Carlos Rafael Archives - Saving Seafood

New Bedford Standard-Times: groundfishermen need to get back to work

May 14, 2018 — It was a bittersweet start to the fishing season on May 1.

Bittersweet because much of New Bedford’s already battered groundfish fleet could not go to sea.

Nearly 60 permits in Sectors VII and IX did not receive quota allocations from NOAA. The federal government withheld their quota because of overages accumulated by fleet owner Carlos Rafael when he admitted last year that he had falsified the numbers of fish he had taken, substituting valuable species subject to quotas for ones that were not so.

Rafael is in prison now but the results of his misdeeds continue to be paid by the community that made him rich. About 80 fishermen have been out of work since November when NOAA first instituted its groundfish ban for the sector in which Rafael perpetuated his fraud. Shoreside businesses, including the ones that manufacture nets and ice and repair boats, have also been greatly affected by the cut to New Bedford’s groundfish effort.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Massachusetts: Federal delegation ‘solidly behind’ New Bedford in fishing fight

May 14, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Prior to a town hall-style meeting in New Bedford on Saturday, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren quietly gathered with fellow senator Ed Markey and Congressman William Keating in the Wharfinger Building on Pier 3. Inside, the three legislators sat for more than an hour, listening to representatives of the fishing community relay their present and future concerns facing the industry.

About 80 fishermen out of New Bedford have been unable to fish or lease their quotas since NOAA shut down Sector IX in November. The shutdown remains in effect until the feds can estimate how much quota convicted “Codfather” Carlos Rafael depleted in his overfishing scheme.

Massachusetts’ two senators have been all but crucified for what many see as inaction on the Sector IX closure. Following Saturday’s meeting, Senator Warren told WBSM News what appears to some as inaction is, in fact, a more tactful approach in discussions with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“There are a lot of steps to go through to get Sector IX back up,” said Warren. “And NOAA seems committed to move forward on those. Senator Markey and I are pushing. We don’t want to turn this into politics. We want to facilitate this. We want to make it move forward.”

“But we have made it very clear that both of us and Congressman Keating are deeply committed to getting a fast process so that the innocent people that have been harmed by what’s happened here can get back out on the water and fish,” she said.

Read the full story at WBSM

Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren packs a town hall meeting, sits with Markey, Keating over fishing

May 14, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., came to the city Saturday to hear the concerns of fishermen who wanted a faster resolution to the Carlos Rafael problems that have closed two fishing sectors, maybe throwing fishermen permanently out of their jobs.

These cases of licensing and ownership, and repayment of overfishing, “need to be resolved as quickly as possible,” Warren said later.

Warren also heard from Mayor Jon Mitchell and fishing representatives who contend that the wind energy companies that are the finalists for an exclusive contract are not listening to the concerns of the fishing industry, mainly scallopers.

Warren along with U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., listened about these matters in a meeting at the Wharfinger Building on City Pier 3, organized by Bob Vanasse of the industry lobby Saving Seafood.

They parted ways when Warren and her campaign staff went to the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School to conduct a town hall style meeting.

The event had an atmosphere much like a campaign rally, with Warren on stage answering questions from attendees who signed up in a lottery.

She touched on a dozen topics, taking her talk where the questions went, on everything from her late mother, poverty, and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who rejects a bill that would insulate special prosecutor Robert Mueller from being removed from office by President Donald Trump.

She also condemned the recent trillion-dollar tax cut while Medicaid recipients are threatened by cuts and 90 percent of Americans claim zero percent in the rise of the economy in the past several decades.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Massachusetts: Rafael is behind bars, and New Bedford’s economy is paying the price

May 7, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In the harbor off Leonard’s Wharf, the large steel boats with their signature green hulls are rusting in the salt air, their dormant nets still coiled as if ready to scoop up schools of cod or haddock.

In the parking lot behind Reidar’s Manufacturing, more than a dozen trawls molder in the dirt, their floats and cables weathered and waiting.

As the new fishing season begins, many of the city’s fishermen are unemployed, their suppliers stuck with excess inventory, and local officials are questioning whether the millions of dollars in lost revenue will cost the port its ranking as the nation’s most valuable, as it has been for the past 17 years.

Carlos Rafael, the disgraced fishing mogul known as “The Codfather,” is now in prison. But the consequences of his crimes are still being felt throughout New Bedford.

“It’s devastating what’s happened to us, and other businesses here,” said Tor Bendiksen, the manager of Reidar’s, a marine supply company.

