July 2, 2020 — Atlantic Capes Fisheries has partnered with local food banks in Fall River and New Bedford, Massachusetts, to donate 10,000 pounds of fresh seafood.
“It’s important for us, as part of the South Coast community, to support members of our community who are in need,” said Jeff Bolton, CEO of Atlantic Capes Fisheries. “We hope that this donation of fresh seafood will provide some relief to those experiencing food insecurity during this difficult time.”
July 2, 2020 — As the nation grapples with a pandemic and continued protests against systemic racism, calling for police reform, President Donald Trump is rolling back environmental regulations in an effort to deliver on some of his major campaign promises as November nears.
On June 4, Trump issued an executive order to expedite infrastructure investments and “other actions” that will “strengthen the economy and return Americans to work.” The order calls for expediting government decision making and halting environmental review processes.
In the same spirit of cutting red tape, Trump issued a proclamation June 5 to reopen the Northeast Canyons and the Seamounts Marine Region, off the coast of New England, to commercial fishing. In 2016, the Obama administration established the only marine sanctuary in the Atlantic Ocean, protecting 5,000 miles of fragile deep sea environments 130 miles off the shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
At a roundtable in Bangor, Maine, Trump touted how the move would be good for Maine’s economy.
“As we work to fully reopen and revitalize our nation’s economy I am doing everything in my power to support American workers, including those in Maine’s amazing seafood industry,” Trump said.
July 2, 2020 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance (RODA) has called for a correction to a US Coast Guard (USCG) offshore wind study.
Referring to the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Port Access Route Study (MARIPARS), the fishing industry group has cited “serious foundational and analytical errors that merit correction”.
On 29 June RODA filed a formal Request for Correction under the Information Quality Act in order to “improve the objectivity and utility” of the disseminated information.
The MARIPARS study examined current waterway uses in the areas off the coast of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which are sites of proposed offshore wind energy development.
RODA stated: “Understanding these ocean use patterns is critical for successfully designing any offshore development, and for minimising interactions between the proposed developments and existing activity.
“Unfortunately, the Coast Guard’s final report, issued on 27 May, contained several key errors, and the process ‘failed to address nearly all of the substantive comments from fisheries professionals’”.
July 2, 2020 — The following is an excerpt from a letter from Massachusetts Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr to multiple federal regulators in regards to at-sea monitor waivers:
The current waiver from the requirement of At Sea Monitoring (ASM) in the Northeast groundfishery is a critically important safeguard not only for the health and safety of those engaged in this fishery, but also for preventing the spread of the COVID-19 crisis, and should not be ended as our nation continues to confront devastating impacts of this disease. Accordingly, I write to join with Congressman Moulton and Congress Keating and the Massachusetts Fishing Partnership to request that you extend this waiver and the essential health protections that it provides.
July 1, 2020 — The following was released by The Office of Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.):
Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Representatives Seth Moulton (MA-06), and William R. Keating (MA-09) wrote to the Trump administration urging it to fairly include the Massachusetts lobster industry in any discussions or distribution of trade relief assistance provided to the lobster industry and seafood producers in response to China’s retaliatory tariffs. The Trump administration issued a memorandum on June 25, 2020 that instructed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to assess the need for assistance and the impact by the retaliatory tariffs on Maine and other affected states. Massachusetts has the second-largest lobster industry of any state, and since the tariffs were imposed in 2018, national lobster sales to China have fallen by 66 percent – from approximately $138 million in 2018 to $47 million in 2019. In addition to the impacts of China’s retaliatory tariffs, the lobster industry has been suffering from the impacts of the Canadian-European Union (EU) Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which provides tariff-free access for Canadian lobster products sold in the EU, and the coronavirus pandemic, which has shuttered restaurants and eliminated a primary source of domestic consumption.
June 30, 2020 — While many of advanced age across the United States have taken to largely sheltering in their homes and avoiding human interaction under self-imposed quarantines due to the coronavirus pandemic, there’s a strong chance that Carlos Rafael is now or soon will be living a similar existence.
The so-called “Codfather” of New Bedford, Massachusetts, who was earlier convicted of overseeing a massive, organized fish fraud operation in New England in which more than 782,000 pounds of fish were mislabeled over a four-year period (2012-2015), has been moved from the Federal Medical Center, a prison in Devens, Massachusetts, to the Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) Residential Reentry Management Office, confirms Scott Taylor, a Bureau of Prisons (BOP) spokesperson.
That means Rafael is either in home confinement or a residential reentry center, also known as a “halfway house”, Taylor said.
June 30, 2020 — The emergency orders have been in place for over a month, but local health officials are already seeing positive changes.
The most notable change is the health department is seeing a decline in COVID-19 workplace complaints. Since the orders went into effect on May 11, there have been seven complaints made to the department compared to nearly 40 complaints received in April and early-May.
“In my work I feel that everything is being done with the correct hygiene,” Camila, a fish plant worker at North Coast Seafoods said. (The worker’s name was changed for this story to protect her identity.)
Early in the crisis, she was scared of infecting her child and elderly parents and hoped the facility would close. But, Camila said, she feels more secure in her job now. Workers receive appropriate PPE equipment, temperatures are taken daily, and the facility, including cafeteria tables, are disinfected constantly.
Additionally, employers, and temp agencies that place many fish plant workers in jobs, are now obligated to take the lead in preventing outbreaks. That means workers are no longer responsible for things like bringing their own masks or taking their temperature before coming to work.
Damōn Chaplin, health director of the New Bedford Health Department, said the shift in responsibility has helped provide a layer of protection for facility workers.
“We had several different industries, doing different levels of cleaning and levels of workplace practices,” Chaplin said. “And we wanted to make sure we had a standard level of performance across the board.”
The emergency orders combined with a greater availability of PPE and access to testing is what has reduced the number of complaints, Chaplin said.
“For me, it’s safe,” Camila said.
June 25, 2020 — There might be something fishy about October at the University of Massachusetts Amherst this fall.
Thanks to a state grant reeled in by Our Wicked Fish Inc., students at the UMass flagship campus can expect plenty of local seafood and fishing-related events during “a month-long campaign for New England-caught seafood” coinciding with National Seafood Month.
“Components of the campaign will include social media content, on-campus contests, online giveaways, meet-n-greets with fishers, and could also include events such as a film screening, fish cutting demonstrations, cooking demonstrations, and brief before-and-after online survey,” the Baker administration said in a press release announcing the award of three grants through the Division of Marine Fisheries’ Seafood Marketing Grant Program.
The partnership between Our Wicked Fish and UMass Dining was awarded $31,240 in funding, the largest of the three grants.
June 25, 2020 — Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, which was originally scheduled to take place in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A., in March and was postponed to 22 to 24 September, 2020, has been canceled.
The event’s organizer, Diversified Communications, said the COVID-19 crisis has made holding the event this year untenable.
June 25, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries’s plan to reinstate at-sea monitoring aboard commercial fishing vessels on July 1 despite the ongoing pandemic prompted withering criticism Tuesday from the region’s fishing industry.
Fishermen and other stakeholders flocked onto the webinar of the New England Fishery Management Council’s June meeting Tuesday morning to voice their displeasure — and perplexity — at the decision by NOAA Fisheries to resume placing monitors aboard vessels despite obvious health risks.
“They’ve offered us no guidelines and protocols for keeping observers and the industry safe,” Gloucester Fisheries Director Al Cottone, a longtime Gloucester fisherman, said in an interview following the webinar. “Basically, NOAA Fisheries has just passed the buck, placing the burden on the industry and (monitoring) providers on how to be safe on a 40-foot boat.”
He said the agency has not provided provisions for mandatory testing of observers, nor will it provide medical exemptions for at-sea monitoring to fishermen who have a pre-existing condition or are at extreme risk because of age.
“We have an elderly working fleet here,” Cottone said.