Saving Seafood

Mass. Seafood Collaborative calls for sanctions on Russian fish imports

March 8, 2022 — The Boston-based Massachusetts Seafood Collaborative, which has several Gloucester members, is calling for sanctions to take a bite out of Russian fish imports because of the war in Ukraine.

The collaborative, which counts the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association as a member, said that in 2021, the U.S. imported $4 billion worth of Russian fish for processing, leading directly to jobs and paychecks for Massachusetts residents.

“Though Russia blocks imports of American fish,” the collaborative said, “our commitment to free trade and open markets allowed this one-sided relationship to bear fruit. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has forced our industry — and our nation — to decide between our ideals and our wallets.”

The collaborative called on elected officials to immediately sanction Russian fish exports into the U.S.

It was unclear what this would mean for Gloucester.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Memorial Celebrates 20th Anniversary

August 6, 2021 — Near the far end of Gloucester’s boulevard, a stretch of waterfront road that wraps around the city’s western harbor, stands a bronze statue. A woman, her feet braced against the wind, hoists a baby in her left arm and rests her right hand on the back of a young boy. She gazes seaward, watching, it seems, for the return of a fishing boat carrying her husband, her father, her brother.

The statue, the Fishermen’s Wives Memorial, does not draw the same attention as the iconic Man at the Wheel a few minutes’ walk to the east. But for Lyn Burke, the statue is at least as important as its more famous counterpart.

“These are strong women who have been holding up the community for hundreds of years,” says Burke, the founder of LuminArtz, a Gloucester-based nonprofit the produces light-based art installations.

So Burke decided her organization should do something to highlight the memorial—and everything it stands for—as the piece celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The result of this inspiration was an immersive light and audio installation that takes place on August 5, the date the statue was first unveiled.

The installation bathed the memorial in a marine blue light and illuminated the granite paving stones around the statue, which are inscribed with names and messages from the donors who helped fund the project. The voices of local women telling their stories or struggle and success were broadcast intermixed with an original soundtrack composed by percussion artist Maria Finkelmeier.

Burke recalls the vision she had: “It will be immersive. Visitors will want to sit and listen to the voices.”

Read the full story at North Shore Magazine

MASSACHUSETTS: Light shows to honor fishermen’s wives

August 3, 2021 — Twenty years ago on the morning of Aug. 5, Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, was attending to the final details of the public dedication celebration of the 12-foot Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Memorial on Stacy Boulevard along Gloucester’s historic harbor.

Her joy would soon turn to utter despair.

“We had a wonderful event planned but it was very painful because we lost a boat that day,” she recalled. Early that morning, the Gloucester fishing vessel Starbound was struck by a freighter; one crewman survived and three died at sea.

But the women of the fishermen’s wives association carried on with the event which attracted an estimated 5,000 people.

“It wasn’t easy that day but we carried on and we wanted to acknowledge the pain of the widows. As women in the fishing industry, we carry on to help with the needs of fishermen, their families and the community. That comes with the title of being a fisherman’s wife,” said Sanfilippo.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fighting for fishing grounds in face of wind farms

June 1, 2021 — For almost a half century, Angela Sanfilippo has spearheaded campaigns to protect the physical and economic health of commercial fishermen, their families and the communities in which they live.

The longtime president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association waged battle with energy behemoths while opposing two live natural gas pipeline terminals within about a dozen miles of Gloucester’s shores.

She fought foreign encroachment into U.S. fishing grounds and wrestled with fishing regulators over onerous fishery management regulations that have shrunk access to the rich fishing grounds that surround Cape Ann.

Now Sanfilippo is saddling up one more time to try to prevent the inexorable march of offshore wind projects in Massachusetts waters from blowing away elements of the Bay State’s historic and productive fishing industry.

“We are not crazy enough to think we’re going to stop this massive thing now,” Sanfilippo said at the beginning of an extended interview following the federal government’s final approval on May 10 of the Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind project, located south of Martha’s Vineyard. “But we want to be at the table.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

In Massachusetts, offshore wind opens up job training, economic opportunities

August 17, 2020 — In a northern Massachusetts fishing town, an advocacy group that has opposed an offshore wind farm is opening up to economic opportunities the project could provide.

As part of a $1.3 million state grant program, a partnership between fishing advocacy group the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association and the Northeast Maritime Institute will enroll commercial fishermen in a certification course that will qualify them to transport people and supplies to wind turbine sites for the Vineyard Wind project. Gloucester has traditionally been a major New England fishing port, but the industry has been hard hit by declining fish stocks and regulations designed to prevent overfishing.

Though the program has not started actively recruiting participants yet, word of mouth has raised some interest and there are already five names on the waiting list, said Angela Sanfilippo, president of the organization.

The Gloucester group has spoken out against Vineyard Wind from the start, but recognizes offshore wind is likely to be a reality. The group wants to help the fishermen it serves adapt to whatever comes next, Sanfilippo said.

Read the full story at Energy News Network

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishermen’s Wives tout Gov. Baker’s support

October 15, 2018 — Gov. Charlie Baker said he and his wife, Lauren, have taken 20 vacation days over the last three years. On 17 of them, he said, they’ve visited Gloucester.

The affinity between the governor and the city continued on Saturday morning, when the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association held an event at the Gloucester House Restaurant to thank Baker for his support of the fishing industry.

