Saving Seafood

Federal lawsuit targets Louisiana coastal restoration project

January 13, 2024 — A pair of Louisiana seafood processors joined conservationists and a local resident Thursday to file a federal complaint against the ambitious Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project, a $2.9 billion effort to combat the state’s trend of coastal land loss.

In the complaint, the plaintiffs claim the project “will have serious, permanent, adverse impacts on [the basin’s] resources,” including its species diversity, its economy and human health.

They say that in authorizing the project, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers violated administrative procedures and the National Environmental Policy Review Act (NEPA), while federal agencies conducting environmental reviews violated the Endangered Species Act.

The project, which is primarily funded with $2.26 billion from Natural Resource Damage Assessment funds from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill settlement, broke ground in August 2023. A joint effort of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, it will feature a controlled gate structure through the river’s existing levee connected to a new, approximately 2-mile manmade channel with an outfall structure in the basin.

Read the full article at the Courthouse News Service

LA.: Pushing pogy fleet offshore could prove costly to industry

December 12, 2023 — Pushing commercial menhaden fishing farther off the Louisiana coast may appease anglers and conservationists, but it would come at a heavy cost to the industry, according to a new report from state economists.

The two companies operating what amounts to Louisiana’s largest fishery could lose about $31 million per year and shed up to 90 jobs if the state approves a plan to restrict menhaden fishing within a mile of the coast, an economic impact report by the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Court rules against feds in charterboat case

December 4, 2023 — There are enough federally permitted charterboat operations in Louisiana to warrant attention from the latest ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

The ruling turns aside a U.S. Department of Commerce regulation which demanded these charterboat operators install a constant (24-hour) GPS tracking device on their vessels and report what opponents considered to be “confidential economic data” to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The New Civil Liberties Alliance took up the cause for the Mexican Gulf Fishing Company, et al. (meaning more than 1,300 federally permitted charterboat operations) in a plea to the courts to have the requirement declared unconstitutional on a violation of the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights.

Read the full story at The Advocate

Menhaden fishermen say proposed Louisiana buffers threaten fishing communities

October 14, 2023 — Ocean Harvesters and Westbank Fishing are extremely concerned with last week’s decision by the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission to approve a Notice of Intent (NOI) that would impose a one-mile buffer zone for menhaden fishing along the state’s coastline and a 3-mile buffer around Cameron Parish in Southwest Louisiana.

We believe that this decision is not supported by any scientific evidence and will be economically harmful to the menhaden fishery and Louisiana’s fishing communities.

We believe Louisiana’s waters should be shared by all user groups. The new coastwide buffer zone is not necessary for menhaden management. Rather, it’s the result of a long-debated, often political, user conflict that’s already been considered and defeated by the Louisiana Legislature and this Commission. Simply put, these new buffer zones prioritize recreational anglers over commercial fishermen.

Additionally, the Commission chose to move forward without consideration of economic data.  As numerous fishing captains have previously testified before the Commission, this NOI will have real and lasting economic harm and threaten the long-term viability of their operations.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

LOUISIANA: Edwards requests emergency declaration to help Louisiana shrimping industry

September 17, 2023 — Gov. John Bel Edwards has requested an emergency declaration for disaster relief for Louisiana shrimpers amid a flood of foreign shrimp that has driven dockside prices to below $1 per pound.

Edwards made the request in late August at the behest of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, which penned a letter to the governor in August seeking the declaration, the first step in securing disaster relief funding for shrimpers from the federal government.

“Louisiana will be pursuing a federal fisheries disaster declaration from the U.S. Department of Commerce,” Edwards wrote to association president Acy Cooper.

Read the full article at The Center Square

LOUISIANA: GOP says Biden administration protecting whales instead of Louisiana jobs

September 2, 2023 — U.S. House Republicans are preparing to investigate a recent court settlement that pits one of the world’s most endangered marine mammals against potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues and thousands of jobs for Louisiana.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, said President Joe Biden’s administration created the confrontation by using the settlement of a federal lawsuit in Maryland to circumvent time-consuming environmental regulatory procedures.

