Gloucester Archives - Page 28 of 45

Gloucester to host hearing on new shrimp rules

April 3, 2017 — The traveling roadshow for public comment on proposed changes to the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp fishery is set to hit Gloucester the first week of June.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates the northern shrimp fishery, has scheduled four public hearings on the draft of Amendment 3. The draft includes state-by-state allocations and increased accountability measures, but does not call for limiting the number of shrimpers allowed into the fishery.

The Gloucester public hearing is set for June 5 at 6 p.m. at the state Division of Marine Fisheries’s Annisquam River Station on Emerson Avenue. The deadline for all public comment is June 21.

The AFMSC closed the northern shrimp fishery in December 2013 and it remains shuttered because the stock has been plagued by historic lows in recruitment and spawning stock biomass.

Initially, the commission’s northern shrimp section said it was going to consider a limited access program “to address overcapacity” in the fishery that draws shrimpers from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. It later changed course.

“Due to the uncertainty about if or when the resource would rebuild and the fishery reopen, the section shifted the focus of draft Amendment 3 to consider measures to improve management of the northern shrimp fishery and resource,” the AFMSC stated.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A milestone in the war over the true state of cod

April 3, 2017 — For years, fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford have accused the federal government of relying on faulty science to assess the health of the region’s cod population, a fundamental flaw that has greatly exaggerated its demise, they say, and led officials to wrongly ban nearly all fishing of the iconic species.

The fishermen’s concerns resonated with Governor Charlie Baker, so last year he commissioned his own survey of the waters off New England, where cod were once so abundant that fishermen would say they could walk across the Atlantic on their backs.

Now, in a milestone in the war over the true state of cod in the Gulf of Maine, Massachusetts scientists have reached the same dismal conclusion that their federal counterparts did: The region’s cod are at a historic low — about 80 percent less than the population from just a decade ago.

“The bottom line is that the outlook of Gulf of Maine cod is not good,” said Micah Dean, a scientist who oversaw the survey for the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “What we’ve seen is a warning sign about the future of the fishery, and it’s a stark change from what we saw a decade ago.”

The state’s surveys, conducted on an industry trawler, also found a dearth of juvenile cod and large cod, suggesting that the population could remain in distress for years. The lack of small cod reflects limited reproduction, while the absence of the larger fish is a problem because they’re capable of prolific spawning.

Dean said he hoped fishermen would find the results credible, given that the survey sought to accommodate their concerns about the federal survey, conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

To address their concerns, the state spent more than $500,000 to trawl for cod in 10 times as many locations. Rather than sampling the waters twice a year, as NOAA does, the state cast its nets every month from last April to January, and kept them in the water about 50 percent longer. They also searched for the fish in deeper waters, where fishermen have said they tend to congregate.

“It was an exhaustive survey meant to provide an answer to the questions that the fishermen were posing,” Dean said. “But the fish weren’t there.”

Some longtime cod fishermen remain unconvinced. They say the historic fishery has been fully rebuilt, although the federal and state surveys estimate it is only about 6 percent of the level needed to sustain a healthy population.

Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition in Gloucester, which represents many of the region’s commercial fishermen, maintained that the state surveys had some of the same flaws as the federal surveys. Rather than conducting random sampling throughout the Gulf of Maine, the researchers should have trawled for cod in areas where fishermen are finding them, he and other critics said.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester to host hearing on new shrimp rules

March 31, 2017 — The traveling roadshow for public comment on proposed changes to the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp fishery is set to hit Gloucester the first week of June.

The Gloucester public hearing is set for June 5 at 6 p.m. at the state Division of Marine Fisheries’s Annisquam River Station on Emerson Avenue. The deadline for all public comment is June 21.

The ASMFC closed the northern shrimp fishery in December 2013 and it remains shuttered because the stock has been plagued by historic lows in recruitment and spawning stock biomass.

Beyond establishing state allocations and new accountability measures, the draft amendment includes gear provisions, including the mandatory use of “size-sorting grate systems designed to minimize harvest of small (presumably male) shrimp.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

FishOn: Cod docufilm features Gloucester cast

March 27, 2017 — So, a cod fish walks into a bar and the bartender says, “Why the long face?”

