Saving Seafood

Committee votes to let states receive more money from offshore drilling

September 14, 2018 — A House committee voted Thursday to increase the money coastal states receive from offshore oil and natural gas drilling off their coasts.

The bill, from Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.), would give Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama half of the fee and royalty payments that companies give the federal government to drill for oil and gas in a set of new wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

That would be an increase from the current 37.5 percent, which last year amounted to 0.4 percent of the government’s total income from offshore drilling going to Louisiana last year, or $11 million, Graves said.

At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Graves framed the issue as one of shoring up states’ coasts. All of the money Louisiana gets from offshore drilling goes to coastal resilience, and Graves said his bill would mandate a quarter of the money go for that purpose for all four states.

“We’ve got to stop the stupidity of spending billions of dollars after disasters instead of millions before,” Graves said.

The panel passed the bill by voice vote after an intense debate over whether Gulf states should get special treatment for the drilling that occurs off their shores.

In one exchange, Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), the panel’s top Democrat, wanted the money to go to all coastal states for resilience, not just the Gulf of Mexico ones.

Read the full story at The Hill

NFI seeks to reach administration on seafood trade in 2018

January 2, 2018 — Pressing the importance of all trade on the Donald Trump administration, including imported seafood, will be one of the top priorities of the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) in 2018.

The US seafood industry’s biggest trade association, representing close to 300 companies, is still smarting from several of the moves made by the White House and its Cabinet in their first year, including its formal withdrawal from a trade deal with Pacific countries, a lack of progress on a trade deal with Europe and implementation of the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (Simp).

But NFI president John Connelly said trade will remain a top focal point for the group in the New Year.

“We just need to spend more time on the Hill and in the administration to help them appreciate that not all trade is negative for the US,” Connelly told Undercurrent News in an December interview at his office in McLean, Virginia. “Seafood is not like steel or autos or something else. We cannot now produce enough seafood in the US, whether it be from wild capture or aquaculture, to feed all Americans.”

The US exports 40% to 60% of the seafood it produces, depending on the value of the dollar and some other factors, and imports about 85% of the seafood it consumes. Seafood is responsible for 1,270,141 jobs in the U.S. and imports account for 525,291 of those, according to Department of Commerce data noted by the association.

“Gladys, down in Brownsville, Texas, is cutting imported tilapia right now, and that job is extraordinarily important to her family. Why is that job any less important than a job involving domestic codfish?” Connelly said.

High points and low points in 2017

But in looking back at 2017, Connelly can point to at least one major trade-related victory: The removal of the prospective border adjustment tax from the legislative tax overhaul passed by Congress and signed by the president before leaving on its winter break. The provision, which was supported by several Republican leaders, would have forced some seafood dealers to raise their prices 30% to 40%, said Connelly, quoting a Wall Street Journal article.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

US seafood industry, ocean groups in unison against red snapper bill

December 19, 2017 — The National Fisheries Institute and ocean conservation groups don’t always see eye to eye on legislation, but they do with regard to HR 3588, the Red Snapper Act, which has been advanced by the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources.

They are both against it.

The bill, which the panel approved by a 22-16 vote following a brief markup hearing on Wednesday, along with two amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, would transfer management of the red snapper recreational fishery in the Gulf of Mexico from a federal fisheries management council to several gulf states, including Louisiana. Representative Garrett Graves, who introduced the bill, represents the Republican districts of northern Terrebonne and Lafourche, in Louisiana.

Graves’ bill must still get to the House floor for a vote. And its companion bill, S. 1686, introduced in August by Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy, also a Republican, in the upper chamber’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, has just two co-sponsors (Republicans John Kennedy, also from Louisiana, and Luther Strange, from Alabama).

But the recreational fishing industry is excited.

“The need to update our nation’s fisheries management system to ensure the conservation of our public marine resources and reasonable public access to those resources is abundantly clear. We look forward to the full House consideration of the bill,” said Patrick Murray, president of Coastal Conservation Association, one of the nation’s largest sport fishing groups, in a written statement following the vote.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News