or carried out by a federal agency.

“Critical habitat really affects federal actions,” NMFS endangered species act national listing coordinator Lisa Manning explained.  “It’s not something that affects everything that takes place within those areas that everyone’s seeing on the map. The regulatory effect of critical habitat is it requires federal action agencies to make sure their actions don’t adversely affect or destroy the critical habitat.”

Those activities could include vessel traffic, aquaculture, clean water permitting, in-water construction, alternative energy development and work permitted by the U.S. Forest Service on the Tongass National Forest. Manning says there are also indirect impacts possible that the agency has analyzed in documents available on the agency’s website. For instance, the agency’s analysis states the designation may impact how the state of Alaska manages commercial fisheries for herring, a food for the whales.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

CALIFORNIA: Bay Area crab sellers dismayed over delay of commercial Dungeness season

November 25, 2019 — Marin’s fishmongers reacted with both disappointment and understanding to news that Northern California’s commercial Dungeness crab season has been delayed again.

The state Department of Fish and Wildlife confirmed Friday, after issuing a preliminary announcement earlier this week, that the opening has been held back until Dec. 15 in an effort to prevent whales from getting tangled in fishing lines.

The season had already been delayed a week from the traditional Nov. 15 start date over concerns about whale entanglements.

Responding to concerns from the commercial crab fleet, state Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham announced late Friday that he intends to further delay the commercial season south of the Mendocino/Sonoma county line.

Read the full story at The Mercury News