Saving Seafood

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.

Halibut landings up, so Maine halibut landings to go down

June 15, 2018 — Just as in the physical world, it’s a quirk of the regulatory world of fisheries management that when something goes up, something must go down, and it isn’t always the same thing.

Last week, the Department of Marine Resources held a series of public hearings in Ellsworth, Machias and Augusta on a proposed regulation that would shorten the Maine halibut fishing season by 20 days, cut the number of allowable hooks for halibut fishing on each boat and ban possession of halibut by fishermen who have state-issued halibut tags who have been fishing outside the three-mile state waters limit.

DMR imposed those regulations on an emergency basis before the scheduled May 1 start of the 2018 season. Valid for 90 days, the emergency rule pushed the start of the season back 10 days, from May 1 to May 11, and ended the season on June 20 instead of June 30. The proposal under consideration last week would make those changes permanent.

Halibut are one of several groundfish species such as cod, haddock and yellowtail flounder that are subject to annual catch limitations established by the New England Fishery Management Council. For halibut, the council sets an overall landings quota and allocates a portion of that to fisheries in state waters — inside the three-mile limit.

The aggregate total annual allowable catch of halibut for state- and federally-permitted harvesters is currently 104 metric tons (229,281 pounds). Of that, the annual catch limit for harvesters fishing in state waters during the 2018 fishing season is 21.8 metric tons (just under 48,061 pounds).

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

CHRIS BROWN & BOB DOOLEY: Electronic monitoring will help restore trust to fishery

June 13, 2018 — Two years ago in the pages of The Standard-Times we delivered some straight talk about New England’s fisheries and the opportunities that groundfish fishermen and regulators will realize when they embrace comprehensive catch monitoring. As the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) prepares to meet this week, we felt it was important to communicate again how critical “full accountability” is to the successful stewardship of this fishery.

“It is based on the straightforward idea that fishermen need to keep track of their catch, both the fish they bring to the dock and any unwanted ‘bycatch’ they may discard at sea. Why? Because in the absence of comprehensive catch monitoring, there is no basis upon which fishermen and (government) scientists can establish a productive level of trust and cooperation. This means that fishery managers often assume the worst when they estimate fish stocks and are required, under federal law, to take very conservative approaches in order to account for that uncertainty when they set catch limits and allocations. Completing the negative feedback loop, fishermen interpret low allocations as bad science and the cycle of mistrust rolls on.”

That cycle of mistrust is what the NEFMC is addressing as they consider alternatives for establishing catch accountability, particularly whether and how to advance electronic monitoring (EM) in the New England groundfish fishery from pilot project to widespread implementation. What we said two years ago is precisely what we would say to the council today.

“In fisheries where catch monitoring is in place, an entirely different … feedback loop is established. Reliable catch and discard data from fishermen, combined with scientific survey results, give fishery managers not just critical and complete information, but the ability to eliminate a major source of uncertainty and to set catch limits with confidence. Over time, as more-reliable and verifiable data comes in, confidence grows and cooperation develops between fishermen and managers.”

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

ALASKA: Pollock ‘B’ Season Opens With 1% Quota Increase

June 12, 2018 — Bering Sea fishermen are now trawling for one of Alaska’s most profitable catches.

Pollock “B” season opened Sunday with a total quota of 731,804 metric tons.

That’s about one percent higher than last year, according to Krista Milani, a groundfish manager for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“It’s a very small difference, so I don’t know that it necessarily means there’s a big upward trend,” she said. “But at least, it indicates that there’s a healthy stock.”

Milani said pollock biomass has been up in recent years, helping the species to maintain its status as the cornerstone commercial fishery in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.

“Pollock’s been one of our most sustainable fisheries in Alaska, for sure,” she said. “Probably one of the most sustainable fisheries in the country.”

Read the full story at KUCB

One fish, two fish: Are we counting too few fish?

June 3, 2018 — When fish are in short supply, every fish counts. To make every fish count, it’s important to accurately and comprehensively count the fish.

Three miles offshore, in the Gulf of Alaska’s industrial groundfish fisheries, counting fish is the job of fishery observers. These trained scientists gather data about what the vessels catch and keep, and what they discard as bycatch. The data collected is essential for monitoring and managing the fisheries.

