Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Provides an Update on Notification Requirements and Implementing Industry-Funded Monitoring in the Atlantic Herring Fishery

March 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

On February 12, 2020, we invited monitoring service providers to apply to become NOAA Fisheries-approved providers for industry-funded observer, at-sea monitoring, and portside sampling coverage. We expect to announce the approved industry-funded monitoring providers in April.

Beginning April 1, 2020, herring vessels will notify us via the pre-trip notification system (PTNS) to be considered for monitoring coverage, including coverage to satisfy Standardized Bycatch Reporting Methodology coverage and industry-funded monitoring coverage. The details of new and existing notification, reporting, and monitoring requirements, and how to comply with those requirements, is described in this bulletin.

Originally, we had also planned to begin selecting vessels, specifically vessels issued Category A or B herring permits, for industry-funded at-sea monitoring coverage on April 1. However, we are delaying the start date to begin assigning industry-funded monitoring coverage in the herring fishery. Once monitoring service providers are approved, we want to provide ample time for industry participants to make arrangements with service providers to secure at-sea monitoring coverage, and potentially observer coverage to access Northeast multispecies closed areas, for their vessels. Additionally, our training class for new monitors and observers in the herring fishery has been delayed in response to the Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic. For these reasons, we will not be selecting herring vessels for industry-funded monitoring coverage any earlier than June 15, 2020. This means that PTNS will issue waivers for industry-funded monitoring coverage until June, and herring vessels will not be responsible for paying sampling costs associated with industry-funded monitoring until June.

Read the full release here

Ocean Data Portal Maps Show Significant Shifts by Mid-Atlantic Fish Species

March 30, 2020 — The following was released by the Urban Coast Institute:

A series of interactive maps published on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal illustrates the shifts that have taken place over the last five decades by several commercially and recreationally important fish species living along the East Coast.

Users of the free and publicly accessible Portal (portal.midatlanticocean.org) can automatically animate or toggle through hundreds of maps representing fish distributions during the spring or fall seasons in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s or 2010s. These maps can be activated in combination with any of the Portal’s 5,000 map layers showing data for commercial fishing hot spots, marine life habitats, zones being examined for offshore wind development and much more. 
 
The Fish Species Through Time map collection was made possible by a grant from the Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program (CZM) to The Nature Conservancy. It was created based on an analysis of federal Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) bottom trawl survey data collected between 1972 and 2017. 
 
Many of the maps show a trend in fish moving to waters further north and further offshore from the 1970s to the present day. Some fish species that showed little presence off the New England coast decades earlier have since migrated past Cape Cod and established themselves in the Gulf of Maine. 
 
“Our analysis and the maps make no assumptions as to the factors causing these shifts,” said Chris Bruce, GIS manager at The Nature Conservancy in Virginia and a member of the Portal’s technical team. “However, there is no shortage of scientific research to refer to on how factors like climate change and increasing water temperatures are impacting marine habitats.”
 
The fish species analyzed were alewife, American shad, Atlantic mackerel, black sea bass, blueback herring, bluefish, butterfish, longfin squid, monkfish, northern shortfin squid, red hake, sand lance, scup, spiny dogfish, spot, summer flounder, winter flounder and yellowtail. In addition to individual species, a pair of summary maps was created to illustrate shifts by demersal fish and forage fish. “Overlap Area” maps were also created for each species showing the places where fish were consistently present each decade. 
 
The Portal also added a collection of maps projecting future shifts by the fish species through the year 2100. Users can animate these maps, which are based on data previously released by OceanAdapt (https://oceanadapt.rutgers.edu/), a collaboration between the Pinsky Lab of Rutgers University, NMFS, and Fisheries and Oceans Canada.
 
Users can access these maps in the Portal’s Marine Planner application by clicking on the Marine Life theme and then clicking on the dropdowns for Fish Species Through Time (for the data showing the 1970s-present) or Fish Species Future Projections.
 
“These maps tell an important story about the challenges our region’s economies and communities face due to the rapid changes taking place in our ocean,” said Laura McKay, program manager with Virginia CZM and the chair of MARCO’s mapping and data team that manages the Portal. “We hope that they help the region’s ocean stakeholders and decision-makers understand the trends so they can plan and adapt accordingly.”
 
The Portal is an online toolkit and resource center that consolidates available data and enables state, federal and local users to visualize and analyze ocean resources and human use information such as fishing grounds, recreational areas, shipping lanes, habitat areas, and energy sites, among others. With financial support through The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Portal is maintained by a team consisting of the Monmouth University Urban Coast Institute, Ecotrust, The Nature Conservancy and Rutgers University’s Center for Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis under the guidance of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO). Established by the governors of the five coastal Mid-Atlantic states in 2009, MARCO is a partnership of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Virginia to enhance the vitality of the region’s ocean ecosystem and economy.
 
“Regional coordination on ocean use planning is essential to ensure the long-term health of our invaluable ocean resources, and an important piece of this coordination is data accessibility,” said Kisha Santiago-Martinez, chair of MARCO and deputy secretary of state at New York’s Department of State. “Information on the Portal is available to anyone who wishes to view data for any reason, such as ocean planning, education, or decision-making.”

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Midwater Trawl Vessels to Participate in an Atlantic Herring Exempted Fishing Permit

March 30, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is proposing an Exempted Fishing Permit (EFP) to evaluate how to best administer an electronic monitoring (EM) and portside sampling program in the Atlantic herring fishery.

This EFP would allow midwater trawl vessels issued Category A or B Atlantic herring permits to use EM, coupled with portside sampling, instead of at-sea monitoring to satisfy their industry-funded monitoring (IFM) requirements during IFM years 2020-2021 (April 1, 2020 – March 31, 2022). Participating vessels would be required to operate EM systems on all declared herring trips and obtain portside sampling services for trips selected for IFM coverage. Consistent with the 50-percent IFM coverage target for herring vessels, 50 percent of EFP trips would be selected for portside sampling. For more information about the proposed EFP, please read the Federal Register notice describing the project.

If you own a midwater trawl vessel issued a Category A or B herring permit and would like to be issued an EFP, please contact NOAA Fisheries no later than April 27, 2020.

Notifying NOAA Fisheries that you would like to participate in the EFP by April 27, 2020, will help us ensure we have sufficient information for you to participate, including ensuring that the Pre-Trip Notification System works properly for your vessel.  Additionally, your notification will alert the EM and portside sampling service providers of your interest in the EFP, which will facilitate arranging system upgrades and your coverage in advance of IFM coverage beginning as early as June 2020.

Read the full release here

Mills requests federal assistance for Maine’s seafood industry

March 23, 2020 — Gov. Janet Mills is asking President Trump for help to support Maine’s fishing industry.

In a letter to the president Friday, Mills pointed to a collapse of the markets for seafood both locally and globally due to the COVID-19 pandemic and asked the administration to consider direct financial assistance, subsidies, operating loans or loan deferment, or tweaking existing programs to make them more accessible to fishing and seafood businesses.

“In the short-term, harvesters have only limited opportunities within their communities to sell small quantities of product in hopes to earn just enough money to buy weekly necessities,” wrote Mills, calling the men and women who fish for lobster, herring, groundfish and shellfish “the very backbone of our rural coastal economy.”

In the long term, Mills said, “it is clear that the collapse of the international and larger domestic markets will devastate Maine’s commercial fisheries.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Seafood Shipping Concerns Rise Amid Coronavirus Outbreaks

March 18, 2020 — There’s no denying that coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has had a massive impact on the world. Here’s an overview of the ramifications on seafood shipping and related topics.

Demand and customer levels are down

Industry experts say the coronavirus factors into a downward trend related to demand. For example, Alaska’s Sitka Sac Roe Herring Fishery likely won’t happen this year. The department overseeing fish and game in the state reportedly contacted all processors with an assumed interest, and the response was that none intended to purchase herring this year.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Second lawsuit filed in at-sea monitoring dispute

March 10, 2020 — A second lawsuit has been filed in a U.S. federal courthouse against a rule, scheduled to take effect Monday, 9 March, that would require Atlantic herring fishermen to pay for independent monitors aboard their vessels.

Seafreeze Fleet LLC and two vessels it owns filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and NOAA Fisheries in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island last week. It comes a couple of weeks after New Jersey fishermen filed a similar lawsuit over the rule.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Herring hearing

March 2, 2020 — Atlantic herring, which is the fish used for bait by most Maine lobstermen, was expensive and hard to come by in 2019.

In 2020, the catch limit set by interstate fishery regulators will be even lower than last year, but the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is working on ways to provide more flexibility in how the quota is allocated.

A hearing on Draft Addendum III for the herring fishery management plan is planned for March 9 at 6 p.m. at the Maine Department of Marine Resources Augusta office.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Atlantic herring fishermen take government to court over at-sea monitor requirement

February 28, 2020 — A group of New Jersey fishermen have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block a ruling that would require them to pay to carry independent monitors on their vessels during their fishing trips.

The suit, filed on Wednesday, 19 February, in the District of Columbia, came after the U.S. Department of Commerce approved an amendment sought by the New England Fishery Management Council to improve clarity regarding landings data in the Atlantic herring fishery.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Jersey-based herring fleet sues over at-sea monitoring rule

February 25, 2020 — New Jersey herring fishermen are going to court challenging a new rule forcing them to pay for at-sea monitoring, which they say will cost more than $700 a day for observers and cut their revenue from herring trips by more than 20 percent.

A half-dozen vessels associated with Lund’s Fisheries, based near Cape May, N.J. are named in the lawsuit filed last week against the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA and the Department of Commerce.

Cape Trawlers, H&L Axelsson and Loper Bright Enterprises contend regulators have no statutory authority from Congress to impose industry-paid monitoring in addition to a separate, federally-funded observer program.

“The regulation also has the potential to modify other New England fishery management plans to allow for standardized implementation of additional industry-funded monitoring programs in the future,” Lund’s Fisheries said in a joint announcement with the Cause of Action Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based legal and free-market advocacy group.

A final rule published in the Federal Register Feb. 7, to take effect March 9, would require Atlantic herring trawlers with areas A and B permits to pay toward a 50 percent at-sea monitoring coverage target for the first time.

Originating with the 2018 Industry-Funded Omnibus Amendment approved by the New England council, the potential for levying new monitoring requirements had been in the background since being okayed by the Department of Commerce.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Lund’s-linked vessels sue NOAA over industry funded at-sea monitors

February 24, 2020 — A group of US Atlantic herring trawlers linked to major New Jersey scallop and squid supplier Lund’s Fisheries have sued the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) arguing that a new rule requiring them to pay for the cost of at-sea monitoring violates federal laws.

The lawsuit, filed Feb. 19 in a Washington, D.C., federal court, alleges that NOAA’s Feb. 7 publication of a “final rule” that will pave the way for industry-funded monitoring claims that the rule exceeds the agency’s authority granted under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the main legislation that regulates fishing in US federal waters.

The lawsuit further claims that the rule improperly infringes on “Congress’s exclusive taxation authority” and violates three other federal laws — the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Miscellaneous Receipts Act and the Independent Offices Appropriations Act, all of which regulate how the government collects and spends money.

The rule, according to the lawsuit, could cost herring harvesters as much as $700 per trip for the monitors, third-party observers hired by the vessel owner.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News