Saving Seafood

Maritime Gloucester Talk: A Marine National Monument off Cape Ann, Massachusetts?

February 22, 2016 — The following was released by Maritime Gloucester:

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Registration : MGTalks are free of charge. Please consider making a donation at the door.

Audience: General Audience; students encouraged.

A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times

A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action.

NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE GLOUCESTER HIGH SCHOOL LECTURE HALL.

Register for Maritime Gloucester’s event

CHRISTIAN PUTNAM: Transparency lacking in harmful fishing restrictions

December 7, 2015 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Obama Administration are working closely with several environmental groups to “protect” vast areas of ocean off New England’s coast from the dreaded commercial and recreational fishermen.

After NOAA’s utter failure to work with the stakeholders that make up the fishing community through the National Marine Fisheries Service, rebranded NOAA Fisheries after the name became synonymous with disastrous over-regulation, it appears an even less transparent process is now underway to regulate our natural resources.

Plans have been hatched by several environmental groups that include the Conservation Law Foundation, Pew Charitable Trust, and the National Resources Defense Council to create at least one Marine National Monument in New England Waters. Potential areas include Georges Bank, east of Cape Cod, and Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles east of Gloucester.

It has been reported that direct conversations have occurred between these organizations, the administration and NOAA. The plan is to use the Antiquities Act of 1906 to allow for unilateral action by President Barack Obama to designate certain areas as national monuments from public lands to preserve their significant cultural, scientific or natural features.

Read the full opinion piece at the Scituate Mariner

JES HATHAWAY: Conspiracy Queries

October 5, 2015 — Once upon a time, fishermen and environmentalists butted heads, pretty much all the time. Then for the most part, both sides slowly realized they had some things in common. We all want clean water (and plenty of it), preserved fish habitats, better fishing gear, more efficient engines, and the list goes on.

We are now in an era in which the environmental movement and the fishing industry often work well together to achieve common goals. But there are some groups who have little interest in collaboration, or indeed even hearing what the other side has to say.

Last week, the fishing industry watchdog Saving Seafood made public what they say are the results of a Freedom of Information Act request to Maine’s governor’s office that showed the New England-based Conservation Law Foundation was working behind the scenes (including attempts to reach out to some Maine state officials) in the hopes of securing an East Coast marine monument designation through the Antiquities Act, which does not require democratic review. The emails indicated that the group hoped President Obama could announce the monument plan at the Our Ocean Conference in Valparaiso, Chile, (taking place this week) and that they hoped to be well under way in the process toward that designation before any potential opposition was aware of it enough “to fight it, to organize against it,” said CLF’s Interim President Peter Shelley, according to Environmental and Energy Publishing.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

Greens’ hopes for quick win on New England monument fade

September 30, 2015 — One month ago, environmental groups were strategizing over their latest bid: Get the Obama administration to create its first marine monument off New England.

They had talks with fishing groups, lawmakers and think tanks. At the end of August, they exchanged emails over their progress — and in one, the president of the Conservation Law Foundation warned everyone to keep quiet about the possibility of a breakthrough at the upcoming Our Ocean Conference in Chile.

“I hope no one is talking about Chile to the outside world,” CLF Interim President Peter Shelley wrote. “It’s one of the few advantages we may have to know that it could happen sooner rather than later.”

The email showed up in response to a public records request that Saving Seafood filed with the office of Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s. The advocacy group — which represents fishermen opposed to the monument — sent the emails to Greenwire yesterday, asserting that they confirm “rumors” of an impending monument announcement from the White House.

Such an announcement would certainly make waves. The proposed monument is small and sees little activity today, but it is near prime fishing grounds. House Republicans have also added the proposal to their arsenal of criticism over the White House’s use of the Antiquities Act (E&E Daily, Sept. 30).

Read the full story from the E&E Reporter

Proposal to create ‘marine national monument’ off New England coast up for discussion in Providence

September 13, 2015 — Federal officials on Tuesday will present a proposal to permanently protect three deep-sea canyons and nearby underwater mountains off New England in a move that would create the first “marine national monument” on the eastern seaboard.

Although environmental groups and marine scientists have been pushing for the special designation for the area that starts about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod at the edge of the Outer Continental Shelf, they say the current proposal under consideration by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration doesn’t go far enough.

At the upcoming Town Hall meeting in Providence, the groups’ focus won’t be so much on Oceanographer, Gilbert and Lydonia canyons and the seamounts that lie south of them but on other areas in the region that haven’t been included for protection in the plan.

At the top of the list for the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Pew Charitable Trusts and others is Cashes Ledge, a swath of waters in the Gulf of Maine that they describe as a one-of-a-kind fish nursery and feeding ground for important species that range from cod to tuna to endangered North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full story from the Providence Journal

Conservation groups eye protection for Cashes Ledge

August 31, 2015 — National groups this week plan to call for sprawling areas in off Cape Ann, Cape Cod and Rhode Island to be declared the first “marine national monument” on the Eastern Seaboard.

A January 2009 presidential proclamation established three Pacific Marine National Monuments — the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, which is on the Samoan archipelago 2,500 miles south of Hawaii and is the southernmost point belonging to the United States.

Now the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and partners such as the National Geographic Society, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking protections for the Cashes Ledge Closed Area, about 80 miles due east of Gloucester in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts off Cape Cod — areas CLF describes as “deep sea treasures.”

A CLF official told the News Service on Monday that the Cashes Ledge area covers 530 square nautical miles in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts encompasses 4,117 square nautical miles, for a total of 4,647 square nautical miles of protected areas.

The designation, according to CLF press secretary Josh Block, “ensures that this area remains permanently protected from harmful commercial extraction, such as oil and gas drilling, commercial fishing and other resource exploration activities.”

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times