Saving Seafood

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell Submits Additional Testimony on Marine Monuments to Congress

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – March 30, 2017 – On March 15, Mayor Jon Mitchell of New Bedford, Massachusetts delivered written testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee expressing serious concerns about the impact of marine monuments on fishermen and coastal communities, as well as the process by which president’s designate monuments using the Antiquities Act.

Yesterday, Mayor Mitchell submitted additional answers to questions from Rep. Doug Lamborn, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans. In his follow-up answers, Mayor Mitchell supported fisheries management under the Council process created by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

“I would argue that the Council has both the resources and the approach necessary to achieve ecosystem protection (while balancing economic productivity) commensurate with any protections that could be pursued in conjunction with a monument designation under the Antiquities Act,” Mayor Mitchell wrote. “I have witnessed firsthand the strengths of the of the Fishery Council’s deliberative- and decision-making processes.”

Mayor Mitchell went on to cite two recent examples of the Council process effectively being used to protect important marine resources. In the Mid-Atlantic, the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-Sea Coral Protection Area, designated by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in 2015, brought together a broad range of stakeholders to protect over 38,000 square miles of federal waters. The resulting protected area was applauded by conservation groups and fishermen alike.

In New England, the Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2, passed last year by the New England Fishery Management Council after more than a decade of work, used the most up-to-date science to protect essential and vulnerable New England habitats, while opening up areas no longer considered important for successfully conserving fish stocks. The development of this amendment was deliberative and collaborative, with input from federal and state regulators, environmental groups, scientists and academics, and members of the fishing industry, Mayor Mitchell wrote.

Read Mayor Mitchell’s letter here

Atlantic Ocean Area The Size Of Virginia Protected From Deep-Water Fishing

December 19, 2016 — Coral in an area in the Atlantic Ocean stretching from Connecticut to Virginia has been protected from deep-sea commercial fishing gear, by a new rule issued this week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The protected area covers some 38,000 square miles of federal waters, NOAA says, which is about the size of Virginia. It’s the “largest area in the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico protected from a range of destructive fishing gear,” according to the NRDC, an environmental advocacy group.

The new regulations prohibit the use of bottom-tending fishing gear at depths below 1,470 feet. Boats are allowed to cross the protected area as long as they bring the banned heavy gear on board while they do so, according to the text of the rule. It is set to go into effect on Jan. 13.

It’s named the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep Sea Coral Protection Area, in honor the former New Jersey senator who was an advocate for marine conservation.

Coral grows extremely slowly and is vulnerable to damage from this kind of heavy equipment that drags along the sea floor. As the NRDC put it: “One pass of a weighted fishing trawl net can destroy coral colonies as old as the California redwoods in seconds.”

“They’ve lived a long time but they live in an environment that is cold, with huge pressure, without light,” Joseph Gordon, Pew Charitable Trust’s manager of U.S. northeast oceans, told Delaware Public Media. “And so fishing technology could damage them in a way that could take centuries to recover from.”

The area is also home to many other animals, the NRDC adds, “including the endangered sperm whale, as well as sea birds, sea turtles, tunas, sharks, billfish, and countless other species.”

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council began to look into setting up a protected area here in 2013, and NOAA issued a proposed federal rule in September 2016. It was finalized on Wednesday.

John Bullard, Regional Administrator for the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, hailed this rule as a “great story of regional collaboration among the fishing industry, the Mid-Atlantic Council, the research community, and environmental organizations to protect what we all agree is a valuable ecological resource.”

And Bob Vanasse, the executive director of Saving Seafood, which represents the commercial fishing industry, told Virginia’s Daily Press that he thinks this is “the right way to protect these resources.”

Read the full story at NPR

NOAA approves Mid-Atlantic deep-sea coral canyons for protection

December 16, 2016 — Vulnerable deep-sea corals off Virginia and along the Mid-Atlantic just got final approval for federal environmental protection by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The move will protect a 38,000-square-mile swath of sea bottom from New York to the North Carolina border, or an area roughly the size of the state of Virginia. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council initiated the action for the deep-sea coral zone in 2015.

 Many of these corals grow in underwater canyons, including Norfolk Canyon — a steep gouge in the side of the Continental Slope about 70 miles off Virginia Beach.

John Bullard, administrator for NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, said the action represents the efforts of a wide variety of stakeholders.

“This is a great story of regional collaboration among the fishing industry, the Mid-Atlantic Council, the research community and environmental organizations to protect what we all agree is a valuable ecological resource,” Bullard said in a statement.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is one of eight regional bodies empowered by Congress in the 1970s to manage fisheries off the U.S. coast. It moved in June 2015 to adopt the Deep Sea Corals Amendment.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a D.C.-based group that represents the commercial fishing industry, also praised the final designation Thursday as an example “of the right way to protect these resources.”

