Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Commercial striped bass season opens this week

June 23, 2020 — Fishermen should be prepared to see an armada of boats descend on our best striped bass fishing concentration points this week, possibly through much of July. Commercial striper fishermen will begin their intense harvesting season on June 24 — this Wednesday.

The first days of the frenetic, highly competitive season usually bring the very highest prices — and some of the lowest thoughtful behavior. With the lure of a thousand dollars for a day’s work, motivation can be powerful. If the initial supply is high, though, rewards can plummet fast. Too much early success by too many fishermen hurts their final bottom line.

Whole, gutted wild striped bass averaging 11 pounds right now are retailing at New York’s Fulton Fish Market for $213.18 per fish. That’s about $19.38 per pound and includes bones and head. Fillets are selling for about $29.99a pound What Massachusetts fishermen will get this year is anyone’s guess, but it likely won’t be stable or fair.

I remember lamenting back in 2014 that while the retail price of striped bass in the market was anywhere from $17 to $26 per pound, fishermen were getting only $4 to $5 a pound. Added to the challenge this year is the presence of seals stealing hooked fish off a line and great white sharks chomping off all but the heads.

Commercial fishing days starting this week will be limited to Mondays and Wednesdays until the state’s quota of 735,240 pounds is reached. That’s a huge toll on a species that has been in decline for at least the last five years. Commercial fishermen bring their fish to buyers the same day they catch them, so those wholesalers can immediately report our state’s catch. Seafood lovers should expect stripers at their favorite markets and restaurants this week.

Read the full story at Telegram

MASSACHUSETTS: UPDATE: Moulton calls for extension of monitor waiver

June 19, 2020 — Two Massachusetts congressmen are urging NOAA Fisheries to extend the waiver that removed at-sea monitors from commercial fishing vessels in the Northeast fisheries as a continued protection against the COVID-19 virus.

In a letter to Neil Jacobs, an acting undersecretary at the Department of Commerce, U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton and Bill Keating said a continuation of the at-sea monitor waiver is “critical to both protect the health and welfare of fishermen who are working to sustain their operations and to maintain our region’s seafood supply during the continued COVID-19 pandemic.”

On March 24, NOAA Fisheries implemented the at-sea monitor waiver and took the observers off the boats. It has extended the waiver at least twice. Moulton said the agency informed his office on June 12 that the waiver would be withdrawn, possibly as early as July 1, and at-sea monitors would return to assigned vessels.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Return of Fishing in Atlantic Marine Monument Spurs Legal Challenge

June 18, 2020 — Two weeks after President Donald Trump opened the door to commercial fishing in scientifically important ocean waters off the coast of Cape Cod, environmentalists shot back Wednesday with a federal complaint.

“From our perspective, President Trump seemed to know, actually, very little about what the purpose of the monument was or what it was trying to accomplish when he signed his proclamation,” Conservation Law Foundation senior counsel Peter Shelley said in a phone call Wednesday.

“We’ve been in there for 40 years,” Jon Williams, owner of the Atlantic Red Crab Company, told Trump. “And so if the environmental groups can deem the place pristine and we’ve been operating in that area for 40 years and they can’t find any evidence where we’ve done any damage, I would say we’ve been pretty good stewards of that 5,000 miles.”

Coinciding with Wednesday’s lawsuit, the New England Fishing Management Council unveiled new steps it has taken to protect fragile corals, specifically by prohibiting the use of bottom-tending commercial fishing gear in areas where corals are common.

“We’ve said from the beginning that fishery management councils are best suited to address the complicated tradeoffs involved in managing fisheries, and we appreciate regaining our control to do so in the monument area,” John Quinn, chairman of the council, said in a statement.

“The monument area will not be ‘wide open to industrial fishing,’” Tom Nies, the council’s executive director, said in a statement.

“The council worked hard to walk that fine line between providing strong habitat and coral protections in the area while balancing the social and economic impacts to the industry,” Nies continued. “We don’t think the recent criticism from the environmental community since the announcement of the second monument proclamation is entirely warranted. Existing fishery management measures provide strong protections for Lydonia and Oceanographer Canyons, and with the coral amendment, we’re preventing commercial fishing from expanding beyond its historical footprint. The council took this step while carefully weighing the associated impacts. We look forward to the implementation our amendment.”

