Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Atlantic Capes Fisheries donates 10,000 lbs of seafood to SouthCoast food banks

July 6, 2020 — Atlantic Capes Fisheries, with operations in New Bedford and Fall River, has donated 10,000 pounds of restaurant-quality fish to the food banks run in both cities by Citizens for Citizens in Fall River, and PACE (People Acting in Community Endeavors) in New Bedford, according to a company press release.

The donation of yellowtail flounder, caught by Atlantic Capes boats, will help ensure that those in need in the South Coast area will have access to healthy, fresh food during the current crisis, the release said.

PACE’s Executive Director Pam Kuechler has seen a significant increase in the use of their Food Bank, including families who have never reached out to a Food Bank before the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are grateful for this generous donation,” Kuechler stated in the release. “We have seen our numbers skyrocket in the past few weeks. In addition to our Main Food Bank at 166 William Street, we now have a mobile food pantry to serve our most vulnerable neighborhoods.”

Kuechler added that these types of donations help the food bank expand its offerings to a growing numbers of participants, and provides families with healthy options in their weekly grocery bags, “something that is critical in the middle of this health crisis,” she added.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fish council seeking input on monitor rule

July 6, 2020 — The New England Fishery Management Council has been toiling for two years on the amendment that would set monitoring levels for vessels in the Northeast groundfish fishery and now appears to be hitting the home stretch.

Final action on the measure — known as Amendment 23 — now is expected at the council’s September meeting. The meeting, Sept. 29 to Oct. 1,  currently is set for the Beauport Hotel Gloucester on Commercial Street, but could be shifted to a webinar depending on the state of the COVID-19 virus and its associated restrictions.

The council, which extended the public comment period to Aug. 31, already has held three public hearings via webinar on Amendment 23 and plans more in July and August. The next is scheduled for July 16 at 4 p.m. and interested participants can access all related documents in the Amendment 23 library on the council website, nefmc.org.

The council also is reaching out to commercial fishermen and other stakeholders, offering a variety of platforms to help them understand the complexities of the amendment and ease their participation in the online public hearings.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Can New England’s cod fishing industry survive?

July 6, 2020 — It’s said cod were once so plentiful in New England they would throw themselves into a boat. It’s said you could walk across their backs to shore.

Gloucester, Massachusetts, grew up around cod. The waterfront teemed with boats and fishermen, heaps of fish thrashing in wire baskets. Boats were inherited from fathers and shipyards boasted of operating since 1684. As late as the 1980s, the cod were so abundant and large (30-50lb each) that the fishermen still brought in big hauls. Cod remains the state fish of Massachusetts.

Today, you’re unlikely to find fresh Atlantic cod in any American food shop. The vast majority of the cod for sale is frozen, shipped in from Norway or Iceland. New England’s cod population has been diminished by new fishing technology, too many boats and foreign vessels, and poor management decisions. Both major stocks of North Atlantic cod in US waters – the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod – are overfished. With the climate crisis warming waters and disrupting cod spawning behaviour and food sources, many scientists wonder if the stocks will survive at all.

In Gloucester, that has meant regulation to protect the stocks – including catch limits, monitoring and no-fishing zones. These have placed a burden on fishermen, many of whom dispute the scientific data, creating tension between some scientists and fishermen and threatening the identity of person and place in a town where culture and economy were, for centuries, intertwined around cod.

Read the full story at The Guardian

MASSACHUSETTS: Atlantic Capes Fisheries Donates 10,000 Pounds of Fresh Seafood to South Coast Food Banks

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.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

Trump fast-tracks environmental rollbacks to deliver on campaign promises

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.

Read the full story at PBS

US fishing alliance challenges offshore wind study

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’”.

Read the full story at ReNews

MASSACHUSETTS: Senator Tarr Letter on NOAA ASM Waivers

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.

Read the full letter here

Senators Markey and Warren, and Reps. Moulton and Keating Call for Mass. Lobster Industry to be Included in Lobster Tariff Assistance

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.

“These challenges create a direct need for assistance to this industry, and we urge you to include Massachusetts lobstermen in your efforts to assess how and whether that aid will be distributed,” write the lawmakers in their letter. “This relief could help many small business owners withstand the ongoing economic crisis and preserve a key part of New England’s cultural identity.”
 
A copy of the letter can be found HERE. 
 
The Massachusetts lawmakers, led by Senator Markey, have championed the swift, equitable, and transparent allocation of financial aid to fishery participants during the coronavirus pandemic and secured a $20 million U.S. Department of Agriculture procurement of Atlantic seafood in May.  Senators Markey and Warren, and Alaska Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan successfully called on Senate leadership to include support for the fishing industry in coronavirus economic relief packages, of which Massachusetts received $28 million. On June 6, Senators Markey and Warren wrote to Senate leadership and asked for an additional $500 million in fisheries assistance in order to make the fishing and seafood industries in Massachusetts whole from the effects of the pandemic.

Carlos Rafael gets early release from prison amid COVID-19 concerns

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.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: Safety experts say New Bedford orders on fish houses and other industrial facilities could set national standard on COVID-19

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.

Read the full story at The Public’s Radio