May 29, 2020 — Pacific Fisheries officials, on 21 May, extended a suspension of 100 percent observer coverage requirements on all purse-seiners fishing in the waters of member-nations to 31 July.
The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), in a circular memo, endorsed the extension of the measure, stating that the “temporary suspension will apply to new trips after a vessel operator has met any requirement for repatriation of observers currently onboard a vessel.”
May 29, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries is extending the waiver granted to vessels with Greater Atlantic Region fishing permits to carry human observers or at-sea monitors through June 30, 2020. This action is authorized by 50 CFR 648.11, which provides the Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator authority to waive observer requirements, and is also consistent with the criteria described in the agency’s emergency rule on observer waivers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
We intend to begin redeploying observers and at-sea monitors on vessels fishing in northeast fisheries on July 1. During the month of June, we will continue to work with regional observer and at-sea monitoring service providers to finalize their observer redeployment plans, conduct outreach with industry, and finalize internal programs and policies that will support the safe and effective redeployment of observers and at-sea monitors in the region.
Observers and at-sea monitors are an essential component of commercial fishing operations and provide critical information that is necessary to keep fisheries open and to provide sustainable seafood to our nation during this time. We will continue to monitor all local public health notifications, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for updates. We are committed to protecting the public health and ensuring the safety of fishermen, observers, and others, while fulfilling our mission to maintain our nation’s seafood supply and conserving marine life.
As has been done throughout the rest of the country, it is the intent of NOAA Fisheries to begin redeploying observers as soon as it is safe and appropriate to do so. While we intend to begin redeploying observers on July 1, we recognize that this public health crisis continues to evolve and changing conditions may warrant re-evaluating these plans. Should our plans regarding re-deploying observers and at-sea monitors change, we will announce any changes as soon as practicable.
May 29, 2020 — Archie Soliai was supposed to be leading a meeting at the Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu’s North Shore this week, but instead he appeared on a computer screen with a pixelated view of Pago Pago in American Samoa in the background.
Soliai is the chairman of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, a quasi-governmental federal agency that oversees fish stocks in U.S. waters from Hawaii to the Pacific Island territories of American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.
He works for the StarKist Samoa tuna cannery, and over the course of two days hosted a meeting of the nation’s premier fisheries managers via a WebEx video conference to discuss how commercial fishermen could rebound from the coronavirus outbreak that so far has killed more than 101,000 people in the U.S. and 358,000 worldwide.
May 28, 2020 — The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries will not be able to operate its annual “lunch and learn” series at its facility in Stonington this summer as normal. With a move to virtual meetings, the center has the ability to reach more people.
It is a series folks came to look forward to in the summer. The Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries has been inviting around 40 people to its facility on the last Friday of the month in the summer, bag lunch in hand, to learn about different types of fisherman. This year it cannot happen in person, at least in the early summer, due to COVID-19 safety measures.
“Everything’s changed and we’re unable to open up quite yet to have in person experience, so everyone’s getting used to webinars,” said MCFC president Paul Anderson.
The Center’s summer talk series will go virtual in 2020, starting this Friday, May 29.
As “lunch and learn” starts on Zoom, it is a chance for more people to learn about the coastal fishing industry.
May 28, 2020 — In the early days of the coronavirus shut-downs, commercial fishermen were among those gut-punched by the impacts of an economy screeched to a halt.
Fishermen were told they could keep working, and the fish they sought were plentiful, but the value of fish at markets reeling from the forced closures of tens of thousands of restaurants and people fleeing into their homes was minimal.
But fishermen say that as the pandemic has settled into the habits of humans across the world, where one window of opportunity has closed, others have opened and helped the industry keep itself … well, afloat.
They have been buoyed by a steep drop in the amount of seafood being imported to the U.S. from other countries — the practice itself a plague that many fishermen said the country needs to rid it self of — and a populace that has still eagerly sought out seafood to eat while in quarantine.
With restaurants either closed or doing a fraction of their usual business, fishermen have relied more on selling to retail seafood markets, or at retail farmers markets, selling fish off the back of their boats or pickups and, in some cases, door-to-door deliveries, to peddle their catch.
May 28, 2020 — The seafood industry relies heavily on restaurants and retail stores for the majority of sales. With restaurant closures and coronavirus shelter-in-place orders, the seafood industry has been hit hard. The sudden drop in demand has forced fishers and fish farmers to get creative in their methods, turning to direct sales to stay afloat. A new tool through the University of Washington Sustainable Fisheries initiative has compiled information about where to find seafood in the form of a map that can be used to easily track down local, sustainable catch for delivery or direct sales.
