Saving Seafood

Why everything you’ve heard about ‘ropeless’ crab fishing gear is false

August 26, 2020 — Is the so-called “ropeless” fishing gear the silver bullet for solving the perceived problem of marine mammal interactions in California’s crab fisheries?

Several profit-driven environmental groups, including Oceana, would like the public and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to believe these baseless claims.

That’s because these groups are ramping up efforts to force California’s historic and economically most important fishery — which helps create $400 million annually for working families — to adopt expensive, impractical and unproven new fishing gear which would force most crab fishermen out of business.

But the problem is that neither the science, nor any other reliable data, support their false claims. “Ropeless” gear is not a silver bullet — in fact, it’s actually dangerous — and ironically, it still has ropes. Nor are marine mammal populations currently at any significant risk.

Francine Kershaw, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, has misleadingly asserted that “off the West Coast, the number of deaths of humpback whales caused by entanglements are now high enough for the population to slip into decline.”

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

USTR extends tariff exclusions for some seafood products, others will face tariffs again

August 10, 2020 — The United States Trade Representative has released a list of products shipped from China that will receive an extension of tariff exclusions, with several seafood items on the list.

The exclusion extensions apply to several seafood products shipped from China, and allows those products to continue avoiding a 25 percent tariff. The product exclusions will continue to retroactively apply as of 24 September, 2018, and were set to expire on 7 August before the extension which came on the last day before those products would be back under the tariff program.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Sen. Cantwell Criticizes “Slow and Inefficient” Implementation of Fishery Disaster Relief Funding, Calls for Streamlining Process

July 30, 2020 — The following was released by The Office of Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA):

Today at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), the top Democrat on the committee, highlighted the devastating impacts COVID-19 has had on the seafood sector and called for a streamlining of the fishery disaster process, criticizing the “slow and inefficient and cumbersome implementation” of fishery disaster relief by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Marine Fisheries Service.

The fisheries sector makes up 60 percent of Washington state’s 30 billion dollar maritime economy, which supports over 146,000 jobs. In her opening statement, Cantwell discussed how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the seafood industry, resulting in a decrease of $21 million in revenue for West coast fisheries—a 40 percent decline compared to the previous five-year average. In January alone, Washington Dungeness crab fishery saw a 37 percent decline in revenue from the previous year. Overall, U.S. seafood sales have dropped an estimated 95 percent this year.

“Despite this staggering economic data, many fishermen have not been able to access the COVID relief funding from the Paycheck Protection Program, the Main Street Lending Program, or even qualify for unemployment based on the nature of their businesses and tax structures,” Senator Cantwell said. “USDA food purchase programs have not been able to provide the support for most seafood products, and some USDA programs, including the Farmers to Families Box Program, specifically block wild caught seafood from eligibility to the program, another blow to the industry.”

“That is why I fought so hard to secure $300 million dollars for the seafood sector in the form of grants and other assistance in the CARES Act to address the loophole. Unfortunately, the industry has yet to see a single dollar of relief due to a slow and inefficient and cumbersome implementation through NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.”

At the hearing, Cantwell also highlighted legislation she introduced with Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) that would streamline the fishery disaster process. “While this bill was written before COVID, it is clear even now…that this is an important aspect of what we need to be doing,” Senator Cantwell said.

Senator Cantwell has been a long-time leading advocate for fishing communities and sustainable fisheries management. In March, Cantwell secured $300 million in economic relief for fishermen suffering from the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, including $50 million for Washington fishermen, from the Coronavirus, Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. In May, Cantwell successfully ensured the release of more than $8.4 million in fishery disaster funds to Washington state communities and Tribes. Cantwell has advocated for reforms to the fisheries disaster process to ensure that small business charter fisherman are included in the Disaster Relief Recovery Act, and throughout her time in the Senate Cantwell has worked with her colleagues to help securefunding for fishing communities impacted by federally-declared disasters.

Video of Senator Cantwell’s opening statement can be found HERE and audio HERE.

Video of Senator Cantwell’s Q&A with witnesses can be found HERE and audio HERE.

New technology promises to save the whales by reducing the need for crab fishing lines.

July 16, 2020 — After a slightly better year in 2017, the number of whales getting entangled in fishing gear has gone back up, according to a new report from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Researchers confirmed 105 whale entanglements nationwide in 2018, the latest year for which data is available, noting the number is “much higher” than average.

These findings come as a possible solution emerges out of a collaboration being led by Monterey Bay conservationists, fishermen and fishing gear designers.

On the Pacific coast, whales pass through stretches of ocean that are important for Dungeness crab fishing and they sometimes get caught in lines connecting traps on the ocean floor to buoys at the surface. Technology that is under development would all but eliminate vertical lines and buoys. Using ropeless or pop-up innovations, these new crab traps would sit idly on the ocean floor until receiving an acoustic signal from the fisherman. Only then would the trap release a rope and buoy to the surface.

“We are working with fishermen to see what works and what doesn’t and what allows the fisherman to survive economically,” says Geoff Shester, a Monterey-based scientist with nonprofit Oceana. “The Monterey Bay is the epicenter of the whale entanglement issue.”

