Saving Seafood

Council Wants Money For Fishers Hurt By Monument Expansion

November 14, 2016 — The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council is wasting no time seeking financial compensation for those in the fishing industry who may claim they have been harmed by President Barack Obama’s expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in late August.

At its meeting last month — shortly after being advised by counsel of restrictions on lobbying legislatures or the president for funds — the council decided to send a letter to Obama highlighting the expansion’s impacts on Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities and requesting that the Department of Commerce mitigate those impacts through “direct compensation to fishing sectors.”

The council’s letter will also include a request that the ban on commercial fishing in the expansion area — which includes the waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — be phased in. The letter will also ask for “other programs that would directly benefit those impacted from the monument expansion.”

Compensation for fisheries closures in federal waters is not unprecedented. In 2005, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reimbursed the Hawaii Longline Association $2.2 million for legal expenses tied to the group’s lawsuit opposing a temporary closure of the swordfish fishery. Also, as part of the same $5 million federal grant that funded the reimbursement, lobster and bottomfish fishers displaced by the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve established by President Bill Clinton also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct compensation and funds for fisheries research.

With regard to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, after it was first established by President George W. Bush in 2006, then-Sen. Daniel Inouye inserted an earmark in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 that provided more than $6 million to NMFS for a “capacity reduction program.” That program allowed vessel owners with permits to fish for lobster or bottomfish in the NWHI to be paid the economic value of their permits if they chose to stop fishing well ahead of the date all commercial fishing was to end in the monument, June 15, 2011.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Commercial fishing ends at marine monument

November 14th, 2016 — As of Monday, virtually all commercial fishing will be banned from the newly created Marine National Monument that includes the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts off the coast of southern New England.

The closure includes more than 4,900 square miles of ocean, or about the same area as the state of Connecticut, about 130 miles east-southeast of Cape Cod.

The Northeast Canyons represent 941 square miles of that total, while the protection afforded the Seamounts stretches over 3,972 square miles.

 Currently, only lobster and red crab fishing are exempted from the closure. Those fisheries are grandfathered in for seven years before they also will be excluded and the area wholly shut off to commercial fishing.

The closure, widely criticized by fishing stakeholders as an end-run around the established national fishery management system, is a product of President Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act on Sept. 15 to create the new Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

The process, as it has in coastal communities around the country, pitted commercial fishing interests and other fishing stakeholders against environmentalists and conservationists in a contentious struggle over wide swaths of the nation’s oceans.

Some history:

In August, in a victory for environmentalists and conservationists, Obama ended a roiling debate by more than quadrupling the size of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument to 582,578 square miles in the northwestern Hawaiian Islands, establishing the largest protected area on the planet.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times 

JIM MEEK: Sure, let’s protect the oceans, but we still need to fish

November 7, 2016 — Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are getting as common as hipster sightings along the south end of Agricola Street.

Just last week, the world’s largest MPA (600,000 square miles) was announced for Antarctica’s Ross Sea.

The new MPA was the result of a multilateral negotiating marathon involving nations that don’t get along — like Russia and the U.S. — so let’s hope it all works out for the environment.

Speaking of the Americans, their outgoing president has burnished his legacy by using executive orders to announce two massive “national marine monuments” off Hawaii and New England.

By massive, I mean 5,000 square miles of MPA territory. We’re not talking the Sailors’ Monument in Point Pleasant Park here, or the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.

Normally, Americans declare marine sanctuaries instead of marine monuments, but the former would involve pre-consultation with a bunch of noisy people including disgruntled fishermen — who can raise an awful ruckus once they’re riled up.

So Barack Obama got around all that “let’s-listen-to-the-people-first” nonsense by declaring marine monuments under a century-plus old piece of legislation called the Antiquities Act.

So, you’re asking yourself, who can blame a president for using an executive order or two during his last months in office?

New England fishermen, that’s who.

David Borden, who represents offshore lobstermen, goes straight and smart to the heart of the matter.

Environmental groups keep saying the neglected waters are pristine, but ignore the inconvenient truth that they remain blue, serene, and contented after decades of continuous fishing.

Borden’s argument: If the water’s pure, why kick the lobster and crab fishermen out while oil tankers still crisscross the North Atlantic without swearing allegiance to Greenpeace?

Read the full story at The Chronicle Herald

HAWAII: Suisan evaluates its sourcing policies

November 1, 2016 — A September Associated Press report regarding labor conditions of foreign workers on Honolulu fishing boats has prompted many in the industry to review or reasses their own sourcing practices.

On the Big Island, Suisan undertook an evaluation of its policies.

The retailer purchases all of its seafood from local fishermen and does not buy from longline boats, but wanted to “reassure the public that these are our fishermen here, and you don’t have to worry about that issue,” said vice president and general manager Kyle Kawano.

The Associated Press report last month found abuses of basic labor practices by some longline boats in Hawaii’s commercial fishing fleet. A federal loophole allows foreign crews to work on the vessels but they are not legally allowed to enter the country and cannot leave the boats.

Since then a new crew contract was developed by the Hawaii Longline Association that will be required of all boats who want to sell at the Honolulu fish auction. That contract is not federally enforceable by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, the industry will still be self-regulating.

Suisan president Glenn Hashimoto said that one of the boats Suisan works with employs two foreign workers who are relatives of the captain’s wife. He said they each have contracts like their American counterparts.

“They’ve been verified,” Kawano said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 80 percent of Hawaii’s commercial fish landings are from longline boats. Troll fishing comprises just over 10 percent.

Handline and seamount boat fishing account for 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

An undated fisheries overview by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which manages fish stocks, notes that handline-caught tuna plays a “significant role in the local tuna supply, particularly on the Big Island.”

Suisan sources 72 percent of its fish from day boats, which typically spend one to two days at sea, while 28 percent comes from seamount boats, which spend about a week at sea.

Read the full story at West Hawaii Today

Obama charting course on Pacific fish farming

October 31st, 2016 — OBAMA CHARTING COURSE ON AQUACULTURE IN PACIFIC: The Obama administration is laying the groundwork for permitting fish farming in federal waters in the Pacific Islands for the first time, part of its plan to double aquaculture production in the U.S. by 2020. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — in partnership with the regional fishery council that manages fish stocks in Hawaii, the Marianas and other islands — intends to conduct an environmental impact study to evaluate where farms should be located. The deadline to comment is today.

While salmon and shellfish have been farmed in state waters for decades, NOAA wants to expand aquaculture further from shore, in order to meet growing demand for seafood as the amount of wild-caught fish has flatlined. The U.S. imports more than 90 percent of what is eaten here, half of which is farmed — a practice that’s resulted in a trade deficit of $11.2 billion. Aquaculture is practiced widely in countries like Norway and China, but has been slow to catch on in the U.S. because of concerns about ocean ecosystems and coastal economies. It took NOAA about 14 years to finalize a framework for the Gulf of Mexico, and when the rule was finally completed in January, the agency was sued by a dozen environmental advocacy and commercial fishing groups.

“Farmed species can escape and alter wild populations, and when you put a lot of fish together in one location, it can harbor disease and spread pollution,” said Marianne Cufone, executive director of the Recirculating Farms Coalition, which advocates for land-based aquaponics. The nonprofit is part of the suit filed against NOAA’s plan for the Gulf; Cufone said she expects a challenge to the Pacific program, if it’s finalized.

Read the full story at Politico 

HAWAII: Fishermen Catch 11% More Bigeye Tuna Despite Overfishing Status

October 27, 2016 — U.S. commercial fishermen hauled in 2.5 million pounds more bigeye tuna last year than they did in 2014, landing almost all of it out of Honolulu, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

Bigeye landings in 2015 totaled 25.8 million pounds, an increase of nearly 11 percent compared to last year. 

And that tuna was worth a bit more too, averaging $3.17 per pound in 2015, up from $3.08 in 2014, according to the most recent Fisheries of the United States report by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Overall, U.S. commercial fishermen landed 32 million pounds of seafood last year operating out of Honolulu, the 27th highest nationally by weight. 

But that seafood — mostly bigeye tuna, which fetches top dollar in local sashimi markets and high-end restaurants — was worth $97 million, making it the sixth-highest catch in the country by value. 

Bigeye tuna continues to be subject to overfishing, however. It’s one of 28 stocks on the federal overfishing list. Only 9 percent of fishing stocks monitored by the feds are subject to overfishing, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Officials say they cannot enforce Hawaii fishing contracts

October 21st, 2016 — Federal officials cannot enforce a contract being proposed by the commercial fishing industry as a solution to concerns about foreign fishing crews in Hawaii, leaving the industry responsible for enforcing its own rules.

Federal and state officials met with vessel owners, captains and representatives from the fleet Thursday at a pier in Honolulu.

The normally private quarterly meeting was opened to media and lawmakers to discuss conditions uncovered in an Associated Press investigation that found some foreign fishermen had been confined to vessels for years.

U.S. Custom and Border Protection “does not review contracts, we just make sure that these fishermen … are employed on the vessel,” said Ferdinand Jose, Custom and Border Protection supervisory officer. “Whatever you negotiate … is between you folks, not us.”

The Hawaii Longline Association, which represents fishing boat owners, created a universal contract that will be required on any boat wanting to sell fish in the state’s seafood auction.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WGEM NBC

Hawaii lawmakers hold public meeting on foreign fishermen

October 20, 2016 — HONOLULU — Hawaii lawmakers held a meeting to discuss conditions in the Hawaii longline fishing fleet and heard from an observer who described what it’s like to live on the boats.

“The worst conditions would be no toilet, no shower, no hot water,” said Ashley Watts, a former observer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who spent weeks at sea with various boats over seven years at the federal agency. “You have a cold water deck hose as a shower…the water tastes like iron.”

The meeting on Wednesday followed an Associated Press investigation that found some fishermen have been confined to vessels for years.

A federal loophole allows the foreign men to work but exempts them from most basic labor protections. Many foreign fishermen have to stay on the boats because they are not legally allowed to enter the United States.

“It’s hard to sleep, because every day we don’t do something is another night that some folks are suffering,” state Rep. Kaniela Ing said. “It’s very frustrating to just hear people just kind of punt or say maybe over time we can find a solution.”

Ing and other lawmakers pressed representatives from the fishing industry and government agencies about what can be done to increase oversight and improve conditions in the industry. Ing asked Jim Cook, board member of the Hawaii Longline Association, whether fishing boat captains could provide copies of contracts between fishermen and boat captains to the state, and Cook said he believed that would be possible.

The Hawaii Longline Association, which represents fishing boat owners, created a universal crew contract that will be required on any boat wanting to sell fish in the state’s seafood auction.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Fight Over Papahanaumokuakea Expansion Isn’t Over

October 20, 2016 — Hawaii’s commercial fishing industry leaders are not finished fighting the fourfold expansion of a U.S. marine monument in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

President Barack Obama signed a proclamation in August to make Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument the world’s largest protected natural area after several months of intense lobbying for and against the proposal.

Now the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which actively opposed the expansion, wants the government to study the potential effects and find ways to alleviate them.

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Chair Edwin Ebisui, left, and Executive Director Kitty Simonds, at Wespac’s meeting last week.

“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. said in a statement Friday. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”

Wespac sets fisheries management policies for a 1.5-million-square-mile area and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on how to minimize bycatch, protect habitat and prevent overfishing.

The latest wave of opposition to the monument rolled in earlier this month at the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee meeting in Honolulu. 

New committee member Ray Hilborn, a prominent marine biologist from the University of Washington, railed against large marine protected areas.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat