Saving Seafood

Louisiana to open state outside waters to shrimping

April 14, 2016 –BATON ROUGE, La. — The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries will open a portion of state outside waters to shrimping at 6 a.m. on Friday, April 22.

The area lies seaward of Terrebonne Parish and extends a distance of three nautical miles seaward from the Inside/Outside Shrimp Line, beginning at the northwest shore of Caillou Boca and extending westward to the eastern shore of the Atchafalaya River Ship Channel at Eugene Island as delineated by the channel red buoy line.

See the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times

US Judge OKs $20B Settlement From 2010 BP Oil Spill

April 6, 2016 — A federal judge in New Orleans granted final approval Monday to an estimated $20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over the worst offshore spill in the nation’s history.

The settlement, first announced in July, includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five Gulf states and local governments. The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years. The U.S. Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as $20.8 billion, the largest environmental settlement in U.S. history as well as the largest-ever civil settlement with a single entity.

U.S District Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, had set the stage with an earlier ruling that BP had been “grossly negligent” in the offshore rig explosion that killed 11 workers and caused a 134-million-gallon spill.

In 2012, BP reached a similar settlement agreement with private attorneys for businesses and residents who claim the spill cost them money. That deal, which didn’t have a cap, led to a protracted court battle over subsequent payouts to businesses. A court-supervised claims administrator is still processing many of these claims.

BP has estimated its costs related to the spill, including its initial cleanup work and the various settlements and criminal and civil penalties, will exceed $53 billion.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

LOUISIANA: Louisiana Restaurant Association Awards GSI $50,000 Advocacy Grant

March 21, 2016 — The Louisiana Restaurant Association (LRA), the industry’s organization committed to advancing and protecting Louisiana’s restaurant and foodservice industry, has awarded the Gulf Seafood Institute (GSI) a $50,000 grant to advocate for one of the most important menu items from New Orleans to Shreveport – Gulf seafood.

“Over the past couple of years, we have spent more time advocating for equitable fishing policies and improved data collection, things important for our industry to maintain it source of supply,” said Stan Harris, CEO of the Association while on a trip to Capitol Hill with GSI members. “It became clear to us there was not a central point that we could go to work with the harvesters, to work with the charter-for-hire industry, as well as the chefs and distributors. GSI gives us the opportunity to be able to do that because it convened all these different voices to advocate in a positive manner.”

According to Harris, the goals of GSI align with needs of LRA members, especially those that are in the segment that serve a lot of fresh Gulf seafood to customers coming from around the world. The story of Louisiana and Gulf seafood is all about sustainability and locality.

The LRA was established in 1946 to advocate on behalf of the state’s foodservice and hospitality industry among elected officials and regulatory agencies within Louisiana and through it’s partnership with the National Restaurant Association, address the same issues with federal agencies.

It is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors and operates the LRA Self Insurer’s Fund for Workers’ Compensation and the LRA Education Foundation. The nine state chapters are composed of restaurants, caterers, hotels, suppliers and related businesses.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News

Can ‘Slow Fish’ Help Save America’s Small-Scale Fishermen?

March 14, 2016 — You can’t find a more intimate relationship between humans, food and nature than fishing, says Michele Mesmain, international coordinator of Slow Fish, a seafood spinoff of the Italy-based Slow Food movement. Think of all the thousands of boats at sea, catching wild creatures to haul back to shore and eat. “It’s our last source of widely eaten, truly wild food,” she says.

Held every odd-numbered year in Genoa, Slow Fish attracts about 50,000 chefs, fishers, scholars, activists and eaters to promote small-scale fishing, marine biodiversity, cooking and eating neglected seafood species. This year, organizers added a U.S. event — in New Orleans — to highlight fisheries in the Americas and threats to Louisiana’s vanishing independent fishermen.

The New Orleans event was born last year when New Orleans Slow Food chair Gary Granata and Carmo restaurateurs Dana and Christina Honn presented in Genoa. Granata says he spoke about Louisiana’s coast washing away due to erosion, “and Dana and Christina cooked Louisiana seafood in sauce piquant, and we said: ‘Come to New Orleans!’ ”

They meant it. To fund Slow Fish 2016, the group held “Trash Fish Happy Hours,” where customers could eat seafood — like porgy, small squid and whiting — that’s normally considered unwanted bycatch. Though the New Orleans Slow Fish gathering came together as an “all-volunteer, DIY sort of thing,” Granata says, it was far from unambitious. Alongside panel discussions about fisheries throughout the Americas, the hosts planned a full-on festival with a lineup of live, local music and chefs cooking Louisiana seafood, plus added delicacies from around North America.

Read the full story at New York Now

Jim Gossen Joins SXSW Fishery Bycatch Panel

As the 2016 South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival returns to Austin for the 30th time, the interactive incubator  of cutting-edge technologies and digital creativity portion will feature five days of compelling presentations and panels from the brightest minds, including the Gulf Seafood Institute’s Texas Board Member Jim Gossen who will join three other presenters on a panel discussion on seafood bycatch.

Who is successfully making bycatch a part of their everyday menu? What are they serving, and why? How can the movement be promoted nationwide? Wherever there is fishing, there is bycatch, the incidental capture of non-target species, and some chefs/fishmongers are working hard to promote the “trash fish” on menus – both for the good of our planet and our taste buds. The panel discussion Hooked on Bycatch: Seafood You Should Be Eating takes place on Saturday March 12th at 3:30 pm at the Driskill Hotel and will focus on some of the underlining questions about “sustainable seafood”.

While most educated diners want to order “sustainable seafood,” if faced with choosing between a responsibly harvested salmon and a fish they’ve never heard of (Can I interest you in a beautiful ribbonfish this evening?), diners most often rely on what they know and love.

A native of Louisiana with Cajun roots, Gossen has been an innovative and tireless leader for the recovery and improved sustainability of the Gulf of Mexico’s seafood industry. His 44-plus-year career in the restaurant, seafood processing and distribution business includes owning and operating six restaurants in Louisiana and Houston and founding Louisiana Foods Global Seafood Source, Texas’ largest seafood processing and distribution Company.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood News

LOUISIANA: Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance fights NOAA over aqua farms

NEW ORLEANS, La. — February 25, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)  decision to approve industrial offshore fish farming last month in federally protected waters in the Gulf of Mexico is a strong concern in a “delicate and restricted estuarine system,” according to a leading non-profit fisherman’s organization.

Eric Brazer, deputy director at the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, told the Louisiana Record that there are strong concerns with constructing an aquaculture facility of unprecedented size.

“We’ve already seen the catastrophic damage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in this sensitive ecosystem,” Brazer said. “It will likely take generations to understand the true ecological and economic cost, the latter of which is already on the order of billions of dollars.”

Finalized in January, the plan for the aqua farms will permit up to 20 industrial facilities, which will see approximately 64 million pounds of fish produced every year in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the same amount of wild fish currently caught in the Gulf of Mexico annually, meaning that farmed fish would double offerings and flood the market.

Brazer said that it will be future generations who suffer as a result.

“It is our commercial fishing and charter businesses in the Gulf of Mexico, and those of the next generation, that will be the ones carrying the entire burden of risk that comes out of this new aquaculture industry,” he said.

A suit was filed against NOAA by a number of Gulf fishing groups, including Brazer’s organization, in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Louisiana on Feb. 12. The suit alleges that NOAA has no authority to undertake the offshore fish farming, and that allowing aqua farms is a threat to native and endangered species, the ecosystem, and the fish we eat.

Read the full story from the Louisiana Record

Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance fights NOAA over aqua farms

February 25, 2016 — NEW ORLEANS — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)  decision to approve industrial offshore fish farming last month in federally protected waters in the Gulf of Mexico is a strong concern in a “delicate and restricted estuarine system,” according to a leading non-profit fisherman’s organization.

Eric Brazer, deputy director at the Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance, told the Louisiana Record that there are strong concerns with constructing an aquaculture facility of unprecedented size.

“We’ve already seen the catastrophic damage of the Deepwater Horizon disaster in this sensitive ecosystem,” Brazer said. “It will likely take generations to understand the true ecological and economic cost, the latter of which is already on the order of billions of dollars.”

Finalized in January, the plan for the aqua farms will permit up to 20 industrial facilities, which will see approximately 64 million pounds of fish produced every year in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the same amount of wild fish currently caught in the Gulf of Mexico annually, meaning that farmed fish would double offerings and flood the market.

Brazer said that it will be future generations who suffer as a result.

“It is our commercial fishing and charter businesses in the Gulf of Mexico, and those of the next generation, that will be the ones carrying the entire burden of risk that comes out of this new aquaculture industry,” he said.

A suit was filed against NOAA by a number of Gulf fishing groups, including Brazer’s organization, in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Louisiana on Feb. 12. The suit alleges that NOAA has no authority to undertake the offshore fish farming, and that allowing aqua farms is a threat to native and endangered species, the ecosystem, and the fish we eat.

