Saving Seafood

Judge sets deadlines in fish espionage case

March 5, 2019 — The opposing sides in the industrial espionage lawsuit filed by National Fish & Seafood against a Florida competitor have spent much of the past two months wrangling over discovery and a federal judge has set deadlines that could end the squabbling and allow the case to move forward.

U.S. District Court Judge M. Page Kelly on Friday acceded to requests from Gloucester-based National Fish and Florida-based Tampa Bay Fisheries and other defendants to extend the deadlines for discovery.

Kelly, who sits in federal court in Boston, set March 15 as the deadline for all written fact discovery and April 15 for the close of all fact discovery.

In its lawsuit, National Fish claims that executives at Florida-based Tampa Bay Fisheries encouraged and conspired with Kathleen A. Scanlon, a former National Fish employee, to copy “substantial volumes of NFS’ confidential business information and trade secrets”  in her final days at National Fish before she started a position with Tampa Bay Fisheries.

Scanlon, who rose to chief of research and development and quality control in her 23 years at National Fish, denies the allegations, as do the other Tampa Bay executives named as defendants.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA Fisheries Proposes Management Measures for the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery 2019 Fishing Year

February 20, 2019 — The following was released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

Today, NOAA Fisheries published the proposed rule to set management measures for the Atlantic Sea Scallop fishery for the 2019 fishing year (April 1, 2019 – March 31, 2020). Framework 30 would:

  • Set specifications for the scallop fishery for fishing year 2019, including days-at-sea (DAS) allocations, individual fishing quotas (IFQs), and sea scallop access area trip allocations. These allocations would be similar to those set in the 2018 fishing year. This action would also set precautionary default 2020 specifications, in case we implement the next framework after the April 1, 2020 start of the 2020 fishing year;
  • Allocate effort into three rotational access areas (Mid-Atlantic, Nantucket Lightship-West, and Closed Area 1). Scallop landings allocated to Closed Area 1 would be “flexible” and could be landed from any available access area;
  • Set a 205,000 lb Northern Gulf of Maine total allowable catch (TAC) for 2019 that would be split as 137,500 lb for the limited access general category (LAGC) and 67,500 lb for the limited access fleet;
  • Standardize default specifications for limited access DAS and LAGC IFQ allocations; and
  • Standardize the approach used to set the number of access area trips available to the LAGC IFQ fleet.

To get all the details on these proposed modifications, read the proposed rule as published in the Federal Register today.

We are accepting comments through March 7, 2019.

Please submit comments either through the online e-rulemaking portal or by mailing your comments to:

Michael Pentony, Regional Administrator
National Marine Fisheries Service
55 Great Republic Drive
Gloucester, MA, 01930.

Please mark the outside of the envelope, “Comments on the Proposed Rule for Scallop Framework 30.”

Questions?
Fishermen: Contact Travis Ford at 978-281-9233
Media: Contact Allison Ferreira at 978-281-9103 or at

New measures proposed for Gulf of Maine scallops

February 13, 2019 — Federal fishery regulators are considering new measures for the Atlantic sea scallop management plan and have scheduled a series of public hearings from Maine to Virginia to collect public comment.

The public hearings, which include an April 3 session at the state Division of Marine Fisheries’s Annisquam River Station on Emerson Avenue in Gloucester, will touch upon three primary issues contained in Amendment 21 currently being developed by the New England Fishery Management Council:

* Measures to support a growing scallop fishery in the federal waters of the northern Gulf of Maine.

* Increasing the individual fishing quota possession limit of 600 pounds for those fishing with a limited access general permit.

* Measures that would allow limited access vessels to transfer quota to vessels fishing on a limited access general permit.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Deep cut for fishermen of herring amid population loss

February 8, 2019 —  Fishermen of an important species of lobster bait will have to contend with a deep cut in quota this year due to concerns about the fish’s population.

Atlantic herring are the source of a major fishery on the East Coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Thursday that it’s cutting this year’s herring quota from nearly 110 million pounds to about 33 million pounds.

Read the full story at WRAL

NOAA after shutdown: Priority getting fishermen back to work

January 29, 2019 — Furloughed NOAA Fisheries staffers returned to work Monday from the partial shutdown of the federal government and commenced the task of playing catchup as a new fishing season beckons.

