Saving Seafood

Senators from 12 states seek offshore drilling exemptions like Florida’s

January 12, 2018 — WASHINGTON — Twenty-two Democratic U.S. senators from 12 states on Thursday joined the chorus of local representatives seeking exemptions from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s newly proposed offshore drilling plan, after his surprise move on Tuesday to shield Florida.

Zinke surprised lawmakers, governors, and industry groups on Tuesday night by announcing that Florida would be removed from the Interior Department’s proposal to open up over 90 percent of federal waters to oil and gas leasing.

Zinke had met in Tallahasee, Florida’s capital, with Republican Governor Rick Scott, who told the Interior chief that drilling puts his state’s coastal tourism economy at risk. Scott is widely expected to challenge Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, who is up for re-election this year.

The White House dismissed suggestions that Florida’s exemption was a political favor to Scott. “I am not aware of any political favor that that would have been part of,” spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters.

“Just like Florida, our states are unique with vibrant coastal economies,” wrote the 22 senators, who include Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kamala Harris of California. “Providing all of our states with the same exemption from dangerous offshore oil and gas drilling would ensure that vital industries from tourism to recreation to fishing are not needlessly placed in harm’s way,” they wrote.

Interior Department spokeswoman Heather Swift said Zinke intends to meet with every coastal governor affected by the agency’s proposed offshore drilling plan, a process that could take a year.

Democrats are not alone in pressuring Zinke to exempt their states from drilling. South Carolina’s Republican Governor Henry McMaster asked Zinke for an exemption, citing the value of his state’s coastal tourist economy.

Read the full story at Reuters

 

Portland Press Herald: Offshore drilling threatens important Maine industries

January 12, 2018 — The Trump administration Tuesday removed the waters off Florida – and only Florida – from the list of areas newly open to offshore drilling, and in doing so made a compelling case that the Maine coast should be removed as well.

After opposition from Republican Gov. Rick Scott, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said Florida would not be part of a plan to make more than 90 percent of the outer continental shelf available by lease to energy extraction companies. Florida, Zinke said, was “unique,” with its coasts “heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver.”

Sound familiar?

Not only is Maine’s $6 billion-a-year tourism industry largely dependent on a clean and picturesque coastline, so too is the $1.7 billion-a-year lobster industry. Together, they have an economic impact far greater than the fossil fuel industry ever could here.

It should go without saying that a spill on par with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, which pumped 215 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, causing $17 billion in damages and effects on wildlife and coastal areas that are still seen today, would be catastrophic for the state. But even routine seismic testing and the everyday extraction of oil and gas could affect the fishery and degrade the coastline.

Read the full editorial at the Portland Press Herald

 

South Jersey Times: Christie should fight hard to keep drilling ban

January 11, 2018 — With less than a week to go in office and part of his legacy on the line, Gov. Chris Christie has called out President Donald Trump over his administration’s unilateral call to open the entire East Coast to offshore energy drilling.

The possibility of drilling causing a spill despoiling the Atlantic Coast or otherwise ruining New Jersey’s tourism and fishing industries has long been a third rail of Garden State politics, uniting Democrats and Republicans alike. Past attempts to increase coastal drilling — and even President Barack Obama authorized them — generally had “opt-out” features for states, often won after protests from New Jersey lawmakers and governors.

The latest move by U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, with Trump’s apparent blessing, to open both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to more drilling has no specific carve-outs. A current drilling moratorium for the Atlantic coast was supposed to last until at least 2022.

With all due respect to most of the New Jersey elected officeholders who circled the wagons against the Zinke proposal, just as they had in the past: They have no juice with this president.

Read the full story at the South Jersey Times

 

Massachusetts congressional delegation urges Gov. Charlie Baker to reject Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan

January 11, 2018 — Massachusetts congressional lawmakers called on Gov. Charlie Baker Wednesday to formally oppose the Trump administration’s plan to expand oil and gas drilling off the East Coast.

All 11 members of the state’s delegation penned a letter to Baker urging him to join other states’ governors in officially rejecting the Interior Department’s newly unveiled five-year drilling plan, which seeks to open federal waters off the California coast and areas from Florida to Maine for oil and gas exploration purposes.

The lawmakers, who have been critical of efforts to expand offshore drilling, contended that opening areas off the East Coast for such purposes “would pose a serious threat to our oceans and the economic viability of the Commonwealth’s coastal communities, tourism and shore-side businesses that rely on healthy marine resources.”

Pointing to maritime industries’ impact on Massachusetts’ economy, the delegation noted that the commercial fishing supported 83,000 jobs in the state and generated $1.9 billion income, as well as $7.3 billion in sales in 2015.

Marine-related tourism, meanwhile, generates tens of billion of dollars in economic value each yeah and supports more than 100,000 jobs in Massachusetts, they wrote.

“The economic effects of our ocean community are extensive, providing a source of income and jobs for commercial and recreational fishermen, vessel manufacturers, restaurants and other businesses throughout Massachusetts, all of which would be threatened by allowing offshore drilling and the risk of an oil spill off our coast,” the letter stated.

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Florida Is Exempted From Coastal Drilling. Other States Ask, ‘Why Not Us?’

January 11, 2018 — WASHINGTON — At 5:20 on Tuesday evening, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tweeted a photo of himself at the Tallahassee airport with Gov. Rick Scott of Florida, announcing that he had decided, after meeting with Governor Scott, to exempt the state from a new Trump administration plan to open up most of the nation’s coastline to offshore oil drilling.

It was a sudden and unexpected change to a plan that President Trump had celebrated just five days before, and it took lawmakers and governors from both parties by surprise. It also gave Governor Scott, a Republican who is widely expected to run for the Senate this year, a clear political boost in that race. Florida lawmakers of both parties have long opposed offshore drilling, especially after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill sent tarballs to the shores of a state where the economy relies heavily on tourism. Mr. Zinke’s sudden flip-flop on Florida drilling allows Governor Scott to tout the decision as evidence of his influence with the White House.

Mr. Trump’s critics say the move highlights the president’s willingness to blatantly use the nation’s public lands and waters as political bargaining chips.

It also appears to illustrate the clumsiness with which the Trump administration drafts federal policies. By publicly putting forth the comprehensive new coastal drilling plan and then abruptly announcing a major change to it less than a week later, with little evident public or scientific review, the Interior Department appears to have opened itself to a wave of legal challenges.

Within hours of Mr. Zinke’s tweet, governors in other coastal states began demanding their own drilling exemptions.

Read the full story at the New York Times

New Jersey: Trump Saves Florida, Not Jersey Shore, From Offshore Oil Drilling

January 10, 2018 — The Trump administration exempted Florida from its plans to open the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to oil and gas drilling. But the Jersey Shore and its tourism industry won’t get the same break.

The U.S. Interior Department announced this week that it would exclude Florida and cited the potential impact on the Sunshine State’s tourism industry. Despite tourism have impact on the entire coast’s economy, however, the decision left the rest of nearly all U.S. waters, including the Atlantic, open to offshore drilling.

In a statement, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said President Trump, who owns the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, directed him to rebuild the offshore oil and gas program “in a manner that supports our national energy policy and also takes into consideration the local and state voice.”

“Florida is unique and its coast is heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” Zinke said. “As a result of today’s discussion and Gov. (Rick) Scott’s leadership, I am removing Florida from consideration for any new oil and gas platforms.”

The decision drew criticism from New Jersey leaders, all of whom – Republican and Democrat – universally oppose drilling off the Jersey Shore. Coastal leaders and environmentalists believe a spill anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean would cause environmental damage all along the coast.

Read the full story at the Toms River Patch

 

Doug Clark: North Carolina deserves the same protection as Florida

January 10, 2018 — North Carolina deserves the same consideration as Florida when it comes to offshore oil and gas drilling.

The Trump administration said Tuesday it will remove the Florida coast from its plan to open virtually all U.S. offshore waters to fossil fuel development.

“I support the governor’s position that Florida is unique and its coast is heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said, according to a news release from Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s office.

Florida’s coast certainly is “heavily reliant on tourism as an economic driver,” but it is not unique in that.

So is North Carolina’s coast, a point made by N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper last week:

“Offshore drilling represents a critical threat to our coastal economy. Protecting North Carolina families and businesses is my top priority, and we will pursue every option to prevent oil drilling near North Carolina’s beaches, coastal communities, and fishing waters.”

In his statement, Zinke noted:

“President Trump has directed me to rebuild our offshore oil and gas program in a manner that supports our national energy policy and also takes into consideration the local and state voice.”

That voice, as represented by North Carolina’s governor and the elected leaders of many coastal communities, says don’t drill. The North Carolina voice also deserves to be heard in Washington.

Read the full opinion piece at the Greensboro News & Record

 

Gulf shrimpers push for monitoring

January 8, 2018 — The $5.7 billion dollar U.S. industry built on the importation of foreign shrimp is not happy about a monitoring provision tucked away inside a pending federal budget bill, though the Gulf shrimp industry is all for it.

The provision, part of Senate Bill 1662, would remove a stay on including imported shrimp under the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), a new set of reporting and record-keeping requirements implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service. SIMP is aimed at preventing illegal, unreported and unregulated-caught and/or misrepresented seafood from entering the U.S. market.

Jan. 1, 2018, was the compliance deadline for 10 other species under SIMP, though shrimp and abalone were to be phased in later. The provision in S.B. 1662, if it takes effect, would give the U.S. import shrimp industry 30 days to prepare for the new reporting requirements. Imports represent 90 percent of the U.S. shrimp industry.

“Importers of record,” typically U.S.-based seafood dealers, would be required to maintain records for at least two years on the type of species caught, when and where the species were harvested, quantity and weight of the harvest, type of gear used, name and flag of the fishing vessel, first point of landing and other data.

Read the full story at the Brownsville Herald

 

Trump proposes massive expansion of offshore drilling

January 4, 2018 — The Trump administration is proposing to greatly expand the areas available for offshore oil and natural gas drilling, including off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

In the first major step toward the administration’s promised expansion of offshore drilling, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said nearly all of the nation’s outer continental shelf is being considered for drilling, including areas off the coasts of Maine, California, Florida and Alaska.

The proposal, which environmentalists immediately panned as an environmental disaster and giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, is far larger than what was envisioned in President Trump’s executive order last year seeking a new plan for the future of auctions of offshore drilling rights. That order asked Zinke to consider drilling expansions in the Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

“This is a start on looking at American energy dominance and looking at our offshore assets and beginning a dialogue of when, how, where and how fast those offshore assets should be, or could be, developed,” Zinke told reporters Thursday.

Read the full story at The Hill

SAFMC Reminder: Public Scoping Comments Solicited for Proposed Measures in Spiny Lobster Amendment 13   

January 4, 2018 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is currently soliciting public input on management measures being considered for spiny lobster in federal waters off the coast of Florida. In addition to written comments, the Council will hold two public scoping webinars to review proposed measures and solicit public input for Amendment 13 to the Spiny Lobster Fishery Management Plan for the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic.

Draft Amendment 13 addresses inconsistencies between State of Florida spiny lobster regulations and those in federal waters off the coast of Florida, including regulations pertaining to the bully net fishery. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission recently implemented new regulations for the fishery after hearing concerns from the public about the increase in participation in both the commercial and recreational bully net fishery. The fishery primarily occurs at night and involves the use of long-handled nets.

Amendment 13 includes options for an endorsement, vessel marking, and gear prohibitions for the bully net fishery, similar to those currently required in Florida state waters. The measures are expected to help management and enforcement of spiny lobster harvest by creating consistent regulations in state and federal waters. The amendment also addresses other inconsistencies in the regulatory process.

Spiny Lobster Amendment 13 Public Scoping via Webinar:
Council staff will provide an overview of measures being considered and solicit public comment on the proposed measures and any additional recommendations. Registration is required.

  • Monday, January 8th at 6:00 p.m. 
    Register
  • Tuesday, January 9th at 6:00 p.m.
    Register 

The Council is also currently accepting written comments on proposed measures. Written comments are due by 5:00 p.m. on February 9, 2018. Learn more, including a video overview of Amendment 13, a Story Map highlighting the issues, and a copy of the Amendment 13 Scoping Document, from the Council’s website at: http://safmc.net/safmc-meetings/public-hearings-scoping-meetings/. Webinar registration and information on submitting written comments is also available on the same website page.

Learn more about the SAFMC by visiting their site here.