The Aug. 23 deal expands the protected Gulf of Mexico habitat of Rice’s whales — the only indigenous whale in American waters.

Only about 100 Rice’s whales exist, mostly off Florida’s coast, where there is little oil and gas activity. Recently, sonar findings, a confirmed sighting in 2017 and an unconfirmed sighting in July indicate that the whales — which measure about 40 feet long and weigh about 60,000 pounds — may also live off the coasts of Louisiana and Texas, where there is far more energy activity.

Read the full article at Nola.com

LOUISIANA: Rep. Garret Graves: Federal aid for Louisiana fisheries delivered after nearly four years

August 28, 2o23 — After a long wait, Louisiana’s fisheries finally will receive $58 million in federal aid to offset disaster impacts, U.S. Rep. Garret Graves announced.

The Baton Rouge area congressman worked to secure the federal assistance in 2020 after multiple disasters affected the state’s fisheries in 2019.

Graves said in a news release the federal government has taken nearly four years to deliver the funding after it was awarded.

“There is no excuse for the bureaucracy to take four years for the disaster relief we secured to actually be made available, but these funds will be invaluable,” he said in the announcement. “We have promised the seafood industry we would not stop our fight to bring them relief while working to reform the broken fisheries disaster process. We will continue to work with our fishing community to cut through the red tape and make this program functional.”

Read the full article at Gonzales Weekly Citizen

LOUISIANA: Louisiana breaks ground on experimental project to rebuild lost wetlands

August 12, 2023 — Over thousands of years, the Mississippi River wended its way through the lush and dense wetlands of the Barataria Basin in what’s now south-central Louisiana. As it flowed south on its way to the sea, the river continually poured sediment into the basin, gifting it with fresh, nutrient-rich river mud that replenished the land and prevented coastal erosion. But 20th-century innovations like dams and levees stopped the river’s natural systems. This, in combination with recent sea-level rise and the constant battering of supercharged hurricane seasons, means the sea now gnaws steadily at the bottom of the state, causing gradual but catastrophic land loss. Since 1932, the Barataria has lost 17 percent of its land. It’s predicted to lose another 200-plus square miles in the next 20 years.

To combat this, Louisiana officials broke ground Thursday on an ambitious, $2.92 billion project to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into the basin, mimicking the natural processes of the river’s flow in an attempt to save the state’s disappearing coast. The initiative is the first step in Louisiana’s $50 billion Coastal Master Plan, funded in part by a lawsuit settlement from the devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010. Though many laud the project, some worry it will harm existing wildlife in the basin, while taking a very long time to do its work.

The main event for the mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion Project will be “punching a hole in the levee” that prevents the Mississippi River from regularly overflowing its banks and changing course, said Bren Haase, the chair of the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority. The project involves installing a complex gate structure through the Mississippi River’s levee, allowing some water to flow into a channel, which will then empty out over the basin and wash into the sea, carrying mud, silt, and clay with it to create new land. It’ll take five years to build. Over 50 years, the diversion project should add 21 square miles of land to the basin, according to Haase.

Read the full article at Grist

LOUISIANA: A billion-dollar coastal project begins in Louisiana. Will it work as sea levels rise?

August 10, 2023 — Nearly $3 billion in settlement money from the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster that devastated the Gulf Coast and killed hundreds of thousands of marine animals is now funding a massive ecosystem restoration in southeastern Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish.

The flat, sparsely populated land divided by the Mississippi River delta is marbled by bayous and bays. Farms, fishing camps and shrimp boats share the region with oil rig supply vessels and industrial storage. And it’s about to host a vast undertaking meant to mimic Mother Nature: Enormous gates will soon be incorporated into a flood protection levee.

The aim is to divert some of the river’s sediment-laden water into a new channel and guide it into the Barataria Basin southeast of New Orleans.

If it works, the sediment will settle out in the basin and gradually restore land that has been steadily disappearing for decades. State coastal officials call it a first-of-its-kind project they are certain will work, even as climate change-induced rising sea levels threaten the disappearing coast.

Read the full article at Associated Press