Saving Seafood

Bristol sheriff’s captain convicted in ‘Codfather’ case

July 17, 2018 — A captain in the Bristol County sheriff’s office was convicted Sunday by a federal jury in connection with helping Carlos Rafael, the New Bedford fishing magnate, smuggle profits from his illegal overfishing scheme to Portugal, the US Attorney’s office in Boston said in a statement.

Jamie Melo, 46, of Dartmouth was convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States and one count of structuring the export of monetary instruments. He was acquitted of one count of bulk cash smuggling. Melo was indicted October 2017.

Rafael, known as “The Codfather,” allegedly told undercover agents that he would conduct his smuggling schemes sometimes by himself and sometimes using others.

During the trial, evidence showed that Melo traveled with Rafael to the Azores in Portugal for a charity event sponsored by the Bristol County Sheriff’s Office. At the time, Melo was an administrative captain with the sheriff’s office.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Oceana report claims Italy ignoring IUU

July 13, 2018 — Oceana released a report on 12 July that suggests multiple European governments, particularly Italy, are turning a blind eye to illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the Mediterranean Sea.

The report, which used data from Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) tracking from Global Fishing Watch (GFW), found suspected cases of bottom trawlers operating in Fisheries Restricted Areas (FRA) and foreign vessels active in waters that potentially qualify as IUU. The biggest offender, Italy, was found to have more than 10,000 hours of illegal fishing activity from Italian-flagged bottom trawler-equipped vessels in the FRA established in the Strait of Sicily.

The area in the Strait of Sicily is designed to protect young hake populations where the stock is already overfished. Trawling in the area is prohibited.

The IUU vessels were discovered using GFW’s fishing detection algorithms. According to Oceana, the actual amount of IUU may be even higher, as some vessels could have either “lacked AIS equipment or have turned off AIS broadcasting.”

The findings were discussed at two governmental meetings of the General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean. According to Oceana, the countries “failed to provide clarification on whether any vessel has been fined or if any punishable action will be taken” during that meeting.

“While Mediterranean governments and their leaders are committing globally to fight pirate fishing under the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the very same governments are turning a blind eye to potential cases in their own Mediterranean Sea,” said Lasse Gustavsson, executive director of Oceana Europe. “Information gathered by Oceana indicates that fishing vessels that can easily be identified are blatantly violating the law in fisheries-restricted areas. They’re doing nothing to uphold the law.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Levittown Man Trafficked More Than 3,500 Protected Turtles, Feds Say

July 11, 2018 — Federal prosecutors indicted a Levittown man Tuesday for allegedly trafficking protected diamondback terrapin turtles.

According to William McSwain, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, David Sommers, 62, of Levittown, was charged with smuggling the turtles and submitting false records for a shipment sent to Canada. The indictment included four violations of the Lacey Act for allegedly trafficking more than 3,500 turtles in interstate commerce.

Federal prosecutors said Sommers would capture the diamondback terrapins and their eggs from marshes in coastal New Jersey. The Levittown man would sell them illegally and had sent turtles across the border with Canada in 2014 in a package that he claimed contained a book.

Sommers is accused of violating the Lacey Act, a wildlife trafficking law, while transporting the turtles from New Jersey into Pennsylvania, according to prosecutors.

“Diamondback terrapins (Malaclemys terrapin) are a semi-aquatic species of turtle native to brackish waters in eastern and southern United States. They are not found in the wild in Pennsylvania but have a dwindling habitat range in neighboring New Jersey. The terrapins are prized in the reptile pet trade for their unique, diamond-shaped shell markings. The turtles are protected under New Jersey law and by an international treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (“CITES”),” prosecutors said in a press release.

Read the full story at Levittown.com

UN Predicts Growth in World Fish Production

July 10, 2018 — World fish production is expected to grow over the next 10 years despite a slowdown in both farmed and wild caught fish, the U.N.’s food agency said.

In a new report on global fisheries, the Food and Agricultural Agency predicts world fish production will grow to 201 million metric tons by 2030 — an 18 percent rise over current levels.

