Saving Seafood

Gorton’s giving 214K pounds of pollock to food banks in areas hit by Harvey

November 13, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — There’s just something about a guy in a Sou’wester that makes you know that you can trust him when things get a tad sticky. Which is the complete opposite of guys in visors. Them, we keep a eye on.

One of the Gloucester companies that helped make the sou’wester an iconic image of the fishing life is Gorton’s Seafood over at the east end of Rogers Street. And the company has done a very good thing.

Last week, the seafood company announced it is donating 214,000 pounds of its pollock tenders — which breaks down into about 858,000 separate servings (curiously, the exact daily amount called for in the Tom Brady diet) — to food banks in areas ravaged by Hurricane Harvey.

Gorton’s donated the fish to SeaShare, a nonprofit that helps distribute seafood all over the country to folks in need of food assistance through the local organizations which help provide it.

SeaShare set a goal of delivering 2 million servings to the distressed areas damaged by the hurricane and Gorton’s single contribution sure gets the ball rolling in the right direction.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Doreen Leggett: Open up scallopers’ fishing grounds

November 10, 2017 — There is $300 million worth of mature scallops in waters off the Cape that virtually everyone agrees should be harvested. But that potential economic boon to local fishermen may never materialize.

“Before long, they are just going to die,” said Beau Gribbin, a Provincetown scalloper, explaining that the shellfish only live for about 10 years.

Gribbin was in Washington, D.C. last month working to make sure that doesn’t happen. He joined fellow scalloper Tom Reilly from Chatham, and staff from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, advocating for approval of the so-called Omnibus Habitat Amendment.

The amendment would open up several areas that have been closed to scallopers, including Area 1, part of George’s Bank, and the nearby Nantucket Lighship area, while also creating stronger protections for other crucial areas where groundfish spawn. (These areas were closed in 1994 to protect essential fish habitat.)

He said his arguments were well received on Capitol Hill, but it is still unclear what will happen. Gribbin is already worrying about the unpalatable alternative of having to travel down South next season to make sure his business remains solvent.

In years past, he and many of the two dozen or so scallop captains across the Cape have worked out of Delaware and Maryland to make their quotas. Scallopers have invested greatly in the fishery; they own quota and not using it would mean payments lost and increasing debt.

Read the full story at the Harwich Wicked Local 

 

Pressure on regulators remains in ‘Rafael’ case

November 7, 2017 — CODFATHER IN PRISON, BUT PRESSURE ON GOVERNMENT REMAINS: Carlos Rafael — the New Bedford, Mass. based fishing mogul otherwise known as the Codfather — is scheduled to report to federal prison today. Yet even with a nearly four-year sentence, the pressure continues on regulators to ensure that he doesn’t return to his old ways.

What he did wrong: The prison sentence caps a career of 30-plus years in which Rafael flouted fishing laws — and authorities. At one fisheries meeting, he taunted officials by saying: “I am a pirate. It’s your job to catch me.” After being caught in undercover recording bragging about illegal activities, Rafael pleaded guilty in March to 28 criminal charges, ranging from falsifying federal records to smuggling cash.

Read the full story at Politico

Fishing magnate reports to prison

November 7, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Carlos A. Rafael, who once ruled the New Bedford waterfront with his personality and his vast fishing assets, reported to federal authorities on Monday to begin his 46-month prison sentence.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons on Monday afternoon confirmed that Rafael, known as “The Codfather,” initially is serving his sentence at FMC Devens — which the bureau describes as an “administrative security federal medical center with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp.”

Read the full story at Gloucester Times

Aquatic limbo

November 5, 2017 — Fourteen years is a long time.

Consider, in 14 years children go from being unable to do much more than eat, sleep and relieve themselves to walking, talking, and giving serious consideration to driving a car.

Fourteen years is also the length of time of three-and-a-half presidential terms; more than long enough to change the direction of an entire country and the fates of hundreds of millions of people.

Fourteen years is also an interminably long time to wait if your livelihood is at stake. And yet, it took the New England Fisheries Management Council 14 years to develop regulations regarding the protection of fishing habitats. That, in and of itself, would not be so bad; after all, one would hope that those involved would take the time necessary to get the science right on an issue where so much is at stake.

But it has now been two years since those regulations were passed, and there is little indication that they are any closer to being implemented.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Headless 400-pound tuna found in Massachusetts woods

November 2, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Spotting a 400-pound tuna in the Massachusetts seaport of Gloucester, known as America’s oldest seaport, is not unusual. But finding a headless tuna in the woods is a bit odd.

State Environmental Police and federal fisheries regulators are trying to figure out who dumped the headless fish, which had to be hauled out of the trees by a tow truck.

Authorities won’t say exactly when the tuna was found or who tipped them off.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Fox News

 

Cape Cod fishermen have high hopes for halibut

November 2, 2017 — CHATHAM, Mass. — On the U.S. side of the border Atlantic halibut are listed as a species of concern by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and fishermen are limited to one fish per trip.

Less than a half a day’s steam to the east, the same fish is the poster child for sustainable fishery management and generates between $100 million and $200 million a year for Canadian fishermen.

It’s a divergence shrouded in mystery as deep as the ocean on either side of the Hague Line, the boundary that separates the two nations out to the 200 mile limit of their exclusive economic zones. The target date to rebuild the U.S. Atlantic halibut stock to healthy levels is 2056, nearly 40 years in the future.

But Cape Cod fishermen believe the future may be happening now. They have been seeing more halibut in recent years and believe the science is wrong.

