Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester group critical of NOAA quotas, methods

April 8, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. —  The city’s Fisheries Commission weighed in with public comments on proposed adjustments to the Northeast Fishery Management Plan, expressing concern about heavy cuts in 2016 catch quotas for some of the fishery’s most important species and frustration with the process for determining the size of fish stocks.

The commission’s comments, which significantly mirror comments generated by the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition on Framework Adjustment 55, are contained in a letter to John K. Bullard, regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The commission is supportive of the Northeast Seafood Coalition comments,” Commission Chairman Mark Ring wrote to Bullard. “Notably, the concerns raised by the NSC over the catch reductions slated for the 2016 fishing season, which are based on the 2015 Operational Assessment Update.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Feds: Fish companies on hook for not paying overtime

April 7, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The U.S. Labor Department has filed suit against two Gloucester waterfront businesses and their owner, seeking more than $200,000 in damages after the company failed to pay overtime to its workers over a three-year period.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston and announced this morning, targets Zeus Packing Inc. and Cape Ann Seafood Exchange, both based at 27 Harbor Loop, and their owner, Kristian Kristensen, is seeking $203,998 in liquidated damages for 132 workers, designed to compensate them for hardship they sustained by not having received the money they should have been paid, said Carlos Matos, the Labor Department’s wage and hour division’s Massachusetts district director this morning.

The suit says Zeus Packing Inc. and Cape Ann Seafood Exchange failed to pay the workers $203,998 in overtime wages due from October 2011 through September 2014 in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

While Kristensen and his companies paid the workers the $203,998 in back wages due in December 2015, Kristensen is contesting the liquidation damages payment, Matos said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Seafood coalition skeptical of proposed new rules

April 6, 2016 — The Northeast Seafood Coalition has submitted public comments for the proposed rules for the Northeast Fishery Management Plan that reiterate its lack of confidence in NOAA’s current system of scientific assessments for groundfish.

The comments from the Gloucester-based NSC, submitted to NOAA Fisheries before Tuesday’s deadline, question the reported status of the witch flounder stock and sets the fishing advocacy group in opposition to the proposed allowable biological catch limit of 460 metric tons or the 2016 fishing season.

“NSC expressed concern with the reported status of witch flounder during the public process,” the coalition said in its comments, which also reference the group’s “expressed concern that catch rates within the fishery are completely inconsistent with the reported stock status from the assessment.”

That concern with the methodology and accuracy of the stock assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a familiar refrain throughout the NSC comments.

“NSC has been an active participant over the years in the scientific assessments for groundfish stocks,” it said in its comments. “Direct engagement in the process, however, has made NSC leadership grow more leery of groundfish assessments.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times 

From necessity, delicious seafood invention

April 5, 2016 — Because restaurants sell 70 percent of the seafood consumed in the United States, chefs are hugely influential in creating market trends, so Latitude 43’s chef Ryder Ritchie wants you to know there’s nothing fishy about dogfish. Or, for that matter, monkfish. Or pogies, or skate, or pollock, hake, tusk, or even, once you get the hang of them, those ubiquitous little invasive crustaceans, green crabs.

Notice, he doesn’t mention redfish, a species that — armed with their moveable feast of redfish soup — the formidable duo of Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken and Angela DeFillipo have done a dazzling job of marketing at Boston’s Seafood Expo and beyond.

But everything else that might ever have been referred to as “trash fish?”

Look for it on chef Richie’s future forward menus at Latitude 43.

This Wednesday evening — Latitude 43’s third annual sustainable seafood benefit for Maritime Gloucester — Ritchie recommends for starters, Saffron Monkfish Stew in wild mushrooms and basil; Atlantic Razor Clams with lemongrass, house-made chilies and charred bread; followed by an entree of brown-butter-seared local flounder with capers and golden raisins, grilled asparagus, olive-oil-poached fingerling potatoes, sherry foam and pine nuts.

Flounder? Underutilized?

