Saving Seafood

Rep. Zeldin Secures House Passage of Proposal to Protect LI Fishermen

July 15, 2016 — Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) announced today that an amendment he introduced in the House of Representatives to the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2017 (H.R. 5538) passed the House with a vote of 225 to 202. The Zeldin amendment bars funding for the designation of any National Marine Monuments by the President in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Marine Monuments are massive areas of ocean where fishing would be banned without consulting the local community, fishermen, or regional fisheries managers. You can watch the Congressman discuss his amendment on the House floor, by clicking here.

Congressman Zeldin said, “The Antiquities Act has been an effective tool in the past to preserve historic sites like the Statue of Liberty, but the overly broad interpretation of this law held by the current Administration is threatening to shutdown thousands of square miles of ocean from fishing through a Presidential Proclamation. My amendment ensures that this President, or the next President, does not abuse the Antiquities Act to lock out thousands of fishermen on Long Island and nationwide from portions of federal waters that contain essential fisheries. We must protect our oceans and the solution is clear—any efforts to create a marine protected area must be done through the transparent process laid out by the Magnuson-Stevens fishery conservation law, not through executive fiat that threatens to put thousands of hardworking men and women out of business. Recent Marine Monument designations proclaimed by the Obama Administration have been the largest in U.S. history, locking out fishing in perpetuity—a severe departure from the original intent of the Antiquities Act to preserve historical sites and archeological treasures. Protecting the seafood economy, coastal communities, and the hardworking men and women of the seafood industry who provide for their families through fishing is a top priority for my constituents on the east end of Long Island. I will keep fighting to get this proposal signed into law on behalf of fishermen on Long Island and throughout the nation.”

Read and watch the full story at Long Island Exchange

New York Wind Farm Part of Larger Offshore Energy Ambitions

July 14, 2016 — UNIONDALE, N.Y. — A New York utility plans to approve a wind farm off eastern Long Island that it says would be the nation’s largest offshore wind energy project built to date.

The project would be the first phase of a more ambitious effort to construct hundreds of electricity-producing turbines in the Atlantic Ocean in the coming years.

The announcement that the Long Island Power Authority plans to approve a proposed 90-megawatt, 15-turbine wind farm in U.S. waters east of Montauk at a meeting next week was greeted enthusiastically by energy experts, elected officials and environmentalists.

“This is obviously an important development,” said Jeffrey Firestone, a professor at the University of Delaware and an expert on offshore wind. “Hopefully, this will be something toward facilitating a more regional approach to the need for offshore wind energy.”

The U.S. lags behind Europe and others in development of offshore wind energy because of regulatory hurdles and opposition from fossil fuel and fishing interests, among other challenges. Many wind farms in Europe are already producing hundreds of megawatts of power.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has issued several leases for wind projects along the Atlantic coast, but none have come to fruition yet. LIPA said its project would be the next one built after one opens near Block Island, Rhode Island, later this year.

A scallop industry trade organization, the Fisheries Survival Fund, has raised concerns about some wind farm proposals, but not this one. Important scallop areas were removed from the possible lease areas for this wind farm, said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the fund. He cautioned that other commercial fishermen could raise objections.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

SUSAN POLLACK: Fishing For Progress: Saying No To ‘No Women On Board’

June 10, 2016 — In 1982, as supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment fought claims that that the proposed amendment to the Constitution would destroy the American family, I confronted an older mythology: Women are bad luck on boats.

I was a young maritime reporter for The East Hampton Star on Eastern Long Island. I loved boats and the sea, and I’d always loved adventure. That summer, I planned to join local fishermen aboard a state-of-the-art Japanese squid ship. This was several years after the United States enacted its 200-mile limit, but before American fishermen had fully developed a squid fishery of their own. In exchange for sharing their technical know-how, the Japanese would be permitted to catch squid in our waters.

I was game.

But as I was readying my boots and gear, I received an unexpected warning from the American sponsors of the U.S-Japan venture: no women on board.

Surely, something must be wrong: I’d spent the previous five years in gurry-soaked oil skins reporting on life at sea on American draggers, lobster boats, bay scallopers, gillnetters, long-liners and clamming rigs. I’d photographed the sun rising over the stern of a dragger hauling its catch of yellowtail and blackback flounders, cod, haddock and scup. I’d spent bone-chilling winter days in an open skiff, culling bay scallops – separating the delicate fan-shaped bivalves from whelks, rocks and seaweed. I’d danced on the boat, not for joy, but to keep warm.

On summer evenings, I’d helped my neighbor lift his gillnets, gingerly plucking out sharp-toothed bluefish and the occasional striper. And I’d finally succeeded in filleting a flounder without mangling the fragile flesh.

Read the full story at WBUR

Proposed wind farm off the New Jersey coast concerns local fisherman

June 21, 2016 — LONG BRANCH, N.J. — A proposal to build a wind farm off the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey is concerning some local fisheries, which say that the farm could hurt their livelihood.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management held its first of four public meeting in Long Branch Monday night to education the public on what environmental impacts a wind farm in the ocean could have.

Local fisherman Arthur Osche says that the proposed building site for the farm is right where he usually fishes for scallops. Scallops make up about 40 percent of his fishery business.

“My boat typically does about $3 million a year, so it would be like $1.2 million,” he says.

Osche says that although he does support renewable energy sources, he does not want to see them build where he and other fisheries fish.

Read and watch the full story at News 12 The Bronx

Fishermen worry about plan for wind farm off New York coast

June 20, 2016 — MINEOLA, N.Y. — A long-stalled plan to build a forest of power-producing windmills off the coast of New York may finally be gathering momentum, and that is sparking concern among commercial fishermen who fear the giant turbines will ruin an area rich with scallops and other sea life.

Federal officials announced earlier this month that they would auction off the rights to build the wind power farm on a 127-square-mile wedge of the Atlantic Ocean.

The tip of the wedge begins about 11 miles south of Long Island’s popular Jones Beach and spreads out across an area, sandwiched between major shipping lanes, where trawlers harvest at least $3.3 million worth of sea scallops each year, as well as smaller amounts of mackerel, squid and other species, according to a study commissioned by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“There’s got to be a better place,” said Eric Hansen, a scallop fisherman based in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Groups including the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and the Fisheries Survival Fund and a seafood company in Rhode Island have already voiced objections about damage to the fishing ground and potential navigation hazards for vessels traversing the area.

“We’ll fight it every step of the way,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the Fisheries Survival Fund, although he stopped short of threatening legal action. He said scallop fishermen don’t object to all wind farms, but are angry the New York site was chosen without their input.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Times Union

Long Island a Possible ‘Breeding Ground’ For Great White Sharks, Experts Say

June 13, 2016 — Ever since the blood-curdling screams of an ill-fated skinny dipper, who met her famous demise in the opening scene of “Jaws,” generations of beach-goers have approached the water with bone-chilling trepidation.

Now, a leading shark research team has said it suspects Long Island might be a breeding ground for great whites and has launched a tagging expedition to be able to determine potential birthing sites.

But the news isn’t reason to panic: Experts agree that swimmers have a greater danger of being killed by a faulty toaster oven — or driving on the Long Island Expressway, for that matter — than being devoured by a shark.

According to OCEARCH Chief Operating Officer Fernanda Ubatuba — OCEARCH is a nonprofit organization dedicated to shark research — if you look at a global shark tracker, five mature female great white sharks have been tagged in the past three to four years, and it seems that “there is certain activity in that region.”

Great white sharks, she said, travel from Florida to Canada, “and you can see their activity sometimes overlaps around Long Island.”

OCEARCH has launched a Kickstarter campaign to tag and research great white sharks in the North Atlantic; that research might help to investigate sample sites and ultimately determine definite breeding sites around Long Island, Ubatuba said.

The team will tag juvenile great whites in New York waters, the campaign site says.

Technology utilized by OCEARCH aims to allow people to see, in real time, “breeding and mating sites for the first time in history. It’s amazing,” she said.

Read the full story at Patch

As Long Island Sound warms, its fish species are changing

June 13, 2016 — During a day of fishing on Long Island Sound earlier this month, Richie Nickerson of Niantic caught 10 legal-sized scup, a black sea bass and a northern kingfish — all species he wasn’t likely to land when he first started angling in these waters 30 years ago.