Perhaps the answer to that endearing question will be divulged in one of the three films on commercial fishing that already have hit the screen or soon will.

(And, according to FishOn’s far-flung film sources, there may be a fourth fishing documentary on the way, but that is yet undocumented. As always, watch this space.)

The one documentary already completed is “Sacred Cod,” which examines the New England cod fishery through the lens of its history and influence, ultimately detailing the collapse that led to the current fishing crisis in the Gulf of Maine.

The film has a decidedly Bay State feel, as much of it is set in Gloucester and the waters around Cape Ann and features a cast of familiar faces from the waterfront and among fishing stakeholders.

It is produced and directed by Steve Liss, a long-time, award-winning photographer at Time magazine who now teaches at Endicott College in Beverly; David Abel, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Boston Globe; and Andy Laub, an accomplished editor and founder of As It Happens Creative.

“Sacred Cod” showed at a few festivals last fall and will receive its greatest exposure on April 13, when it premieres at 9 p.m. on the Discovery Channel and joins the cable network’s revolving spring lineup.

It will be screened twice in Boston — April 4 at Boston’s Park Plaza Hotel as part of the national meeting of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and, in a Conservation Law Foundation-sponsored screening open to the public, April 13, at the Boston Public Library.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Group plans to promote commercial fishing

March 27, 2017 — In many ways, the upcoming year for the Fishing Partnership Support Services organization will be a journey back to its roots in Gloucester, where it all began in 1997.

The Gloucester-based fishing stakeholder, which provides a bevy of financial, medical, safety and other support services to fishermen and fishing families, is planning a yearlong marketing campaign to promote the economic, cultural and health benefits provided U.S. consumers by the commercial fishing industry.

J.J. Bartlett, FPSS executive director, laid out the pillars of the campaign in a quick presentation Thursday night to the Gloucester Fisheries Commission at City Hall.

Bartlett told commission members FPSS envisions the campaign as a vehicle for closing the gap between fishermen and consumers buying their fish, as well as a platform for uniting the industry in the face of the ever-growing appetite for sustainability and accountability.

“The connection between the people that do the work and the people that eat the fish has been lost,” Bartlett said.

The campaign will stretch fully across the state using social media, traditional marketing tools and events, he said.

“It’s really going to be a 12- to 18-month process, starting this spring,” Bartlett said.

He said the schedule includes a large event in Gloucester sometime in August, followed by another in Boston in September.

“We’re going to keep pushing until we change the conversations about what fishermen do and how they’re recognized,” Bartlett said. “Uniting the industry will get us 90 percent of the way there.”

Bartlett also offered some chilling statistics to reinforce the rigors of commercial fishing and the high physical costs that often come from a career on the water.

They include:

Northeast groundfishermen are 37 times more likely to die on the job than police officers. New England waters, according to Bartlett, are the nation’s deadliest.

Conflict in Gulf of Maine Scallop Fishery

March 23, 2017 — Since the start of the scallop season this month, Jim Wotton has dragged heavy dredges along the seabed off Gloucester, hauling in as much as 200 pounds a day of the valuable clams, the area’s federal limit for small-boat fishermen.

Now, to his dismay, dozens of larger, industrial-sized boats have been steaming into the same gray waters, scooping up as many scallops as they can. Unlike their smaller counterparts, the large vessels have no quota on the amount they can catch; they’re only limited by the number of days they can fish.

It’s a regulatory loophole that small-boat fishermen fear could wipe out the resurgent scallop grounds in the northern Gulf of Maine. This year, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimate that the large boats are likely to catch about a million pounds of scallops – roughly half of the area’s estimated stock.

“That would be devastating,” said Wotton, 48, who fishes out of Friendship, Maine. “They’re taking our future. There won’t be anything for us next year.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: City hosts Scottish, Indonesian industry groups for day

March 22, 2017 — The third and final day of the international Seafood Expo North America was unfolding in Boston on Tuesday. But as far as the city of Gloucester was concerned, the real action was here.

