Saving Seafood

Permit banking threat helped drive Canastra Rafael deal

October 6, 2017 — Richard and Raymond Canastra weren’t the only ones interested in buying Carlos Rafael’s New Bedford, Massachusetts-based fishing empire, Richard Canastra said in an interview with a local radio station on Thursday.

Several big corporations have approached both Rafael and the two brothers to inquire about either buying or investing in the 42-permit, 32 fishing vessel operation, he told drive-time, talk-show host Phil Paleologos on WBSM 1420 AM, in the nearby town of Fairhaven. But the “biggest competitors” Canastra said he was concerned about are non-governmental organizations that could buy Rafael’s permits and “bank” them.

The Nature Conservancy has been making an effort to buy up fishing permits in coastal towns, especially for groundfish, and leasing quotas to fishermen for more than a decade. Geoff Smith, marine director for the NGO’s Maine chapter, estimated that between 12 and 15 groundfish permits have been bought in New England over the past seven years, but he said the Nature Conservancy has not met with Rafael or anyone to make an offer for his permits.

“We’re not interested,” he told Undercurrent Friday. “…We’ve had no contact and we have no plans to contact anyone.”

Smith’s group was interested, two years ago, in obtaining at least one of the groundfish permits now owned by Rafael, according to Canastra.

“There was only one offer up in Maine and that was from the NGO, and I believe it was Nature Conservancy,” Canastra said, adding: “So do you want to see those permits go to an NGO, where it can be put on a shelf or the permit could be leased out to their favorites? That’s been happening since sectors.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Maine fishermen testing a ‘game-changer’ for protected cod

July 25, 2016 — GEORGETOWN, Maine — Like many Maine fishermen, Bryan Kelley faces a dilemma as he looks to diversify beyond the lobster that account for the bulk of his catch.

To target pollock, which are relatively common in the Gulf of Maine, he has to fish in the same areas frequented by cod, a type of groundfish protected through strict federal catch limits.

“We literally have to stay away from the codfish,” Kelley said while standing on his 40-foot boat moored in the Five Islands harbor of Georgetown. “I could fill this with codfish if I wanted to, but that wouldn’t help anybody in this sector and that is not why we are out here.”

To help him catch the groundfish he wants and avoid the species he doesn’t, Kelley has begun experimenting with a contraption akin to a conventional fishing reel on steroids and with an electronic brain. The “automatic jigging machines” loaned to Kelley and a handful of other fishermen by The Nature Conservancy allow them to more accurately target the water column where pollock hang out and stay off the bottom where cod lurk. The machines’ simple hooks and lures also ostensibly reduce inadvertent “by-catch” of cod while avoiding other downsides of trawlnets and gill nets more commonly used by fishermen.

“That’s part of the draw of it: It’s the quickest and easiest I have ever rigged anything up in my life,” Kelley said.

Geoff Smith, marine program director at the Maine chapter of the The Nature Conservancy, said preliminary reviews of the machines have been largely positive.

“This project is really about helping fishermen target those healthy stocks (of fish) while avoiding the codfish to allow them to rebuild,” said Smith, whose organization owns several groundfish permits in the Gulf of Maine. “We really feel that these jigging machines, if fished properly, can be selective and have minimal impact on the seafloor. … And if they work for fishermen, we think they could be a real game-changer.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald