Saving Seafood

MSA Today: House approves Magnuson reauthorization

July 13, 2018 — The House of Representatives passed its version of the latest Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization on Wednesday, July 11.

H.R. 200, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, sponsored by Alaska Rep. Don Young, passed primarily on party lines at 222-193. Support from the industry, however, came from all coasts as well as onshore and offshore businesses.

One of the most controversial aspects of this reauthorization has been the elimination of a 10-year rebuilding timeline for rebuilding fish stocks.

The 10-year guideline, however, is an arbitrary goal. Some fisheries recover in 2 to 3 years, and some take decades, regardless of restrictions on fishing effort. Even more to the point, regional administrators always had some flexibility in forcing managers to adhere to the rebuilding guideline or allowing for some leeway. This change is critical for fisheries managed as if there were no flexibility, like East and West coast groundfish stocks. It simply spells out the flexibility that has always been implied.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

‘How are we going to get paid?’; fishing ban continues to suffocate local businesses

July 9, 2018 — Anne Jardin-Maynard is an accountant. She doesn’t own a commercial fishing vessel. The New Bedford native works within an office on Centre Street.

Yet for more than seven months, a groundfishing ban implemented by NOAA has prevented Jardin-Maynard from receiving a paycheck. That doesn’t mean the owner of Jardin & Dawson, a settlement house, which handles payroll and accounting for fishing boats, has stopped working.

“If the boats aren’t fishing, how are we going to get paid,” Jardin-Maynard said.

NOAA announced the groundfishing ban at the end of last November as a result of Carlos Rafael falsifying fishing quota. It was also meant to delay operations for Sector IX, the fishing division where Rafael’s boats were associated, so it could draft provisions to prevent repeat offenses.

Since that time, though, the sector has assigned new board members multiple times, provisions have been drafted, and quota has been gathered as potential repayment, but the ban remains.

“I think they need to move it along,” said Jardin-Maynard, who is a new board member of Sector IX as well. “This has been a long time coming. The person that was involved in it (is penalized). It’s not fair for the other people to be involved in this. He’s paying his price.”

Rafael is serving a 46-month prison term in part for falsifying fishing records. While he serves his time in federal prison in Fort Devens, about 80 fishermen have been out of work sending a ripple effect throughout shoreside businesses from ice houses to processors to settlement houses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

HANK SOULE: Revitalizing waterfront is still up to sectors and Carlos Rafael

July 9, 2018 — Carlos Rafael misreported his groundfish catch, and in its piece “Time for NOAA to let Sector IX fish again,” the Times is misreporting the facts.

First, NOAA didn’t calculate, as the piece states, that Rafael misreported just 72,000 pounds of grey sole. He openly admitted to stealing over 10 times that amount, of several different fish stocks. Rather, NOAA has apparently calculated that all but some remaining grey sole has been repaid, with quota seized earlier to cover the debt.

Second, neither Sector IX nor Sector VII has submitted a plan to return to fishing. Sector IX purged itself of nearly every vessel and permit enrolled there, retaining the bare minimum required to maintain legal status. It submitted an operations plan — which explains how a sector and its boats will track and report their quotas — which states that Sector IX has no immediate intent to resume fishing.

Sector VII is even more explicit. It absorbed the many Rafael vessels and permits shunted from Sector IX under the condition that they “will be enrolling as a non-active member and will not be authorized to fish” until Carlos Rafael sells them. In fact, Sector VII explicitly requested NOAA’s help to DENY those vessels permission to harvest.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Senate Candidate Geoff Diehl unveils plan to help fleet

June 21, 2018 — Geoff Diehl, the Republican challenger to incumbent U. S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, would retain Carlos Rafael’s forfeited groundfish permits in New Bedford and would push to repeal the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument, according to his plan to help the fishing industry.

Diehl, a state representative from Whitman, is set to release the plan, “A Good Diehl for Fishing,” at campaign stops Thursday in New Bedford, Scituate and Gloucester. The Gloucester event is set for 4 p.m. at the Fishermen’s Monument on Stacy Boulevard.

The Diehl fishing plan also calls for reducing the regulatory burden on commercial fishermen and finding “a balance between the necessary protections to ensure ocean preservation, and continuing to support the growth of a healthy marine industry across the state.”

His plan opposes mandated at-sea monitoring of the Northeast groundfish fleet, calling them “onboard watch dogs,” as well as an “egregious example of government overreach and a crippling cost to the fishermen.”

