Saving Seafood

Congress working to prevent government shutdown; fishery disaster funds up in the air

April 26, 2017 — Congressional and White House negotiators made progress Tuesday on a must-pass spending bill to keep the federal government open days ahead of a deadline as President Donald Trump indicated that U.S. funding for a border wall with Mexico could wait until September.

“We’re moving forward on reaching an agreement on a bipartisan basis,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said, adding that he hoped that an agreement to fund the government through September can be reached in the next few days.

But a big stumbling block remains, involving a Democratic demand for money for insurance companies that help low-income people afford health policies under former President Barack Obama’s health law, or that Trump abandon a threat to use the payments as a bargaining chip. Trump’s apparent flexibility on the U.S.-Mexico wall issue, however, seemed to steer the Capitol Hill talks on the catchall spending measure in a positive direction.

Arriving in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, California 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said he will not be leveraged into supporting “bad policies” such as funding for a border wall, increased military spending and cuts to Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies.

“I am not going to vote for a government funding bill that includes overreaching poison pill provisions,” Huffman told the Times-Standard. “If we have a clean government funding bill, I will support it. But I am not going to be bullied into supporting bad policies in a sort of hijacking exercise with government funding.”

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

Seafood groups praise Trump’s “Buy American” executive order

April 25, 2017 — President Donald Trump’s 18 April “Buy American, Hire American” Executive Order has been positively received by some U.S. seafood trade groups, who say it will help the domestic seafood industry.

Representatives of industry groups in Alaska and the U.S. states on the Gulf of Mexico said the executive order will help them create jobs for Americans.

“In order to promote economic and national security and to help stimulate economic growth, create good jobs at decent wages, strengthen our middle class, and support the American manufacturing and defense industrial bases, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to maximize…through terms and conditions of federal financial assistance awards and federal procurements, the use of goods, products, and materials produced in the United States,” the order states.

In addition, the federal government must “rigorously enforce and administer the laws governing entry into the United States of workers from abroad,” including section 212(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to the order.

C. David Veal, executive director of the American Shrimp Processors Association in Biloxi, Mississippi, said Trump had helped protect U.S. fishing communities with his executive order.

“We appreciate this effort and the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to restore the competitive position of the country. This is the strongest effort by any administration to ensure that U.S. laws designed to promote the purchase of domestically produced products are effectively enforced,” Veal said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Trump to review Maine monument designation, may expand offshore drilling

April 24, 2017 — President Trump will sign executive orders this week aimed at expanding offshore oil drilling and reviewing national monument designations made by his predecessors, continuing the Republican’s assault on President Obama’s environmental legacy.

The orders could expand oil drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans and upend public lands protections put in place in Utah, Maine, and other states. The Antiquities Act of 1906 authorizes the president to declare federal lands of historic or scientific value to be ‘‘national monuments’’ and restrict how the lands can be used.

Administration officials on Monday confirmed the expected moves. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the president’s upcoming actions.

Obama used his power under the Antiquities Act to permanently preserve more land and water using national monument designations than any other president. The land is generally off limits to timber harvesting, mining and pipelines, and commercial development.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

BREN SMITH, SEAN BARRETT, AND PAUL GREENBERG: What Trump’s Budget Means for the Filet-O-Fish

April 25, 2017 — Consider the pollock.

It is the most voluminously caught fish in the United States, accounting for a quarter of everything Americans catch. As such it is the major bulwark against the United States’ multibillion-dollar seafood trade deficit — the second-largest deficit in our trade portfolio, after crude oil. And it is, today, the main component in the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, or the “fish delight,” as Donald Trump likes to call it.

Now consider the president’s budget for the people who make his preferred sandwich possible.

If Congress seriously entertains the White House’s suggestions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — a popular target for conservatives, who see it primarily as a source of pesky climate-change research — and the National Marine Fisheries Service it oversees will lose 17 percent of its funding. This despite Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross’s desire to “try to figure how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter.”

As the three of us consider this statement, a common wry fisherman’s response comes to our lips: Yeah, good luck with that, buddy.

Because of repeated sacrifices made by American fishermen working with NOAA over the past 40 years, the United States now has the most robust and well-managed wild fisheries in the world. Federal observers oversee 80 percent of the large trawlers fishing for pollock, ensuring that this largest of fisheries maintains an impeccable set of management tools.

But in spite of all of our success, only around 9 percent of the seafood available in American markets comes from American fishermen. In fact, the last traditional fishing communities in the United States are fighting for their very existence. Fair-trade local fishermen remain unable to compete in our domestic marketplace, which is overwhelmed and flooded with cheap, untraceable imported seafood.

Read the full opinion piece at the New York Times

Letter calls for approval of fishery disaster funds

April 6, 2017 — A bipartisan group of congressional representatives sent a letter to House and Senate leaders Wednesday urging them to include disaster relief funds for nine West Coast crab and salmon fisheries in a government spending bill this month.

“The closures of commercial and recreational fisheries along the West Coast during the 2014, 2015, and 2016 fishing seasons caused severe economic hardship in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California,” the letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer states.

The House and Senate are set to vote on a government spending bill in the coming weeks that they must pass by midnight April 28 to prevent a government shutdown.

