Saving Seafood

Bill to make North Carolina ‘Napa Valley’ of US oyster industry also good for Cooke

June 25, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Undercurrent News: 

Many North Carolina fishermen are petitioning in support of the Support Shellfish Industry Act. One group, Citizens for a Level Playing Field, have created a petition in support of the Act.

A vote by the North Carolina General Assembly — potentially as early as Monday — could make it easier for Cooke Seafood USA and others to harvest more oysters in the US coastal state. But it’s coming down to the wire, as the state’s legislature is expected to end its session either this week or next.

The Support Shellfish Industry Act (HB 361) would raise the cap for oyster permits in the Pamlico Sound – the US’ second largest estuary, covering over 3,000 square miles of open water behind North Carolina’s touristy Outer Banks — from a combined 50 acres to 200 acres, allowing for larger scale operations. It’s a change being sought by the Wanchese Fish Company, a Suffolk, Virginia-based harvester and processor acquired by the Canadian Cooke family in 2015, among others.

The measure, which was originally introduced in late May as Senate Bill 738 by Republican state senators Bill Cook, Harry Brown and Norman Sanderson, passed the North Carolina upper chamber on June 15 by a 28-9 vote, but still requires approval by the state’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

“With our acres of pristine waters, and a large and growing interest in cultivated oysters, the potential for the industry in the state is huge,” the three lawmakers said in a press release when introducing the original bill. “Our goal is for North Carolina to become the ‘Napa Valley’ of oysters and to become a $100 million dollar industry in 10 years.”

The North Carolina lawmakers might have picked a different area to represent dominance in the US wine industry. Despite its reputation, Napa Valley produces just 4% of the grapes used in California.

Regardless, Jay Styron, president and owner of the Carolina Mariculture Company, an oyster grower in Cedar Island, North Carolina, would settle right now for his state just getting on a playing field that’s level with the oyster industries in Virginia and Maryland, two states on the Chesapeake Bay (the US’s largest estuary), with lease caps that allow operations of up to 2,000 total acres.

Other states, like Louisiana and Washington, allow similarly high oyster growing caps, he said in a letter to the editor published Friday by Undercurrent News.

Styron told Undercurrent he isn’t interested in expanding beyond the 6.5-acre floating-cage oyster and clam farm he owns in the adjacent Core Sound, but is arguing for the change on behalf of other oyster growers in his role as the president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

More groups weigh in on red snapper actions

May 30, 2018 — A commercial fishing group is the latest to express hope that a test program that gives states more control over recreational red snapper fishing will benefit the Gulf of Mexico fishery overall.

Louisiana’s season started Friday and will remain open until state figures show the federally approved quota of 743,000 pounds for sport fishermen has been met.

The action comes after the state Wildlife and Fisheries Department won federal approval last month to oversee fishing of the popular species in federal waters up to 200 miles offshore both this year and in 2019.

Under the Exempted Fishing Permit, or EFP, sport fishermen are limited to two red snapper a day at least 16 inches in length. The state will use its LA Creel program to monitor catch totals.

Sport fishing groups, in earlier comments, welcomed the action.

Last week, it drew qualified praise from the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, which represents commercial red snapper fishermen.

Read the full story at the Daily Comet

 

2 Gulf States: Recreational Red Snapper Season Opens Friday

May 25, 2018 — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Recreational red snapper seasons open Friday in state and federal waters off Louisiana and Mississippi. Openings are scheduled June 1 off Texas and Alabama and June 11 off of Florida‘s west coast for anglers after the popular sport and table fish.

The states announced those dates in April, after the federal government authorized two-year experimental permits to let states along the Gulf of Mexico manage recreational seasons for red snapper.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praises red snapper recreational pilot program

April 23, 2018 — U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross expressed praise on Tuesday, 17 April, for a pilot program that gives states along the Gulf of Mexico more power in managing the red snapper recreational fishery.

NOAA Fisheries previously unveiled a two-year pilot program giving partial control of the fishery to officials in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. All five states submitted applications that will enable them to manage the recreation fishery in both state waters, which run for the first nine miles off the coast, and federal waters, which extend beyond that.

“Granting these experimental fishing permits to all five states continues the work we started last year to expand recreational fishing opportunities through coordinated, Gulf-wide seasons,” Ross said. “We are going to give the states the opportunity to demonstrate effective management that improves recreational opportunities for all Americans.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Omega Protein to christen new menhaden vessel

April 3, 2018 — US fishmeal company Omega Protein is set to launch a new vessel to join its menhaden fishing fleet, said the firm.

The new vessel, called the F/V Vermilion, was purchased by Omega Protein in 2016 from the oil and gas industry and has been re-fitted to the tune of $5 million, the firm said. The F/V Vermilion was originally constructed in 1977 and called the Protector.

The vessel will be christened at an Omega Protein plant in Abbeville, Louisiana, by reverend Paul Bienvenu, on April 7.

Read the full story a Undercurrent News

 

Trump Signs Omnibus Spending Bill With Legislation Adding 63,000 H-2B Guest Workers

March 28, 2018 — President Donald Trump has signed a new 2,232-page Omnibus Spending Bill sent to him by the Senate after it passed the House of Representative that includes an increase in the H-2B Guest Worker Program for the remainder of the year.