This is despite the amount of wild caught fish leveling off and the number of farmed fish slowing down after decades of rapid growth.

“The fisheries sector is crucial in meeting FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition, and its contribution to economic growth and the fight against poverty is growing,” FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said.

But the report said future growth depends on sustainable and stronger fishing management, and successfully fighting such problems as pollution, global warming and illegal fishing.

Read the full story at VOA News

One in three fish caught never makes it to the plate – UN report

July 9, 2018 — One in three fish caught around the world never makes it to the plate, either being thrown back overboard or rotting before it can be eaten, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Its biannual report on the state of the world’s fisheries, released on Monday, also shows that total fish production has reached a record high thanks to more fish farming, particularly in China, with over half the fish eaten in the world now coming from aquaculture.

In contrast, the amount of wild caught fish has barely changed since the late 1980s and a third of commercial fish species are overfished, the FAO says. Fish farms will continue to expand and the FAO projects that almost 20% more fish will be eaten by 2030, helping sustain the growing global population. However, farmed fish can harm wild populations because often their feed, made from wild fish such as sardines and anchovies, is caught at sea and they can cause pollution.

Fish are a crucial source of nutrition for billions of people around the globe, but overfishing is rife in some regions, with two-thirds of species overexploited in the Mediterranean and Black Seas and the Southeast Pacific. Previous analyses that include estimates for illegal fishing indicate that wild fish stocks are declining faster than FAO data suggest and that half the world’s oceans are now industrially fished.

Read the full story at The Guardian

‘How are we going to get paid?’; fishing ban continues to suffocate local businesses

July 9, 2018 — Anne Jardin-Maynard is an accountant. She doesn’t own a commercial fishing vessel. The New Bedford native works within an office on Centre Street.

Yet for more than seven months, a groundfishing ban implemented by NOAA has prevented Jardin-Maynard from receiving a paycheck. That doesn’t mean the owner of Jardin & Dawson, a settlement house, which handles payroll and accounting for fishing boats, has stopped working.

“If the boats aren’t fishing, how are we going to get paid,” Jardin-Maynard said.

NOAA announced the groundfishing ban at the end of last November as a result of Carlos Rafael falsifying fishing quota. It was also meant to delay operations for Sector IX, the fishing division where Rafael’s boats were associated, so it could draft provisions to prevent repeat offenses.

Since that time, though, the sector has assigned new board members multiple times, provisions have been drafted, and quota has been gathered as potential repayment, but the ban remains.

“I think they need to move it along,” said Jardin-Maynard, who is a new board member of Sector IX as well. “This has been a long time coming. The person that was involved in it (is penalized). It’s not fair for the other people to be involved in this. He’s paying his price.”

Rafael is serving a 46-month prison term in part for falsifying fishing records. While he serves his time in federal prison in Fort Devens, about 80 fishermen have been out of work sending a ripple effect throughout shoreside businesses from ice houses to processors to settlement houses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

HANK SOULE: Revitalizing waterfront is still up to sectors and Carlos Rafael

July 9, 2018 — Carlos Rafael misreported his groundfish catch, and in its piece “Time for NOAA to let Sector IX fish again,” the Times is misreporting the facts.

First, NOAA didn’t calculate, as the piece states, that Rafael misreported just 72,000 pounds of grey sole. He openly admitted to stealing over 10 times that amount, of several different fish stocks. Rather, NOAA has apparently calculated that all but some remaining grey sole has been repaid, with quota seized earlier to cover the debt.

Second, neither Sector IX nor Sector VII has submitted a plan to return to fishing. Sector IX purged itself of nearly every vessel and permit enrolled there, retaining the bare minimum required to maintain legal status. It submitted an operations plan — which explains how a sector and its boats will track and report their quotas — which states that Sector IX has no immediate intent to resume fishing.

Sector VII is even more explicit. It absorbed the many Rafael vessels and permits shunted from Sector IX under the condition that they “will be enrolling as a non-active member and will not be authorized to fish” until Carlos Rafael sells them. In fact, Sector VII explicitly requested NOAA’s help to DENY those vessels permission to harvest.