Yes, says Ritchie. Maybe not as underutilized as other species Gloucester natives like himself grew up hearing “bad stuff about,” but certainly never up there with, say, the now highly regulated, venerable cod.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

NOAA Fisheries offering industry-related loans

March 30, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is accepting applications from commercial fishermen and those in the aquaculture industry looking for a share of NOAA’s $100 million in lending authority designated for fiscal 2016.

The loans, which run from five to 25 years, have market-competitive interest rates.

Eligible applicants include those working in aquaculture, mariculture, shoreside fisheries facilities and commercial fishermen.

Potential uses for the funds among applicants from aquaculture, mariculture and shoreside fisheries facilities include purchasing an existing facility, improvements to an existing facility, new construction and reconstruction.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Northeast Seafood Coalition responds to erroneous statements on Cashes Ledge from Pew Charitable Trusts

The following was released by the Northeast Seafood Coalition:

March 29, 2016 – GLOUCESTER, Mass. – Earlier today, in a webinar releasing a new report regarding the environmental composition of Cashes Ledge, in response to Cape Cod Times reporter Doug Fraser’s question as to whether there is an imminent threat to Cashes Ledge, The Pew Charitable Trusts’ Director of US Oceans, Northeast, Peter Baker stated:

“..the different areas – Cashes Ledge, the coral canyons, and the sea mounts – have different pressures on them, and different levels of imminent pressures that might be put on them. For instance Cashes Ledge, some of the council members, led by Terry Alexander, who is the president of the Associated Fisheries of Maine and was quoted in a press release last week, put up a motion just last year at the NEFMC to open Cashes Ledge once again to bottom trawling. The other guy, Vito Giacalone, who was quoted in that press release, at a public forum in Gloucester just last month, said that the fishing industry is eager to get in and catch the cod that are in Cashes Ledge. So, certainly the leaders of the groundfish industry have made it clear, recently, that they’re eager and working to get back in there and that at every available opportunity they’re going to try and open up Cashes to bottom trawling again. So I’d say, yes, absolutely, there’s an imminent threat to Cashes Ledge.”

The statement attributed to Vito Giacalone of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, and the description of the motion made by Councilmember Terry Alexander are factually inaccurate. There was never a motion or statement made proposing access to Cashes Ledge.

The problem is the terminology used.  “Cashes Ledge” is often used as verbal shorthand to refer to the large, 1400 square kilometer ‘Mortality Closure’ that includes Cashes Ledge and the surrounding areas and is an artifact of the old effort control system created to protect cod.

What we did say, and will maintain, is that once the old effort control system was replaced with a quota system, we want to be able to access the old mortality closures, including the Cashes Ledge Mortality Closure when such access is appropriate and scientifically justified. These portions of the Cashes Ledge Mortality Closure, despite the name, are not located on Cashes Ledge.

The Northeast Seafood Coalition proposed and supports the habitat management areas developed with government science, included in Omnibus Habitat Amendment 2 which was adopted by the New England Fisheries Management Council last June, and are pending approval by NOAA.

We collaborated with the Associated Fisheries of Maine, and with the Fisheries Survival Fund, representing the limited access scallop fleet.  We did not develop our own habitat closed area on Cashes Ledge, but rather embraced the habitat management area developed via the government science.

This habitat area is significantly larger than Cashes Ledge itself, in fact, it completely engulfs Cashes Ledge, all of the kelp forest, and all of the areas displayed in the video and photographs circulated in recent months by proponents of a marine national monument. The protected area includes a surrounding buffer of hundreds of square miles.

We never would propose re-entering an area which we agreed to protect, and especially this area that encompasses Cashes Ledge.  It is simply untrue to say that we stated that we are “eager” to fish within the habitat management area on Cashes Ledge.

Did we say we want to preserve the ability to access portions of the mortality closure such as Cashes Basin and other basins that were not identified as important habitat areas by the science? Yes, we did say that.