The goal of the map is to support small seafood businesses by making their transition to direct sales just a little bit easier. Generally a supplier (fishing boat or farm) will deal with processors and distributors to sell their fish, and customers will purchase through a restaurant or grocery store.
Now that direct sales are the only option, the industry is scrambling to keep up and adapt to a new way of business and the map is meant to shoulder some of the burden. “They’re bringing in people from sales to pack boxes, the last thing they should have to worry about is finding new markets,” says Jack Cheney; a senior project manager at seafood sustainability organization FishWise, and contributor for Sustainable Fisheries UW, a grant-funded website dedicated to explaining the science of seafood, “this is the least we can do to try and promote them in some small way.”
May 28, 2020 — The coronavirus has delivered a large blow to Vietnam’s pangasius sector, which was already hurting before the pandemic.
Vietnam has not recorded any COVID-19 deaths through the crisis, and the entire country has only seen around 300 cases of the disease due to the extensive preventative measures it took beginning in January. But while most of social and economic activities in Vietnam have been brought back to a “new normal” since late April, disruptions in foreign markets, tangled supply chains, and suppressed demand have hurt its seafood export sector, upon which the country’s pangasius traders depend heavily.
May 28, 2020 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:
Leaders of the nation’s eight Regional Fishery Management Councils convened the first of their biannual meetings in 2020 today by teleconference. The Council Coordination Committee (CCC) meeting provides the Councils and heads of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to discuss issues relevant to all of the Councils. Heading today’s agenda was COVID-19 impacts on U.S. fisheries and federal efforts to address them, including President Trump’s Executive Orders on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth and on Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery and the CARES Act $300M stimulus package for fisheries and aquaculture.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has made our responsibility more poignant and highlights the often overlooked fact that managing our nation’s fisheries is about ensuring that Americans have food,” stated Taotasi Archie Soliai, chair of the Western Pacific Council, which hosted the meeting. “Yes, management is about making certain fish stocks and protected species remain healthy. Yes, management is about guaranteeing that our fishermen can earn a decent living, pursue the sport of recreational fishing and continue their cultural traditions. But the bottom line is the goal of management of our fisheries is to ensure that our nation can provide nutritious seafood to its people from its waters, which comprise the second largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the world.”
Assistant Administrator for NOAA Fisheries Chris Oliver said the agency “is looking to support a ‘new normal’ where seafood plays an even bigger role in our economy and in our households. … The Presidential Executive Order greatly adds the horsepower we needed, by codifying our role to support you. It calls for regulatory reform to maximize commercial and recreational fishing opportunities and enforcement of common-sense restrictions on seafood imports that do not meet American standards. And it places NOAA firmly in charge of coordinating the federal process for aquaculture permitting. The Executive Order and the CARES Act funding create an exciting new opportunity to address long-term challenges to expanding the domestic seafood sector.”
Offshore wind issues, bycatch and changing stock assessment status were among other items covered today. The meeting continues tomorrow and is open to the public. The agenda and conference call-in instructions are posted at http://www.fisherycouncils.org/ccc-meetings/may-2020.
May 27, 2020 — A rapid survey response by nearly 800 Alaska fishermen will provide a guideline for giving them a hand up as the coronavirus swamps their operations.
The online survey from April 14 to May 3 by Juneau-based nonprofit SalmonState asked fishermen about their primary concerns both before the COVID-19 outbreak and in the midst of the pandemic in April. It also asked what elected officials at local, state and federal levels can do to help them directly.
Over half of the 817 responses came in over four days, said Tyson Fick, SalmonState communications adviser.
“Clearly, people were interested to have their stories heard and to weigh in. In several ways we feel like we had a very broad swath of regions and gear types and fishermen,” he said.
May 27, 2020 — As COVID-19 affects global food systems, tremendous impacts are being felt by coastal communities and small-scale fishers, many of whom are self-employed and rely on the catch to feed their own households or local communities.
In a review published in Coastal Management, researchers explore the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on small-scale fisheries in Canada and worldwide, and provide recommendations on how to support them.
We spoke with lead author Nathan Bennett, research associate with the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC, and Chair of the People and the Ocean Specialist Group for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), about the findings.