Saving Seafood

The electronic monitoring of groundfish industry

June 13, 2017 — Randy Cushman rises before dawn each day, drives down to his trawler at Port Clyde Harbor and meets his crew. They prep their boat and head out for another day of chasing flounder and halibut. These days, Cushman and his crew rest easier and sleep in a little later, thanks to the camera installed in the boat’s wheelhouse.

“We used to have to take observers to help count our catch,” said Cushman.

Regulations had required observers appointed to certain vessels by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association to help keep track of fish stock.

“Taking an observer out with you is cumbersome,” Cushman said. “You have to train them, get down to the boat an hour early. Sometimes they clash with the crew. And you have to worry about another body on your boat. The camera eliminates those issues. And there are a lot more advantages than that.”

For three years, Cushman has been participating in the Maine Coast Fisherman’s Association’s Electronic Monitoring System pilot project. The project swaps out the observers with surveillance cameras in order to count fish and take other observations on board New England groundfish vessels.

In the groundfish industry, 15 percent of trips must be covered by observers. The data gleaned from those trips is then used to portray industry norms.

All legal fish are counted at the docks, but until recently only human observers could properly count fish that were thrown back in the ocean.

Read the full story at The Times Record

Fish council likely give input on Rafael permits

June 13, 2017 — The New England Fishery Management Council could adopt a formal recommendation to NOAA Fisheries on the ultimate redistribution of Carlos Rafael’s groundfish permits when it convenes next week in Portland, Maine.

The council, set to meet next Tuesday through Thursday, faces a busy agenda of items, including a summary of public comments on groundfish monitoring, as well as possible final actions on the coral amendment and the framework dealing with skates.

But the question of what should happen to Rafael’s stable of more than 40 groundfish permits once the New Bedford fishing magnate is sentenced — now scheduled for July 28 — may generate the most heat at the three-day meetings.

“That issue has generated a lot of interest and opinion among the fishing community and the council could develop an official comment that could be positioned in a recommendation letter to (NOAA Fisheries),” said Janice Plante, council spokeswoman.

The council is set to hear from its Groundfish Committee late next Tuesday morning, including a discussion on the interim final rule for 2017 and 2018 fishing sector operation plans and “whether measures or restrictions should be recommended for Sector 9 due to misreporting by sector vessels.”

As part of an agreement with federal prosecutors, Rafael pleaded guilty in late March to falsifying fish quotas, conspiracy and tax evasion. The man known on the docks as “The Codfather” may have to surrender up to 13 of his groundfishing vessels — which continue to fish as members of Northeast Fishing Sector 9 — and will pay almost $109,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

The commercial groundfish industry has roiled over the question of what to do with all of Rafael’s groundfish permits now that he has pleaded guilty to multiple federal charges.

Officials and fishing stakeholders in New Bedford have insisted the permits should remain there, even if divvied up to other groundfishermen. Other stakeholders — such as Maggie Raymond, executive director of the Associated Fisheries of Maine — argue that Rafael should be stripped of all of his permits.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MAINE: Midcoast lobster pound co-op sees a promising future in aquaculture

June 12, 2017 — The Bremen Lobster Pound Co-op on Keene Neck has been a fixture of Bremen’s working waterfront for decades. After a merger between the fishermen’s association and Community Shellfish LLC, the co-op’s new owner is looking to keep it that way.

Boe Marsh is a Bremen selectman and owns Community Shellfish LLC, a dealer in lobster, clams and shrimp. The company buys from harvesters at its processing and distribution center at 656 Waldoboro Road in Bremen and at the co-op.

The co-op will continue in its current role as a base of operations for local lobstermen and other commercial fishermen, and Marsh is reintroducing aquaculture, a field the co-op first experimented with in previous years.

Marsh hopes to repurpose the co-op’s two lobster pounds for aquaculture space, particularly the growth and harvesting of oysters and clams, while keeping the co-op open and available to local lobstermen and commercial fishermen.

According to Marsh, co-ops across Maine have long used lobster pounds — roughly 50 are spread along the state’s coast — to house and nourish lobsters during the height of the crustacean’s season. The co-ops used plentiful groundfish to sustain the lobsters when a seasonal surplus tends to drive prices down, saving the lobsters for a time of year when they are more valuable.

Marsh said this practice has changed in recent years because of the rising cost of groundfish, such as herring, and the development of technology to keep the lobsters indoors. Some tanks use thermal elements to keep the lobsters in hibernation for two to three months.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MAGGIE RAYMOND: Carlos Rafael’s Fishing Permits Should be Redistributed

June 5, 2017 — Dear Editor:

Carlos Rafael’s environmental crime spree, spanning two decades, will finally come to an end. Rafael pleaded guilty to federal charges of falsifying fish catch reports, conspiracy and tax evasion. He will serve at least four years in jail and will forfeit millions of dollars in fishing assets. For law-abiding fishermen, this day is long overdue.

While other fishermen were complying with steep reductions in fishing quotas, Rafael decided those rules didn’t apply to him. Rafael’s violations set back groundfish rebuilding requirements, and forced others to compete with his illegal activity on the fishing grounds and in the market. Rafael has harmed the entire groundfish industry, and fishermen from Maine to New York deserve to be compensated.

Rafael’s history is so egregious that the National Marine Fisheries Service is obliged to cancel all his groundfish permits and fishing privileges. Existing regulations describe a process for redistributing the fishing privileges from canceled permits to all other permit holders in the fishery, and this is precisely the process that should be followed in this case.

Maggie Raymond

Executive Director

Associated Fisheries of Maine

South Berwick

Read the letter at The Ellsworth American 

New Comment Link for Proposed Recreational Catch Limits for Gulf of Maine Cod and Haddock

June 2, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA:

Due to an administrative error, the comment link published in the Federal Register for the proposed groundfish recreational measures has changed.

Please submit your comments using the Regulations.gov online portal, which now matches the docket number listed in the ADDRESSES section of the Federal Register notice and will link you to all the supporting documents for this action.

If you already submitted comments using the previous link, you do not need to resubmit. Those comments have been registered.

You can also mail comments to: John K. Bullard, Regional Administrator, National Marine Fisheries Service, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930. Mark the outside of the envelope, “Comments on the Fishing Year 2017 Groundfish Recreational Measures.”

The comment period closes on June 9.

We apologize for the error.

For more information, read the proposed rule as published in the Federal Register.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Goebel at 978-281-9175 or jennifer.goebel@noaa.gov

EDF: Rafael’s assets should be seized, fund fishery restoration

May 21, 2017 — After decades of fraud, Carlos Rafael can finally do some good for the fishing industry, fishermen and fish stocks he so badly damaged.

Mr. Rafael reaped tens of millions of dollars, mislabeling millions of pounds of fish to mislead regulators and exceed quota limits. In the process, he was not just breaking the law — he was undermining sustainability in the New England groundfish fishery, cheating his fellow fishermen of their future.

Mr. Rafael amassed an empire of more than 40 fishing boats and 44 fishing permits, making his one of the largest commercial fishing companies in the country. Now, having pleaded guilty to a raft of charges including false labeling, conspiracy and tax evasion, he faces the potential for serious jail time when he is sentenced on June 27. But that should just be the beginning. NOAA, the IRS and the federal judge in this case have an unprecedented opportunity to dispense justice in a way that can transform this iconic fishery.

Leaders in the fishing industry have made two demands that we support: Carlos Rafael should never again be allowed to fish, and his groundfish quota should be redistributed to other participants in the fishery who were among his victims. We propose a third remedy: He should face steep fines and asset seizures proportionate to his crimes, and the proceeds should be used to fix system failures that allowed his criminality to flourish.

Specifically, we are calling for the creation of a Groundfish Monitoring Fund. One of the major causes of the New England cod crisis, and a key enabler of Rafael’s crimes, is inadequate monitoring of the groundfish fleet. Only 1 out of 10 groundfish boats carries an at-sea observer, and there are no monitors to document catch when fishermen bring their harvest to land. As a result, participants in the fishery can’t have confidence that all are abiding by fishing rules, and little accurate information on fishing activity exists upon which to base harvest limits. It is no wonder that Rafael’s massive fraud went undetected for so long, or that this fishery has one of the worst records of stock recovery in the country.

A Groundfish Monitoring Fund could turn this fishery around. In other places, like the U.S. Pacific and British Columbia, successful groundfish monitoring programs have helped resuscitate stocks and put fishermen on a level playing field. There are growing calls for New England to adopt similar innovations, and the Fishery Management Council recently kicked off an amendment process that could get this done. A major remaining challenge, however, is the cost burden of effective monitoring. If a Groundfish Monitoring Fund could overcome that hurdle by helping underwrite costs, it could be a historic breakthrough.

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

NMFS OKs new electronic fisheries monitoring system

May 10, 2017 — The Pacific Fishery Management Council on April 27 recommended new regulations governing the use of electronic equipment to monitor at-sea discards of target, non-target and prohibited fish for certain West Coast groundfish fisheries. If approved by National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), this will mark the culmination of a four-year process to develop and implement regulations for electronic monitoring system use in these fisheries.

“For many fishing operations, electronic monitoring will provide a more cost-effective way to meet 100 percent monitoring requirements. This will allow fishermen the flexibility to choose the monitoring method that makes the most sense for them while maintaining full accountability,” Council Member Dorothy Lowman said in a press release.

Under the council’s catch share program, every vessel must carry a human observer to help monitor catch that is allocated to each vessel owner, including discards that happen at sea. Each owner has a share of the total catch allocation and the program requires that each vessel have “quota pounds” to cover its catch of nearly all groundfish species. The catch share program relies on at-sea monitoring to ensure that discards are accurately identified with an estimated weight so that vessel quotas are properly tracked.

However, fishermen must pay as much as $500 per day for an observer, and must schedule deployment of an observer when a vessel is ready to fish. The electronic monitoring program is expected to increase flexibility while reducing operating costs for fishermen.

An electronic monitoring system collects video images of fishing activity with cameras, uses gear sensors to trigger recording and monitor use, and includes a Global Positioning System to collect location data. It then stores this information on a computer hard drive for review at a later date at a mainland facility, where a person reviews the video to monitor the fishing activity. Under the West Coast electronic monitoring program, the video images will be used to verify the species and amount of discarded fish that is recorded in a fisherman’s logbook.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

HANK SOULE: Rafael: Punishment should fit the crimes

May 9, 2017 — New Bedford fishing mogul Carlos Rafael has now pleaded guilty to a suite of felonies including tax evasion, smuggling fish to shore and cash offshore, false federal reporting, and evading quotas. The Justice Department has worked up a plea deal including four years in prison and seizure of some boats and permits. That suffices for the cash-related crimes, and thanks goes to law enforcement for their long, hard work and the penalties imposed. But it’s not enough.

Rafael has a multi-decadal history of lawbreaking. In 2016 the Boston Globe reported, “Rafael has a history of crime related to his business. He served a six-month prison term for tax evasion in the 1980s and was charged with price-fixing in 1994, though he was acquitted in that case, according to court records. He was also convicted of making false statements on landing slips for commercial fishing vessels in 2000 and was sentenced to probation, according to court records.”

That’s not the half of it. The National Maine Fisheries Service has record of 20 separate admitted violations over the last two decades involving Rafael’s vessels and corporations. They include sub-legal net mesh sizes, missing fishing day declarations and under-counting, quota violations, false reporting, and concealing illicit catch. The boats and scams varied but they all have one common thread: The name “Rafael” stamped on the corporate documentation.

It is no stretch to stipulate that this record, along with the recent case at hand, constitutes prima-facie evidence of repeated, willful, and egregious criminal activity on the part of Rafael. These violations caused unknown harm to fishery resources — by statute, property of the people of the United States — and to all the law-abiding fishermen who have suffered under increasingly stringent regulations (or been forced out of the business entirely). The question at hand is: How to protect the victims and environment alike from this serial offender?

Here’s the rest of the story: In addition to the 13 vessels and permits to be seized, Rafael has another eight vessels and 25 permits still enrolled in the groundfishery. The government has not proposed to restrict those vessels in any way. There are no known sanctions on the offending captains. No additional monitoring of those vessels is planned. In other words: It’s pretty much business as usual, and for Rafael while the loss of those 13 vessels is unfortunate, it’s just one of the costs of engaging in smuggling.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

Other New England Groundfish Sectors Demand Equitable Distribution of Rafael Permits

May 8, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Sustainable Harvest Sector, one of the fishery cooperatives authorized by the New England Fishery Management Council, has called again for NMFS to redistribute Carlos Rafael’s fishing permits to the entire industry, by returning the catch history to the entire region.  Below is a statement from the Board of this Sector, making the case as to why NMFS should act in this manner. [Saving Seafood Editor’s Note: The Board of this Sector consists of Frank Patania, Anthony Fernandes, Phil Ruhle, Jr., Maggie Raymond, James Odlin, Marshall Alexander]

They also rightly state that any geographic preference, such as permanently awarding a portion of quota to New Bedford, requires an extensive public consultation and rulemaking, as such geographic allocations are outlawed under Magnuson except in very special and specific cases.

Fair and Just Compensation in the Case of Carlos Rafael

As Carlos Rafael’s criminal case of money laundering and fishery fraud winds toward closure, the National Marine Fisheries Service must confirm how to re-allocate Rafael’s fish harvesting privileges.  The government plans to seize thirteen vessels and fishing permits. That still leaves Rafael with dozens more boats and permits to continue operating, and many fishermen believe he should be expelled from the fishery entirely.  But whether it’s thirteen permits seized or the three dozen he owns, each one has some amount of fishing rights ‘attached’ to it which must be re-allocated.

The New England Fishery Management Council is the primary federal body which controls quota allocation, and it already has a re-allocation mechanism in place.  Several years ago, the Council voted that the harvesting rights attached to any permit surrendered to the government would be proportionally redistributed to all remaining permits in the fishery.

Though the Council perhaps did not envision a seizure of this magnitude, the mechanism actually works quite well here.  Carlos Rafael has a long history of breaking a myriad of fishing rules, including quota-busting, violations of fishing time limits, closed area incursions, and false catch reporting to the government.  The nearly twenty publicly available settlement agreements with the government follow a timeworn, repeat pattern: A violation, followed by a negotiated fine which is just the cost of doing business in a criminal enterprise.

Rafael stole from every other fisherman in New England.   Over the last five years, his boats poached fish from waters off Downeast Maine to the Rhode Island coast.  While everyone else was suffering under severe cuts to their allowable catch of cod and flounder, Rafael simply decided those cuts didn’t apply to him, and smuggled the fish ashore anyway.

So the Council’s re-allocation mechanism rewards those who play by the rules.  If offers some relief to fishermen working under stringent catch limits which might be a bit higher if not for Rafael and his complicit captains.   It buttresses the logic that as the crimes were committed throughout the region, relief should be distributed throughout the region as well.

The City of New Bedford believes Rafael’s thirteen permits should be confiscated, then locked to that port in perpetuity.  This is an understandable position but is morally bereft.   Locking the quota to that port denies redress to the vast majority of Rafael’s victims.  The City of New Bedford has only benefitted from Rafael’s continuous criminal acts.  It is unseemly to enjoy those benefits for twenty years then, once the scam is exposed, seize them for all time.

New Bedford is by far the nation’s richest fishing port and has been for at least a decade, landing $300-$400 million of seafood annually. In contrast, the entire New England groundfishery is presently worth $60 million.  It is a vibrant and diverse waterfront which will not, by the Mayor’s own admission, succumb to Rafael’s misdeeds.  And New Bedford will benefit from the Council’s mechanism, via quota re-allocation to other boats already based in that port.  Everybody gains.

Neither the governing Council, nor the National Marine Fisheries Service which implements the Council’s policy directives, has ever contemplated restricting quota even to the New England states, never mind individual cities.  Changes of that magnitude take years to develop and mountains of public input – which the Council already conducted, as part of its fishery management plan.  The redistribution mechanism is already in place, it has passed legal muster, and – particularly in this case – it is just.

Board of Directors

The Sustainable Harvest Sector

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

SEAN HORGAN: Fate of Raphael’s permits being debated

May 8, 2017 — As we have mentioned several times in the past, they don’t seem to brook a whole lot of foolishness up in Maine, particularly when it comes to cheating in the commercial fishing business.

So, it wasn’t really surprising when the Gloucester Daily Times received —  ran — a letter last week from Maggie Raymond, the highly respected executive director of the Associated Fisheries of Maine, with her take on what should happen to convicted scammer Carlos Rafael’s surrendered groundfishing permits.

“For law-abiding fishermen, this day is long overdue,” Raymond wrote. “While other fishermen were complying with steep reductions in fishing quotas, Rafael decided those rules didn’t apply to him. Rafael’s violations set back groundfish rebuilding requirements, and forced others to compete with his illegal activity on the fishing grounds and in the market.”

But Raymond wasn’t done there. She followed by offering a solution for the distribution of Rafael’s still-to-be-decided permit forfeitures. It’s one sure to make New Bedford Mayor Jon F. Mitchell choke on his Wheaties.

“Rafael’s history is so egregious that the National Marine Fisheries Service is obliged to cancel all his groundfish permits and fishing privileges,” she wrote. “Existing regulations describe a process for redistributing the fishing privileges from cancelled permits to all other permit holders in the fishery — and this is precisely the process that should be followed in this case.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Times