In Gloucester, the furloughed workers, sent home 35 days ago, resumed their duties at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office on Great Republic Drive as Regional Administrator Mike Pentony acknowledged the shutdown’s impact on fishing stakeholders and set the overarching agenda moving forward.

“We will have three priorities as we ramp back up to full and normal operations: getting fishermen back to work; completing consultations so federally permitted projects in your communities can move forward; and ensuring that adequate monitoring and protections are in place for our protected resources,” Pentony said in a statement.

Pentony conceded the shutdown has left the agency behind schedule for completing several essential actions as the 2018 fishing season winds down and the May 1 start of the 2019 season moves closer.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

‘We need to fish’ New Bedford fishermen tell toll of shutdown

January 28, 2019 — Many things fell into place Friday that led to the government reopening, including the words of a New Bedford scalloper in the nation’s capital.

Capt. Jack Morris, director of operations for FV Holdings LLC, spoke on a panel conducted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the shutdown prevented one of his vessels from fishing.

“We’re bleeding,” Morris said. “We need to go fishing.”

Hours later, President Donald Trump announced a deal had been struck to reopen the government through Feb. 15.

The shutdown didn’t allow Morris to transfer a license from an out-of-service vessel to a new one.

“It’s a simple application that’s done all the time, and it’s sitting on the desk of the permit office in Gloucester,” Morris said. “There’s nobody at that desk. It’s empty.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester looks to up seafood matchmaking

January 28, 2019 — The city continued its outreach to Gloucester seafood businesses on Thursday, hoping to bolster its presence — and the array of fresh Gloucester seafood products — at the upcoming Seafood Expo North America in Boston.

Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken and other city officials met at City Hall with executives from Mortillaro Lobster Inc., Intershell and Cape Seafoods and its North Atlantic and Pacific Seafood subsidiary to expound on the benefits of attending one of the largest seafood shows in the world.

In a sense, the city was preaching to members of the choir. Intershell and Cape Seafoods already have booked their own booths at the show, which is set to run March 17 to 19 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Maine lobster harvest topped 100m lbs again

January 23, 2019 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is still auditing its 2018 lobster catch and won’t issue a report until February, but department spokesperson Jeff Nichols has reportedly confirmed that the US state landed more than 100 million lbs for the eighth year in a row.

Speaking at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Market Conference, in San Diego, California, last week, Keith Moores, president of Gloucester, Massachusetts-based frozen seafood supplier J.W. Bryce, estimated that Maine’s 4,500 harvesters landed about 119m lbs of lobster in 2018, an 8m lb increase over 2017, the Portland (Maine) Press Herald reported.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Shutdown hampers planning for management of fisheries

January 23, 2019 — The New England Fishery Management Council will meet as scheduled next week, but the agenda for the three-day meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, will be colored by the ongoing shutdown of much of the federal government.

While the council is not scheduled to vote on any final actions, the shutdown has precluded a legion of scientific and fisheries management staff at the Gloucester-based Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office and NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center from contributing analysis and participating as they normally would in the management process.

“It’s really affected the plan development teams,” said Janice Plante, council spokeswoman. “Without their participation, the plan development teams just can’t get the analyses done. We knew this would be one implication of the shutdown. But the longer and longer it goes on, the more and more we miss their participation.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

New bill would change Massachusetts lobster processing laws

January 18, 2019 — The first bill introduced in the Massachusetts Senate in 2019 aims to modernize the state’s lobster processing rules and expand in-state processing.

Massachusetts currently allows only for the production and sale of live and cooked lobsters and canned lobster meat, while raw and frozen lobsters are shipped to either Maine or Canada for processing before returning to the state.

“Our state has the second-largest lobster catch in the country. Yet without this bill, raw and frozen lobster parts are processed in Canada or Maine only to be brought back to our local consumers,” said the bill’s sponsor, State Senate Majority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester). “This bill modernizes those lobster laws to bolster the fishing industry and give consumers, including local restaurants and food stores, more choices, all while sustainably supporting coastal fishing communities.”

In 2017, Massachusetts lobstermen landed 16.57 million pounds of lobster for a total value of $81.54 million.

Read the full story at National Fisherman