Rafael, whose commercial fishing company was among the nation’s largest, pleaded guilty last year to flouting federal quotas and smuggling cash out of the country.

Six months ago, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded with an unprecedented punishment, temporarily banning 60 fishing permit-holders in the area from allowing their boats to operate and halting all operations by the fishing sector that failed to properly account for their catch.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Frozen fish: NMFS approves Sector IX management plan

April 25, 2018 — Fishing boats in New England’s Sector IX groundfish fleet that were in danger of being barred from leasing groundfish quota moved into Sector VII in late March in order to recoup losses from a post-Carlos Rafael trip shutdown of the New Bedford groundfish industry. But the process of approving new operating plans will keep that quota frozen until midsummer at the latest.

NMFS reported that Sector IX was shut down completely in order to determine how much of the sector’s quota was illegaly used to cover Rafael’s quota evasion scheme.

Under a new plan operating plan put forward by the sector, which was narrowly recommended for approval by the New England Fishery Management Council with a 7-5-5 vote, NMFS will treat illegal catch in each fishing year as if it was known immediately after the end of the season, eliminating any carryover of unused quota into the next fishing season if there was any illegal fishing.

The council recommended that that NMFS authorize the “lease only” operations plan “with the condition that all overages attributable to the known misreporting are paid in full.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Massachusetts: New Bedford fishermen docked for season’s start

April 23, 2018 — The New Bedford groundfishing fleet will remain at dock — and without the ability to lease quota to other fishing entities — when the 2018 fishing season dawns on May 1. What happens after that is anybody’s guess.

NOAA Fisheries staffers informed the New England Fishery Management Council earlier this week that operations plans for New Bedford-based Northeast Fishing Sectors VII and IX will not be completed in time for the opening of the 2018 fishing season.

But the discussion following the briefing, as well as the council’s widely split vote on a draft recommendation to NOAA Fisheries, reflected stark divisions within the council and the Northeast groundfish fishery at large over how NOAA should resolve the issues borne from the long-standing catch misreporting and conviction last year of New Bedford fishing mogul Carlos Rafael.

It also recommended that, following full repayment of the overages associated with Rafael’s cheating, NOAA Fisheries work with Sector VII “to ensure that the 2018 sector operation plan and associated conditions” are fully implemented.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

NE Fishery Management Council Divided Over New Plan For Rafael’s Fishing Sector

April 20, 2018 — In a divided vote, the New England Fishery Management Council is backing a new operations plan for a sector of New Bedford boats that have been prohibited from fishing. However, the council said the plan should only be approved if certain conditions are met.

The sector of boats, called Sector IX, has been banned from catching groundfish, such as cod and haddock, for the past five months. Federal regulators from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made the decision to prohibit all sector activity after fishing mogul Carlos Rafael, who has also been referred to as “The Codfather,” pleaded guilty to misreporting the numbers of fish his boats were catching.

Now, Sector IX wants to be operational again as a “lease-only” sector, which means the boats would remain docked but could still make money by leasing their fishing allocation to other fishermen.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

Massachusetts: NOAA Plans Keep Sector IX Boats Moored

April 19, 2018 — MYSTIC, Conn. — Officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration say fishing vessels that transferred to Sector VII from Sector IX in New Bedford may have to wait until mid-summer to begin leasing quotas.

NOAA closed down fishing out of Sector IX in order to assess just how much quota was illegally used up by fishing magnate and now convicted “Codfather,” Carlos Rafael.

At a meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday, NOAA proposed a plan for Sector IX that would treat illegal catch in each fishing year as if it was known immediately after the end of the season, eliminating any carryover of unused quota into the next fishing season if there was any illegal fishing.

Read the full story at WBSM

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell to NEFMC: Sector IX Closure Is Hurting New Bedford’s Economy

April 18, 2018 — The following statement was delivered to the New England Fishery Management Council today on behalf of New Bedford, Massachusetts Mayor Jon Mitchell. Mayor Mitchell also serves as Chairman of the New Bedford Port Authority:

Thank you Chairman Quinn and Members of the Council for this opportunity to communicate about a matter of ongoing concern to the Port of New Bedford, namely the impact that the closure of Sector 9 of the Northeast Fishery is having on groundfishing operations in the Port.

The NOAA decision has had–and continues to have–troubling economic consequence for the Port of New Bedford and our local economy. It has triggered significant business losses among local companies that provide support services to the commercial fishing fleet, and has meant the loss of livelihood for dozens of local fishing families.