For the second consecutive year, the city supplemented its presence at the massive seafood show by playing host to groups of foreign fishermen and seafood processors willing to trek to end of Route 128 to see Gloucester for themselves.

The groups, which featured fishermen and seafood executives from Scotland and Indonesia, were treated to lunch at Cruiseport Gloucester —baked stuffed haddock, sauteed green beans and Sicilian cookies from the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association — and tours of the Cape Ann Seafood Exchange on Harbor Loop and Intershell in the Blackburn Industrial Park.

It was yet another element in the city’s campaign to promote its Gloucester Fresh brand and its strategy of stockpiling international seafood contacts that just might blossom into tangible business assets in the future.

The two groups had met individually with Gloucester officials during the first two days of the seafood show at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and didn’t finalize the plans for their visit until Tuesday morning.

“We’re so pleased that you decided to come visit us,” said Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken. “There is so much that we share culturally as harvesters of seafood from the ocean.”

The visit came one day after the city hosted a reception and cooking demonstration at the seafood expo to further promote the Gloucester Fresh brand. The reception drew more than 75 show participants, as well as state and local officials.

Read the full story from The Gloucester Times here

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester’s presence at seafood expo leading to fish sales far afield

March 21, 2017 — The city of Gloucester announced its presence with authority Monday at the massive Seafood Expo North America by hosting an international reception that drew seafood executives from around the globe.

The Gloucester Fresh reception at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, hosted by Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken and featuring state Assistant Secretary for Domestic and International Business Development Nam Pham, continued the city’s marketing drumbeat on the sustainability and culinary benefits of the region’s fresh seafood.

“If you are looking for fresh seafood, the quality that comes off our boats is 100 percent,” Romeo Theken told seafood processors and buyers from Malaysia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Iceland, Ireland and other seafood producing and consuming countries.

City organizers said the city’s presence at the gigantic show this year has provided more than 100 business leads and 20 meetings between Gloucester seafood companies and international seafood executives.

The Seafood Expo is one of the largest seafood trade shows in the world, drawing thousands of industry executives to the three-day event to buy, sell and network.

This marked the third appearance by the city at the show and the second year that Gloucester has ramped up its game to spread the word internationally on the Gloucester Fresh brand and the bounty of seafood still being harvested from the waters off Cape Ann.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Channel Fish plants up for grabs after deal for US Foods facility

March 14, 2017 — Channel Fish Processing Co. plans to sell its plants in Boston and Gloucester, Massachusetts.

The family-owned US company aims to transfer all capacity to the facility it acquired from US Foods on Monday, which is located 13 miles outside its Boston headquarters in Braintree, Massachusetts.

“We were getting close to capacity at our other facilities, so we needed somewhere to expand into,” national sales manager Steve Atkinson told Undercurrent News.

Founded in 1964, Channel Fish buys from New England boats and imports from Canada, Iceland, Norway and Chile. It freezes certain items like haddock, cod, pollock and scallops but also sells fresh and farmed products. It processes for a variety of preparations, including breaded products and fillets.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Rafael scheduled to plead guilty to evading fish quotas, smuggling money

March 9, 2017 — Carlos Rafael, who was labeled by the Department of Justice as the owner of the largest commercial fishing business in New England, will plead guilty to federal charges as part of a settlement he reached with the government, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Massachusetts said Wednesday.

Rafael of Dartmouth was scheduled to appear in federal court on March 20. Instead he’s scheduled to plead guilty to evading fishing quotas and smuggling profits to Portugal in U.S. District Court in Boston at 2 p.m. on March 16. The U.S. Attorney’s office provided no further details regarding the plea deal.

Rafael’s attorney, William Kettlwell, did not return requests asking for comment.

Often referred to as the “Codfather” as the owner of more than 40 boats ported in New Bedford and Gloucester, Rafael faced one count of conspiracy, 25 counts of lying to federal fishing regulators and one count of bulk cash smuggling.

The indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney last May listed 22 examples of Rafael falsely claiming his vessels caught either haddock or pollock from June 2012 through January 2016. According to the indictment, in those circumstances Rafael actually caught fish that were subject to stricter quotas than haddock or pollock like American plaice, yellowtail or gray sole.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times