Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Two locals bypassed for fish council seats

June 30, 2021 — The federal Department of Commerce has filled five vacancies on the New England Fishery Management Council, bypassing the candidacy of the Northeast Seafood Coalition Executive Director Jackie Odell for two of those seats.

Odell was a candidate for the obligatory Massachusetts seat that went to Mike Pierdinock, a Cape Cod recreational fishing stakeholder who will be serving his first three-year term on the council.

Odell was Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker’s second choice for the Bay State’s obligatory seat that will become vacant Aug. 10 when council Chairman John Quinn retires after reaching the mandatory limit of three consecutive three-year terms.

She also was Baker’s first choice for the at-large seat that will become available Aug. 10 with the pending retirement of Vincent M. Balzano of Maine from the council. Balzano also reached his term limit of nine years.

Peter Seminara, Gloucester’s shellfish warden and Baker’s third choice for the at-large seat, also was passed over in this year’s round of appointments.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo chose to appoint Kristin ‘Togue’ Brawn of Maine to her first three-year term on the council for the at-large seat. Brawn operates a wholesale seafood business that sources scallops from Maine’s scallop dayboat fleet.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gov. Baker nominates locals for regional fish council

June 17, 2021 — The New England Fishery Management Council will lose four of its longest-serving members this summer because of term limits and two of the vacant seats could be filled by candidates from Cape Ann.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker has nominated Jackie Odell, the executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition and a Gloucester resident, as his second choice to replace retiring council Chairman John Quinn in the obligatory Massachusetts seat.

“Ms. Odell’s support of the council process established by the (Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act) is rooted in a belief that utilizing data, sound science and comprehensive analyses are essential to the management decision-making process,” Baker wrote in his nominating letter to Paul Doremus, NOAA Fisheries acting assistant administrator for fisheries. “Encouraging advancements in science and evolving scientific methodologies is vital to ensure successful management measures.”

Baker listed recreational fishing stakeholder Mike Pierdinock, of Plymouth, as his preferred candidate for the Massachusetts seat.

The governor also nominated Odell as his preferred candidate for the at-large seat that will be vacated in August by Vincent Balzano, of Saco, Maine.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishing interests fight ocean closures bill

November 20, 2020 — A national coalition of seafood industry and commercial fishery stakeholders is mobilizing against congressional legislation that would exclude commercial fishing from wide swaths of the nation’s fisheries.

The House bill, filed in late October by U.S. Rep. Raul Grivalja of Arizona, seeks to use “marine protected areas” to ban all “commercial extractive use” across 30% of the nation’s exclusive economic zone by 2030. The closures would be part of the so-called “30×30” strategy to conserve 30% of ocean habitat worldwide by the 2030 target date.

In a letter to Grivalja, more than 800 fishing stakeholders, including the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, framed the conservation-fueled proposal as an undermining threat to the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and an assault on the economic viability of fishing communities from New England to Alaska.

“Members are the commercial fishing industry are very concerned about the attempt to undermine the Magnuson Act via these proposed pieces of legislation,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NEFMC adopts controversial plan to monitor all trips to sea

September 30, 2020 — After years of concerns about the overfishing of some of New England’s iconic species, the regional body overseeing fishing issues on Wednesday adopted a divisive plan that could require monitors to accompany groundfishermen on all trips to sea.

The plan approved by the New England Fishery Management Council would require that fishermen who target cod, flounder, and other groundfish bring monitors on their trips or install electronic devices to track their catch. The plan aims to ensure that fishermen accurately account for the haul they unload at the dock and are not improperly discarding fish that might exceed their quotas.

But the plan is contingent on Congress covering much of the costs, putting its future in doubt.

At the start of a contentious virtual meeting, John Quinn, the council’s chairman, described the debate over increased monitoring as “the most divisive issue” he has experienced in his five years overseeing the group, noting there have been multiple threats of lawsuits.

Environmental advocates called the plan a step in the right direction, but they worried that it wouldn’t be viable without sufficient government support.

“If federal funding continues, we will finally have accurate and precise baseline information about the catch, discards, and landings in this fishery,” said Gib Brogan, a fisheries policy analyst at Oceana, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group. “This information is the foundation of successful modern fisheries management, and we are optimistic that today’s action will help chart the future success of this fishery.”

One environmental group, The Nature Conservancy, offered to pay as much as $2 million to cover the costs of the entire fleet to equip the boats with electronic monitoring devices, calling such action “essential” to preserving the region’s fisheries.

“The critical discussion of establishing monitoring targets that improve catch accounting while maintaining flexibility and fleet viability has yet to be addressed by the council,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, an advocacy group for groundfishermen in Gloucester. “The can has been kicked down the road.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing group asks Baker to fight ‘crippling’ monitor measure

September 23, 2020 — The Northeast Seafood Coalition is trying to enlist Gov. Charlie Baker in its campaign against the monitoring measure that it charges has the “strong potential” to financially cripple the state’s commercial groundfish industry.