California 2nd District Congressman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) is among the 17 members of Congress who signed the letter. Huffman is asking Congress to approve millions of dollars for the North Coast crab fleet and the Yurok Tribe. In January, the former Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker issued disaster declarations for nine fisheries along the West Coast, which allows Congress to appropriate relief funds.

Read the full story at the Eureka Times-Standard

Molly Payne Wynne: Maine’s coastal communities depend on agencies Trump plans to gut

April 5, 2017 — Let me be open from the start — I’m a scientist, and I’m from away.

I spent my first summer in Maine navigating backroads along the coast, collecting fish, and water samples in ponds, rivers and estuaries for a study I was conducting. I’d get up with the sun and travel to various fishways for this work. I’d meet and talk with alewife harvesters, who would often treat me to a cooler full of alewife and blueback herring. I used these fish samples — and the harvesters’ anecdotes — in my research to shed light on where river herring live and grow, and how best to manage populations for the benefit of the fish and the people who depend on this valuable resource. Meeting these fishermen and studying the nearby fish habitats made the mutual dependence coastal communities have with the resources of Maine’s coastal rivers very clear.

As media reports continue to unveil the Trump administration’s proposals, it is also clear that our nation’s environment and natural resources programs are increasingly at risk. Coastal states such as Maine need to pay attention to proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The White House is proposing to slice its budget by 17 percent. Cuts to programs such as the National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service would have far-reaching consequences for programs created to ensure healthy coastal environments and economies. In Maine, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a significant contributor in the effort to save endangered Atlantic salmon in the last remaining rivers in the country in which they still spawn.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Fishery Managers Voice Marine Monument Concerns to Trump

March 30, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — The leaders of eight regional councils that manage fisheries are reaching out to President Donald Trump to express concern over the creation of marine monuments, such as one in the ocean off of New England.

President Barack Obama created the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument last year. It’s made up of nearly 5,000 square miles of habitat, and is very unpopular with many commercial fishermen.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

Calling on the president to make commercial fishing great again

March 30, 2017 — One boat after another offloaded their catch at Gambardella’s Wholesale Seafood. A busy day for the seafood distributor but that’s not the norm these days. Fewer fishing boats are coming in because crews say they can’t afford to go out with limits on what they can catch.

“The regulations are outdated, the science is wrong, and we’ve been fishing under these conditions for too long,” said Bobby Guzzo a longtime fishermen.

He says they often have to throw back fish so they don’t go over their limits and those limits are based on what state fisherman are from even though they all fish the same federal waters. Connecticut limits are a lot lower than states down south.

“We’re all fishing in federal water, we’re all fishing together,” said Guzzo. “Why aren’t we all together?”

It’s a question Guzzo has been asking for years and now he and fellow fishermen are hoping to ask President Donald Trump. They are calling on him to make commercial fishing great again.

“We want to sit down with Mr. Trump hopefully,” said Guzzo. “It may be pie in the sky but we got to try to do something otherwise we’re going. And he has been listening. He seems to a few people. We need change.”

Read the full story at WTNH 

CONNECTICUT: Fishermen hope bumper sticker gets Trump’s attention

March 29, 2017 — STONINGTON, Conn. — For struggling Town Dock fishermen, President Trump’s promise to eliminate regulations and spur the economy means they might finally have success in their long fight to rescind the catch restrictions they say are not only unfair and based on bad science but are putting them out of business.

So in an effort to attract Trump’s attention and help spread their message in Washington, they have printed up a bumper sticker that will be appearing on vehicles here in coming days.

The sticker features a picture of Trump giving a thumbs-up next to a fishing boat with the slogan “Make Commercial Fishing Great Again,” a spin on Trump’s popular campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

“He’s sat down and talked to coal miners and truck drivers. We’d like to be able to get the seafood industry to sit down and talk to him,” said Mike Gambardella, who runs his family’s fish wholesale business at the Town Dock. “It’s a matter of him understanding the problem.”

Gambardella said if fishermen just had the chance to explain the long-standing problem to Trump, “his head would spin.”

Read the full story at The Day

Fish reps to Trump: Marine monuments make it harder to manage industry, fish reps say

March 28, 2017 — The issue of whether presidents should use the Antiquities Act to independently designate new marine national monuments is not going away any time soon.

The chairmen of the eight regional fishery management councils have weighed in, co-authoring a letter to President Donald J. Trump decrying the use of the Antiquities Act to create new marine national monuments and characterizing it as a disruptive end-run around traditional fishery management practices.

The letter and accompanying resolution from the Council Coordinating Committee are the most recent drumbeats in an escalating campaign to reverse marine national monuments designated by former President Barack Obama and dissuade future presidents from using the same procedural mechanism to create the protected areas.

The letter, which includes Chairman John F. Quinn of the New England Fishery Management Council as a signatory, flatly states the use of the Antiquities Act impedes the councils from performing their statutory duties as set out in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).

“Designation of marine national monuments that prohibit fishing have disrupted the ability of the councils to manage fisheries throughout their range, as required by MSA and in an eco-system manner,” the letter stated. “Our experience with marine monument designations to date is that they are counter-productive to domestic fishery goals, as they have displaced and concentrated U.S. fishing effort into less productive fishing grounds and increased dependency on foreign fisheries that are not as sustainably managed as United States fisheries.”

The designations, they wrote, not only curtail potential harvesting areas for commercial fishermen but also diminish the nation’s ability to watch over its waters.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times