Saving Seafood

NEFMC may limit access to whiting fishery

July 13, 2018 — The New England Fishery Management Council has scheduled five public hearings — including one in Gloucester — to collect public comment on a proposal that could establish a limited access program for five small-mesh stocks including whiting.

The Gloucester public hearing is set for next Thursday, July 19, at 4 p.m. at the state Division of Marine Fisheries’ Annisquam River Station on Emerson Avenue. The schedule calls for additional public hearings in Tinton Falls, New Jersey; Montauk, New York; Warwick, Rhode Island; and New Bedford.

The council already has demonstrated its lack of enthusiasm for the proposal contained in draft Amendment 22 to its Northeast multispecies fishery management plan. In its vote last December to send the amendment out for public comment, the council listed “no action” as its preferred alternative.

Still, in announcing the public hearings, the council said “public input is highly encouraged on all options.”

The amendment, which proposes a limited access plan for the three stocks collectively regarded as whiting — northern silver hake, southern silver hake and offshore hake — as well as northern red hake and southern red hake.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Deepwater Wind says it can coexist with commercial fishermen

July 13, 2018 — Saying it wants to be “a good neighbor” to commercial fishermen, Deepwater Wind – the company with wind energy turbines off Rhode Island’s coast – announced Thursday it has adopted what it calls “first-of-its-kind” procedures to avoid damaging fishing gear.

Beginning this month, Deepwater said it will provide fishermen with frequent updates on its offshore activities, and the company is requiring all its vessels and personnel to comply with the initiative.

The procedures involve Deepwater’s fisheries liaisons and a team of fisheries representatives in regional ports, as well as online updates for mariners and twice-daily updates on VHF channels.

While Deepwater expects there will be only “limited impact” on fishing gear, the company said it also has adopted a process for handling claims of loss and damage of fishing gear.

Read the full at Providence Business News

Massachusetts could boost dredging projects

July 12, 2018 — Sediment is piling up on the bottoms of rivers and harbors, putting cities and towns on Cape Ann and elsewhere into a multimillion-dollar bind.

State and federal funding for local dredging has dried up in recent decades, forcing local officials to dig into reserves or borrow money to remove silt in order to make their waterways deep enough for boats to navigate.

Gov. Charlie Baker has pitched a new program — with $50 million in grant money — to help coastal communities pay for dredging as part of a more than $660 million economic development proposal, which cleared the state House of Representatives late Tuesday.

The measure still needs approval from the state Senate.

Under Baker’s plan, communities would compete for matching grants and be required to cover half the costs of each project.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, said the money would go a long way because many communities along the coast haven’t dredged in decades. In many instances, he said, silting is making waterways less navigable.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Sens. Markey, Warren support right whale legislation

July 11, 2018 — Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren will co-sponsor the SAVE Right Whales Act, filed June 7 by four other Atlantic Coast senators.

“Senator Markey wanted to ensure that all of the stakeholders in Massachusetts that would be impacted by the legislation were briefed on the bill, understood its provisions, and had the opportunity to share their perspectives before he committed to co-sponsorship,” a spokesman for the senator said.

On Monday, Markey and Warren both became co-sponsors of the bill joining Democrats from New Jersey, Delaware, New Jersey, Florida and New York.

U.S. Rep. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., introduced a similar bill in the House on June 7 with three other representatives.

The legislation would allocate $5 million annually in grants through 2028 for conservation programs, and the development of new technology or other methods to reduce harm to right whales from fishing gear entanglements and ship collisions. Grants could promote cooperation with foreign governments, affected local communities, small businesses, others in the private sector or nongovernment groups. The National Marine Fisheries Service has funded North Atlantic right whale protections at more than $8 million annually since fiscal year 2009, with another $128,000 released last year with announcement of an unusual mortality event after 17 right whales were observed dead in Canadian and U.S. waters.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association gave its nod of approval on June 20 to the SAVE Act. The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance has endorsed the bill as well.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Feds might allow fishermen to catch more skates

July 10, 2018 — The federal government is looking to allow fishermen to catch more Northeastern skates, which are caught for use as food and bait.

Skates are bottom-dwelling fish that are often sold in fish markets as “skate wing.” The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is proposing to increase the annual catch limit for skates by about 8 percent, to nearly 70 million pounds.

The proposed rule changes would apply to a management plan for Northeastern skate fishery.

The biggest skate producing states are Alaska, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, though the fish are brought to land as far south as California on the West Coast and North Carolina on the East Coast.

The full proposed rule may found at https://bit.ly/2NDexjm

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

‘How are we going to get paid?’; fishing ban continues to suffocate local businesses

July 9, 2018 — Anne Jardin-Maynard is an accountant. She doesn’t own a commercial fishing vessel. The New Bedford native works within an office on Centre Street.

Yet for more than seven months, a groundfishing ban implemented by NOAA has prevented Jardin-Maynard from receiving a paycheck. That doesn’t mean the owner of Jardin & Dawson, a settlement house, which handles payroll and accounting for fishing boats, has stopped working.

“If the boats aren’t fishing, how are we going to get paid,” Jardin-Maynard said.