Diehl said transferring Rafael’s groundfish permits to “ready licenses” in New Bedford rather than dispersing them to other fishing concerns throughout the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery “is critical for maintaining the livelihood of those individuals and for ensuring the survival of the fishing industry now and in the future.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

New Bedford Standard-Times: Time for NOAA to let Sector IX fish again

June 21, 2018 — Seventy-two thousand pounds of grey sole.

That’s the amount of fish that NOAA calculates Carlos Rafael misreported in his illegal groundfish scheme.

Multiple people at a Monday meeting of the New Bedford fishing community cited the number. So after months of NOAA saying it could not let Sector IX fishermen back on the water because it didn’t know how much overfishing took place in the sector dominated by Rafael, now the federal agency knows.

We don’t officially know it from NOAA, however, because the oversight group remains silent, even as the ban on the groundfish sector drags on into its eighth month. We know it because the members of the New Bedford fishing community — the fishermen, the fuel depot owners, the gear suppliers, the settlement houses — are all struggling because of the lost fishing. And they cited the number publicly Monday, based on information from NOAA itself.

“Everyone knows (the money in) the account is overdrawn. How do we get the money back in the bank,” asked Sector 9 attorney Andrew Saunders.

That’s the conundrum. The sector is ready to deduct the 72,000 pounds of grey sole from its fishing effort. But it needs NOAA to tell them to go ahead, and the agency remains silent. As it has for months.

The inaction has caused an estimated 240 jobs lost across the Northeast, estimated SMAST professor Dan Georgianna.

Richard Canastra, the co-owner of the New Bedford Seafood Display Auction, estimated it will take a long time to bring the groundfish industry back in New Bedford after so many months without fishing. It was not a very profitable industry to begin with, but it played a key role in keeping many of the New Bedford waterfront support industries active.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

North Pacific Council Looks at Limits for Cod Deliveries to Motherships in the Bering Sea

June 21, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Twelve years ago Amendment 80 was adopted by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to allocate several non-pollock groundfish among trawl sectors, and help form cooperatives in that sector. The amendment covered dozens of competing concerns and succeeded in striking a balance that has worked well in the last decade.

But Amendment 80 was silent on whether the catcher/processors (CPs) in that fleet could act as motherships in the Bering Sea limited access cod fishery.

Last winter, AM80 CPs acted as motherships taking deliveries from their own catcher vessels and others in a reduced allocation cod fishery. That resulted in an increased percentage in the amount of Pacific cod delivered to the AM80 sector, an increase in the number of catcher vessels delivering Pcod to motherships, and a decrease in the amount of cod delivered to shoreside processing facilities.

To correct this, the Council is considering options that would restore balance to the shore-based and off-shore processing facilities. In the process of understanding how best to address that, a latency issue has emerged.

The Council revised its problem statement at their June meeting in Kodiak to reflect that.

“Information shows a large number of AFA endorsed vessels are not participating, but whose catch history contributes to the AFA Pacific cod sideboard in the Bering Sea trawl cod fishery,” the new statement reads.

“Despite a high level of latency, the pace of the fishery has increased shortening the season, resulting in decreased ability to maximize the value of the fishery and negatively impacting fishery participants. Additional entrants could exacerbate these issues and threaten the viability of the fishery. The Council is considering options to improve the prosecution of the fishery, with the intent of promoting safety and increasing the value of the fishery.”

Prior to the Council’s early June meeting, there were four Alternatives on the table. Now there are six. As always, Alternative 1 is status quo.

Alternative 2 has two Options, the first of which was revised at the June meeting to allow an AM80 CP may take directed fishery deliveries of Pcod from catcher vessels if the CP acted as a mothership and received targeted Pacific cod deliveries during 2015-2017, with sub-options of in any one of those three years, in any two years, or in any three years. Those sub-options will be analyzed and considered by the Council later this year. A second Option under Alternative 2 is for non-AM80 CP acting as motherships during 2015-2017.

Alternative 3 was also revised at the June meeting to clarify that the allocation will be set for “A” Season and “B” Season and apply to all catcher processors limited by the action. Options for what final allocations will be included the percentage of Bering Sea subarea Pacific cod delivered to CPs acting as motherships, relative to the total BSAI Bering Sea subarea catcher vessels trawl catch between a variety of time periods ranging from 2008 to 2017.