Tony Murphy of Berlin, who fished from the Black Hawk charter boat with Nickerson, also reeled in a haul of scup, also called porgies, as did most of the other 38 fishermen on board that day.

“It used to be we’d strictly catch bluefish and striped bass,” Murphy said. “But now, there are just so many porgies.”

Scup, black sea bass and northern kingfish are just three of the species once more prevalent in warmer mid-Atlantic waters that are now becoming abundant in Long Island Sound.

As the warmer-water species move in, they compete for food and habitat with cold-water species, such as winter flounder and cod, that are now becoming scarce.

“Everything’s changing,” said Greg Dubrule, owner and captain of the Black Hawk, which takes daily boatloads of anglers into the Sound from its docks on the Niantic River.

“There’s no question that, because of the warmer water, we’re seeing more scup and black sea bass, which had always been a New Jersey and southern Long Island fish,” he said.

“Our mainstay used to be winter flounder and cod, but now it’s sea bass, scup and fluke,” he added, “and we’re catching a lot of trigger fish, which we never used to see.”

Read the full story at The Day

US Department of the Interior Approves New York City Offshore Wind Project, Commercial Fishermen Oppose

June 10, 2016 — The Offshore Wind Project in New York City is given a go signal by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) last week. On the other hand, the commercial fishermen disagree in building windmills on pylons within approximately 329 square kilometers of the New York Bight.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the department took a major step in broadening the nation’s energy portfolio, channeling power near population centers on the East Coast. The Offshore Wind Project is a public-private collaboration by Con Edison, Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and New York Power Authority (NYPA).

Read the full story at Science World Report

Sen. Schumer: Closing Black Sea Bass Fishing Season Even Though Stocks Are Thriving May Dramatically Hurt LI Fishing Industry

June 6, 2016 — WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called on federal fishery commissions, including the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, to update outdated and inflexible regulations and New York State DEC to re-evaluate New York’s black sea bass fishing season and consider opening it in June.

Schumer explained that New York’s black sea bass fishing season just closed on May 31st and will not begin again until July 1st. Schumer, today, said forcing the black sea bass fishing season to close – despite healthy stocks – without re-evaluating landing numbers could hurt Long Island’s commercial fishing industry, which supports direct and indirect jobs across the island.

Schumer pointed out that New York is already hurt by poor federally-generated yearly quota allocations, and said that losing out on any of the black sea bass quota due to a June closure would drastically hurt Long Island’s black sea bass commercial fishing industry.

“The black sea bass stocks are thriving and the industry is well below its allowable quota so it makes sense to keep open this fishery in June rather than close it,” said Senator Schumer. “We also must change the arbitrary and outdated federal regulations that hamstring the state DEC so we can more coherently and fairly manage the black sea bass fishery.”

Schumer continued, “Our Long Island fishing community is already reeling from low federal allotments, a closure and potential loss of black sea bass quota will throw it overboard. After a slow start to the black sea bass season, mostly due to weather, our Long Island commercial fishers are ready to bounce back and access the plentiful supply of sea bass, but instead they might fall flat if the feds and the state don’t throw them a line and let them do what they do best—fish. That’s why we should re-evaluate the current black sea bass season and consider opening it in June to help our Long Island fishing communities prosper in a way that is in balance with fishery management.”

Read the full story at LongIsland.com

NEWSDAY: New York fishers deserve fresh assessment of black sea bass

June 3, 2016 — Regulating fisheries isn’t easy. Commercial fishers need to make a living, but species must be protected from overfishing or everyone loses. Quotas and seasons are needed, but regulators must be flexible enough to adjust to unforeseen circumstances.

Those principles are in play now with black sea bass. Cold weather delayed their migration from Maine, so New York’s commercial fishers, most of them Long Islanders, caught only part of their quota in the period ending May 31. June is off-limits, part of a plan fishers helped craft to give equal access to those who fish in different seasons. The state Department of Environmental Conservation wisely agreed to reopen the season this month if final May data show unused quotas. The DEC also was smart to take the unusual step of letting pairs of fishers catch their daily allotment from the same boat, reducing costs of fuel.

Read the full editorial at Newsday