“Unlike the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which cover 41 million and 64 million square miles, respectively, the 600,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico are nearly completely surrounded by land,” Brazer said. “The Gulf effectively acts like a closed system with finite limits on nutrient loading and effluent.”

For 365 days of the year, commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico make sacrifices in order to build a sustainable fishery that can deliver Gulf red snapper to American seafood consumers. Collectively, the fishermen have invested millions of dollars into the fishing and seafood supply businesses, Brazer said.

Read the full story at the Louisiana Record

Constructing An Off-Bottom Oyster Business on Grand Isle

February 15, 2016 — A native of Ecuador, Marcos Guerrero has always believed there is a future in food coming from the sea. The Baton Rouge contractor and his family are now investing in sustainable seafood coming from oysters cage-grown in the waters off Grand Isle, Louisiana.

Approximately eighteen months ago Guerrero, his wife Lali and two sons, Aldo and Boris, founded Caminada Bay Premium Oysters and planted more than 170,000 seed oysters in 200 cages a few hundred yards off the island’s bay bridge, a pre-permitted farming zone for the oysters.

“Oyster are a sustainable source of food and at the same time provide a service of cleansing the water.   We are from Latin America and grew up in a seaside town where seafood was the order of the day,” said Guerrero. “I started to read articles about off bottom oysters and the hatchery on Grand Isle. My sons and I started a conversation with the Grand Isle Port Commission and received one of the first plots to grow oysters in the new program they were starting.”

“Our cages are floating cages because oysters grown in these are sustainable, it is not something that can be fished out of existence. It is a renewable resource for food,” said the aquaculture entrepreneur. “Why floating cages? The majority of the nutrients are in the first twelve inches of the water column, that is why we decided to go with the floaters. I think it was a good decision because the oysters are growing pretty fast. Within a year we were harvesting.”

Floating oysters off-bottom keeps young oysters, called spat, from smothering under sediment and away from predators.

Read the full story at Gulf Seafood Institute

Guest-worker program helps Louisiana seafood facilities

February 8, 2016 — BATON ROUGE — Congress’ decision to quadruple the size of a guest-worker program might be described as a gift to Louisiana’s seafood processing industry, which struggles to fill the seasonal jobs each year.

The LSU AgCenter says about 60 Louisiana seafood processing facilities hire more than 2,000 guest workers each year to peel crawfish and shrimp, shuck oysters and filet fish. Most of the workers come from Mexico and Central America and work 60 hours a week for a few months.

In Louisiana, the top guest-worker jobs include landscaping, packers and packaging, forestry and conservation, construction, and production helpers.

Ben LeGrange, general manager of Atchafalaya Crawfish Processing in Henderson, said  the plant typically hires 50 or 60 guest workers a season, mainly women who peel crawfish.

According to the LSU AgCenter, about 60 Louisiana seafood processing facilities hire more than 2,000 guest workers each year to peel crawfish and shrimp, shuck oysters and filet fish. Most of the workers come from Mexico and Central America and work 60 hours a week for a few months.

The processing season may last from about March to June, where the crawfish season can run November to July, LeGrange said. The processing time varies from season to season, depending on what’s being produced by farmers and fishermen.

“You really have trouble finding local help because it’s erratic. It’s not a set, defined time period,” LeGrange said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Advertiser

Fish Farming In Gulf Poses Questions And Opportunities

February 3, 2016 — Most of the fish we eat in the U.S. comes from other countries. Fishermen in Louisiana have long sought to displace some of those imports but the industry has faced challenges like hurricanes and the 2010 BP oil spill.

Now, a new source of fish in the gulf offers promise — but also raises questions.

For the first time, the Gulf of Mexico is open for fish farming.

Companies can apply for permits through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency. Then they can install floating fish cages — like those already in place in state waters off the coasts of Maine, Washington and Hawaii.

Harlon Pearce owns Harlon’s LA Fish, which sells local fish to restaurants and grocery stores across the south. On a recent afternoon his refrigerated warehouse in Kenner was full of them. He pointed to yellowfin tuna, snapper, black drum and sheep’s head. It doesn’t always look this way.

Pearce, who is on the board of the Gulf Seafood Institute, says he freezes a lot of his fish in order to meet continuous demand, but ultimately always runs out. He wants to sell nationwide and contract with big chains, like Red Lobster, but he says, “We never have enough fish to supply the markets. Never.”

That’s true for a couple of reasons – the seafood industry in the Gulf still hasn’t bounced back from the 2010 BP oil spill, but it’s always fluctuated due to hurricanes and pollution.

Read the full story at New Orleans Public Radio