Saving Seafood

‘Buy American’ provision survives in US Farm Bill, big win for Alaskan pollock

December 12, 2018 — Alaskan pollock harvesters and processors have scored a major victory over their Russian competitors in the waning moments of the 115th US Congress, promising to end their dominance in US school meals.

A provision championed by senator Dan Sullivan, an Alaskan Republican, to close a major loophole in the US Department of Agriculture’s “buy American” food rules for school systems, has survived and is included in the text of the final 2018 farm bill conference report released Monday night by House and Senate agriculture committee leaders, Undercurrent News has confirmed.

The legislation must still go back to the floors of both chambers for final votes before Congress concludes, which is expected to happen by Dec. 21. But those final steps are considered largely perfunctory and president Donald Trump could wind up signing the bill before the end of this week.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Fishing industry wins EPA exemption for deck wash

December 11, 2018 — Gloucester fishermen and their contemporaries across the nation, following years of uncertainty, finally caught a break in the new federal law regulating incidental deck discharges from fishing vessels.

A provision within the new Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, signed into law last week by President Donald Trump as part of an omnibus Coast Guard bill, exempts commercial fishing vessels of all sizes and other vessels up to 79 feet in length from having to obtain a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency to cover incidental deck wash.

“Specifically, discharges incidental to the normal operation, except for ballast water, from small vessels (i.e., less than 79 feet in length) and commercial fishing vessels of all sizes no longer require National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit coverage,” the EPA said in its statement about the new law. “Thus, permit coverage for any vessel covered under the (Small Vessel General Permit) is automatically terminated.”

Commercial fishermen have operated under a series of temporary exemptions since the initial regulations were enacted in 2009 for commercial non-fishing vessels. But if forced to comply with the existing regulations, fishing vessels larger than 79 feet would have faced regulations dealing with 27 different types of discharges — including routine discharges such as deck wash, fish hold effluent and greywater.

The permanent exemption, according to industry stakeholders, removes an impediment that might have economically sunk commercial fishing nationwide.

“It could have killed the industry,” said Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, which worked with Washington-based consultant Glenn Delaney to help build a network of commercial fishing interests to change to obtain the permanent exemption. “It’s been a ticking time bomb for the entire fishing industry in the U.S. This is such a game-changer.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Pacific nations resist US push to lift tuna quota

December 11, 2018 — Pacific island nations have vowed to oppose US efforts to increase its catch limit in the world’s largest tuna fishery, saying the proposal does nothing to improve sustainable fishing.

The United States is expected to try to increase its quota for  at a meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) taking place in Honolulu this week.

The meeting brings together 26 nations to determine fishing policy in the Pacific, which accounts for almost 60 percent of the global tuna catch, worth about $6.0 billion annually.

It is mostly made up of small island nations but also includes so-called “distant-water nations” that come from as far afield as Europe, China, the United States, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan to fish Pacific tuna.

Island nations regularly accuse them of being reluctant to curb the lucrative industry in the interests of long-term conservation.

President Donald Trump’s administration will push this year to catch more bigeye—one of the most sought after species of tuna for sashimi—as a reward for complying with the commission’s monitoring rules.

All fishing fleets are supposed to carry independent fisheries observers on at least five percent of their boats as means of ensuring quotas are not exceeded and to collect accurate data.

However, most nations aside from the United States ignore the monitoring requirement.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Trump signs Coast Guard bill into law, includes Jones Act waiver for America’s Finest

December 6, 2018 — When Dakota Creek Industries took America’s Finest out for its first sea trial on Tuesday 4 December, it looked like the 264-foot vessel was taking a victory lap.

The Anacortes, Washington-based shipbuilder held an event that day to celebrate the Jones Act waiver elected officials were able to get for the processor-trawler. Later in the day, U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Coast Guard Authorization Act, which contained the labor provision, into law.

The process itself is not quite finished. The Coast Guard will get 30 days to review information to make sure neither Dakota Creek nor Fishermen’s Finest – the company that commissioned construction of the USD 75 million (EUR 65.9 million) vessel – committed a deliberate violation of the Jones Act in building the ship.

Coast Guard officials did not return a request for comment.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

JOHN BULLARD: Trump policies threaten New England fishermen

December 5, 2018 — The Trump Administration just approved dangerous seismic blasting to look for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean, a move that will threaten marine wildlife and fisheries. This announcement came on the heels of the National Climate Assessment, which the Trump Administration tried to downplay by releasing it the day after Thanksgiving. That’s right, Trump just sidestepped science — twice — to deliver a one-two punch to fishermen.

The scientific report on climate change offers a devastating look at the impact of climate change on the American economy — including fisheries in New England — if we fail to act fast. According to the report, the American economy will decline by up to 10 percent by the end of this century. Failure to reduce carbon emissions will continue to negatively impact the health of fish stocks, threatening the economic stability of our fishing industry and coastal communities.

None of this is news to New England fishermen, who already know the changes happening in their place of business: the ocean. They know warming waters have driven lobster out of southern New England towards Canada. They know that despite difficult quota cuts, cod is much harder to rebuild, and many flounder species don’t reproduce the way they used to.

Fishermen know that warming oceans have pummeled the Maine lobster industry, where revenues fell by $99 million in 2017. Some scientists warn that ocean acidification could make the scallop industry, a $500 million-dollar mainstay of New England’s fishing economy, the next to go. There’s no Plan B if this happens. And new oil and gas development could accelerate the decline of these and other species. Without action, the working waterfronts of New England could cease to work.