Trawler boats that fish for pollock, cod, rockfish and flatfish are required to carry independent fishery observers for some of their trips. This is a requirement that makes sense; it is well-known to fishery managers that trawlers can easily end up taking more than their fair share of fish from the ocean. Large trawl nets, dragged through the water or along the seafloor, catch thousands to tens of thousands of fish in a single pass. Not all that fish is kept. Some species, such as salmon, halibut and crab, are required by law to be discarded. Those species are valuable as their own fisheries, so long-standing management measures have been put in place to prevent trawlers from targeting and selling them. Other species that are undesired or can’t be sold, like skates, sharks, snailfish and sculpins, are thrown back, dead or dying. The same goes for the corals, sponges and sea stars that make up the living structure of the Alaskan seafloor.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Warming seas may scramble North America’s fishing industry

May 17, 2018 — Get ready, seafood lovers: Climate change may complicate efforts to net your catch of the day. That’s because warming seas will force many of North America’s most valuable fish and shellfish stocks north in coming decades, a major new modeling study finds, potentially creating headaches for the fishing industry and government regulators. Some species could see their ranges shrink by half, whereas others are poised to expand into vast new territories more than 1000 kilometers north of their current homes.

“Basically, climate change is forcing species to move, jumbling up ecosystems,” says ecologist Malin Pinsky of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher James Morley, now at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “That’s not necessarily bad news. But we’ve already seen that even much smaller shifts in the distribution of marine species can cause real economic disruption, political friction, and challenges to fisheries managers. And here we are talking about potentially big shifts.”

Researchers have already shown that on land and in the sea, plants and animals are shifting their ranges in response to rising global temperatures. Trees that thrive in warmer climates, for example, are spreading into areas where frigid winters once made survival impossible. And species that need cooler weather are retreating from areas that have become too warm.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

 

New Bedford Standard-Times: groundfishermen need to get back to work

May 14, 2018 — It was a bittersweet start to the fishing season on May 1.

Bittersweet because much of New Bedford’s already battered groundfish fleet could not go to sea.

Nearly 60 permits in Sectors VII and IX did not receive quota allocations from NOAA. The federal government withheld their quota because of overages accumulated by fleet owner Carlos Rafael when he admitted last year that he had falsified the numbers of fish he had taken, substituting valuable species subject to quotas for ones that were not so.

Rafael is in prison now but the results of his misdeeds continue to be paid by the community that made him rich. About 80 fishermen have been out of work since November when NOAA first instituted its groundfish ban for the sector in which Rafael perpetuated his fraud. Shoreside businesses, including the ones that manufacture nets and ice and repair boats, have also been greatly affected by the cut to New Bedford’s groundfish effort.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren packs a town hall meeting, sits with Markey, Keating over fishing

May 14, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., came to the city Saturday to hear the concerns of fishermen who wanted a faster resolution to the Carlos Rafael problems that have closed two fishing sectors, maybe throwing fishermen permanently out of their jobs.

These cases of licensing and ownership, and repayment of overfishing, “need to be resolved as quickly as possible,” Warren said later.

Warren also heard from Mayor Jon Mitchell and fishing representatives who contend that the wind energy companies that are the finalists for an exclusive contract are not listening to the concerns of the fishing industry, mainly scallopers.

Warren along with U.S. Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass, and U.S. Rep. Bill Keating, D-Mass., listened about these matters in a meeting at the Wharfinger Building on City Pier 3, organized by Bob Vanasse of the industry lobby Saving Seafood.

They parted ways when Warren and her campaign staff went to the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School to conduct a town hall style meeting.

The event had an atmosphere much like a campaign rally, with Warren on stage answering questions from attendees who signed up in a lottery.

She touched on a dozen topics, taking her talk where the questions went, on everything from her late mother, poverty, and U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, who rejects a bill that would insulate special prosecutor Robert Mueller from being removed from office by President Donald Trump.

She also condemned the recent trillion-dollar tax cut while Medicaid recipients are threatened by cuts and 90 percent of Americans claim zero percent in the rise of the economy in the past several decades.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

 

Pair of Lawsuits Seek to Bolster Protections for Right Whale

May 11, 2018 — WASHINGTON — The critically endangered right whale took center stage in a pair of federal lawsuits from an environmental nonprofit that says a significant reduction in protected fish habitat in the Northeast will further imperil the whale and other fish species.

In one of the lawsuits filed Monday, the Conservation Law Foundation says partial passage on April 9 of New England’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment failed to meet some of its initially worthy goals, like minimizing the impact of fishing gear on fish habitats.

The Conservation Law Foundation says the amendment opened up more than 3,000 square miles of once protected ocean in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to commercial fishing activities known to destroy fish habitats.

“In the region, the final Amendment reduced the amount of currently protected essential fish habitat by over 40 percent and lifted current restrictions on destructive fishing practices in vital parts of the remaining ‘protected’ habitat, including areas that are critical habitat for endangered North Atlantic right whales,” the complaint says.

In particular, the environmentalists argue federal regulators have failed to minimize the impacts of fishing gears in the Cashes Ledge area, which has been closed since 2002 to large bottom trawls and other bottomtending fishing gears capable of catching groundfish.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service