It is important for all parties to keep in mind the numerous New Bedford businesses and families who have played no direct role in the operation of Sector 9, but who now find themselves in severe financial distress as a result of the Sector’s closure.

While the significant human cost of the closure cannot be adequately measured, Professor Dan Georgiana of the School of Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts (SMAST) has used a standard NOAA economic impact model to estimate the economic damage being done to the Port of New Bedford. His analysis found that the Port suffered roughly $12 million in economic losses in just the first twenty-five days after the closure went into effort on November 20th of last year.

This week marks the fifth full month of the Sector 9 closure, and the losses continue to mount. If one extrapolates from Professor Georgiana’s original analysis, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Port of New Bedford may now have cumulatively suffered tens of millions of dollars in losses in the last five months.

This figure includes the impacts on harvesting, processing, wholesale and retail market activity, but does not include the cost to the public of unemployment compensation or the impact on businesses that supply vessels or process groundfish.

None of this is to suggest that the one person at the center of the controversy should not be punished severely. Carlos Rafael should be held fully accountable for his actions. I emphasize rather that the Fisheries Service should undertake its rulemaking, as it is statutorily required, with the interests of the Port and its businesses in mind. At a minimum, this means that it should complete the rulemaking “expeditiously”–as NOAA’s notice of withdrawal said it would–so that the effected fishermen and businesses can get back to work without further delay.

The Service also noted it had to calculate the amount of “overage” to certain groundfish stocks caused by Rafael’s fraud before it completed its rulemaking. Yet the Service has had, for some time now, all the reasonably available information to complete this loss calculation. Again, I urge the Service to complete these calculations and its rule-making with all deliberate speed.

The clock is ticking against New Bedford fishermen and shore-side businesses. A resolution of this matter therefore cannot come soon enough for the Port of New Bedford. Thank you for your consideration.

New England Council to Take up Issue of New Bedford Sectors IX and VII on Wednesday

April 17, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The New England Fisheries Management Council will take up the issue of the operations plans submitted by sector IX and sector VII, which represent the majority of groundfish vessels in New Bedford.

Many of these vessels, which were formerly members of Sector IX, have been prohibited from fishing until Sector IX came up with an acceptable mechanism to account for the illegal fishing and overages done by vessels belonging to Carlos Rafael that were in the sector.

The sector was strongly criticized by NMFS for failure to have an adequate plan to account for overharvests, to do proper record keeping, and to then take necessary steps to payback fish that was illegally harvested.

Instead of coming to an agreement, on the last day for filing sector membership, the vessels in Sector IX decamped en masse to Sector VII, which otherwise would have been shut down.

Sector VII vessels that have come from Sector IX still won’t be able to fish until a plan to pay back illegal harvests has been approved, but the vessels hope that by moving to an operating sector they may be able to lease their quotas.

Sector VII has written the council to say that for many years they have shared a sector manager with sector VIII, another sector in New Bedford. They said that with reduced catches, it was no longer viable for them to operate as a stand alone sector.

Sector manager Linda McCann wrote that they have one vessel groundfishing, and six vessels fishing for monkfish, and this is too small an amount of activity to sustain a separate sector.

She says the plan to merge with sector 8 was developed months ago, and communicated to NMFS.

She says “We didn’t realize we needed to justify to the fishing world why these internal decisions were made, or how we handle our internal business affairs. However, we feel compelled to do so in sight of recent politics, attacks and mischaracterizations of facts. Let us be clear, the decisions made to merge sector 7 membership into sector 8 has nothing to do with the sector 9 situation of the Carlos Rafael situation. “

Another letter, from the Northeast Seafood Coalition urges the council to set clear goals.

“As many Council members are painfully aware, the 28 offenses to which Mr. Rafael pled guilty and is now incarcerated for have created enormous turmoil throughout the fishery and the region. Part of the turmoil concerns the broader fishery management implications of starting a new fishing year with such a significant portion of the fishery’s sub-ACL not being made available to the fishery.

NSC recommends that the Council provide the Agency with their primary objectives and request the Agency use their administrative authority to consult with the respective sector boards to achieve the stated objectives.

NSC recommends the following objectives:

ACE overages be identified and paid back to the system. The timing and result of the resolution shall be consistent with a result that would have been possible had the 2018 NEF Sector 9 roster been the same as 2017.
Conditional upon resolution of the NEF Sector IX overages, ensure the groundfish sector system has access to the ACE associated with permits that are enrolled in NEF Sector VII.
Work with the NEF Sector VII to ensure the conditions they’ve listed in their March 26, 2018 letter are met and upheld.”

This story was originally published by Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.