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Offshore Wind Companies Are Racing To Develop America’s East Coast. First They Must Appease The Fishermen.

June 18, 2020 — On a windy stretch of ocean ten miles northeast of Martha’s Vineyard lies the watery grave of America’s first major offshore wind farm.

This is where a Boston-based company called Energy Management planned to build 130 Statue of Liberty-sized turbines, enough to supply power to 200,000 homes.

But the project known as Cape Wind never made it beyond the planning stages. Facing relentless opposition from wealthy homeowners on Nantucket Sound, including the billionaire industrialist William Koch and the late Democratic senator Ted Kennedy, it drowned in a sea of lawsuits over 16 years. Energy Management declared it dead in December 2017.

Cape Wind’s historic failure, even as Europe and Asia add more offshore wind farms every year, has become an infamous cautionary tale for the wind development industry. It seemed the US was destined to lag behind its peers.

Read the full story at Forbes

Environmental groups sue Trump administration for allowing commercial fishing in protected waters

June 17, 2020 — Environmental groups filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, challenging its recent decision to allow commercial fishing in nearly 5,000 square miles of protected waters off Cape Cod.

The Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation and other groups said President Trump’s decision to open the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — the only such protected waters off the East Coast — violated the Antiquities Act, a 1906 law that President Obama used to create the monument in his last year in office.

Fishing groups had lobbied for the change, saying the restrictions had cost the industry millions of dollars. In a meeting with fishermen in Bangor, Trump told them: “This action was deeply unfair to Maine lobstermen. You’ve been treated very badly. They’ve regulated you out of business.”

Critics of Obama’s decision to use the Antiquities Act said the move circumvented federal law established in the 1970s to regulate fisheries.

“President Obama swept aside our public, science-based fishery management process with the stroke of a pen,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington, D.C.-based group that represents commercial fishermen. “That was a mistake, and whatever anyone thinks about President Trump is irrelevant.”

He also criticized the Conservation Law Foundation for its interpretation of the law.

“The record is clear that the highest political bidder during the Obama years was the environmental community, and that is why they succeeded in including a prohibition against commercial fisheries,” Vanasse said, noting that Obama did not ban recreational fishing in the protected area.

He and others in the fishing industry called Trump’s decision overdue. Before the ban, fishermen estimated that as many as 80 boats had regularly fished the area for lobster, crab, scallops, swordfish, and tuna. Fishermen said the closure has harmed their livelihoods.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

ROB MOIR: The Monument Watch and How Trump Took the Bait to Strengthen Protections of Atlantic Ocean Realm

June 16, 2020 — The trap had been set up by boisterous environmental groups arguing with fishermen. Not seeing the forest for the trees, or rather the school for the fish, President Trump stepped squarely into it. He opened the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument to commercial fishing while strengthening protections of the ocean park area.

Deeply unfair, it’s a terrible thing, said the president addressing fishermen in Bangor. A representative of the Maine Lobstermen’s Union said he was “a little disappointed” so much time was spent on a monument that “has nothing to do with Maine.” The monument is 140 miles Southeast of Nantucket. Of greater interest are the millions of dollars lost in lobster exports due to the China tariffs. A hardship they hold Trump responsible for.

Lobstermen sued the government while continuing to work the resource. Just when the window for lobstering by the fourteen vessels was closing, Trump decreed they may continue. He maintained the status quo. The actually taking of fish is directed by the National Marine Fisheries Service with advice from the fishery councils. The quotas for catching fish or lobsters did not change, just the rhetoric.

Trump spared the NE Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument the damage he inflicted on Bears Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. Here, Trump took away from native American tribal nations, the twin buttes of sacred lands packed with ancestral Pueblo artifacts. He made these lands available, for a price, to cattle, mining, oil and gas drilling. The monument was broken into two parts. Bears Ears National Monument was reduced by 85%, down from 1.35-million acres. Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument was reduced to nearly half the size, down from 1.88-million acres. The resulting monuments now have a combined area of 201,876 acres. This is a reduction of 85% of monument acres.

Read the full opinion piece at Medium

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Cod Local Seafood provides fish fresh from the boat

June 15, 2020 — Kevin Conway started Cape Cod Local Seafood with a mission to bridge a gap between fishermen and consumers.

Conway says it provides consumers with the opportunity to get a hold of “the freshest seafood at the best prices.”

Facebook users may connect with Cape Cod Local Seafood by subscribing to their page and signing up to purchase seafood fresh off the boat from various docks across the Cape.

Conway’s preorder system is designed to avoid a “free for all on the dock” that would make social distancing difficult to maintain. Signing up beforehand also gives consumers the added benefit of not having to “stand in line for a couple of hours” when paying for their orders.

The program is open to all people who want fresh seafood below market price. Conway says that “residents, tourists, people from off-Cape, anyone can participate.” The seafood available to consumers includes haddock, striped bass, bluefish, fluke, lobsters, tuna, blue tuna, yellow fin, and various types of shellfish.

Conway decided to launch Cape Cod Local Seafood’s page while using “other virtual marketplaces” on Facebook to buy some of his own fishing gear. His thinking was “this is pretty cool, I want to see if I could do this with seafood.”

Read the full story at Wicked Local

SEN. ED MARKEY: Fighting for fishermen during COVID-19

June 15, 2020 — Our historic and robust fishing industry is among the hardest-hit sectors of our state’s economy, in the fourth month of this pandemic. The “Sacred Cod” that has hung in the Massachusetts statehouse since the 1700s has seen the fishing industry go through many crises, but this one has been unique.

Restaurants have shuttered and large export markets have been disrupted. Fishermen have lost access to critical points of sale and sources of income. With a decreased demand for fresh seafood, many boats sit idle in port. Meanwhile, boat payments are due and families need to be fed.

In the U.S. Senate, I have been fighting on a bipartisan basis alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan to secure dedicated economic assistance for the fishing and seafood industries in COVID-19 economic relief packages. Thankfully, this bi-coastal effort got results. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, enacted into law on March 27, included $300 million in assistance for fishery participants and $9.5 billion for affected agricultural producers.

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times

BOEM report points to strict conditions for Atlantic offshore wind projects

June 12, 2020 — A new environmental assessment of offshore wind power projects issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management could lead to stricter conditions for developers seeking to build new facilities off the Northeast coast.

BOEM’s new supplement to the draft environmental assessment for the Vineyard Wind facility, planned off the coast of Massachusetts, found the project posed potentially “major” adverse impacts to sea life and other industries, particularly commercial fishing.

The document is an update to the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard that BOEM issued in 2018. Last year, the agency announced it would extend the permitting process for the 800 MW facility so it could assess the impacts not just of that wind farm, but others planned by Northeastern states to meet clean energy targets.

The report released Tuesday assesses an array of construction scenarios for Vineyard and 22 gigawatts of other facilities planned in New England waters. It considers the creation of a transit lane for fishing and other sea traffic, as well as changes to the project’s turbine layout and the siting of a substation to connect the project to the onshore power grid.

Read the full story at Politico

Federal fishing aid may not arrive until late July, August

June 11, 2020 — Eligible Massachusetts commercial fishermen and other seafood businesses could begin receiving funds in late July or early August from the $28 million in federal fishery assistance designated for the Massachusetts seafood industry, according to the state’s top fishery regulator.

But Dan McKiernan, the newly appointed director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, also joined the growing chorus of public officials and seafood stakeholders who say the funds won’t come close to covering the more than $500 million in losses projected for the state’s four major seafood components: commercial fishing, seafood processing, for-hire charter services and aquaculture.

“That’s the unfortunate aspect,” McKiernan said in an interview with the Gloucester Daily Times. “The losses are so great that they can’t be covered by the $28 million. Commercial fishing lost $28 million in March and April alone. That’s just fishing.”

McKiernan said four separate groups began working this week to develop spending plans for each of the four industry components, along with eligibility requirements and the structure of payment methods and systems.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times