NOAA announced the groundfishing ban at the end of last November as a result of Carlos Rafael falsifying fishing quota. It was also meant to delay operations for Sector IX, the fishing division where Rafael’s boats were associated, so it could draft provisions to prevent repeat offenses.

Since that time, though, the sector has assigned new board members multiple times, provisions have been drafted, and quota has been gathered as potential repayment, but the ban remains.

“I think they need to move it along,” said Jardin-Maynard, who is a new board member of Sector IX as well. “This has been a long time coming. The person that was involved in it (is penalized). It’s not fair for the other people to be involved in this. He’s paying his price.”

Rafael is serving a 46-month prison term in part for falsifying fishing records. While he serves his time in federal prison in Fort Devens, about 80 fishermen have been out of work sending a ripple effect throughout shoreside businesses from ice houses to processors to settlement houses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

HANK SOULE: Revitalizing waterfront is still up to sectors and Carlos Rafael

July 9, 2018 — Carlos Rafael misreported his groundfish catch, and in its piece “Time for NOAA to let Sector IX fish again,” the Times is misreporting the facts.

First, NOAA didn’t calculate, as the piece states, that Rafael misreported just 72,000 pounds of grey sole. He openly admitted to stealing over 10 times that amount, of several different fish stocks. Rather, NOAA has apparently calculated that all but some remaining grey sole has been repaid, with quota seized earlier to cover the debt.

Second, neither Sector IX nor Sector VII has submitted a plan to return to fishing. Sector IX purged itself of nearly every vessel and permit enrolled there, retaining the bare minimum required to maintain legal status. It submitted an operations plan — which explains how a sector and its boats will track and report their quotas — which states that Sector IX has no immediate intent to resume fishing.

Sector VII is even more explicit. It absorbed the many Rafael vessels and permits shunted from Sector IX under the condition that they “will be enrolling as a non-active member and will not be authorized to fish” until Carlos Rafael sells them. In fact, Sector VII explicitly requested NOAA’s help to DENY those vessels permission to harvest.

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

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘A place to do great science’

July 9, 2018 — Chris Munkholm has lived with every phase of building Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute’s new research institute and laboratory, from the first rendering to the ongoing construction along the Gloucester waterfront by landlord Windover Construction.

But nothing really prepared GMGI’s chief operating officer for the impressions that washed over her as she stood Friday in what will be GMGI’s conference room with views of the Jodrey State Fish Pier across the north channel.

“This is really the first time I’ve experienced it as a three-dimensional space and seen how glorious it will be to look out these windows and recognize that we are a part of America’s oldest fishing harbor,” Munkholm said. “I’m almost in tears.”

Munkholm and other GMGI executives and board members got their initial look at their new digs Friday morning in a site walk-through that presented the first tangible experience of the work space to come.

“I don’t think we could have dreamt anything better,” said Marc Vidal, one of GMGI’s founders and a member of its scientific advisory board. “It’s taken us five years to get established here, with local people starting to recognize and accept us. In the next five years, I believe that recognition will grow to a national scale. Interestingly, that would be in the year 2023, which is the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Gloucester.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Great whites help scientists understand ocean’s ‘twilight zone’

July 6, 2018 — Four years ago, Lydia, a 14 ½-foot, 1-ton great white shark almost made history when she swam over the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in March of 2014, a submerged mountain chain that runs from the Arctic Ocean to the southern tip of Africa, and entered the eastern Atlantic.

No other great white had made a documented Atlantic crossing and, while she ultimately turned back 800 miles short of the Cornish coastline, scientists puzzled over why she made the trip at all.

Great whites are driven by the search for food, but a foray into the open ocean beyond the continental shelf, often portrayed as a desert relieved only by an occasional oasis, was baffling. Finding a possible answer took detective work, piecing together data from some of the most sophisticated technology strapped to two great whites, as well as a network of satellites and ocean-going robots. It’s a technique scientists hope will be a model for future research into the unknown worlds of the deep sea and for conservation efforts to protect that ecosystem.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Mariners brake for right whales

July 5, 2018 — NOAA Fisheries announced Tuesday that a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone has been established to protect a group of four North Atlantic right whales sighted two nautical miles south of Nantucket on June 30, according to a press release.

Mariners are asked to travel at 10 knots or less inside the area where the whales were spotted, in order to avoid ship collisions with the endangered species. Effective through July 15, either slow to 10 knots or avoid the area of 41 32 N, 40 54 N, 070 29 W, 069 36 W.

Mandatory speed restrictions of 10 knots or less are also in effect in the Great South Channel through July 31.

In 2017, 17 whales died, plus an additional mortality in January 2018, totaling about 4 percent of the entire right whale population. Also in 2017, two right whale carcasses washed up on Vineyard beaches, and two other carcasses were found on Nantucket and the Elizabeth Islands. This sparked an increased local effort by the NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard to protect the whales from further harm. Migratory patterns of right whales trace directly through parts of Nantucket and Vineyard Sound as they travel to seasonal plankton blooms for food. The whales are a critically endangered species, with a population estimated at about 450 animals, according to the release.

Read the full story at the Martha’s Vineyard Times