The H-2B program allows employers to hire temporary foreign workers to fill low-skill, non-agricultural positions. Currently it provides for an annual cap of 66,000 visas per year, with a few exceptions.

The new bill contains a provision to once again allow the Department of Homeland Security to exceed the annual cap on admissions of unskilled non-agricultural workers. If fully implemented by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, it has the potential to add as many as 63,000 additional H-2B guest workers next year, nearly doubling the size of the program.

New Bill Huge Improvement

“The new provision to exceed the cap on admissions will sure will help a lot!” exclaimed Jennifer Jenkins, a Gulf Seafood Foundation Board Member and owner of Crystal Seas Oyster in Pass Christian, MS, whose company depends on the more than 150 H-2B workers each year. “I’m not sure it will solve all the problems because there are so many people trying to use the program, but anything is a huge improvement from where we were a week ago.”

The H-2B Foreign Worker program, many from Mexico and Central America, has continued to grow at a steady pace. The Gulf States of Texas, Florida and Louisiana have more than 33,000 H-2B workers alone, with occupational categories that include: landscaping and grounds keeping workers, seafood workers, forest and conservation workers, and maids and housekeeping.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News

 

States: US government to rewrite 2 endangered species rules

March 16, 2018 — NEW ORLEANS — The Trump administration will rewrite rules governing how to choose areas considered critical to endangered species to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four trade groups, according to state attorneys general.

The endangered species director for an environmental nonprofit says that’s terrible news. Noah Greenwald of the Center for Biological Diversity says the administration has “shown nothing but hostility toward endangered species.”

The attorneys general for Alabama and Louisiana said in news releases Thursday that the administration made the agreement Thursday to settle a lawsuit brought by 20 states and four national trade groups, challenging two changes made in 2016.

According to the lawsuit, the rules are now so vague that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service “could declare desert land as critical habitat for a fish and then prevent the construction of a highway through those desert lands, under the theory that it would prevent the future formation of a stream that might one day support the species.”

A spokeswoman for Fish and Wildlife referred a request for comment to the U.S. Justice Department, which did not immediately respond to phoned and emailed queries. A NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman did not immediately respond Thursday.

“We are encouraged that the Trump administration has agreed to revisit these rules, which threaten property owners’ rights to use any land that the federal government could dream that an endangered species might ever inhabit,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in his news release. “These Obama-era rules were not only wildly unreasonable, but contrary to both the spirit and the letter of the Endangered Species Act.”

Greenwald said, “Their case didn’t have a leg to stand on.”

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

 

Louisiana: Red snapper season delayed

March 13, 2018 — NEW ORLEANS — There’s good news and bad news when it comes to red snapper season in Louisiana.

The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission has asked the feds to allow the commission to delay the start of red snapper season, which was slated to open March 24. Instead, the commission will announce at its May meeting the dates of red snapper season.

But unlike previous years, the state season will likely be concurrent with the federal red snapper season, eliminating confusion for anglers, according to Wildlife and Fisheries.

The application for the federal waiver asks that red snapper season open the Friday, May 25, the Friday before Memorial Day, in both state and federal waters.

But the Wildlife and Fisheries Commission will make the final determination for season opening date and daily creel limit per angler.

Read the full story at WGNO

 

Massachusetts: Promise of jobs, revenue not muting foes of offshore drilling

February 27, 2018 — BOSTON — The Trump administration proposal to open new tracts of ocean to the oil industry could create “hundreds of thousands of jobs,” according to an offshore energy group whose president said the plan is part of a “larger push to increase the global competitiveness of America and to spur jobs and economic growth at home.”

But the prospect of drilling off the Massachusetts coast also brought together advocates on Monday who are often at loggerheads but are now pulling in the same direction, against the Trump administration’s plans.

Decades ago, when oil exploration at George’s Bank last occurred, the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) joined together with the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives to fight the proposal, ultimately prevailing, and those groups and others are hoping for a repeat this time around.

“It was a remarkable moment,” said Peter Shelley, senior counsel at CLF, who said it is “ridiculous” that the idea has resurfaced.

“We knew this would not die completely,” said Angela Sanfilippo, of the Fishermen’s Wives, who said she saw the devastation an oil spill can bring to a fishing community when she visited New Orleans after Deepwater Horizon spewed fuel into the Gulf of Mexico eight years ago.

CLF often supports regulations on fishing that the industry opposes, but the two groups — and others — were on the same side for Monday’s event, organized by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey one day before the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s hearing on the offshore drilling proposal in Boston.

The public meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. at Sheraton Boston Hotel is a “sham” because officials there will not take live testimony from the public and the meeting location was moved multiple times, according to Markey.

“We cannot allow George’s Bank to become Exxon’s Bank,” Markey said at Monday’s event, held at the New England Aquarium. The Trump proposal is an “invitation to disaster,” he said.

The Trump administration has proposed opening up waters to drilling and oil exploration, allowing companies to tap into some of the estimated 89.9 billion barrels of oil sitting undiscovered beneath the continental shelf. The idea has pitted food providers against fuel providers.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times