Saving Seafood

Commercial disasters declared for nine West Coast fisheries

March 21, 2017 — The Commerce Secretariat determined that nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington experienced commercial failures, which will enable fishing communities to seek disaster relief assistance from Congress, NOAA Fisheries Division reported.

The decision was taken by US Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker due to the fact that in recent years, each of these fisheries experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass due to unusual ocean and climate conditions.

The fisheries deemed to have experienced commercial failures are the following:

  • Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fisheries (Alaska/2016)
  • California Dungeness and rock crab fishery (California/2015-2016);
  • Yurok Tribe Klamath River Chinook salmon fishery (California/2016);
  • Fraser River Makah Tribe and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe sockeye salmon fisheries (Washington/2014);
  • Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay non-treaty coho salmon fishery (Washington/2015);
  • Nisqually Indian Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and Squaxin Island Tribe South Puget Sound salmon fisheries (Washington/2015);
  • Quinault Indian Nation Grays Harbor and Queets River coho salmon fishery (Washington/2015);
  • Quileute Tribe Dungeness crab fishery (Washington/2015-2016);
  • Ocean salmon troll fishery (Washington/2016).

“The Commerce Department and NOAA stand with America’s fishing communities. We are proud of the contributions they make to the nation’s economy, and we recognize the sacrifices they are forced to take in times of environmental hardship,” said Samuel D. Rauch III, deputy assistant administrator for regulatory programs, NOAA Fisheries.

Rauch stressed their commitment to helping these communities recover and achieve success in the future.

Read the full story at Fish Information & Services

Could fisheries policy change under Trump and Commerce Secretary Ross?

March 15, 2017 — Since January, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the nation’s fishery regulators, has offered hints that changes to U.S. fishery policy might be in store.

A formal fisheries policy has yet to emerge, and these are, of course, still early days for the Trump Administration. But some observers read in Ross’s recent statements a potential desire to increase fishing.

During the campaign, Trump railed repeatedly against the United States’ trade deficit. And Ross, during his Senate confirmation in January, expressed a wish to reverse the nation’s seafood trade deficit – a tall task given that the U.S. imports 90 percent of the seafood eaten here and has a USD 11 billion (EUR 10.3 billion) seafood trade deficit.

“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our freshwater, I would like to try to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter,” he said at his confirmation hearing in January, according to Politico.

Then, during his first address to the department’s 47,000 employees, on 1 March, he listed a key challenge for the department of “obtaining maximum sustainable yield.” It was his only reference to the nation’s fisheries during the short speech.

“The Secretary’s remarks reflect the importance our nation’s marine and coastal fisheries resources, and his commitment to ensuring these resources are sustainable for generations to come,” John Ewald, a spokesman for NOAA Fisheries, told SeafoodSource in an email.

How Ross views fisheries matters, since his department oversees both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Ross will make appointments to the nation’s regional fishery management councils, and the policies he advances will have profound effects on recreational and commercial fishermen.

Those policies could mark a sharp departure from the conservation-driven policies of the last eight years. The Recreational Fishing Alliance, an early supporter of Trump’s campaign for president, sees the potential for a new day under Trump, and hopes Ross will reverse the Obama administration’s policies.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sean Horgan: New Commerce secretary says US should be first in seafood

March 6, 2017 — The U.S. Senate took time out from its annual handball tournament last week and confirmed Wilbur Ross as the new commerce secretary, adding yet another billionaire to the Trump cabinet that has more of them than Danny Ainge has draft picks.

Ross is estimated to be worth about $2.9 billion, which means Commerce’s NOAA Fisheries might want to bypass Congress and put the arm on the new boss the next time its runs out of cash for at-sea monitoring.

Still, fishing stakeholders had to take some measure of comfort from his intention to make America first in the world in seafood by the reversing the trend of massive annual seafood imports.

“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our fresh water, I would like to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net importer,” Ross told the senators during his confirmation hearing in January.

Bully for him. But how will he do it? Will his crusade translate into fewer regulations? Higher fishing quotas? Declaring war on seafood competitors?

The Politico website had its own suggestion:

“One action Ross could take to curb the amount of seafood the U.S. imports each year is to follow through on the Seafood Monitoring Program which the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established during the waning days of the Obama administration,” it wrote in an analysis of the Ross confirmation. “That regulation, supported by environmental groups like Oceana, is aimed at reducing billions of dollars in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing each year by creating a traceability program to track imported seafood from point of harvest to point of entry in the U.S.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Times

White House proposes steep budget cut to leading climate science agency

March 6, 2017 — The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.

The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.

NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.

The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal.”

The OMB outline for the Commerce Department for fiscal 2018 proposed sharp reductions in specific areas within NOAA such as spending on education, grants and research. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would lose $126 million, or 26 percent, of the funds it has under the current budget. Its satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, of its current funding under the proposal.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

New Jersey asks new Commerce boss to stop fluke cut

March 3, 2017 — Wilbur Ross meet New Jersey’s summer flounder fishermen.

Ross is the newly appointed U.S. Secretary of Commerce. As the department’s boss, he oversees management of fisheries through its Fisheries Office and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

He’s the person the Christie Administration, and state delegates are now trying to hook, and win over to their side on the summer flounder issue.

They wasted no time to petition Ross this week and ask him to put a hold on the new summer flounder regulations approved by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission on Feb. 2.

The regulations call for a 30-percent reduction in the coastwide harvest of summer flounder on the Atlantic Coast. The regs were voted on after federal regulators reported the coastwide summer flounder population from Maine to North Carolina declined and fishermen overfished their quota last year.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

NOAA outlines enforcement efforts

December 31, 2015 — Nearly six years after being savaged by a Commerce Department investigation that portrayed it as a department basically run amuck, the NOAA Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement has issued its first public annual report.

The report, released Dec. 17, is “part of our effort for more transparency,” Casey Brennan, chief of staff at the Office of Law Enforcement (OLE), said Wednesday.

The report, which does not reference the documented abuses by NOAA law enforcement agents at the heart of the 2010 investigation by the Commerce Department’s inspector general, portrays an agency grappling with the challenge of fulfilling its expanding mandate despite shrinking resources, budgetary constraints and declining staff at its headquarters, as well as its five divisional offices and 53 field offices.

“As we continue to navigate the challenges of resource management and budgetary constraints while adapting to new and expanded missions, we have not lost sight of our core priorities,” OLE Director James Landon wrote in his director’s message introducing the report.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell: City would be great home for fisheries center

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — December 29, 2015 — If NOAA Fisheries should decide to move the Northeast Fisheries Science Center out of Woods Hole, Mayor Jon Mitchell said New Bedford would be just right for a new home.

Mitchell calls the city “the best place in the Northeast by far.”

For about a year, the Commerce Department, which contains NOAA, has been assessing the adequacy and the condition of the various buildings that constitute the laboratory. NOAA spokeswoman Teri Frady said repairs, renovations or replacement are all possible options and any definitive direction is still a long way off.

“This kind of facilities study is done of any project like this,” Frady said. “There’s no decision at this point. We’re mainly focusing on the study so that the Department of Commerce and NOAA have everything they need.”

For his part, Mitchell said told The Standard-Times he “raised this issue with NOAA at least a year ago, along with the federal delegation.”

Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times