Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen's Alliance Archives - Page 5 of 6

JOHN PAPPALARDO: Rafael Should be Permanently Banned from Fishing, Redistribution of Quota

May 15, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Carlos Rafael pled guilty to running a massive criminal enterprise that stole from honest fishermen and undermined the fisheries as a whole. One of his quotes offers a revealing insight into his perspective:

“This is America; anything can happen, with money behind it.”

Let’s put his money to work fixing the fishery he badly damaged.

Carlos Rafael should be banned from commercial fishing forever. The fish quota he owns should be redistributed to all the fishermen he harmed. That’s what existing regulations mandate, that’s what many in the industry believe, and we agree.

But we can demand and expect more. Honest fishermen have not been playing on a level field with the likes of Carlos. We need to make sure they aren’t put in that position again.

To do that, we must invest some of his illegal gains in fishing’s future by improving dockside monitoring, expanding electronic monitoring and increasing fishermen-scientist collaborations to get better fish counts.

We can transform this moment into an opportunity to create the oversight and infrastructure necessary to make honest, long-term success possible for our iconic fishery.

This can happen, and Carlos Rafael’s money should be behind it.

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

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford among crowd staking claim to Carlos Rafael’s permits

May 1, 2017 — Before Carlos Rafael uttered the word “guilty” last month, the judge made the New Bedford fishing mogul aware of the possibility of forfeiting his assets, which means permits, too.

About two months remain before Rafael’s sentencing date, but cities and states have started to acknowledge that possibility as well.

Rebeiro, along with Council President Joseph Lopes and Ward 5 Councilor Kerry Winterson introduced a written motion Thursday night “requesting that the Committee on Internal Affairs meet with Attorney General Maura Healey and NOAA to discuss how current owners and mariners operating in New Bedford have the first right of refusal to acquire licenses to be auctioned as result of the plea agreement in the case of The United States vs. Carlos Rafael …”

The case cited has yet to be completed despite Rafael’s plea agreement. Sentencing is scheduled for June 27.

On March 30 in U.S. District Court in Boston, Rafael pleaded guilty to 28 counts including falsifying fishing quotas, false labeling, conspiracy and tax evasion.

If Rafael had been convicted of false labeling, he could have been subjected to the forfeiture of all vessels and other equipment used in the offenses, the indictment said, which listed 13 boats.

However, during the Rafael’s plea agreement hearing, his lawyer William Kettlewell said, “We have reserved the right … to challenge the proportionality of the assets” that could potentially be seized.

Kettlewell didn’t return multiple requests for comment on Rafael’s permits.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape fishermen push dogfish, skate at expo

March 23, 2017 — Chatham fishermen Charlie Dodge, Jamie Eldredge, and Greg Connors walked the crowded aisles of the Seafood Expo North America Monday, one of the largest seafood shows in the world, drawing more than 21,000 attendees and exhibitors over three days.

The men were there to meet wholesale fish buyers and distributors looking to market their catch: skates — a kite-shaped fish related to sharks — and dogfish, a small coastal shark.

Dogfish and skates may not be ready to join heavyweights like salmon and shrimp, but with help from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, as well as federal and state grants to assist with marketing, they are slowly gaining a foothold in domestic markets.

“It would be way better if it stays within the country,” Dodge said of dogfish, which, like skates is largely exported to Europe and Asia, and fetch relatively low prices, with skates at 23 cents per pound on average in 2015 and dogfish fluctuating between 11 cents and 22 cents per pound. In 2015, cod, by comparison, averaged $1.90 per pound.

Not long ago Chatham was one of the top cod ports in the country, but that stock is considered to be at historically low levels and landings state-wide collapsed from 27.5 million pounds in 2001 to 2.9 million pounds in 2015. Both skates and dogfish are plentiful and considered sustainably managed by organizations like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Marine Stewardship Council and Seafood Watch. That message — a local, sustainable and affordable fish — has helped convince institutional clients like the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Read the full story at Cape Cod

MASSACHUSETTS: State Announces Over $105,000 for Seafood Marketing Projects

March 22, 2017 — The state has announced $105,500 in grants to seven marketing campaigns designed to increase awareness and demand for Massachusetts seafood products.

The grants were awarded through the Division of Marine Fisheries’ (DMF) Seafood Marketing Pilot Grant Program.

Seven organizations were awarded funding for projects to stimulate demand though education, promotion, and other strategies.

These organizations have experience and significant ties to the commercial fishing and seafood industries and communities, focus on different species and span geographical areas throughout the state.

Funding for this pilot grant program comes from commercial fishing and dealer permits through the Seafood Marketing Program.

The state launched the Massachusetts Seafood Marketing Program in August 2016 to increase awareness and demand for local seafood products. The program recently announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Farm to School Project to promote the consumption of local seafood in schools.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance has received $15,000 for two boat-to-plate recipe demonstration videos on dogfish and skate for social media.

“We got a grant that is specific to the fisheries that are very important to a group of Cape Cod fisherman and that is skate and dogfish,” said Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance spokeswoman Nancy Civetta.

Wellfleet SPAT got more than $20,000 for a pilot educational and tasting event in Boston to reacquire and increase market share for Wellfleet oysters and clams.

“Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance and Wellfleet SPAT do tremendous work to promote more sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management, scientific research, and community education,” said State Senator Julian Cyr. “I am encouraged that they have been selected to receive grants from the Seafood Marketing Program. These grants will go a long way in helping to promote and encourage the consumption of Massachusetts seafood products.”

“Skate, dogfish, and Wellfleet shellfish are all essential to the outer and lower cape economy. Scores of families count on the income generated by the sale of these delicious and sustainable caught and harvested products,” said State Representative Sarah Peake. “These grants to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance and to Wellfleet SPAT to raise awareness, market share, and by extension incomes to our fishing families are important and welcome.”

Read the full story at Cape Cod

Cape fishermen push dogfish, skate at expo

March 21, 2017 — Chatham fishermen Charlie Dodge, Jamie Eldredge, and Greg Connors walked the crowded aisles of the Seafood Expo North America Monday, one of the largest seafood shows in the world, drawing more than 21,000 attendees and exhibitors over three days.

The men were there to meet wholesale fish buyers and distributors looking to market their catch: skates — a kite-shaped fish related to sharks — and dogfish, a small coastal shark.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Regulators to Discuss Localized Depletion of Herring

November 16, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. – The New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Newport, Rhode Island tomorrow and an organization that supports local fishermen will push for a buffer zone to move midwater trawlers further off shore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking to move the large herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat coastal fisheries.

The management council will discuss ways to address “localized depletion” in the herring fishery, which is a key source of food for whales and larger fish.

“Our concern is that they are depleting the forage species that we need for tuna, stripers, cod, haddock, dogfish, the whales – all of that stuff is the food chain and they are sucking up the lower end of it,” said Bruce Peters, an Orleans fisherman from the vessel Marilyn S.

Current regulations allow for the midwater trawlers to fish beyond three miles from shore from Provincetown past the Islands.

A vessel tracking program showed about a half dozen trawlers about three or four miles off the Coast of Orleans and Eastham along the back side of the Cape earlier this week.

“They have huge boats. They can go to Georges Bank. They can go offshore. They can fish herring pretty much anywhere,” Peters said. “Our small-boat fleets are 30 to 40-foot boats. We don’t have the luxury of being to go way, way offshore like that.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Fishermen Seek Buffer From Herring Trawlers

August 29, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Cape Cod fishermen may be on their way to some relief from sharing inshore fishing grounds with mid-water herring trawling, a practice they say is threatening their livelihoods. But a persistent lack of data on the impact of the trawls may hamper efforts to regulate them.

On Aug. 17, the Herring Oversight Committee of the New England Fisheries Management Council voted to send the council two options for establishing a buffer zone prohibiting mid-water trawling off Cape Cod. The zone would extend either 12 miles or 35 miles from shore — significantly farther than the 6-mile zone proposed by the herring industry and closer than the 50-mile mark sought by environmental groups. The council will consider the options when it meets in September.

Fishermen have been complaining for years about the industrial-sized ships landing on the back side of Cape Cod, scooping up millions of pounds of herring and leaving, they say, a temporary ocean “bio-desert” in their wake.

In 2015, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance collected hundreds of comments and individual letters from fisherman about the phenomenon called “localized depletion” — defined as “when harvesting takes more fish than can be replaced locally or through fish migrating into the catch area within a given time period.”

Read the full story at ecoRI News

New rules require fish imports to meet U.S. standards

August 12, 2016 — Nations selling seafood to the U.S. must maintain higher standards for protecting whales, dolphins and other marine mammals, according to new regulations announced Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other countries will be required to meet standards equal to what is required of U.S. fishermen under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, NOAA Fisheries officials said, a change local fishermen groups applauded.

“It’s fantastic,” Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance CEO John Pappalardo said.

While the U.S. has some of the most conservation-minded fisheries laws in the world, American fishermen are selling in a global marketplace, Pappalardo said.

The cost of domestic regulations to U.S. fishermen cuts into their competitive edge, he said.

“It costs more money to produce that fish,” he said.

Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association members find it difficult to compete with fishermen from other countries because of gear modifications and fishing ground closures required under U.S. law, said Beth Casoni, executive director for the organization.

The association has about 1,800 members from Maine to New Jersey who fish lobster, scallop, conch, groundfish and more.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Cameras to be Used for Monitoring On Some New England Groundfish Vessels

May 27, 2016 — HARWICH, Mass.– A commercial fishing association says a group of fishermen from Massachusetts and Maine will use digital cameras instead of human monitors to collect data during trips at sea.

Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance says up to 20 fishermen who catch groundfish such as cod and flounder will use the cameras in a first-time program.

The fishermen are required to bring monitors on some fishing trips. Many fishermen say the cost of human monitors is prohibitive.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bristol Herald Courier

Cape Cod fishermen anticipated cod collapse

March 25, 2016 — Dogfish Neck? Cape Skate? Pollock Peninsula?

Can this still be Cape Cod without the cod? There still is cod, and they’re still being caught, but the stocks have collapsed and that was further underlined this week when a Georges Bank quota cut of 62 percent to 762 metric tons was proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Management Council on Monday. That follows an earlier massive cut during the last three-year management period – totaling a 95-percent reduction over the last four years.

Outer Cape fishermen are ahead of the curve – most have already abandoned cod.

“We experienced the lack of cod first. It’s been a long time so several years ago our fishermen transferred to other fish. A lot fish for monkfish, skate, dogfish so the cod rules don’t impact them” explained Claire Fitz-Gerald, Policy Analyst for the Chatham based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

As recently as 2003 Chatham fishermen brought in 1,053,290 pounds of cod to Chatham Fish Pier while the dogfish catch was 224,589 pounds in 2004 (there was no record for 2003). Now those numbers are flipped. In 2012 just 113,406 pounds of cod were landed at Chatham’s Pier, while 936,563 pounds of dogfish, 64,191 pounds of pollock, 287,753 pounds of skate were brought in.

Read the full story at The Cape Codder