“Yes, we’re seeing more halibut, continuously,” said Jason Amaru, the captain and owner of the Chatham-based trawler Joanne A III. “The population seems to be recovering.”

Last year, the Nature Conservancy received a $270,000 federal grant to work with fishermen, scientists from NOAA, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, and the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance to place satellite tags on halibut and take biological samples.

Grant money pays for Amaru to attach the tracking devices, which cost more than $3,000 each. He also takes biological samples: the ear bones that determine age, gonads that tell the stage of sexual maturity, the heart for genetic analysis, and documents where the fish was caught, its weight and length.

“Four years ago, we were talking to fishermen. They said they were seeing more halibut than ever before. It used to be like seeing a unicorn, one a year, then once a month, now every day,” said Christopher McGuire, marine program director for The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts, who spearheaded the drive for research money after listening to Cape fishermen. “We see that one fish a day being landed by a lot of fishermen.”

McGuire said he hopes the new data will show whether a resurgent Canadian halibut population is repopulating U.S. waters, or whether the U.S. fish are experiencing their own population boom.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times  

 

NEMFC Undertakes Independent Review to Assess Past Performance and Solicit Suggestions for Improvement

November 2, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council is launching an independent “program review” and is asking stakeholders who interact with the Council to participate in the undertaking.

“Like every organization, the Council can benefit from periodically reviewing how it does business,” said Council Chairman Dr. John Quinn, Director of Public Interest Law Programs at the University of Massachusetts School of Law. “That’s why we initiated an external review of our operations. We want to know three things: what we’re doing right; what we’re doing wrong; and how we can improve the way we serve the people who are involved in our fisheries and the public overall.”

Stakeholder input is being solicited through two primary avenues: (1) a short online survey; and (2) 14 port meetings from Maine to New Jersey, coupled with a webinar option for anyone who can’t attend an in person meeting or who wants to contribute additional comments. For a list of meeting times and locations click here.

The online survey, which shouldn’t take more than 15-to-20 minutes to complete, is designed to obtain feedback about Council communications and the ability to participate in the Council process. The survey is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NEFMC_Review_Stakeholder_Survey.

Council Chairman Quinn said, “I encourage everyone to take advantage of the two available options. Fill out the online survey and attend a port meeting. We need both forms of stakeholder input.”

Stakeholder input will be confidential. Specific statements, ideas, and perspectives will not be attributed to individuals. Comments and suggestions will be summarized based on themes, fishery, and/or geography as appropriate, and a report will be prepared for the review panel. The final report will be available to the public and posted on the Council’s program review webpage at https://www.nefmc.org/library/council-program-review.

WHO’S IN CHARGE OF THE EXTERNAL REVIEW

The Council Program Review will be conducted by an external panel of managers and scientists from other regions and/or international fisheries entities who have a strong understanding of U.S. federal fisheries management but no recent involvement or affiliation with the New England Council. The review panel will meet for one week in early 2018 to discuss Council operations and carry out the Terms of Reference for the review. The meeting will be open to the public. The Council has enlisted the help of two contractors to support this review process as follows:

Fisheries Leadership & Sustainability Forum – The Fisheries Forum (http://www.fisheriesforum.org) will gather input from all stakeholders through the port meetings, webinar, and online survey and provide a summary to the review panel. Tidal Bay Consulting – Tidal Bay (https://www.tidalbayconsulting.com) will compile background documents for the review panel, provide support for the review meeting itself, and prepare the panel’s final report. Additional materials related to this external review, including a Stakeholder Frequently Asked Questions document and the Terms of Reference for the external review panel, are available at: https://www.nefmc.org/library/council-program-review

The New England Fishery Management Council’s members come from the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The Council manages 29 species under nine Fishery Management Plans and addresses habitat/coral protection across all plans. The Council also is working on ecosystem-based fishery management.

For more information visit their site here.

 

Government files appeal hoping to grab more Carlos Rafael permits

November 1, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Just when it felt safe to close the Carlos Rafael case, the government appealed Judge William Young’s decision regarding forfeiture on Wednesday.

A motion for reconsideration was filed Oct. 25 by the government seeking Young to alter his decision to force Rafael to forfeit four vessels and the accompanying permits. Young dismissed the motion a day later.

Wednesday’s appeal will be sent to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, according to court documents. It pertains only to Young’s determination of forfeiture.

Young sentenced Rafael to 46 months in prison on Sept. 25 after the New Bedford fishing mogul pleaded guilty to falsifying fishing quota, bulk cash smuggling and tax evasion in March. A decision on forfeiture wasn’t made until Oct. 11. U.S. Marshals seized the Bull Dog, the Lady Patricia, the Olivia and Rafaela and the Southern Crusader II a week later.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NOAA: Fewer fish landed in 2016 but higher value

November 1, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Mirroring a national trend, the port of Gloucester in 2016 landed fewer fish than the previous year, even as the value of those fish rose by double digits, according to the annual state of the U.S. fisheries report released on Wednesday.

America’s oldest commercial seaport ranked 15th among the nation’s ports with 63 million pounds of fish landed, a decrease of 5 million pounds, or 7.3 percent, from 2015. But the city’s waterfront ranked 18th in the value of its landings, which increased 18 percent to $52 million in 2016 from $44 million in the previous year.

The Gloucester fishing experience in 2016 reflected a national trend. Throughout the United States, commercial landings of edible and industrial seafood was down 145.6 million pounds, or 1.5 percent, to 9.6 billion pounds. The value of those landings, however, rose 2.1 percent to $5.3 billion.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times