Saving Seafood

East Coast fishermen file appeal over cost of government-required ‘at-sea monitors’

December 12th, 2016 — David Goethel built his life off the profits of cod, trolling the waters of New England for 30 years netting the region’s once-abundant signature fish.

“My slice of the American Dream was paid for from fishing,” Goethel said from behind the wheel of his 44-foot fishing trawler on a windy Friday afternoon in December. “Cape Cod house, two cars, four college educations – it all came out of the fish hole in this boat.”

But a controversial federal mandate is threatening to put him out of business, he claims.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, requires groundfishermen — those who catch cod, haddock and other common bottom-dwelling species — to carry on board “at-sea monitors.” The observers, hired by three for-profit companies, are third-party workers whose task it is to observe fishermen’s compliance with federal regulations and ensure annual quotas are not exceeded.

The dispute lies in the cost of the monitors and who should pay for them: Fishermen are billed on average $700 a day when a regulator is present.

NOAA, meanwhile, says monitors were placed on fishing boats like Goethel’s only 14 percent of the time in 2016 — and claims the fishing industry supported this system of regulation in 2010 when a vote went before the New England Fishery Management Council, an advisory board to NOAA that sets the rules.

Read the full story at Fox News 

Scallopers to White House: Marine monument a bad idea

May 6, 2016 — A fishing trade group that represents scallopers from Maine to Virginia has joined Northeast groundfishermen in opposing the designation of any marine national monuments in New England waters.

The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) penned a May 4 letter to Obama administration officials stating its opposition to the establishment of the monuments while also criticizing the unilateral process — presidential decree through the Antiquities Act — being considered for designating them.

“A monument designation, with its unilateral implementation and opaque process, is the exact opposite of the fisheries management process in which we participate,” FSF legal counsels David Frulla and Andrew Minkiewicz wrote to Christy Goldfuss and Whitley Saumwebber, executives in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Public areas and public resources should be managed in an open and transparent manner, not an imperial stroke of the pen.”

The FSF letter comes almost two months after Goldfuss, the managing director of the White House environmental council, told fishing stakeholders at a March 24 meeting in Boston the White House has shelved the proposal pushed by environmental and conservation groups to establish a marine national monument about 80 miles east of Cape Ann in the area around Cashes Ledge.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

NOAA to reduce monitoring in new season

April 29, 2016 — In a victory for groundfishermen, NOAA will significantly reduce at-sea monitoring coverage for Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels in the season that begins Sunday.

NOAA, according to the final rule filed Friday in the Federal Register, will cut monitoring to 14 percent of all vessel trips in 2016, down from about 24 percent in 2015.

The reduction was welcomed by fishermen, particularly following recent federal policy changes leaving permit holders on the hook for the cost of at-sea monitoring. It was a disappointment for conservationists and environmental groups, who were seeking more coverage, not less.

The new rule, known as Framework 55, is expected to be formally published Monday, but will go into effect at the start of the 2016 fishing season on May 1.

“Fishermen appreciate the changes and the evolution of the at-sea monitoring program,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, which strongly advocated for the adjustments to the monitoring program. “We think what they’ve done is prudent and responsible.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Massachusetts fishermen fear new rules smothering industry

January 16, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Gerry O’Neill looks at the water world spinning around him, a world of regulation and re-regulation and over-regulation— in other words, the modern world of commercial fishing —and thinks that he’s seen this movie before.

Two days removed from the public comment hearing at the state Division of Marine Fisheries offices on Emerson Street on potential changes to rules governing the scope and the schedule of the herring season, O’Neill sits in his office on Jodrey State Fish Pier and wonders if his two 141-foot mid-water trawlers Challenger and Endeavour and the Cape Seafood fish processing and sales operations that collectively employ almost 40 full-time workers— and even more when the product is flowing —will survive the future any better than the nearly decimated Gloucester groundfish fleet.

‘‘At the end of the day, the groundfishermen are struggling and everybody knows that and it’s because of over-regulation as well,’’ O’Neill said. ‘‘We’re not dying yet. But if they keep doing what they’re doing, we’re going to go the same way as the groundfishermen.’’

Given the state of the groundfish fleet, that is a chilling phrase, made even more-so by his matter-of-fact delivery in the soft brogue of his native Ireland and his admission that he favors regulations that will sustain the fishery even when they cost him fish and money.

His voice was steady and calm, just as it was at last week’s session in which David Pierce, the executive director of DMF and the state’s representative on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission which governs the Northeast herring fishery, conceded the fishery remains robust.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

Rep. Seth Moulton unites region on monitoring

January 11, 2016 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton has expanded efforts to reform at-sea monitoring for groundfishing vessels, corralling a regional and bipartisan group of federal legislators to urge NOAA to accept changes already approved by the New England Fisheries Management Council and supported by NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard.

Moulton and 16 other members of Congress — totaling 12 Democrats, four Republicans and one Independent from five New England states — wrote to NOAA Administrator Kathleen D. Sullivan expressing support for the council motions approved in December and again voicing their opposition to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plans to transfer at-sea monitoring (ASM) costs to permit holders sometime early this year.

Those costs are estimated at about $710 per day per vessel with monitor coverage.

“We have requested that your agency utilize authority provided by Congress through the Fiscal Year 2015 Appropriations process to cover such expenses in fishing year 2015 and continue to strongly support the deferment of ASM costs to the industry until these program reforms are fully implemented,” the legislators wrote to Sullivan.

The letter, sent Friday, represents the broadest congressional reach on the issue to date and reflects Moulton’s emergence as a leading congressional ally in the fishing industry’s effort to recast the monitoring program into a more efficient and economical operation.

“We felt we needed to educate a broader group of leaders across the region and here in Washington,” Moulton, the first-term Democrat representing Massachusetts’ Sixth Congressional District that includes Cape Ann, said Friday of the monthlong work that went into drafting the letter and convincing the other legislators to sign on.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

NEW HAMPSHIRE: Ohio Gov. John Kasich vows to help fishermen

January 9, 2016 — SEABROOK, N.H. — It’s been tough going for fishermen in recent years, but yesterday the local fishermen’s co-op managed to reel in a big catch — a candidate for president swung by to listen to their concerns and offer help.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich spent about an hour talking with members of the Yankee Fishermans Co-op. Of the dozen or so presidential hopefuls canvassing the Granite State on the eve of its primary, the Republican is the only one so far to come to the co-op. The Route 1A fishing business is the last remaining fishing coop in the greater Newburyport area — most of the fish caught off the local coastline are landed there and sent to market.

For fishermen, the predominant issue is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA for short. The agency regulates the fishing industry, and fishermen have long complained that it uses bad science and a heavy hand to enforce regulations that are putting many of them out of business.

Fisherman David Goethel of Hampton expressed his frustration with NOAA’s monitoring program, which requires that fishermen pay $710 a day to have a person serve onboard their fishing vessels as the government’s eyes and ears. Goethel is suing NOAA over the issue, arguing it is an unfair financial burden.

Read the full story at the Daily News of Newburyport

 

 

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘We’re not dying yet. But …’

January 8, 2016 —  Gerry O’Neill looks at the water world spinning around him, a world of regulation and re-regulation and over-regulation — in other words, the modern world of commercial fishing — and thinks that he’s seen this movie before.

Two days removed from the public comment hearing at the state Division of Marine Fisheries offices on Emerson Street on potential changes to rules governing the scope and the schedule of the herring season, O’Neill sits in his office on Jodrey State Fish Pier and wonders if his two 141-foot mid-water trawlers Challenger and Endeavour and the Cape Seafood fish processing and sales operations that collectively employ almost 40 full-time workers — and even more when the product is flowing — will survive the future any better than the nearly decimated Gloucester groundfish fleet.

“At the end of the day, the groundfishermen are struggling and everybody knows that and it’s because of over-regulation as well,” O’Neill said. “We’re not dying yet. But if they keep doing what they’re doing, we’re going to go the same way as the groundfishermen.”

Given the state of the groundfish fleet, that is a chilling phrase, made even more-so by his matter-of-fact delivery in the soft brogue of his native Ireland and his admission that he favors regulations that will sustain the fishery even when they cost him fish and money.

Fishery not broken

His voice was steady and calm, just as it was at Tuesday’s session in which David Pierce, the executive director of DMF and the state’s representative on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission which governs the Northeast herring fishery, conceded the fishery remains robust.

“The stock remains rebuilt and over-fishing is not occurring,” Pierce told the approximately 20 stakeholders that attended. “The mortality seems to be under control and the stock appears to be in a good shape.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

Over-regulation threatens fishing industry

December 30, 2015 — HAMPTON, N.H. — New Hampshire fishermen locked horns with a federal agency this year over fishing regulations and mandatory costs they said would put them out of business for good.

The fight ultimately led to a federal lawsuit filed in December against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the nation’s fisheries. The suit challenged the legality of NOAA’s intent to make fishermen pay for observers to monitor their compliance with federal regulations. Fishermen said it was unfair they would be forced to pay for their own policing.

Fishermen were already struggling with regulations in the start of 2015. In August 2014, NOAA’s scientific arm reported that Gulf of Maine cod was down 97 percent from historic sustainable levels. That led NOAA to cut fishing allocations for commercial fishermen in 2015 by roughly 70 percent from last year. NOAA also prohibited recreational fishermen from catching any cod and limited haddock this year.

Half of the commercial groundfishing fleet went inactive this year as a result, leaving only nine. Many recreational fishermen have picked up land jobs for supplemental income and anticipate leaving the fishing business eventually for good.

Read the full story at the Portsmouth Herald

 

 

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