Saving Seafood

CONNECTICUT: Stonington fishermen fight for their livelihoods: A look at the fleet’s past, present and tenuous future

July 22, 2021 — At 3:20 a.m. Wednesday, the fishing boat Tradition, its deck awash in flood lights, eased out of the south pier of the Town Dock and headed out into Stonington Harbor. A few minutes later, the Jenna Lynn II followed, gliding through the placid water on the way to its fishing grounds.

The two boats would return Wednesday afternoon to unload their catches on the dock.

This scene has taken place here for more than 250 years as fishermen and lobstermen from the Town Dock and other borough piers have left home in search of fish, lobster and scallops in waters as close as Block Island and Long Island sounds and as far away as Georges Bank and Hudson Canyon.

While they have weathered storms, the loss of 41 fleet members at sea, declining catches and restrictions on how much fish they can land, the aging group of mostly men who make up the Town Dock Fleet now face a set of new challenges that threatens their future and that of the state’s last surviving commercial fleet.

These include the difficulty of luring young people into a grueling but potentially lucrative occupation and the leasing of vast areas of their fishing grounds to offshore wind energy companies that plan to erect hundreds of massive turbines.

“A lot of these men have sacrificed a lot to keep Stonington a viable fishing community,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns four large scallop and fishing boats at the dock.

To a man, they say the general public does not have a good understanding of or appreciation for what they do.

Read the full story at The Day

NEW YORK: Stonington fishermen say wind farm developer not responding to their concerns

October 23, 2019 — Local fishermen say they’ve been waiting for months for Ørsted to respond to a host of concerns they’ve presented  about a proposed 75-turbine wind farm about a dozen miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard.

Joe Gilbert, who has a fleet of four commercial boats based at the Stonington Town Dock, said he met with John O’Keefe, head of marine operations for Ørsted, in March to discuss the “vast” concerns that he and other fishermen have ranging from potential environmental impacts to spacing in between turbines. The meeting, which lasted several hours, was productive with O’Keefe taking copious notes, Gilbert said.

“I thought it was the beginning of an open dialogue between the wind developer and the fishermen,” Gilbert said. “I understand we have to try and coexist, and these folks came down wanting to know what our issues were to hopefully work with us so we would all be good neighbors.”

Gilbert said he never heard back from O’Keefe about how Ørsted plans to address the issues, even after following up multiple times with him and other company officials. Eventually, he and a group of Stonington fishermen were offered a meeting in September with Matthew Morrissey, Ørsted’s head of New England markets.

They reiterated their concerns, including those that required more immediate attention, such as a close call earlier in the year between a survey vessel and a fishing vessel in the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard. Gilbert said the fishing vessel tried to communicate with the survey vessel to determine right of way, but the operators on the bridge of the survey vessel, which operates under the Marshall Islands flag, did not speak English.

Morrissey “promised a two-day response” to address their concerns, Gilbert said, but he and the others still haven’t heard back.

Read the full story at The Day

Undersea monument plan advocates hear fishermen’s concerns

August 31, 2016 — MYSTIC, Conn. — One hundred and fifty miles east of Cape Cod, a unique undersea landscape of deep canyons and high mountains supports a diverse ecosystem, abundant with colorful corals, fragile sponges, beaked whales, dragonfish and mussels adapted to living in methane hydrate seeps, that is being considered for protection as a National Monument.

Two leading advocates for the designation, which would be given by President Barack Obama under the American Antiquities Act before he leaves office in January, explained why they are lobbying for the designation Tuesday to an audience of both conservation advocates and commercial fishing representatives concerned about losing valuable fishing grounds.

U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Peter Auster, retired University of Connecticut marine science professor and currently the senior research scientist at the Mystic Aquarium, made their case for declaring the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as a Marine National Monument during a program Tuesday evening at the aquarium.

But commercial fishing groups say the designation would cut off their access to productive areas for red crab, swordfish, tuna and offshore lobster harvests, among other species.

“Those areas have been used for hundreds of years,” said Joe Gilbert, owner of Empire Fisheries, which has operations in southeastern Connecticut and elsewhere along Long Island Sound.

He and other fishing representatives argued that if Obama uses the executive authority afforded him in the Antiquities Act to designate the area a monument, the federal and regional fisheries regulatory processes that require public input would be circumvented.

“We feel disenfranchised at this point,” Gilbert said.

Eric Reid of North Kingstown, R.I., who represents commercial fishing interests on the New England Fishery Management Council, said creating the monument would cause “localized economic damage” to the already stressed fishing industry, and advocated for a compromise being recommended by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Read the full story at The Day