Saving Seafood

NEFMC adopts controversial plan to monitor all trips to sea

September 30, 2020 — After years of concerns about the overfishing of some of New England’s iconic species, the regional body overseeing fishing issues on Wednesday adopted a divisive plan that could require monitors to accompany groundfishermen on all trips to sea.

The plan approved by the New England Fishery Management Council would require that fishermen who target cod, flounder, and other groundfish bring monitors on their trips or install electronic devices to track their catch. The plan aims to ensure that fishermen accurately account for the haul they unload at the dock and are not improperly discarding fish that might exceed their quotas.

But the plan is contingent on Congress covering much of the costs, putting its future in doubt.

At the start of a contentious virtual meeting, John Quinn, the council’s chairman, described the debate over increased monitoring as “the most divisive issue” he has experienced in his five years overseeing the group, noting there have been multiple threats of lawsuits.

Environmental advocates called the plan a step in the right direction, but they worried that it wouldn’t be viable without sufficient government support.

“If federal funding continues, we will finally have accurate and precise baseline information about the catch, discards, and landings in this fishery,” said Gib Brogan, a fisheries policy analyst at Oceana, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group. “This information is the foundation of successful modern fisheries management, and we are optimistic that today’s action will help chart the future success of this fishery.”

One environmental group, The Nature Conservancy, offered to pay as much as $2 million to cover the costs of the entire fleet to equip the boats with electronic monitoring devices, calling such action “essential” to preserving the region’s fisheries.

“The critical discussion of establishing monitoring targets that improve catch accounting while maintaining flexibility and fleet viability has yet to be addressed by the council,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, an advocacy group for groundfishermen in Gloucester. “The can has been kicked down the road.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Court Rejects Pacific Choice Appeal on Non-Whiting Groundfish Quota Holdings

September 29, 2020 — The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected an appeal from Pacific Choice Seafood Company challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service rule on single-entity quota cap in the non-whiting groundfish fisheries off the West Coast.

The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment entered in favor of NMFS rule, limiting the total allowable catch and prohibiting any one entity from controlling more than 2.7 percent of the outstanding quota share.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NEFMC’s increased monitoring consideration raises concerns among fishermen

September 29, 2020 — The New England Fishery Management Council is considering the adoption of a new rule that would require the expansion of current monitoring mandates.

The new rulemaking, called Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23, has been in process for over two years and is intended to overhaul the way groundfish monitoring takes place. The council had been seeking comments on the new amendment over the summer, and is now considering the implementation of the new rules.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

SEAN HORGAN: Fishery in Hail Mary mode

September 28, 2020 — A quick recap: The council has been working on the measure — Amendment 23 — for more than two years. It seems like 50.

The amendment will set future monitoring levels for sector-based groundfish vessels. The council faces four alternatives: Monitors aboard 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of groundfish trips. The council has chosen 100% coverage as its preferred alternative.

That’s not good for the groundfishermen. Once the federal government stops harvesting spare change from between the sofa cushions to keep reimbursing the fleet for at-sea monitoring, the onus for paying falls on the fishermen at a current tune of about $700 per day per vessel.

If 100% monitoring carries the day, it will add an estimated $6.4 million of additional costs across the fishery. The fishermen aren’t even patting their pockets. They are serious when they say it could easily spell the end of the fleet.

So this is a big deal.

Environmental groups have poured in resources and comment in support of the preferred alternative. If they set a betting line on fisheries management, conservationists would probably be heavy favorites.

The industry is in Hail Mary mode. The long pass, not the prayer. Though at this point, it’s a difference without a distinction.

In a letter, the Northeast Seafood Coalition reached out to Gov. Charlie Baker for support and leadership on the issue — Massachusetts stands the most to lose within the fishery — and was rewarded with a palpable silence.

Sixteen members of the Massachusetts Legislature, at the urging of Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr and others from fishing communities, signed a letter asking the council to reject Amendment 23 as currently constituted. They cited the measure’s inconsistency with a number of standards within the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and executive orders.

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishery Regulators Plan Vote on 100% At-Sea Monitoring

September 28, 2020 — The prospect of a sharp increase in at-sea monitoring requirements for groundfishing vessels is pitting New England’s seafood providers against environmental advocates, and players from the Port of New Bedford are right in the middle of the discussions.

“Amendment 23” to the region’s fisheries management plan will be up for a vote Wednesday by the New England Fishery Management Council. The council will decide whether sector-based groundfish vessels should be monitored at a 25, 50, 75, or 100-percent level. Currently, fewer than 50 percent of all trips are monitored.

The council, known as the NEFMC, will also decide whether human at-sea monitoring, electronic monitoring via cameras, or a combination of the two will be allowed. Under electronic monitoring, video of the fishing operation would be either saved to a hard drive or uploaded to the cloud, then reviewed by regulators.

The council has already stated that a 100-percent coverage level is its “preferred alternative,” and that it wants to allow electronic monitoring in addition to human monitors, but that’s not set in stone.

Read the full story at WBSM

As climate change threatens Maine fisheries, it’s not all bad news for oysters

September 28, 2020 — Despite the threat climate change poses to longstanding Maine fisheries such as lobsters and softshell clams, and the harm it already has inflicted on northern shrimp and groundfish, there is one Maine fishery that has seen rapid growth in the past decade and is expected to continue expanding: oysters.

Eastern oysters are native to Maine, and have long been harvested as food along the coast, as evidenced by piles of ancient shell middens found along the banks of the tidal Damariscotta River. The river is where the current fishery was revived as an aquaculture enterprise in the 1980s, when growers seeded and harvested hundreds of thousands of pounds of both Eastern and European oysters each year.

Since then the industry has expanded along the Maine coast to Wells in York County and Steuben in Washington County to include nearly 100 commercial lease sites (more than two dozen of which are on the Damariscotta River) and millions of dollars in annual revenues. In 2019, oyster growers earned $7.6 million in gross revenues — more than three-and-a-half times what they took in in 2010 — making oysters one of the most valuable marine fisheries in the state.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

USDA Will Purchase $4.4 Million of Blue Harvest’s Sustainable, New Bedford Groundfish

September 22, 2020 — The following was released by Blue Harvest Fisheries:

Blue Harvest Fisheries is pleased to announce that it has been granted a $4,425,480 purchase award to supply local, sustainably harvested haddock, ocean perch and Atlantic pollock to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The purchase, part of the Department’s Commodity Procurement Program, will be used to distribute Blue Harvest’s all-natural, IQF groundfish  to schools, food banks, and households across the United States.

According to the USDA, the Commodity Procurement Program is “a vital component of our nation’s food safety net” that provides “wholesome, high quality products” to communities across the country.

Deliveries will start on October 1 and run through December 31. All of the fish utilized for this program will be harvested by American-flagged vessels from MSC-certified fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. They’ll be processed at Blue Harvest’s dock-side facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts before being distributed to recipients nationwide.

“We are delighted that the USDA has selected Blue Harvest to bring high-quality seafood to deserving Americans across the country,” said Keith Decker, CEO of Blue Harvest. “Given the uncertainties surrounding the seafood market during the ongoing pandemic, this order will help ensure that the groundfish industry at the New Bedford waterfront can continue working, while providing food security for those who need it most.”

Blue Harvest thanks Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, USDA staff, and the Trump Administration for expanding the Commodity Procurement Program to include East Coast seafood for the first time in decades.

The company is deeply grateful to Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Congressmen William Keating (D-MA-09) and Seth Moulton (D-MA-06) who first took the initiative on this issue. In May, they wrote to Secretary Perdue to ask that the USDA include East Coast seafood in purchasing agreements funded by the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) and the Section 32 program.

“I am pleased that the USDA is supporting fishermen by purchasing seafood from the Port of New Bedford, the nation’s top commercial fishing port, during a pandemic that has affected every sector of the economy,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell. “I am grateful to Secretary Perdue for his support of the seafood industry, and to our congressional delegation for their advocacy on behalf of our port and our state’s commercial fishermen.”

The USDA Commodity Procurement Program has long been vital in supporting U.S. agriculture, as well as seafood producers in other parts of the country. We hope that the program’s expansion to include East Coast seafood is the start of a productive, long-term relationship with the USDA.

Fishing Year 2021-22 Sector At-Sea and Electronic Monitoring Provider Applications

September 18, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is currently accepting at-sea and electronic monitoring applications from providers interested in providing monitoring services to groundfish sectors for fishing years 2021 and 2022.  The deadline to submit an application is October 19, 2020.

If you would like to provide either at-sea monitoring (ASM) or electronic monitoring (EM) services to groundfish sectors in fishing years 2021 and 2022 (May 1, 2021, through April 30, 2023), you must submit an application by October 19, 2020.  Applications must include a cover letter and the information and statements identified in the regulations at 50 CFR 648.87(b)(4) and (5).  In your cover letter, please specify whether you are interested in providing ASM services, EM services, or both.  Service providers interested in providing both ASM and EM services must develop separate ASM and EM deployment plans to meet the service provider performance standards [§ 648.87(b)(4)(ii)(A)].

We will review your application in accordance with the third-party monitoring provider standards [§648.87(b)(4)].  For currently operating at-sea monitoring providers, our review will also include an evaluation of your past performance in comparison to the at-sea and electronic monitoring operational standards [§ 648.87(b)(5)], to determine whether to approve your company for fishing years 2021 and 2022.  Please review the regulations for at-sea and electronic monitoring provider and operational standards carefully, including the requirements for signed statements.

Approvals will cover both fishing year 2021 and fishing year 2022, and final decisions will be published in the Federal Register.  There will be a subsequent opportunity to apply to be approved as an ASM and/or EM provider only for fishing year 2022.

Please use Kiteworks, a secure file-sharing service, to submit the requested document.

Visit our web site for more information on groundfish sectors and provider applications.

NEFMC to decide on at-sea monitoring levels later this month

September 16, 2020 — Now two years and change in development, the New England Fishery Management Council measure that could determine the fate of the Northeast groundfish fishery is set for final action on the middle day of the council’s upcoming three-day meeting.

The agenda for the council’s Sept. 29 through Oct. 1 meeting, originally scheduled for Gloucester and now consigned to a webinar, sets aside all of Sept. 30 for groundfish-related issues — including the highly contentious Amendment 23, which will set future monitoring levels aboard sector-based Northeast commercial groundfish vessels.

The council is considering four alternatives: Putting monitors on 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of all sector-based groundfish vessels trips. It has designated 100% coverage as its preferred alternative.

In January, NOAA Fisheries set the target level for 2020 at-sea monitoring at 40% of all sector-based groundfish trips. It’s highly unlikely the agency will hit that target this year after the COVID-19 pandemic kept monitors off boats for about five months.

The council’s preferred choice of 100% monitoring levels helped establish an obvious and stark divide between the fishing industry and conservationists, as if they needed the help.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Cities take council to task over monitoring recommendation

September 8, 2020 — You may have noticed that we’ve written a bit lately about the monitoring measure — Amendment 23 — being considered by the New England Fishery Management Council to set future monitoring levels for sector-based groundfish vessels.

It’s a hot item. Conservationists are all for it. Local fishermen say it could spell the death knell for the industry. The council is expected to take final action on the measure at its September meeting.

The cities of Gloucester and New Bedford — the state’s historic commercial fishing fiefdoms — weighed in. Not surprisingly, they are fervently against the council’s preferred option, which would put monitors on every trip by every sector-based groundfish vessel — at an average cost of about $700 per day per boat.

“Monitoring in any fishery is an important component to fisheries management,” the city of Gloucester stated in its comments to the council. “But the New England Fishery Management Council’s preferred alternative of 100% at-sea monitoring on the groundfish sector program is excessive and in complete disregard of the socio-economic disruptions and extreme hardships that will be imposed on fishermen, their groundfish sectors and their communities.”

And it goes on from there.

So there you go. The battle lines are drawn.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times