We have no way of knowing whether Mr. Baker’s statement was made to intentionally mislead, or simply out of a lack of clear understanding regarding the difference between Cashes Ledge, the habitat management area surrounding Cashes Ledge, and the remaining portions of the previous mortality areas that were artifacts of the old system, but we state unequivocally that it is not true to say we ever proposed accessing the Cashes Ledge habitat management area.

Why Gulf of Maine waters won’t be a national monument

March 28, 2016 — Despite substantial pressure from environmental groups, Obama administration officials this week said the president won’t declare a national monument in a distinct portion of the Gulf of Maine that features glacier-sculpted mountain ranges and billowy kelp forests.

Over the past year, environmental advocates have lobbied the administration to designate an area known as Cashes Ledge as a national monument, a decision that would have permanently banned fishing around the submerged mountain range.

The ecosystem, about 80 miles off the coast of Gloucester, is home to an abundant array of life, from multicolored anemones to massive cod. Fishermen have opposed the designation and said they were relieved when they learned about the decision in meetings this week with officials with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Gloucester boat captain in ill-fated Coast Guard rescue drowned

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (March 25, 2016) — The state medical examiner has determined that a Gloucester eel boat captain who died during an ill-fated rescue off Cape Ann late last year had drowned, a finding that brings new scrutiny to the equipment aboard the Coast Guard’s vessels.

David “Heavy D” Sutherland died moments after his 51-foot wooden boat, the Orin C, sank while under tow by the Coast Guard about 12 miles off Cape Ann on Dec. 3. The Coast Guard is investigating why the tow went awry and whether rescue vessels should be outfitted with more medical equipment.

Drowning victims can sometimes be saved if they’re underwater for only a few minutes and receive oxygen immediately, according to emergency medicine experts. But Sutherland didn’t receive oxygen because, unlike ambulances and airplanes, most Coast Guard vessels don’t carry it and crews aren’t trained to administer it, a Coast Guard official said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

New manual outlines steps for fishermen, communities to take in crisis

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (March 25, 2016) — The concept first began to crystallize in Angela Sanfilippo’s mind about four years ago, when the president of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association realized she needed to start putting some things down on paper.

Sanfilippo, both in her roles with fishing-based community groups and her own experience as a wife, daughter and sister of fishermen, had helped develop a series of protocols to help fishermen avoid calamities on the water and help the Gloucester fishing community deal with fishing tragedies when they occur.

“I just thought that we should start putting these things in writing because we’re not going to be around forever,” Sanfilippo said.

Thus was born the idea that burst into reality Thursday when the Fishing Partnership Support Services unveiled its RESCUES manual in an event at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Station Gloucester.

The title of the manual, assembled with assistance from staffers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sea Grant College program and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, is an acronym for “Responding to Emergencies at Sea and to Communities Under Extreme Stress.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Proposed fishing framework: Something for everyone to hate

March 23, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries has opened the public comment period for the proposed management rule that includes withering cuts to several groundfish species and reductions in the overall level of at-sea monitoring (ASM) coverage for the beleaguered groundfish fleet.

It seems the proposed rule, also known as Framework 55, has a little bit of something for everyone to hate. They have until close of business on April 5 to submit their comments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Environmental groups, such as Oceana, are bitterly criticizing the projected reduction in ASM for groundfish boats to about 14 percent from about 24 percent, saying the rule will “weaken the chances of recovery for this historic fishery.”

Fishermen point to the further reductions in what they already consider minuscule catch quotas and say those reductions — combined with the absorption of the costs for ASM — could finally be the management initiative that shutters the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery for good.

Savage quota cuts

The catch limits, set by the NOAA Fisheries for the 2016 fishing season that begins May 1, include savage cuts to the annual catch limits for gray sole (55 percent), Georges Bank cod (66 percent), northern windowpane flounder (33 percent) and Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder (26 percent).

“We will not have a fishery as we know it anymore,” Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said on Tuesday. “In fact, I think you can already make the case that we don’t have a fishery you can recognize now compared to any period in the past.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times