The Gloucester-based coalition sent Baker a letter last Friday laying out its case that Amendment 23 — which will set future monitoring levels for sector-based, Northeast commercial groundfish vessels —  is highly flawed and should be withdrawn by the New England Fishery Management Council.

The council, which has been developing the monitoring measure for more than two years, is scheduled to take final action on it next Wednesday during the middle day of its three-day meeting that will be conducted via webinar.

“The letter is really a cry for leadership,” NSC Executive Director Jackie Odell said Tuesday. “We’re looking for leadership on this issue. We’re looking for attention on this issue.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA cancels surveys, angering fishermen

August 10, 2020 — A week after announcing the Aug. 14 redeployment of at-sea monitors aboard Northeast groundfish vessels, NOAA Fisheries said it is canceling four fisheries and ecosystem surveys over COVID-19 safety concerns for its staff.

“After much deliberation, we determined we will not be able to move forward with these surveys while effectively minimizing risk and meeting core survey objectives,” NOAA Fisheries said in a statement.

The cancellation of the surveys further angered fishing stakeholders already incensed by what they regard as NOAA Fisheries’s insensitivity toward health concerns of commercial fishermen in the push to redeploy at-sea monitors while the pandemic continues.

“NOAA doesn’t have anybody working in its offices and has canceled much of its on-the-water field work out of safety concerns for its staff,” Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, said Thursday. “Data is very important. Monitoring is very important. But at some point, NOAA has to understand that the lives of fishermen and their families don’t come second. That has to be a top priority.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishing Money found for at-sea monitors

January 8, 2020 — In late December, on the doorstep to the Christmas holidays, New England’s groundfishermen received an early present.

As part of a $1.4 trillion spending package, the U.S. Senate passed a $79.4 billion appropriations bill that includes another $10.3 million for NOAA Fisheries — once again secured by New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen — to fully fund at-sea monitoring in the Northeast groundfish fishery for the 2020 fishing season that begins May 1.

When President Donald Trump signed the bill into law the next day, the mandated shouldering of the full financial weight of at-sea monitoring by the groundfish industry — at a cost of up to $700 per day per vessel — had been deferred for at least another fishing season.

“This is obviously very good news for our commercial groundfishermen,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition. “At-sea monitoring has become such a huge financial issue for everyone in the fishery.”

It was the third consecutive year that Shaheen, a ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, bailed out the groundfish industry on at-sea monitoring. Shaheen secured the first $10.3 million in the 2018 appropriations process that fully funded at-sea monitoring during the current fishing season.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Groundfishermen not hooked by monitoring alternatives

June 12, 2019 — For more than two years, the New England Fishery Management Council has worked on an intricate groundfish monitoring amendment that could have wide-scale economic and regulatory consequences for groundfishermen.

It has been a thorny, winding path that involves a host of groundfish committees, plan development teams and assorted staff within the far-flung fisheries regulatory landscape. Now a group of groundfishermen are weighing in. And they are not pleased.

Today, the council, meeting for the second of its three days in Portland, Maine, is expected to finalize the range of alternatives for revising monitoring programs when the amendment — named Amendment 23 — goes out for public comment, probably late in the fall.

In a letter to the council, groundfishermen from across New England criticized the process for developing the amendment by framing the issue within a simple cost/benefit analysis.

They claim the process for fashioning the amendment still has not identified what the revised monitoring programs will cost the groundfish industry that ultimately will be responsible for paying for it.

“That’s an extremely important issue, since they’re the ones paying for it,” said Jackie Odell, the executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition. “These are industry-funded programs.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA to foot monitoring costs

March 29, 2018 — Timing may not be everything, but it sure counts for a lot. Just ask New Hampshire groundfisherman David Goethel.

Goethel, who had persevered through cascading years of escalating regulation, slashed fishing quotas, a failed lawsuit and, more recently, the prospect of paying the full cost of at-sea monitoring, was ready to get out of commercial groundfishing.

“I had planned to sell my boat this summer,” Goethel said Wednesday, referring to his 44-foot, Hampton, New Hampshire-ported Ellen Diane. “I was done.”

But not now.

Last week, following a full year of working behind the scenes with U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Goethel got the news he and other groundfishermen wanted to hear:

Shaheen, the lead Democrat on a pivotal Senate appropriation subcommittee, was able to insert language and secure $10.3 million in additional funding that directs — some fishing stakeholders would say forces — NOAA Fisheries to fully fund at-sea monitoring in 2018 for the first time in three years.

“All of the credit should go to Sen. Shaheen,” Goethel said. “She just wouldn’t give up on this. She personally took it and guided it through the byzantine and frustrating budget process.”

Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, echoed Goethel’s comments about Shaheen’s leadership and also said the full funding comes at a critical time for the Northeast groundfish fleet.

