Saving Seafood

Lobster pots becoming research platforms

October 11, 2018 — Massachusetts boasts more than 1,200 commercially licensed lobstermen who set more than 300,000 traps in state waters each season — and most of the gear is set without much in the way of credible scientific data on habitat or ocean conditions.

A project call LobsterNet is looking to change the old world approach to the analytics of harvesting lobsters by attaching sensors to the traps to collect data on ocean conditions such as acidity, or pH, and temperature.

The enhanced traps, which automatically will upload the marine data to a satellite network when pulled from the water, will be woven into a data collection network to help advance understanding of ocean conditions and potentially develop new business elements of a “Blue Economy.”

“It’s really kind of a transformative,” said Tom Balf, a Gloucester-based marine consultant on the LobsterNet project. “We’re taking an existing device, a lobster trap, and turning it into a research platform. At the same time, we’re adding value to the existing practice of going out and putting traps in the water by turning lobstermen into data collectors and researchers.”

LobsterNet received a $133,156 grant from the state Seaport Economic Council on Tuesday to begin developing and deploying the low-cost network of lobster pots that can collect and distribute key environmental data for fishermen and researchers alike.

The project’s other partners are Gloucester Innovation, the UMass Gloucester Marine Station, the Angle Center for Entrepreneurship at Endicott College, the SigFox network provider and the Scituate-based Lobster Foundation of Massachusetts.

“Data such as temperature and pH will be captured at depth and in greater spatial and temporal resolution than is now possible,” the Seaport Economic Council said in a release announcing the grants through its Grand Challenge program to promote Internet of Things, or IoT, technologies to bolster the state’s marine economy. “This information will help fishermen and researchers better understand what is affecting lobster habitats in general and individual lobster fertility, lifespan or health in particular.”

The sensors used in the project already have been developed, though Balf said they now will undergo further, more rigorous testing as the project ramps up. He said the project’s organizers expect to conduct trials with lobstermen “in the early fall and winter” across Cape Ann while simultaneously testing the SigFox wireless communication network.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

ROBERT E. JOHNSON: Creating a ‘blue economy’ on the South Coast

October 5, 2018 — From the earliest days of the whaling industry, the ocean has run through the veins of the South Coast economy. Before anybody knew the term, the “blue economy” sustained families and communities along the I-195 corridor.

According to the World Bank, the blue economy is “sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.”

Today, the challenge for business, government, and academic leaders is to create a new blue economy ecosystem along the South Coast, one that sheds the natural tendency toward parochialism, and is driven by collaboration and innovation.

With its location and resources, the South Coast is uniquely positioned to drive this process. The stakes are high: the average median family income in New Bedford and Fall River (where most SouthCoast citizens live) is about half the state average of $70,000. The unemployment rate is chronically higher than the state average and the educational attainment level is lower. We have a moral obligation to confront that economic reality.

Last April, UMass Dartmouth and the National Council on Competitiveness brought 100 leaders together to discuss the possibilities. From Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito to Congressmen Bill Keating and Joe Kennedy, from General Dynamics to the MF Foley Fish Company, and from the New England Council to the Mass. Business Roundtable, there was a consensus that the SouthCoast has the DNA to build a job-creating, income-increasing “Blue Economy Corridor” from Rhode Island to the Cape Cod Canal.

Read the full story at the Boston Business Journal

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

Who Has The Edge In The Lobster Trade War?

September 27, 2018 — There are few New England scenes as iconic as the ol’ lobster shack. Local crustaceans being served up fresh and delicious in whole or in roll form. Well, it turns out that “just-off-the boat” experience has pretty broad appeal … like as far away as China.

“There’s always been a demand for it, but they wanted the live lobster,” said Arthur Sawyer, a Gloucester lobster fisherman and President of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “Live lobster — ya know — it’s like a 36 hour thing to get to China.”