“This is a situation where the industry came together with the council, with NOAA and with environmentalists and came up with a plan that created a compromise that everyone could live with,” Vanasse said in a phone interview. “It’s a bright, shining example of how to do it right.”

Read the full story at The Daily Press

Some of Earth’s oldest creatures are now protected off the Jersey Shore

December 15, 2016 — To preserve some of the oldest living creatures on Earth, the federal government announced Wednesday that it had created an enormous protected area off the coast of New Jersey to protect deep-sea corals and other hidden ecological treasures.

At more than 40,000 square miles (the size of Virginia), the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep Sea Coral Protection Area includes about a dozen deep-water chasms, including the fabled Hudson Canyon. The area begins more than 70 miles offshore and parallels the coast from Long Island to North Carolina. Lautenberg, the U.S. senator from New Jersey who died in 2013, championed several deepwater species.

The agreement was hashed out by several stakeholders including NOAA Mid-Atlantic Fisheries, fishermen  and marine scientists.

Cold-water corals live hundreds of meters under the water. Until the fishing industry started harvesting using bottom trawling, the creatures were undisturbed for millennia. Commercial fishermen using “canyon busters,” however, have raked the world’s sea floors to harvest mackerel, monkfish and squid. The equipment boosts fisheries production but also topples and destroys the fragile coral. What survives can take centuries, even thousands of years, to bounce back. As a result, species that depend on the coral for their habitats — spider crabs, the bizarre rhinochimera, and scores of other rarely seen animals — are also left unprotected and imperiled.

Read the full story at The Philadelphia Inquirer

MAFMC & NOAA Fisheries Announce Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-Sea Coral Protection Area

December 14, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, NOAA Fisheries and the Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council announced publication of the final rule for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s action to designate a large offshore protected area for deep sea corals in the Mid-Atlantic. The Council approved the Deep Sea Corals Amendment to the Mackerel, Squid, Butterfish Fishery Management Plan in 2015 in order to protect deep sea corals from the impacts of bottom-tending fishing gear.

Most deep sea corals are slow-growing and fragile, making them vulnerable to damage from certain types of fishing gear that contact the sea floor. This final rule designates a large “deep sea coral zone” in areas where corals have been observed or where they are likely to occur. Under the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), regional fishery management councils have the disretionary authority to designate zones where fishing may be restricted to protect deep sea corals. Although corals have been protected as essential fish habitat, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is the first of the eight U.S. regional fishery management councils to use this discretionary authority.

The Council named the protected area in honor of the late Senator Frank Lautenberg, a five-term United States senator from New Jersey who was responsible for several important pieces of ocean conservation legislation, including the MSA provisions allowing for deep sea coral protections. The Frank R. Lautenberg Deep Sea Coral Protection Area encompasses areas of known or highly likely coral presence in underwater canyons or slope areas along the continental shelf edge, as well as deeper areas where the presence of corals is uncertain, but where little or no fishing effort currently occurs. In total, the coral zone encompasses more than 38,000 square miles of federal waters off the Mid-Atlantic coast, an area approximately the size of the state of Virginia.

Within the protected area, commercial fishermen are prohibited from using most types of bottom-tending fishing gear such as trawls, dredges, bottom longlines, and traps. The rule does not apply to recreational fishing, commercial gear types that do not contact the sea floor, or the American lobster trap fishery. An exemption is also provided for the deep sea red crab commercial trap fishery. Vessels may transit through the area if fishing gear is stowed and not available for immediate use.

Development of the deep sea coral protection area was informed by several recent scientific research efforts undertaken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, including several deep sea surveys and the development of a predictive deep sea coral habitat suitability model. Using this information, members of the Council’s advisory panels, deep sea coral experts, fishing industry members, and other stakeholders cooperatively reviewed  this information to identify the landward boundaries for the protected area.

“This is a great story of regional collaboration among the fishing industry, the Mid-Atlantic Council, the research community, and environmental organizations to protect what we all agree is a valuable ecological resource,” said John Bullard, Regional Administrator for the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office. “We owe a debt of gratitude to former Council Chair Rick Robins, who led the effort to establish this large protected area, which totals about 24 million acres, the size of state of Virginia. I’d also like to single out the contribution of current Vice Chairman Warren Elliot, who chaired the two-day workshop where all the stakeholders used the best available science to negotiate and agree upon the boundaries of the area to protect.”

“The Mid-Atlantic Council is extremely pleased that NOAA Fisheries has approved the Council’s recommended protection of deep sea corals in the Mid-Atlantic,” said Council chairman Michael Luisi. “We are proud of this achievement and want to thank and congratulate all those who contributed to this ground-breaking effort in the Atlantic.”

See the full release at NOAA