A sub-option was added to Alternative 3 that would exempt a CP from the sideboard limit if it had received deliveries in 7 or more years from the BSAI cod trawl fishery and the catch delivered would not accrue to any sideboard limit established for CPs when acting as a mothership.

Alternative 4 was modified to clarify that both the catch accounting system and the fish ticket target definition would be considered when determining which catcher vessels would be eligible to deliver BSAI Pcod in the future.

An option was also added to exempt the 8 severable Aleutian Islands trawl endorsements on LLP licenses, established under BSAI Amendment 92, from the proposed BSAI landings requirements for trawl CVs.

The two new Alternatives went further to include American Fisheries Act, or the BSAI pollock fleet.

Alternative 5 would establish American Fisheries Act and non-AFA sector allocations for the cod “A” season. Specific allocation percentages or years to consider were not determined as part of the June motion.  Council staff will provide information on that and on ways for the non-AFA sector to develop a cooperative or cooperatives to fish their Pacific cod allocation.

Alternative 6 was added to ensure that AM80 CPs that have been replaced and no longer have an Amendment 80 quota share permit or an Amendment 80 LLP license would be prohibited from acting as a mothership for Pacific cod in the future. The restriction would apply to both the BSAI and GOA.

Initial review of the analysis is scheduled for the Council’s February 4-12, 2019 meeting in Portland, OR.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. This article is reprinted with permission.

New Bedford fishermen, businesses losing out while waiting on NOAA

June 20, 2018 — The wall of windows within the Harborview Room on the top floor of the Whaling Museum provided a look of serenity across the waterfront as the sun shined down on countless fishing vessels.

The conversation within the walls painted a much different picture as those from the fishing industry described the suffocating effects that NOAA’s groundfishing ban has imposed on fishermen and shoreside businesses.

“If something doesn’t happen with groundfishing soon, it’s gone,” general manager of Hercules SLR John Reardon said.

NOAA implemented the ban Nov. 20 and has continued because of an overage calculated at 72,000 pounds of grey sole, according to multiple people who spoke Monday evening.

The overage represents the amount of fish calculated by NOAA that Carlos Rafael misreported. He is serving a 46-month prison sentence, but the NOAA punishment aspect has held many along the waterfront hostage.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NPFMC Separates Adak Cod Issue from Broader Cod Allocation issues, Expects Action by Dec 2018

June 18, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Management of Pacific Cod in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands is a study in complexity, founded on the earnest principles of protecting historical deliveries to the village of Adak and balancing the needs of the rationalized fishery with the non-rationalized Aleutian Island cod fishery.

Amendment 113 to the BSAI groundfish plan was intended to navigate this warren of concerns, but in the first year of its implementation a perfect storm of sorts resulted in the North Pacific Council asking certain fishing vessels to ‘stand down’ last February to allow other cod deliveries to Adak, while the body set out to correct the regulations.

At their April meeting, the Council created a Purpose and Need statement acknowleding that “changes in fishery participation patterns and total allowable catches in the BSAI, resulted in the fishery progressing in a manner that may have been counter to the intent of providing community protections in the Aleutian Islands.”

The Council went on to state it “intends to modify Amendment 113 such that the prosecution of the BSAI cod fishery aligns with the council’s original objective of addressing the risk that participants in BSAI rationalized fisheries may diminish the historical share of BSAI cod of other industry participants and communities that depend on shoreplant processing in the region.”

Thus the process began for alternatives to consider, analyses of the options, and public comment periods, with resolution now estimated for the 2020 fishing season.

But part of the perfect storm of complexities was another problem — the emergence of the Amendment 80 fleet (BSAI trawlers that mostly target flatfish and other non-pollock species) acting as motherships and taking deliveries that may otherwise have gone, at least in part, to shorebased plants.

Any reference to an imbalance in deliveries to on-shore and off-shore facilities triggers memories of perhaps the most contentious issue the North Pacific Council has ever addressed, the ‘inshore/offshore’ debate that resulted in the American Fisheries Act, which rationalized the BSAI pollock fleet.

The Council decided to treat each problem as a separate one, but asked that the discussion paper include “tradeoffs and benefits of combining this action with the BSAI [catcher vessel] cod action the Council will address in June.”

Action taken at last week’s meeting confirmed that the Adak cod set-aside issue will continue independently of the AM80 mothership issue.

The schedule for resolving Amendment 113 and fixing the Adak cod set-aside is to review the analysis of four alternatives in October with final action tentatively set for December 2018. With public comment periods and regulatory reviews, the final rule’s earliest publication could be late 2019 with implementation in the 2020 cod season.

June’s discussion paper crystalized the complexity of current regulations in the Aleutian Island fishery.  After describing the allocations and limitations for BSAI cod, NPFMC analysts Jon McCracken and Darrell Brannan describe what happened next.

“Participants began to realize that under the current regulations the AI shoreplant would not be able to take deliveries of the entire 5,000 mt AI set-aside after the BSAI trawl CV sector was closed to directed fishing for the A season.

“Prior to that time some participants were under the impression that the AI set-aside essentially guaranteed the shoreplants would be allowed to take delivery of the 5,000 mt AI set-aside if they achieved the 1,000 mt before February 28. However, after February 11 all of the federal Pacific cod CV sectors except jig gear were close for directed fishing in the A season in the BSAI.

“Given that 6,515 mt of Pacific cod was available to trawl CVs to deliver to any processor in the AI, at least two companies made plans to harvest a portion of that allowance and deliver the catch to processors other than the AI shoreplant. One company was using its CV to deliver to one of its C/Ps.

“However, this occurred during the February Council meeting, and when the Council was made aware of the issue it asked this company to not participate in the unrestricted fishery, due to the impacts to the AI shoreplant. This company had already taken a small amount of Pacific cod, but they agreed to stand-down from the fishery at the request of the Council.

“After the 2018 A-season was underway, a second company requested that their CVs be allowed to deliver to the AI shoreplant. In part due to capacity constraints and the timing of the request, the AI shoreplant did not offer a market to those CVs. The company decided later in February to have some of its trawl CVs deliver AI Pacific cod to Dutch Harbor.

“CVs that were delivering to the AI shoreplant are reported to have self-imposed trip limits and a one-day stand-down after a delivery to help reduce wait times at the plant. Trawl CVs set the trip limit at 400,000 lbs. for the larger CVs and 100,000 lbs for smaller CVs. These trip limits were abandoned when NMFS announced the BSAI A season trawl CV closure for March 4, 2018, which resulted in a larger volume of Pacific cod being delivered during a short period of time.

“The shoreplant operator has indicated during testimony to the Council that the shoreplant has a daily capacity of 1.2 million lbs. to 1.5 million lbs. At 1.2 million lbs. per day, the shoreplant could process the AI set-aside in about 9.2 days. During the 2018 A-season, daily processing of GHL and federal Pacific cod combined never exceeded 1 million lbs. and was typically much lower.

“Once trawl CVs harvested an amount that was projected to be equal to the BSAI trawl CV sector A-season allowance22, they were closed to directed fishing on March 11.

“NMFS In-season Management’s ability to close a fishery exactly on the amount a sector’s TAC is limited by variations in daily landings and the fact that closures are announced ahead of time for 12 noon on a specific day.

“Catch in the AI set-aside and unrestricted fishery resulted in the trawl CV sector AI season being closed in the BSAI prior to the entire 5,000 mt AI set-aside being delivered. That meant the only CV sector that remained open25 to directed fishing was the BSAI jig gear sector.

“The BSAI allocation to the jig sector was insufficient to allow the AI shoreplant to take deliveries of the remaining 5,000 mt AI set-aside.

“NMFS announced that the 5,000 mt AI set-aside had not been landed at the AI shoreplant by March 15th. Because the 5,000 mt AI set-aside was not reached by that date the BS non-CDQ trawl CV A-season sector limitation remained in effect until March 21 and the AI set-aside to not apply for the remainder of the year. The amount of the 5,000 mt AI set-aside that was delivered to the AI shoreplant cannot be reported due to confidentiality restrictions.

“The AI shoreplant could report their Pacific cod deliveries or agreed to waive the confidentiality restrictions associated with NMFS or the Council reporting the Pacific cod deliveries they received.

“The BSAI Pacific cod non-CDQ trawl CV B-season opened to directed fishing on April 1. The 2018 B-season allowance was set at 4,425 mt at the start of the fishing year. Directed fishing was closed on April 3 as a result of the B-season allowance being reached. The AI shoreplant took Pacific cod deliveries during the B-season.”

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

China to slap tariffs on Alaska seafood, among other U.S. products

June 18, 2018 — The United States today released a list of Chinese goods worth $50 billion on which it will place 25 percent tariffs. Shortly afterward, China announced reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods, including Alaska seafood.

Garett Evridge, an economist with the McDowell Group, who specializes in the seafood industry, explained that the tariff on seafood is likely to be far reaching.

“Our initial review of this is indicates that really all salmon species, pollock, ground fish, herring, really across the board for Alaska seafood products, in addition to lobster and other products used throughout the U.S., it looks like the announcement indicates that tariff would be 25 percent on product, including Alaska seafood products,” said Evridge.

Both U.S. and Chinese tariffs will reportedly take effect July 6. Evridge said it is too early to know what this will mean for the seafood market.

“There’s a whole other side of this with diplomacy and strategy on the side of China and the U.S. that we’re not really aware of. But in the event that this actually occurs, it will certainly be a challenge to the industry, and it will impact processors, communities, fishermen just because a 25 percent tariff means an increase in cost.”

One thing is clear, however. China plays a major role Alaska’s seafood industry, so the tariffs would affect a significant portion of the market.

Read the full story at KDLG

‘Weaponized’ McDowell Report on Value of Shore Processing Opening Gun in Fight Over Cod Allocations

June 15, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The newly released McDowell Report on the economic impacts of shore-based processing was requested by the processors to support their position on the cod issue at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

The results of the analysis demonstrate the inshore seafood sector is the primary source of economic activity in the BSAI region and a critical source of income for the region’s communities and residents. It further illustrates the importance of a diverse portfolio of species and products in sustaining the industry’s important regional and statewide economic impacts,” according to the study.

In 2016, inshore processing paid $41 million in wages to 1,230 of the region’s residents, and over $22 million in fish and property taxes to six communities, including Unalaska, Akutan, Adak, Atka, King Cove, Saint Paul, and the Aleutians East Borough, according to the report.

Although the report has just been released, a 7-page executive summary of the weaponized document was published in February,  and distributed at an Unalaska City Council meeting by Trident Seafoods’ Chief Legal Officer Joe Plesha.  That meeting has been called a ‘side show’, with the main show now being the council meetings themselves.

The NPFMC took its first formal look at various proposals last week and is expected to spend the next two years considering a range of alternatives from the various sectors of the groundfish industry, according to Unalaska Mayor Frank Kelty, who attended the meeting in Kodiak.

The issue is based around whether the increased use of motherships to purchase cod at sea is destabilizing to the shore-side sector.  The shore-side sector wants to retain their traditional share of the cod quota in the Bering Sea.  However, in the past two years the volume of cod purchased directly from vessels by catcher-processors in the Amendment 80 fleet has increased.

The issue came to a head when the Pacific Seafood Processors blocked a congressional waiver for F/V America’s Finest owner, Fishermen’s Finest.  America’s Finest was determined by the Coast Guard to be in violation of the Jones Act because it used more than the allowable amount of foreign steel. The processors wanted any waiver to come with a prohibition on catcher processors purchasing cod as motherships.

Representatives of the Amendment 80 fleet said such a prohibition would cripple their business plans.

As a result of this opposition, Congress has twice failed to grant a waiver to America’s Finest, and the vessel is now up for sale, at a substantial loss.

The current controversy harkens back to the inshore/offshore fights over pollock between shore plants and factory trawlers in the 1990s. Those bitter allocation battles were ended by the U.S. Congress with the passage of the American Fisheries Act, which permanently divided the resource.

An acrimonious debate is again taking shape.

Frank Kelty, mayor of Unalaska and a vocal supporter of the shore-plants, was upset when Fishermen’s Finest expressed opposition to state sanctioned local fish taxes.  Kelty also faced a recall election in Unalaska, which he survived.  Now Kelty has called remarks about him by Fisherman’s Finest’s Seattle publicist, Paul Queary, “threatening”.

Although tempers can get hot, the arduous council decision making process has just started.  Like recreational halibut, bycatch management in the Gulf of Alaska trawl fishery, bycatch affecting halibut and salmon, and the proverbial inshore / offshore fight, these issues all have real economic consequences on both sides.

The job before the council will also be one of maintaining the status quo while working out the options to resolve the conflict.  Toward that end, the one decision the council made was to separate the issue of Adak’s set aside cod quota from the broader issue of mothership purchases.  The council will treat the two independently.

This year processing in Adak was sufficient to reach the threshold to use most of the set aside quota, but still there was controversy when other vessels steamed out to legitimately fish cod trips in the Western Aleutians and deliver back to Dutch Harbor.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.