What was President Trump’s response when asked about the climate report from his own administration? “I don’t believe it.” Apparently his self-professed intellect is superior to more than 300 scientists from inside and outside the government who wrote the report. Because of his inability to accept the advice of his own scientists on what may be the issue of gravest importance to future generations, the president is putting our region’s fishing industry at risk.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Virginia conservationists blast approval of seismic testing for oil, gas in Atlantic

December 4, 2018 — Virginia conservationists are blasting the Trump administration’s decision to reverse course and approve seismic air gun surveys along the Atlantic coast to search for buried oil and gas reserves.

The groups cite widespread public opposition to seismic blasting and offshore drilling, as well as the harm posed to marine life and coastal economies that rely on healthy waters and wetlands.

“This action flies in the face of massive opposition to offshore drilling and exploration from over 90 percent of coastal municipalities in the proposed blast zone,” said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at the D.C.-based advocacy group Oceana. “President (Donald) Trump is essentially giving these companies permission to harass, harm and possibly even kill marine life.”

“Offshore drilling in our region would pose far too many risks to the health of coastal waters and the Chesapeake Bay, fishing, aquaculture, tourism and all jobs that depend on clean water,” said Lisa Feldt, vice president for environmental protection and restoration at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “We need to run away from offshore drilling, not move towards it.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Temporary truce reached in US-China trade war

December 3, 2018 — Meeting at the G20 Summit on Saturday, 1 December in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed to a détente in their trade war.

In an announcement after the meeting, the White House said Trump had agreed to postpone his plan to ramp up existing 10 percent tariffs on USD 200 billion (EUR 170 billion) of Chinese goods to a 25 percent rate on 1 January, 2019. That move is contingent upon China and the United States coming to terms on a broad collection of disagreements – including intellectual property protection and forced technology transfer and a widening trade deficit – that set the trade war in motion in January 2018.

“This was an amazing and productive meeting with unlimited possibilities for both the United States and China,” Trump said in a statement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

We’ll take your lobsters, eh? Canadian imports from US soar

November 30, 2018 — Trade hostility from across the ocean was supposed to take a snip out of the U.S. lobster business, but the industry is getting a lifeline from its northern neighbor.

Heavy demand from Canada is buoying American lobster as both countries head into the busy holiday export season, according to federal statistics and members of the industry. It’s a positive sign for U.S. seafood dealers and fishermen, even as the industry struggles with Chinese tariffs.

China emerged as a major consumer of American lobster earlier this decade, but the country slapped heavy tariffs on exports in July amid its trade kerfuffle with President Donald Trump’s administration. Lobster exports slowed to a crawl.

Industry watchers forecast the move as a potential calamity for U.S. seafood, but Canada has boosted the value of its lobster imports from America by more than a third so far this year, up to more than $180 million through September.

Canada has its own lobster fishing industry, which harvests the same species as U.S. fishermen, and the country sells lobsters domestically as well as to Europe and Asia. The country’s importing so many from the U.S. this year because it needs enough supply to send to China, said members of the lobster industry on both sides of the border.

“They go there to go to China, to avoid the tariffs,” said Spiros Tourkakis, executive vice president of East Coast Seafood, a dealer in Topsfield, Massachusetts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Seattle Times

Maryland oyster restoration project remains stalled by lack of federal funds

November 29, 2018 — Oyster restoration work in Maryland’s Tred Avon River appears likely to remain on hold for at least another year, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers still has no funding allotted through next September for reef construction in the Chesapeake Bay.

Restoration work in the Eastern Shore river began in 2015 and has so far relied overwhelmingly on federal funds. The Trump administration did not request funding for the project in its budget proposal for fiscal year 2019, but the Corps’ Baltimore District did ask for support through discretionary funds authorized by Congress.

While the Corps decided to provide $13 million in additional funding for various projects in the Bay region, including the use of dredged material to restore two vanishing Bay islands, it did not give the Baltimore District money to continue work in the Tred Avon.

“The District is certainly committed to continuing the program,” said Sarah Lazo, spokeswoman for the Baltimore District. But until funding becomes available, she said, it can’t go forward.

It’s not clear whether the oyster restoration funding request was denied by Corps headquarters or by the White House Office of Management and Budget, which has final say on the Corps’ workplan for spending its discretionary funds. Corps headquarters provided no explanation for why District funding requests were not included in its workplans.

Since 2015, the Corps and its state, federal and nonprofit partners have completed the initial restoration of nearly 81 acres of river bottom in the Tred Avon, at a combined cost of $4.6 million. They have planted a total of 380 million hatchery-spawned seed oysters on reefs that are protected from harvest.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

House passes US Coast Guard bill with Jones Act exemption for America’s Finest

November 29, 2018 — The US House of Representatives has passed a US Coast Guard reauthorization bill that includes provisions allowing Alaska’s Amendment 80 fleet to finally gain the use of one of its newest vessels while also protecting shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico from being fined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for cleaning off their decks.

The Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018, S. 140, was passed by a unanimous voice vote late Tuesday, moving the two-year, $10 billion bill named after a retiring New Jersey congressman to president Donald Trump’s desk for a signature. The action happened with just a few weeks to spare in the 115th Congress.

The legislation passed the US Senate back on Nov. 14 by a 94-6 tally, as reported by Undercurrent News.

Included in S. 140 is a long-anticipated Jones Act waiver for America’s Finest, a 264-foot catcher-processor built by Dakota Creek Industries in Anacortes, Washington, for Kirkland, Washington-based Fishermen’s Finest at a cost of about $75 million. More than 7% of the ship’s hull contains steel from the Netherlands, which violates the Jones Act requirement that US fishing vessels be made of no more than 1.5% foreign steel.

The provision, which allows Fishermen’s Finest to use the vessel to replace American No. 1, a 39-year-old, 160-foot vessel, was fought for by senator Maria Cantwell and representative Rick Larsen, both Washington state Democrats, with cooperation from senator Dan Sullivan and representative Don Young, both Alaska Republicans

Read the full story at Undercurrent News