Read the full story at Monterey County Now

President Trump Opens National Monument to Commercial Fishing

June 6, 2020 — President Donald Trump on Friday opened 5,000 square miles of ocean off the New England coast to commercial fishing, reversing an order signed by President Barack Obama shortly before he left office.

“I’m a believer in conservation, but they’ve gone crazy,” he said before an audience of Maine lobstermen, fishermen and crabbers.

The Obama order that declared the area a national monument “was deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen, threatened to cripple family businesses and cost American fishermen millions of dollars,” Trump said. He separately vowed to fight foreign tariffs that hurt the Maine seafood industry.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which is larger than the state of Connecticut, is one of just five marine monuments and the first in the Atlantic Ocean. It is home to endangered right whales, sea turtles, puffins and rare deep-sea cold-water corals.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

New rules for California Dungeness crab fleet seek fewer whale entanglements

May 18, 2020 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Friday unveiled a batch of complex new rules designed to reduce the risk to endangered whales and sea turtles of becoming entangled in commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear.

The draft regulations are set to be finalized before the next commercial season starts in November after a period of public review.

They expand on a framework established under a legal settlement reached last year that allows for the state’s $60-million-a-year crab fishery to be delayed or closed when surveys and other observations suggest a high risk of concentrated fishing gear and marine life overlapping in the same place. The new rules are meant to allow more nuanced risk assessment and precise management actions rather than the closure of large swaths of ocean, as seen in recent seasons.

Among the provisions are options to restrict fishing in certain depths, require crabbers to set only a share of the traps for which they’re permitted or limit intervention to any of six newly established geographic zones, rather than the larger Northern and Central California management districts that currently exist.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

VIRGINIA: Northam administration says federal fisheries relief ‘falls woefully short’

May 12, 2020 — Virginia’s waters are unusually still this spring.

Ordinarily, May 1 is the start of the charter boat season, a day that sees convoys of boats head out from the ports of coastal Virginia for deeper waters where fish are sought by daytrippers. By then, crabbing and oystering, which usually begin in March, are in full swing. So are the commercial fisheries, many of which operate year-round.

Not so this year. Like so many other industries, fisheries, whether commercial or recreational, have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. And while U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Thursday announced $300 million in relief funding for fisheries around the nation, Virginia’s top natural resources official says the state’s $4.5 million allocation is nowhere near enough to stem the tide of losses.

“This funding falls woefully short of even beginning to address the devastating impacts fisheries and aquaculture businesses have suffered due to COVID-19,” said Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler in a statement. “The fishing industry in Virginia supports thousands of jobs and generates millions in revenue. The administration must release more funding to help our coastal communities and businesses.”

Read the full story at The Virginia Mercury

Less Seasonal Help, Coronavirus Deliver One-Two Punch To Bay’s Blue Crab Industry

May 1, 2020 — Crab season is off to a slow and foreboding start around the Chesapeake Bay, with many crabmeat processors crippled by an inability to import seasonal workers and by watermen worried they’ll be unable to sell all they can catch as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chilly, windy weather limited commercial harvests of blue crabs through much of April, the first full month of the season. Warming spring weather usually brings better fortunes, but those in the business of catching or picking crabs say they fear for their livelihoods amid the double whammy that’s hit the Bay’s most valuable fishery.

“It’s kind of a really scary situation,” said Bill Sieling, executive vice president of the Chesapeake Bay Seafood Industries Association, which represents Maryland companies. “It just doesn’t look good.”

Read the full story from the Chesapeake Bay Journal at Patch.com

California Dungeness crabbers protest early shutdown

April 29, 2020 — California state officials are ordering an early end to the southern Dungeness crab season May 15 to protect migrating whales, a move fishing advocates say is out of proportion to the actual risk.

In an April 15 notice Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, announced the Dungeness season would close and all gear pulled by mid-May, two months early, south of the Mendocino-Sonoma County line.

The decision comes as the fishery is winding down, with the California fleet gearing up for a promising salmon season that opens May 1. But it cuts off a sector that is providing jobs and seafood in coastal communities hit hard by coronavirus restrictions and their economic impact, said Ben Platt, president of the California Coast Crab Association.

“They say that there’s ‘significant risk.’ But the whale working group determined there was low risk, as they have in all of the recommendations this season,” said Platt, referring to a stakeholder advisory group established in 2015 to assess seasonal risks of gear entanglement.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

California crab fishery to close in May to protect whales

April 27, 2020 — Commercial fishermen are protesting an order by California wildlife authorities to close the Dungeness crab fishery in mid-May to protect whales and sea turtles from becoming entangled in fishing gear.

There have been no confirmed interactions between commercial Dungeness crab gear and any whales during the current crab season, which began in December, Ben Platt, president of the Crescent City-based California Coast Crab Association, said in a statement.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham on Wednesday ordered the fishery to close on May 15 for the remainder of the season south of the Sonoma-Mendocino county line, which is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

Acknowledging challenges facing the commercial fishing industry during the coronavirus pandemic, the department said the decision “provides additional time on the water while balancing the need to protect whales and turtles.”

Read the full story at The North Bay Business Journal