The group has officially endorsed Baker, who is running for re-election against Democrat Jay Gonzalez in the November election. The governor, whose office listed the event as part of his campaign schedule, received both praise and a bouquet of flowers from Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association President Angela Sanfilippo and Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken, the group’s vice president.

“We need representation and Charlie Baker is our representation,” Romeo Theken, who has also endorsed Baker, said. “He will listen to us and we will be heard.”

Sanfilippo said the governor’s ties to Gloucester and the fishing industry go back two decades, when Baker, then a health care executive, worked on a plan to obtain health insurance for fishermen.

When Baker decided to run for governor, Sanfilippo said he showed up in her office one day and said, “I want to learn all about the fishing industry because if I become governor I want to know what to do.”

In his remarks to the crowd of about 75 people, Baker, wearing a blue shirt and jeans, ran down several issues of concern to the fishing industry and ways the state is trying to help. He said the state has contributed about $500,000 to an industry-based survey, invested grant money in the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, and continues to work on making sure the fishing industry has access to health insurance.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Seafood industry lobbies state leaders to ‘buy local’

October 3, 2018 — The farm-to-table movement has renewed a focus on locally produced foods, from fresh milk and meat to fruits and vegetables.

So too the state’s seafood industry hopes to leverage a growing interest among consumers in buying local products to lift sales amid intense foreign competition.

To that aim, industry officials gathered at the Statehouse on Tuesday to celebrate the annual Seafood Day, highlighting the contributions of the multi-billion dollar industry.

“More than 98 percent of the fish in the United States comes from overseas,” said Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, a nonprofit group that supports the region’s commercial fishing industry.

“So the public needs to support us by demanding local seafood when they go out to eat,” she said. “When you buy fish, make sure its local.”

The Statehouse event, co-sponsored by the nonprofit Fishing Partnership Support Services and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, featured freshly prepared seafood, music, speeches by state officials and industry leaders, and general information about the size and scope of the industry.

“This is all about increasing awareness of the seafood industry and showing appreciation for our courageous, hard-working fishermen,” said John Hanley, a spokesman for the event.

Gloucester fisherman Joe Orlando said the industry is constantly struggling to adapt to frequent closures and strict limits on how many fish can be caught.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

In Their Own Words: ‘Dead In The Water’ Lets Fishermen Tell Their Story

August 29, 2018 — What convinced Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, that filmmaker David Wittkower could tell the story of the decline of the New England commercial fishing industry was that he wanted to interview fishermen and let them speak in their own voice.

“That never happened,” she said. In most stories in the media about the industry, fishermen’s words “are always twisted,” she said. But she sensed that wouldn’t happen with Wittkower, that he’d let fishermen tell their own stories.

“This documentary tells the story of what people have endured through the years, and what we’re still enduring,” said Sanfilippo, whose organization helped finance “Dead in the Water,” Wittkower’s documentary on the industry, which screens at the Chatham Orpheum Theater on Saturday, Sept. 8 at 10 a.m.

Wittkower, who lives in Los Angeles but spent his middle and high school years in Rockport, where his parents still live, said he became interested in the plight of the commercial fishing industry about four years ago when he noticed fewer and fewer fishing boats docked in Gloucester. He began talking to folks and eventually made his way to Sanfilippo, who gave him the lowdown about how catch limits, days at sea restrictions and other regulations were killing the industry and making it impossible for young people to take up fishing.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Chronicle 

 

Gloucester fishing documentary wins film prize; Screenings planned along Mass., NH seacoasts

August 6, 2018 –Filmmaker David Wittkower knew he had to do something or his commercial fishing documentary “Dead in the Water” might indeed be dead in the water.

Following eight months of showings throughout Massachusetts and other parts of coastal New England, Wittkower’s film, which traces the erosion of the once-proud Gloucester groundfish fleet, was largely rejected by most of the film festivals the director tried to enter.

The over-arching criticism was that the film lacked balance, failing to properly include the perspective of federal fishing regulators — most specifically the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries — and environmentalists as the counterpoint to the already powerful message of an industry in trouble.

Wittkower, who produced the film with former Gloucester Mayor John Bell and Angela Sanfilippo of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, also received feedback that the film — at 80 minutes — was just too long to be easily included in the lineups of films assembled by the various festivals.

So Wittkower, originally from Rockport, went to work. He shortened the film from 80 minutes to one hour and added additional perspective from the regulatory and environmental camps.

Read the full story at The Eagle-Tribune

Gloucester fishermen ‘desperate’ for federal bill to ease catch limits

July 16, 2018 — A bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this week is being cheered by fishermen in Gloucester who are hoping for a lifeline for the struggling industry.

“It’s desperate. We are in a desperate situation. We need a change,” said Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association. “It’s a good start.”

The new law would allow more flexibility for fish populations to be rebuilt, and give more authority to the regional fishery management councils, which may be more in touch with the local industry.

The bill, which passed the House on Wednesday, would change a decades-old fisheries law meant to restrict overfishing in a way proponents say can protect both fishermen and fishing stocks.

“My bill will update (the law) to ensure a proper balance between the biological needs of fish stocks and the economic needs of fishermen and coastal communities,” said Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). “We know that each region works within their unique conditions, which is why I fought to ensure the management process will be improved by allowing regional fisheries to develop plans that meet their local needs.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald