Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center presents Working on the Waterfront

September 25, 2018 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the opening of its’ latest exhibit Working on the Waterfront. An opening reception will take place on October 11th at 6:30 p.m. during AHA. The exhibit will run through January 2019.

In New Bedford, there are over 5,000 people working in the commercial fishing industry both on and off-shore. Those in shoreside businesses work in a variety of positions such as electronics technicians, fuel barge operators, welders, fish samplers, settlement staff, fish cutters, and fish sellers. From preparing a vessel to go out to sea to processing the product for market, all of these workers are vital to the success of the fishing trip and the industry.

Working on the Waterfront highlights the vital role of these shoreside workers. These men and women understand the importance of doing the best job possible because the quality of their work means a safe, successful trip for the vessel or a better price for the product. They talk with pride about their jobs and how, in spite of challenges, love what they do. The majority of those interviewed work for family owned businesses, creating a unique workplace environment which they value.

These oral history excerpts and photographs are from interviews recorded as part of an Archie Green Fellowship from the Library of Congress awarded to the Center. The project, Workers on the New Bedford Waterfront, produced interviews and photographic portraits of 58 shore-side workers involved in the local commercial fishing industry with a particular emphasis on female workers and Central American workers. In addition to being a part of the Center’s archives, these interviews and photographs are part of the permanent collection of the Library of Congress.The exhibit includes an interactive oral history kiosk which allows visitors to listen to audio excerpts.

Interviews were conducted by: Laura Orleans – Folklorist & Executive Director of the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center; Madeleine Hall-Arber – retired anthropologist, MIT Sea Grant; Corinn Williams – Executive Director of Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts; and Fred Calabretta – Oral historian at Mystic Seaport Museum. Project Photographer was Phil Mello of Big Fish Studio. Support for the project and exhibit was provided by Archie Green Fellowship – Library of Congress and NOAA’s Voices from the Fisheries.

The Center is open Thursday – Sunday 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Admission is free. Located at 38 Bethel Street in the heart of the National Park, the Center is wheelchair accessible with free off-street parking.

The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the commercial fishing industry past, present, and future through exhibits, programs, and archives. For more information, please email programs@fishingheritagecenter.org or call (508) 993-8894.

BOEM looking at traffic lanes, buffers for offshore wind power

September 24, 2018 — Concerns raised by the maritime and commercial fishing industries now have federal officials considering wider buffer areas, and spacing as far as two nautical miles between proposed offshore wind power turbines.

At meetings in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey, representatives of the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said the burden of proof is on offshore wind energy development companies to show their plans for turbine arrays will be compatible with other ocean industries.

“Right now we’re asking developers to prove that fishermen can still fish” if offshore turbines are built, said Amy Stillings, an economist with BOEM.

The agency is also looking at setting aside a corridor for shipping and barge traffic cutting across the New York Bight, which extends from Cape May Inlet, N.J., to Montauk Point, N.Y., on the eastern tip of Long Island, to maintain a safe buffer between future turbine arrays and vessel traffic.

That idea for a cross-Bight corridor nine nautical miles wide – a five-mile traffic lane, with two-mile buffers on either side – recognizes trends in maritime transportation that allow towing vessels to take the route farther offshore than the traditional paths closer to shore.

Read the full story at Work Boat

 

Fishing insider embraces new role as Vineyard Wind liaison

September 24, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In 12 years, research biologist Crista Bank spent a lot of hours at sea aboard local fishing vessels, but never once heard wheelhouse chatter about the industrial-sized wind farms planned a dozen miles south of Martha’s Vineyard.

“It wasn’t really a topic of discussion,” said Bank, the new fisheries liaison for offshore wind developer Vineyard Wind. “You would think it would be, something this huge on the horizon.”

Even for her, deep in research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology, the magnitude of what will be Vineyard Wind’s $2 billion, 106-turbine offshore construction project didn’t sink in until she happened to pass five turbines off Block Island two years ago.

“I saw them, and I was like, really?” Bank said of her reaction.

It may be that head-down, focused attitude of a researcher that allows Bank to empathize with what she says is a similar attitude of many fishermen — scallopers, lobstermen, pot fishermen, gill-netters, squid fishermen, small-mesh draggers, large draggers, inshore and offshore boat captains, charter boat captains, recreational and pelagic anglers — she knows and hopes to meet.

“I sort of see the fishermen’s perspective a lot more,” Bank said “I believe in offshore energy. I believe we need to do it. I have solar panels on my house. I’m totally for renewable energy.” But, Bank said, those turbines will be placed squarely where people make a living.

Bank might be best known now in the region for her fisheries research. But before that, she crewed aboard the tall ship Ernestina and was an onboard fishing vessel observer for the National Marine Fisheries Service. Bank considers New Bedford her home.

“Crista has an excellent track record in cooperative research with the fishing industry,” said Steven Lohrenz, dean of the UMass Dartmouth marine science school. Bank is knowledgeable about fisheries science and about the challenges being faced by fishermen, said Lohrenz, who first mentioned the Vineyard Wind job to Bank. Bank is also personable and a good communicator, he said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

NOAA officials say seal die-off linked to virus

September 24, 2018 — Gray and harbor seals have lured sharks in increasing numbers into Cape Cod waters, with tragic results, but the burgeoning seal population is taking a hit from viruses.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued an unusual mortality event alert for both species of seal in the Gulf of Maine.

From July 1 to Aug. 29 (when the alert was issued) 599 seals were found dead (137) or ill and stranded (462) on New England shores. In the few weeks since that number has soared to 921. Most of those were in Maine (629), with 147 in New Hampshire and 125 in Massachusetts.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

For comparison the nearly 500 seals found last month is roughly 10 times the number that stranded in August of 2017.

“That is attributed to the influences of disease,” noted Terri Rowles, NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program coordinator.

Read the full story at the Eastham Wicked Local

 

1 Person Killed, 1 Injured in Attack Aboard Fishing Vessel Off Nantucket

September 24, 2018 — One person was killed and another injured when a crew member on board a fishing vessel off Nantucket attacked two of his shipmates on Sunday afternoon.

The Coast Guard said they received an emergency call on Sunday afternoon from the Captain Billy Haver, an 82-foot fishing vessel out of Virginia, saying that a member of its crew had attacked several other fishermen.

The Coast Guard would not confirm what weapons were used in the attack.

The fishing trawler was 60 miles east of Nantucket at the time of the incident.

Read the full story at NECN

New Bedford shocked by NOAA’s latest move in Carlos Rafael case

September 24, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Jim Kendall sees fingerprints on NOAA’s most recent allegations that go beyond Carlos Rafael and loop 22 of his captains into the agency’s non-criminal civil action.

“I’ll tell you right now, you can print it or not, but I think John Bullard still has his thumb on the scale,” the former fishing captain and executive director of New Bedford Seafood Consulting said.

Kendall backed up his claims by saying, “because I know John. He’s a vindictive SOB.”

Bullard is the former mayor of New Bedford, but in this case more importantly acted as the regional administrator for NOAA when Rafael was criminally indicted, pled guilty and was sentenced. Bullard also imposed a groundfishing ban on Rafael-owned vessels.

Except Bullard retired Jan. 19, about nine months before NOAA filed the updated charging documents on Sept. 10.

“A comment like that is insulting to all the people who do very important and hard work in the enforcement arena,” Bullard said. “They just follow the facts and where the facts lead. The only scales are the scales of justice. Nobody’s influencing. The only thing they are following is the facts.”

Bullard was at the helm when NOAA first filed charging documents on Jan. 10.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Fishermen facing cuts to Georges Bank stocks

September 24, 2018 — The New England Fishery Management Council is expected to vote this week on the 2019 total allowable catch limits for three Georges Bank groundfish stocks the United States shares with Canada, with significant reductions expected for each stock.

The council, set to meet Monday through Thursday in Plymouth, will discuss total allowable catch, or TAC, recommendations by both the science-based Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee and the management-based Transboundary Management Guidance Committee.

The latter, however, is expected to hold more sway in developing the 2019 limits. The U.S. and Canada already have negotiated the catch limits within the TMGC recommendations for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, Eastern Georges Bank haddock and Eastern Georges Bank cod.

For Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, which is a critical bycatch stock for the scallop industry, the TMGC recommends the lowest catch limit on record — 140 metric tons, or a 53 percent reduction from the 300 metric-ton TAC in 2018.

The recommendation calls for the U.S. to receive 76 percent of the total, or 106 metric tons. That is down from 213 metric tons in 2018.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Moving NOAA research center to New Bedford is a good idea

September 24, 2018 — Most SouthCoast residents are well aware that relationships between local commercial fishermen and government regulators are frequently tense.

This newspaper alone regularly documents disagreements between them on issues as diverse as how endangered specific fish species are, how effective groundfish catch-share systems are, and who is financially responsible for at-sea monitoring.

Whatever the concern, it’s not surprising when the two groups approach an issue from opposing points of view.

So the city’s proposal to improve dialogue between fishermen and government scientists by bringing them together to coexist on the New Bedford waterfront is a welcome one and one that has the potential to build trust where very little has existed in recent years.

The idea to relocate NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center from Woods Hole to New Bedford was first proposed two years ago, when NOAA announced it would review its aging and increasingly out-of-date Woods Hole facilities and consider new sites. In response, Mayor Jon Mitchell, the Economic Development Council, harbor officials and others sent a detailed letter to then NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan to consider the many benefits of moving its research center to the nation’s highest grossing commercial fishing port.

The city’s argument was that by placing both groups in close proximity, NOAA “could at last begin to break down barriers to communication, and repair the distrust that has plagued the relationship between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the fishing industry in the Northeast for decades,” according to the city’s proposal.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Atlantic herring quotas may be cut again

September 14, 2018 — The Atlantic herring is a small, seemingly unremarkable fish that has distinguished itself through sheer numbers. When herring spawn, they can cover the ocean bottom in a carpet of eggs inches thick. Migrating schools of the fish can number in the billions and have been known to stretch miles wide.

But despite its prolific nature, there are growing concerns in some quarters about the state of the fish’s population, which, according to federal data, has been in decline for the last five years. Environmental advocates and some fishing groups worry that if herring is overfished, it could spell trouble for striped bass, tuna and a whole host of other species in Rhode Island and elsewhere along the Northeast coast that prey on it.

“If there’s no big stocks of herring to entice these other fish into Narragansett Bay, they may pass us by,” said Michael Jarbeau, baykeeper for Providence-based environmental group Save The Bay.

On Tuesday, the New England Fishery Management Council will decide on a new set of regulations known as Amendment 8 that could include restricting fishing areas for herring and could for the first time account for the fish’s place in the larger ecosystem.

The council’s Atlantic herring committee met last week and backed a less restrictive version of the rules out of concern that anything tighter would shut down the fishery for as long as three years as stocks recover. The full council may adopt the committee’s recommendation or go forward with any of a host of other options.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

MASSACHUSETTS: Two dead humpback whales wash up in Boston area

September 24, 2018 — A whale carcass reported by state police Friday morning at Revere Beach is a male humpback calf that had originally washed up in Cohasset on Sept. 7 and was towed out to sea Sept. 14, according to Jennifer Gobel with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Biologists with the New England Aquarium in Boston inspected the carcass in Cohasset but were unable to do a full necropsy because of the weather, aquarium spokesman Anthony LaCasse said.

Gobel said the federal agency is working with local authorities in Revere on a disposal plan for the carcass.

Also on Friday, an aquarium team planned to inspect another humpback carcass that washed up on Little Brewster Island in Boston Harbor, LaCasse said.

Since January 2016, an elevated number of humpback whale deaths have occurred from Maine to Florida, leading to a federal declaration of an unusual mortality event. That declaration allows for the release of more money and support to investigate the deaths. Since the unusual mortality event was declared, there have been 81 documented deaths as of Aug. 29, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times