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

AP Investigation into Sea to Table Raises Questions

July 3, 2018 –On June 15th, the Associated Press released an investigation into Sea to Table, a seafood distributor based in New York, claiming that Sea to Table had misrepresented where some of their seafood had been caught. This case of seafood fraud is particularly troubling as Sea to Table’s main appeal is that they ensure traceability and a clean, sustainable supply chain.

Sea to Table works like this:

Sea to Table partners with domestic fishers, fishing boats, docks, and suppliers to connect them directly to restaurants. Once landed & processed, fish are shipped directly to the chefs who purchase, all facilitated by Sea to Table. This cuts out the traditional fish monger middleman, ensuring a higher price for the fishers and processors, and a fresh, high-quality seafood product for chefs. It also reduces the chances of a fish being mislabeled as the more often a fish changes hands, the more likely it is to be mislabeled.

Encyclopedia Brown and The Case of the Yellowfin Tuna

Sea to Table was a rapidly growing company until the Associated Press found that they sold yellowfin tuna—claimed to be caught off Montauk, NY—that may have been landed elsewhere. The problem comes from one of Sea to Table’s supply partners, Gosman’s, located in Montauk. According to Sea to Table, the tuna sold was supplied by Gosman’s, but had actually been caught in North Carolina (still a sustainable, U.S. fishery). Sea to Table says labeling that tuna as caught off Montauk instead of North Carolina was a simple failure to communicate (and they have apologized), however, the AP did preliminary DNA testing on a piece of tuna in question and claim it is actually from the Indian or Pacific Ocean.

Read the full story at Sustainable Fisheries UW

Congressman Keating says groundfishing ban is in ‘final stages,’ expects it to be lifted soon

July 3, 2018 — As calendars turned to July on Sunday, the new month represented the ninth in which about 80 local fishermen have been banned from groundfishing.

Congressman Bill Keating, who according to some on the waterfront, has most actively tried to return those fishermen to work said on Monday that he expects NOAA to release a decision soon.

“We’re just waiting for the final aspects going forward,” Keating said.

Last month, city, state and federal politicians met at the Whaling Museum to discuss possible scenarios to end the ban. Fishermen also met with the federal delegation in May.

The Democrat representing Massachusetts’ 9th Congressional District said “an administrative procedure” is separating the rule from being announced.

NOAA provided no comment on a timetable and said it would release a statement when an announcement is made.

NOAA has remained quiet throughout the groundfishing ban, which was imposed on November 20, 2017 as measures to force repayment of the fishing overages by Carlos Rafael and to prevent any recurrence of mislabeling.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

19 Eel Smugglers Sentenced, But Lucrative Trade Persists

June 28, 2018 — Tommy Zhou said he’d buy black market eels as long as nobody developed a “big mouth”—and if anyone did double-cross him, he’d pay $200,000 to have him killed, according to undercover agents who arrested Zhou. Zhou, a 42-year-old Brooklyn seafood dealer, was buying and selling eels caught illegally in Virginia. He was among more than 20 other people—ranging from small fishermen to powerful businessmen—recently snagged in a multi-state wildlife trafficking investigation named “Operation Broken Glass.”

“The dealers were laundering eels—buying them illegally, then mixing them with legal ones and actively smuggling them using false labels,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent Eric Holmes, who posed as a poacher selling to Zhou. Poaching all along the East Coast was very sophisticated, he said. “They used night vision and rental vehicles, and they could drop a crew in the middle of the night without making any noise. As long as these poachers had the opportunity to sell to a dealer willing to buy illegal eels, they were unstoppable.”

The run on American eels, Anguilla rostrata, was sparked by a sushi crisis that began in 2010. Wild baby eels, also known as glass eels or elvers, acquired to seed giant aquaculture farms in China and elsewhere were becoming scarce—putting supplies of unagi, eel grilled with soy sauce and served at sushi joints around the world, in danger.

Asia’s eels had already been largely depleted when the European Union announced that it was putting a ban on exports of European eel species to stem a precipitous population decline.

Read the full story at National Geographic