A decade ago, the Chinese market for U.S. live lobster was essentially nonexistent. But a few years back, shippers finally worked out how to reliably get fresh live lobster to China. It was a game changer. Last year, the country imported nearly $150 million worth.

“There’s a whole lot of exporters that have gotten into the lobster business strictly because of China,” said Sawyer.

But live lobster got swept up in the trade war this July, when Beijing slapped a 25 percent tariff on U.S. imports. And just three months in, it’s already having an impact here. Vince Mortillaro, a local wholesaler, said China has stopped buying from him completely, and he’s has had to lay off three employees.

“They’re affecting me a lot,” he said of the tariffs. “We’re losing like 40,000 pounds of sales a week.”

For now, the pinch wholesalers are feeling has yet to trickle down to lobster fishermen on the boats, who sell to the wholesalers, or the lobster-craving public. As for why? Well, it’s complicated. Live lobster exports are an important part of the equation. But a sizable chunk of New England total haul each year gets sold off to be processed.

Read the full story at WGBH

City leaders angered by US government action against former Rafael captains

September 26, 2018 — A recent action by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to punish 22 captains of fishing vessels owned by convicted New England fishing mogul Carlos Rafael crosses the line, believe some important figures in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the South Coast Today reports.

Last week NOAA filed a 51-page superseding charging document that added 20 of Rafael’s ship captains to the list of the two previously charged with violating a long list of fishing-related regulations. It seeks the revocation of 17 of the captains’ operator permits.

The captains have 30 days to request modifications to the charges against them, administrative hearings to challenge the charges, or additional time to respond.

NOAA’s latest move, which also includes increasing civil money penalties from about $1 million to $3m, builds on a civil action filed in January.

Rafael began serving a 46-month sentence in November after pleading guilty in March 2017 to operating a long-running scheme through which he submitted falsified records to the federal government to evade federal fishing quotas.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA’s recent Codfather update leaves New Bedford reeling

September 25, 2018 — Right when it seemed as if the seas were settling around New Bedford, Massachusetts and the crimes of disgraced fishing magnate Carlos “Codfather” Rafael, another wave of controversy has hit the beleagured city.

The latest contention in New Bedford comes in the wake of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) issuance of a 51-page superseding charging document related to the agency’s civil administrative case against Rafael, initiated in January 2018.

Earlier this month, NOAA filed the new document, which called for the revocation of 17 operator permits held by Rafael’s captains and increased the civil penalties associated with the case from just under USD 1 million (USD 983,528, EUR 834,673) to more than USD 3 million (USD 3.3 million, EUR 2.79 million). The noncriminal document also upped the number of alleged fishing law violations – ranging from misreporting species to gear, scallop, and observer violations – to 88, according to The Standard Times.

These new developments have left some stakeholders in New Bedford’s fishing industry baffled. Jim Kendall, a former fishing captain and executive director of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, told local newspaper South Coast Today that he suspects former New Bedford mayor and ex-regional administrator for NOAA John Bullard of continued involvement with the case, even though Bullard retired from his post back on 19 January.

“I’ll tell you right now, you can print it or not, but I think John Bullard still has his thumb on the scale,” Kendall said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NOAA seeks $3 million in fines from Carlos Rafael

September 24, 2018 — Carlos Rafael sits in federal prison, nearing the end of the first year of his 46-month sentence for bulk smuggling and lying for at least four years about the nature and value of his landings.

But that doesn’t mean NOAA is done with the man known as “The Codfather” or many of his vessel captains.

The federal fisheries regulator has updated the civil case against the convicted fishing mogul, more than doubling the number of violations to 88, seeking to revoke 42 of Rafael’s federal fishing permits and increasing the total amount of civil penalties against Rafael, his partners and some of his captains to $3,356,269 from the $983,528 contained in the original charging document.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also said it will seek to prevent “Rafael or his agents” from applying for any NOAA permits in the future.

The new charging document also takes aim at the vessel captains that ran Rafael’s fleet throughout his era of malfeasance.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Ex-fish exec’s fraud sentence: 2 years in prison, $1.2M restitution

September 21, 2018 — Another former National Fish & Seafood executive is on his way to federal prison. But not for anything he did while director of sales at National Fish.

James R. Faro, 62, who worked at Gloucester-based National Fish from 2012 until approximately January, was sentenced Monday in U.S. District Court to two years in federal prison and ordered to pay $1.21 million in restitution.

Faro was convicted of conspiring to commit bank fraud at Marlborough-based Sea Star Seafood Corp., the frozen seafood distributor he founded in 1983.

As part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Faro admitted that he and John Crowley, the chief financial officer at Sea Star, conspired to defraud the Commerce Bank & Trust Company of Worcester by lying about the value of Sea Star’s outstanding accounts receivable to increase its borrowing limits.

Jack Ventola, the founder and president of National Fish, currently is serving a two-year sentence at the minimum-security Federal Medical Center, Devens in central Massachusetts after pleading guilty to failure to pay taxes on $2.9 million he “fraudulently diverted” from National Fish’s majority owners.

Ventola also was ordered to pay $1.07 million in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

Ventola admitted to conspiring with two other National Fish executives — senior sales executive Richard J. Pandolfo and an unnamed head of operations — and National Fish accountant and director Michael Bruno to defraud the IRS and Pacific Andes in a scheme involving a temporary labor company.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Processor: New hire had no know-how to steal fish secrets

September 14, 2018 — Tampa Bay Fisheries, the Florida seafood company that Gloucester-based National Fish & Seafood accuses of stealing trade secrets, has come out swinging in its first response to the charges.

In a document filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, Tampa Bay Fisheries characterized the civil lawsuit filed by NFS as “a fish tale about the one that got away” and claimed it never obtained any of the Gloucester seafood processor’s secrets.

The document was filed in opposition to NFS’ motion for a preliminary injunction. It  highlighted financial problems at NFS parent company Pacific Andes International Holdings — which is in the midst of an extraordinarily complex bankruptcy proceeding — and the criminal convictions of three top NFS executives or board members during the past two years.

“This is not a case about Tampa Bay seeking any information whatsoever from NFS,” Tampa Bay’s lawyers argued in their filing. “This is a case about NFS, a bankrupt company run by investors and still reeling from its top executives’ criminal convictions, seeking a pretext to undermine Tampa Bay’s legitimate success. The evidence is clear — there is no scheme and no grand conspiracy.”

U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin has yet to rule on NFS’ motion for the preliminary injunction.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Filmmaker documents ravages of green crabs

September 12, 2018 — More than a year ago, Gloucester filmmaker Nubar Alexanian laid out his airtight case against the rapacious European green crabs for Bruce Tarr and the incredulous state lawmaker had a suitable response:

“There’s a horror movie happening in my district and I didn’t even know about it,” Tarr told Alexanian.

As Alexanian’s new documentary short film, “Recipe For Disaster,” makes clear, the call is coming from inside the Great Marsh, which stretches from Gloucester to the New Hampshire border.

“I live on the marsh here,” Alexanian said Tuesday at the Walker Creek Media studio adjacent to his West Gloucester home. “I fly-fish and fish for striped bass here all season long. I know this marsh really well. Last June, when I first heard about the green crab problem, it was pretty shocking to me. So I just started shooting.”

The nationally honored filmmaker and photographer, with a catalog of cinema and books to his credit, set out to chronicle the extent of the green crabs’ largely unabated invasion into the coastal waters near his home and beyond. And what Alexanian found astounded him.

“In the film, we say there are millions and millions of the green crabs here already,” Alexanian said. “Now I would say it’s billions and billions.”

Alexanian put the finishing touches on the final edit around midnight Monday and only a few audio tweaks remain before the film is set to be screened next Tuesday, Sept. 18, at Cape Ann Cinema & Stage on Main Street in Gloucester’s West End.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times