Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Northeast Seafood Coalition seeks support for monitoring plan

January 1, 2015 — The Northeast Seafood Coalition is seeking the city Fisheries Commission’s support for the New England Fishery Management Council’s recent vote to reduce the mandated level of at-sea monitoring for groundfish boats when the 2016 fishing season opens May 1.

Jackie Odell, NSC executive director, said she will make a formal request for a letter of support from the commission at its yet-to-be scheduled January meeting to begin building public and industry support for the actions the council took at its December meetings in Portland, Maine.

With the prospect of groundfishermen forced to assume the hefty cost of at-sea monitoring at some point within the first quarter of 2016, the council voted to reduce the level of mandated monitoring from approximately 24 percent of all groundfish trips to about 13 percent to help ease the additional financial burden looming on the horizon.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

On Facebook, EDF Attributes “Amazing Comeback of U.S. Fisheries” to Catch Shares

December 29, 2015 (Saving Seafood) — Yesterday, in a Facebook post, the Environmental Defense Fund attributed the “amazing comeback” of U.S. fisheries to the implementation of catch shares, stating “There’s a boatload of evidence (pun very much intended) that this approach is working.”

According to EDF:

“Just a decade ago, many commercial fisheries were something of a free for all, with little incentive to do anything but fish first, fish fast, and fish until there was nothing left. Risky for fishermen and detrimental to species abundance, this system too often corroded the health of fishing communities and fish populations alike. Since then, an alternative management approach called catch shares has transformed this dynamic in many domestic fisheries by aligning the economic interests of fishermen with long-term conservation outcomes.”

Northeastern fishermen and fishing families with Facebook accounts who would like to comment, and let EDF know what catch shares have meant to them, can access the post here.

DAVID GOETHEL: Fishermen on the Hook to Pay for Their Own Regulators

December 27, 2015 — Few professions are as significant to New England’s economy and history as fishing. Yet the ranks of groundfish fishermen have dwindled so much that we’re now an endangered species. The causes are many—but the one now threatening us with extinction is the federal government. Along with one other plaintiff, I’m suing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to stop it from sinking New England’s groundfish industry for good.

Groundfish include cod, haddock and 11 other common bottom-dwelling species. After years of dwindling stocks, in 2012 the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a disaster declaration for groundfish territory off the coast of New England. Over the past four years my cod quota—my bread and butter—plummeted from 60,000 pounds to 3,700 this year. I caught my limit in four days in June.

Shifting ocean patterns have certainly contributed to our struggles, but regulators are a separate anchor altogether. Groundfish fishermen are organized into a patchwork of 15 sectors, i.e., government-designed cooperative organizations. We operate under at least seven overlapping federal and state entities and programs, all of which have their own regulatory nets.

Read the full opinion piece at the Wall Street Journal

 

DAVID GOETHEL: Fishermen on the Hook to Pay for Their Own Regulators

December 28, 2015 — The following is a excerpt from an opinion piece published today in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Goethel, a groundfish fisherman out of Hampton, N.H., writes that he is suing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “to stop it from sinking New England’s groundfish industry for good.” He is represented by Cause of Action, a government watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Goethel writes: “The courts are the industry’s last chance. This month, along with the Northeast Fishery Sector 13, I filed a federal lawsuit- Goethel v. Pritzker. Our claim: Neither NOAA nor its subsidiary, the National Marine Fisheries Service, has the authority to charge groundfishermen for at-sea monitors. Even if Congress had granted this authority, they would have had to follow the process called for in the Administrative Procedure Act and other statutes-which they haven’t.  A bipartisan group of senators, including Susan Collins (R., Maine) and Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), highlighted this troubling fact in April. Writing to the assistant administrator of NOAA Fisheries, they stated NOAA ‘has chosen an interpretation of the FY15 report language that is inconsistent with congressional intent, and consequently, that very high [at-sea monitoring] costs will soon unreasonably burden already struggling members of the fishing industry in the Northeast.'”

Few professions are as significant to New England’s economy and history as fishing. Yet the ranks of groundfish fishermen have dwindled so much that we’re now an endangered species. The causes are many-but the one now threatening us with extinction is the federal government. Along with one other plaintiff, I’m suing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to stop it from sinking New England’s groundfish industry for good.

Groundfish include cod, haddock and 11 other common bottom-dwelling species. After years of dwindling stocks, in 2012 the U.S. Department of Commerce issued a disaster declaration for groundfish territory off the coast of New England. Over the past four years my cod quota-my bread and butter-plummeted from 60,000 pounds to 3,700 this year. I caught my limit in four days in June.

Shifting ocean patterns have certainly contributed to our struggles, but regulators are a separate anchor altogether. Groundfish fishermen are organized into a patchwork of 15 sectors, i.e., government-designed cooperative organizations. We operate under at least seven overlapping federal and state entities and programs, all of which have their own regulatory nets.

As if warrantless searches from the Coast Guard, catch inspections upon returning to port, and satellite tracking weren’t enough, at-sea monitors also accompany us on roughly one in five randomly selected fishing trips. They are hired by three for-profit companies-one of which is led by the former NOAA official who designed the monitor program. They follow us around and take notes on everything we do. That includes measuring our nets, measuring fish we bring in and those we throw back, and recording our expenses down to how much we spent on lunch.

The program is unnecessary given the heavy regulation that exists. And last month NOAA informed us that, beginning on Jan. 1, groundfish fishermen must pay an estimated $710 a day when a monitor is present. That fee covers the monitors’ training, mileage to and from the fisherman’s boat, supervisor salaries, data processes and all other administrative costs. It also covers a set profit margin for the three companies providing the monitors. What those margins are, neither NOAA nor the companies have disclosed.

Read the full opinion piece at The Wall Street Journal

Factory trawlers praised for halibut conservation

December 26, 2015 — What a difference a year makes for the halibut bycatch controversy in the Bering Sea at the December meetings of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Anchorage. The flatfish factory trawlers, vilified for much of this year, reported vigorous and voluntary efforts at halibut conservation, and even received praise from the Pribilofs. Their zeal was prompted by what might be termed resolution number two-by-four of the fish council last summer, which slashed halibut bycatch by 25 percent.

“It was a huge hit to our sector,” said Chris Woodley, executive director of the Groundfish Forum said last week.

But voluntary efforts by the flatfish fleet have already saved 265 metric tons of halibut this year, he said, exceeding the goal of 217 metric tons.

He cited the benefits of a special federal permit allowing deck sorting that gets the halibut back into the water faster and with greater chances of survival. With the halibut removed from the net and returned to the water from the top deck of the boat, only about half the halibut die, down from the 83 percent that perish when kept inside the huge trawl net for up to two hours while below decks in the factory area, he said.

At last week’s NPFMC meeting, representatives of the factory trawlers in the Amendment 80 fleet said that they were already taking measures to limit halibut bycatch, getting out ahead of the 25 percent cut that takes effect next year.

Read the full story at The Bristol Bay Times

 

Costs for at-sea monitors will force many fishermen out of business.

December 18, 2015 — The following was released by the Center for Sustainable Fisheries:

The Center for Sustainable Fisheries fully supports the lawsuit filed in New Hampshire last week by Cause of Action. The Washington-based watchdog group, which focuses its attention on government overreach, is suing the federal government on behalf of our commercial fishermen in New England.

The case is crystal clear. It stems from the high cost for at-sea monitors and the insistence, by NOAA’s intransigent National Marine Fisheries Service, that fishermen must now foot the bill for monitors because the agency has run out of money. This is simply outrageous. The regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service is former New Bedford mayor John Bullard.

Beginning January 1, fishermen who are required to bring monitors on groundfish trips will be billed an estimated $710 daily for their services, an expense previously borne by our government regulators. This mandate comes down at a time that the groundfishery in New England has been declared a disaster, with landings and revenue down and fewer boats fishing. To now burden struggling fishermen with what is undoubtedly a function of government is simply unjust. Furthermore, NOAA has conducted its own study on the costs of monitoring and concluded that upwards of 60 percent of active groundfish vessels would be rendered unprofitable if forced to pay for at-sea monitors. ‘Unprofitable’ in this case meaning fishermen going out of business; deprived not only of income but a way of life.

The plaintiffs in this important case are Dave Goethel, a CSF board member and owner of the Ellen Diane, a 44-foot dayboat out of Hampton, N.H., along with Northeast Fishery Sector XIII, comprising thirty-two East Coast fishermen and managed by John Haran in New Bedford. The controversial issue has been simmering for some time. It is now in the hands of the judiciary. In arguing the case Cause of Action will present a number of legal arguments, primarily that NOAA has no authority to compel funding. It does not take a legal scholar to see which way this case should be resolved. Let us hope that justice will prevail.

View a PDF of the release

The West Coast Groundfish Recovery: The Best Fish News You Haven’t Heard Yet

December 16, 2015 — Monterey, California, used to be an epicenter in the West Coast commercial fishing industry. But these days the city’s waterfront is full of restaurants serving shrimp and tilapia imported from China. And it’s not the only place doing so.

Many small ports around the United States have fallen into disrepair as more Americans consume imported, often farmed seafood. But there’s also an evolution taking place in commercial fishing in some small port towns that might just bring them back to life.

Cities up and down the West Coast once relied heavily on local “groundfish,” such as rockfish, sand dabs, and petrale sole. But the groundfish fishery saw a dramatic decline by 2000, and although many of the fish themselves have come back, the industry hasn’t recovered. Now, a public-private partnership is working to bring access to local fish in small port communities. And it’s a change that could benefit fishermen and women and the environment, and help small port towns rebuild more robust, stable, and diversified economies.

The Dark Days

Guiseppe “Joe” Pennisi, a third generation Monterey fisherman, has been running a boat since he was 18. He saw the West Coast ground fishery begin to grow in 1987 and balloon to hit 11,000 vessels by 2000. That was the year the federal government declared the coast of Oregon, Washington, and California an “economic disaster” due to groundfish stocks collapsing.

At the time, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program moved most species of West Coast groundfish on to their red “Avoid” list, and by 2005, the nonprofits Oceana and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service for failing to protect groundfish.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

Lawsuit plaintiffs: Groundfish observer funding rule will ‘basically destroy industry overnight’

December 11, 2015 — A lawyer representing fishermen suing the federal government over a forthcoming requirement that they pay for the cost of bringing at-sea observers on their boats estimates that “more than half” of the US east coast groundfishermen will go out of business if the new rule takes effect.

Speaking to reporters on Dec. 10 about a lawsuit filed that day against the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the US Department of Commerce, attorney Stephen Schwartz estimated that the rule change would “basically destroy the industry overnight”.

“That’s the fishermen with downstream effects on the crews, on buyers and sellers of seafood, on restaurants with kind of rippling effects throughout the entire economy of New England,” he said.

Schwartz works for Cause of Action, a non-profit Washington, D.C.-based legal advocacy group that is representing New Hampshire groundfisherman

David Goethel as well as the non-profit industry group Sector XIII  filed suit in federal court alleging that a NOAA requirement that groundfishermen begin paying for the cost of at-sea observers on Jan. 1 — a cost that NOAA has previously borne itself — violates existing federal laws including the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

According to Sector XIII manager John Haran, the at-sea observer funding rule will accelerate the decline of the east coast groundfish industry, which has already been in decline for years, he said.

Goethel, who operates a small dayboat from New Hampshire waters, agreed.

“We can not afford to pay for this. It’s that’s simple. I would ask everybody on the call, could you afford to pay $710 to pay for someone to ride to work with you everyday. We can’t either,” Goethel said.

Haran added fishermen are not clear why the cost for the at-sea observers is so high.

“The actual observer, the person on the boat gets paid between $15 and $20 per hour. How they get to $710 from there is one of the great mysteries of this whole program,” he said. “The fishermen are expected to pay for the observers’ training, for observer company overhead, for observer company profit even though we don’t know what that profit is.”

NOAA has defended the program arguing that it needs the information provided by the observers, but doesn’t have the resources to fund it itself. 

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

AUDIO: Cause of Action & Plaintiffs Discuss At-Sea Monitoring Lawsuit

December 10, 2015 (Saving Seafood) — This afternoon, Cause of Action, a government accountability organization “committed to ensuring that decisions made by federal agencies are open, honest, and fair,” held a media call with David Goethel and John Haran, the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed against the Department of Commerce to overturn the Department’s decision to have the commercial fishing industry pay for the cost of at-sea monitoring.

According to Cause of Action, “a large majority” of the commercial fishing operations in New England “will be forced to shut down if the government forces those who fish for cod, flounder and other ‘ground fish’ to pay out of pocket for at-sea monitoring, a program the government has traditionally funded.” The industry is expected to begin paying for the cost of at-sea monitors sometime in 2016.

According to Cause of Action, NOAA estimates that up to 60 percent of the groundfish fleet will be unable to afford the cost of at-sea monitoring. Among other reasons for the challenge, Cause of Action noted that “Congress has directed NOAA to use its appropriated funding to cover the cost of these at-sea monitors,” and “NOAA is specifically required by statute to implement regulations that allow fishing communities sustainable prosperity and ‘minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.'”

Listen to the call here

 

New England Fishermen File Lawsuit Over At-Sea Monitoring Mandate

WASHINGTON — December 9, 2015 — The following was released by Cause of Action:

Today, Cause of Action is announcing that its clients, David Goethel, owner and operator of F/V Ellen Diane, a 44-foot fishing trawler based in Hampton, N.H., and Northeast Fishery Sector 13, a nonprofit entity comprised of over 20 groundfishermen located up and down the eastern seaboard, are suing the U.S. Department of Commerce over a program that would devastate much of the East Coast’s ground fish industry.

The complaint challenges the legality of a federal mandate requiring groundfishermen in the Northeast United States to not only carry National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) enforcement contractors known as “at-sea monitors” on their vessels during fishing trips, but to soon begin paying out-of-pocket for the cost of these authorities. In addition to the complaint, the Plaintiffs have filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would protect fishermen from having to bear the costs of the at-sea monitors.

“Fishing is my passion and its how I’ve made a living, but right now, I’m extremely fearful that I won’t be able to do what I love and provide for my family if I’m forced to pay out of pocket for at-sea monitors,” said Goethel.  “I’m doing this not only to protect myself, but to stand up for others out there like me whose livelihoods are in serious jeopardy. I’m grateful to Cause of Action for giving my industry a voice and helping us fight to preserve our way of life.”

“The fishermen in my sector are hard-working and compassionate folks who would give the shirts off of their backs to help a fellow fisherman in need,” said Northeast Fishery Sector 13 Manager John Haran. “Our sector will be effectively shut down if these fishermen are forced to pay, themselves, for the cost of at-sea monitors.”

“By the federal government’s own estimate, this unlawful regulation will be the death knell for much of what remains of a once-thriving ground fish industry that has been decimated by burdensome federal overreach,” said Cause of Action Executive Director Dan Epstein. “Americans, particularly those who enjoy good, quality seafood, should be extremely concerned that an industry that has been around since before our nation was even founded is slowly going extinct, having been left out at sea by a federal government that seems more interested in caving to special interests than protecting jobs, families and consumers everywhere.”

 

BACKGROUND: 

“Catch Shares” are a fishery management tool that dedicates a secure share of quota allowing fishermen or other entities to harvest a fixed amount of fish. Since 2010, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has coerced New England groundfishermen like Mr. Goethel into joining a form of catch shares known as “sectors,” where they share quota, and are forced to invite federally-contracted monitors onto their boats anytime they set out to sea. 

Although the agency has claimed in Federal court that “Sector membership is voluntary; permit holders need not join a sector in order to be able to fish,” the reality is they have designed the alternative, known as the “common pool” to be so prohibitive, that fisherman are forced to join a sector to remain economically viable in the groundfish industry. 

Catch Shares were promoted heavily by environmental groups and NOAA during the first years of the Obama Administration. Former NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco, asserted that “fisheries managed with catch share programs perform better than fisheries managed with traditional tools.” She promised that catch shares are “the best way for many fisheries to both meet [federal mandates] and have healthy, profitable fisheries that are sustainable.” However, the promises made by Federal appointees and environmentalists have not been fulfilled in New England.

Unfortunately, it’s about to get much worse for these struggling fishermen, who are already policed by the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Some time in “early 2016,”, NOAA will begin forcing them to pay the costs associated with having at-sea monitors watch over their shoulders.

This unlawful mandate will cost Mr. Goethel and the groundfishermen of Sector 13 hundreds of dollars per day at sea, which, for many of them, is the difference between sinking and staying afloat. In fact, according to a study produced by NOAA, nearly 60% of the industry will be rendered unprofitable if it is required to pay out of pocket for these monitors. 

NOAA has implemented the industry funding requirement for monitoring despite the fact that:

  • The Secretary of Commerce declared the groundfish fishery an economic disaster in 2012.
  • The industry continues to struggle with the precipitous decline in groundfish profitability, as evidenced by a four-year low in groundfish revenue of $55.2 million for Fishing Year 2013 – a 33.6 percent decline from Fishing Year 2010.
  • Congress has directed NOAA to use its appropriated funding to cover the cost of these at-sea monitors, which NOAA has refused to properly utilize and allocate in accordance with congressional intent.
  • NOAA is specifically required by statute to implement regulations that allow fishing communities sustainable prosperity and “minimize adverse economic impacts on such communities.”
  • As mentioned above, NOAA itself produced a study indicating that upwards of 60 percent of the groundfish industry could be rendered unprofitable if it is required to pay for at-sea monitors.

About David Goethel:

Mr. Goethel, who has been fishing for over 30 years, holds a B.S. in Biology from Boston University, and worked at the New England Aquarium as a research biologist before choosing to go back out to sea as a fisherman. Mr. Goethel served two terms on the New England Fishery Management Council, and has been an advisor to seven state and federal fishery management boards, including the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission and the governor’s commission on marine biology. Mr. Goethel has been awarded the National Fisherman’s Highliners Award for his active involvement in cooperative efforts to research and manage marine fisheries resources, and is a member of the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative.

About Northeast Fishery Sector 13:

Northeast Fishery Sector 13 is a nonprofit organization comprised of 20 active groundfishermen who are permitted in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia. The number of groundfishing activity within the sector has declined sharply in the past five years due to poor science and overregulation, which has resulted in quota cuts. Click here for more information about the sector.

About Cause of Action:

Cause of Action is a government accountability organization committed to ensuring that decisions made by federal agencies are open, honest, and fair.

MEDIA CONTACT: Geoff Holtzman, geoff.holtzman@causeofaction.org, 703-405-3511

Read the Complaint here

Read the Motion here

Watch a YouTube video to learn more about the case here