“Sen. Shaheen and her office are really the ones who spearheaded this,” Odell said. “She really knows how important this is for fishermen. Viability continues to be a concern for many fishing interests and at-sea monitoring is a huge burden on the fishery.”

In January, NOAA Fisheries said it would mandate at-sea monitoring coverage on 15 percent of the Northeast multispecies groundfish trips in 2018 — down from 16 percent in 2017. The agency, however, did not say whether it would reimburse monitoring costs or leave them entirely to fishermen.

NOAA Fisheries reimbursed groundfishermen for 60 percent of their montitoring costs in 2017, down from 80 percent in 2016. Prior to 2016, NOAA Fisheries assumed all at-sea monitoring costs.

But the writing seemed to be on the wall.

Odell said NOAA Fisheries told industry stakeholders a couple months ago the agency did not envision reimbursing any of the monitoring costs in 2018, increasing the likelihood that more groundfish dayboats would be forced out of active fishing.

Longtime Gloucester fisherman Al Cottone, who also serves as executive director of the city’s Fisheries Commission, said the new at-sea monitoring funding could help convince some fishermen to return to more active fishing or allow others to continue apace without having to foot the bill.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

NOAA leader looks to cultivate culture of collaboration

March 1, 2018 — As debuts go, Mike Pentony’s first day on the job as the regional director for NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office was a corker.

The federal government marked his ascension on Jan. 22 as only the federal government can — shutting down all but the most essential government services as a consequence of the usual congressional mumbley-peg.

“My first action was to come in and proceed with the orderly shutdown of government operations,” Pentony said recently during an interview in the corner office on the uppermost floor of GARFO headquarters in Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park.

The respite was short-lived. The shutdown lasted a day. When it was over, the 53-year-old Pentony began his new job in earnest as the leader of the regional agency that manages some of the most historically productive — and at times contentious — fisheries in the United States.

It is, as his successor John K. Bullard would attest, a monumental task, working on a canvas that stretches geographically along the Eastern seaboard from Maine to North Carolina and west to the Great Lakes.

But the geographical sweep pales in comparison to the scope and density of the regulations Pentony is charged with enforcing.

There is the crisis of cod in the Gulf of Maine, the alarming demise of the North Atlantic right whales, the malfeasance of cheaters such as New Bedford fishing kingpin Carlos Rafael and a myriad of other issues that affect every fishing community within his purview.

There is incessant wrangling over habitat protections, the usual tug-of-war between environmentalists and conservationists on one side and fishermen on the other. It is a drama with a disparate cast of characters and Pentony is convinced the only way to address extraordinarily intricate problems — usually requiring even more intricate responses — is by forging a collaborative spirit.

“I want to try to develop a culture, not just within GARFO and the agency, but within the region, both mid-Atlantic and New England, where we’re all partners with a collective goal of healthy fisheries and healthy fishing communities.” Pentony said. “The problems and challenges are so huge that we’re only stronger if we’re working together.”

He also understands, given the varying degrees of conflict that exist among fisheries stakeholders, that achieving that collaboration will be far more difficult than contemplating its benefits.

“There’s always going to be people that find it easier to stand outside the circle and throw stones than to get inside the circle and work,” Pentony said. “If they stand outside the circle and just shout about how everything is wrong, that generally doesn’t do much to solve the problem.”

Campaign of engagement

Pentony served under Bullard as assistant regional administrator for sustainable fisheries starting in 2014. He was asked what advice his predecessor gave him.

“He told me there are a lot of people cheering and hoping for your success,” Pentony said. “Not just me personally, but if I’m successful, then the regional office can be successful and the agency can be successful. And if you tie that success to our mission, then our success would mean healthy, sustainable fisheries, healthy and sustainable resources and healthy and sustainable fishing communities.”

Pentony made his fishery management bones as a staff member at the New England Fishery Management Council prior to joining NOAA Fisheries in 2002. That experience, he said, instilled in him a solid faith in the ability of the council system to ultimately arrive at the best decision once all implications are considered.

“I’ve been involved with the council process for 20 years,” Pentony said. “It’s not perfect. But I have a ton of respect for the work and effort council members put into being informed and working through what I think is unique in the federal regulatory process. We have this incredibly unique process that engages stakeholders.”

Pentony didn’t even wait for his first official day in the big chair to begin his own campaign of engagement.

The Friday before his official starting date, he traveled to the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative in Seabrook, New Hampshire, to meet with David Goethel — a frequent critic of NOAA Fisheries — and other New Hampshire fishermen to give them a sense of how he plans to approach the job.

Later that day, he had lunch in Gloucester with Vito Giacalone and Jackie Odell of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. He’s also traveled to Maine to breakfast with Maggie Raymond of the Associated Fisheries of Maine and met with New Jersey fishing companies and processors while in the Garden State on personal business.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times