Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Lawmakers rewrite fisheries tax bill

April 8, 2016 — JUNEAU, Alaska — A House fisheries committee advanced a rewrite of Gov. Bill Walker’s fisheries tax bill on Tuesday, diverting half of the potential revenue into a seafood marketing fund.

The bill, one of six proposed taxes on industries from Walker, could raise an additional $18 million in revenue by adding a 1-percent tax increase to portions of the commercial fishing industry.

The new language requires that one-half of the tax increase be deposited into a newly created Alaska Seafood Marketing Fund. The Legislature also is given the option to appropriate the marketing fund to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Seafood marketing has been an ongoing fight in the Legislature. Both the House and the Senate cut the marketing institute’s budget in their respective versions of the state operating budget. Lawmakers said they wanted to see the institute become self-sustaining, with the Senate declaring that it wanted to see a plan by 2017 on how the institute would wean itself off of the general fund by 2019. The operating budget has yet to be finalized.

After the committee voted to move the bill to House Finance, chair Rep. Louise Stutes, R-Kodiak, asked for an update from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and the Alaska Department of Revenue on taxing issues raised during public testimony on the bill.

See the full story at Homer News

Trip Limit Decreased to 500 Pounds per Trip for Commercial Harvest of Gag in the South Atlantic

October 13, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Trip Limit Decreased to 500 Pounds per Trip for Commercial Harvest of Gag in the South Atlantic

The daily trip limit for the commercial harvest of gag in the South Atlantic is reduced from 1,000 pounds gutted weight to 500 pounds gutted weight, effective 12:01 a.m. (local time) October 18, 2015. NOAA Fisheries has determined 75 percent of the quota of 295,459 pounds gutted weight has been landed.

Reduction of the commercial gag trip limit in the South Atlantic complies with regulations implemented under the Fishery Management Plan for the Snapper-Grouper Fishery of the South Atlantic Region. The 500-pound gutted weight trip limit applies to vessels with a South Atlantic Unlimited Snapper-Grouper Permit fishing for gag in or from the federal waters in the South Atlantic region. The 500-pound gutted weight trip limit will remain in effect until the quota is reached and gag closes or until the end of the current 2015 fishing season, whichever occurs first.

Feds: Eels prized by fishermen aren’t a threatened species

October 7, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — American eels will not be listed under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday, a victory for fishermen who catch the increasingly valuable species.

The wildlife service rejected a petition from the California-based Center for Environmental Science, Accuracy & Reliability to list the eels — prized in Asian cuisine — as threatened.

The petitioners argued that the eels have lost more than 80 percent of their habitat and that the stock is jeopardized by commercial fishing. But the wildlife service issued a report Wednesday saying that “there have been large declines in abundance from historical times,” but the species “currently appears to be stable.”

Fishermen and fishing advocacy groups campaigned against additional protections for eels. Listing them under the Endangered Species Act would have severely limited the ability to harvest them as a commercial species, and they can be of high economic value because of their use in sushi.

Maine baby eels were worth more than $2,100 per pound in 2015, up from less than $100 per pound in 2009. The baby eels, called elvers, are sold to Asian aquaculture companies that raise them to maturity and use them as food.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at SFGate

 

Fish landing app keeps track of boats, catch

September 16, 2015 — With a mobile phone, fishery stakeholders can now find out where commercial fishing boats are located as well as the type of species these have caught.

This is possible with a Fish Landing App recently launched in the Philippines by marine scientist, Dr. Stephen Box, who presented it through a web conference from his office at the Smithsonian Marine Station at Port Pierce in Florida. He serves as the institute’s program coordinator of the Integrated Marine Planning and Conservation Tools.

The mobile app—that also includes a fisherfolk registry and vessel monitoring system—was designed for Android devices and can be used by industry stakeholders and organizations. This will enable them to obtain data such as fish species, frequented fishing grounds, and the profile of fishers, said Box, who co-developed the app.

Read the full story at Manila Bulletin

 

Making the Seas Safer for Fishermen

July 30, 2015 — SITKA, Alaska — Ed Mertz likes to fish, but these days he won’t stray too far from shore. “I’m still kind of chicken,” he says as he casts weighted troll lines in an inlet close to his home in Sitka, in southeastern Alaska. “I look at that forecast, and if it’s not good, it’s like, I don’t want to go.” In 1983, Mertz, now 62, was working on a six-man fishing vessel when it ran aground, flooded, and sank in Alaskan waters. He and two fellow fishermen scrambled onto some rocks, where they spent a bitterly cold night huddled together in survival suits. The bodies of the three others were found the following day by a Coast Guard rescue helicopter.

Commercial fishing has for decades been among the most dangerous professions in America. The most recently available figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from 2013, show fishermen were about 36 times more likely to die on the job than the average worker. Yet government efforts to address the safety problems have been slow. “The administration and Congress haven’t done their job,” says J.J. Bartlett, president of the Fishing Partnership, an advocacy group representing commercial fishermen. “It’s meant that fishermen are dying unnecessarily.”

After Congress passed the 2010 Coast Guard Authorization Act, which updated fishing industry safety standards for the first time since 1988, activists like Bartlett were grateful their concerns were being taken seriously: Life rafts would be improved, safety training would become mandatory for fishing captains, and new boats would be built to standards set and verified by independent third parties called “class societies.”

Read the full story at Bloomberg Businessweek