Massachusetts Archives - Page 283 of 355

New management could be coming to East Coast herring fishery

April 27, 2017 — Federal fishing regulators are considering a host of alternatives about new ways to manage the herring fishery.

Atlantic herring is a major industrial fishery on the East Coast, including in Gloucester, with fishermen frequently bringing more than 200 million pounds of the little fish to shore every year.

Herring are used as human food and bait for other fisheries, such as lobsters. The catch of herring off of New England has been inconsistent in recent years, leading to volatility in the lobster bait market.

The New England Fishery Management Council is considering nine alternatives about how to manage the fishery. The options would allow for measures such as area closures and restrictions on types of gear.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Gloucester Times: We all play a role in limiting mercury pollution

April 27, 2017 — Mercury poses a dangerous threat to people and the environment, and northeastern Massachusetts has been tainted by higher-than-normal levels of the heavy metal. Those of us who live here — let alone catch and eat fish here — depend on efforts to contain the toxic element – including by making sure old thermostats, fluorescent bulbs and similar products don’t wind up in landfills.

But with shared interest comes shared responsibility, and none of us should need a financial reward to do the right thing for ourselves, each other or the environment.

That’s the suggestion of some green groups, however, when they criticize Massachusetts’ law on mercury disposal and an industry-organized effort to collect devices that contain the metal.

They point to incentives required by other New England states that force makers of thermostats and light bulbs to offer rewards to consumers and contractors to recycle old mercury products. In Maine, the rebate is $5.

Those programs come at a cost, either for the state and taxpayers or for manufacturers. And they don’t move the needle of recycling, according to industry representatives. It’s hard to imagine such small rebates swaying enough people to make a difference.

A spokesman for the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, in media reports when Massachusetts updated its mercury law two and a half years ago, derisively called the payments a “bounty.”

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Times

Environmentalists vow to fight Trump on Maine monument

April 26, 2017 — President Trump on Wednesday will issue a sweeping executive order to review as many as 40 national monument designations made by his three predecessors, an unprecedented move that could curtail or rescind their protected status.

It was unclear which areas would come under review, but the list could include monuments designated last year by President Barack Obama, including thousands of acres of pristine woods in northern Maine and sensitive marine habitats in the submerged canyons and mountains off Cape Cod.

Environmental groups immediately questioned the president’s legal authority to reverse a previous president’s designation, but the Trump administration has suggested that some of the restrictions on mining, logging, and other commercial and recreational activities have gone too far.

“The review is long overdue,” US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said at a White House news conference.

“No one can say definitely one way or another whether a president can undo an earlier president’s designation, because the issue has never been litigated,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, who has opposed Obama’s closing of 5,000 square miles of seabed to fishing by designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, about 130 miles off Cape Cod.

Mitchell said there is precedent for presidents to change the boundaries and activities within a national monument. President Woodrow Wilson reduced by half the size of the Mount Olympus National Monument in Washington, created by President Theodore Roosevelt.

“Intuitively, one would assume that if the president can establish a monument, the president can undo an earlier establishment,” he said.

Andrew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C., said the president wouldn’t have to rescind Obama’s designation to address the concerns of the fishing industry.

“With the stroke of a pen, he could just say there’s no longer a ban on commercial fishing,” he said.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

2016 fishing review highlights monitors —human and electronic

April 24, 2017 — NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Office released its annual year in review for 2016 and nowhere does it mention the ever-churning debate over Gulf of Maine cod and the yawning divide between scientists’ data and the primary-source observations of fishermen.

For the most part, the report is a four-color chronicle of what officials at Gloucester-based GARFO — which manages the nation’s federal fisheries from the Gulf of Maine south to Cape Hatteras and west to the Great Lakes — consider the agency’s most tangible accomplishments in 2016.

Still, the review gives some insight into some of the agency’s management priorities and policy areas where it may marshal its resources in the future.

It specifically mentions the office’s work in drafting a recovery plan for endangered Atlantic salmon and a five-year action plan for the species. It highlights its work with commercial groundfishermen — many of them from Gloucester — on potential changes to the small-mesh whiting fishery.

The report also highlights the agency’s transfer of the cost of of at-sea monitoring to permit holders.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

States to host hearings on changes to squid fishery

National Fish executive makes deal in fraud case

April 24, 2017 — A senior executive at Gloucester-based National Fish & Seafood pleaded guilty to one count of tax fraud Thursday in U.S. District Court in Boston and is set to be sentenced in July, the Justice Department announced.

Richard J. Pandolfo, 71, of North Andover, was indicted by a federal grand jury last June on four counts of filing false federal tax returns between 2009 and 2012.

The charges were reduced to one count as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors. Pandolfo, an executive vice president at the East Gloucester seafood processor, faces up to three years in prison, one year of supervised release, a fine of $100,000 and restitution of $25,879 to the Internal Revenue Service.

Prosecutors charge Pandolfo failed to pay federal tax on about $90,000 of the $95,000 in “substantial supplemental income” he received from former National Fish & Seafood executive and part-owner Jack Ventola from 2008 to 2012.

According to the original indictment, some of the supplemental income went directly to Pandolfo, while other payments went to a shell company established in the name of Pandolfo’s wife, who is not named in the indictment, through another shell company controlled by Ventola.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Coast Guard Rescues Man From Fishing Ship Dozens of Miles off Montauk

April 24, 2017 — The Coast Guard rescued a man who was suffering a medical emergency on a ship 65 miles south of eastern Long Island.

The 47-year-old man was lifted from the deck of the Braedon Michael after the fishing vessel contacted the Coast Guard around 8:30 a.m. Friday for help with a crewmember who was experiencing flu-like symptoms and was in and out of consciousness.

An MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter launched from an air station in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and arrived at the ship about an hour later, where it swooped in and rushed the man to a local medical center.

Read the full story at NBC 4 New York

Boats may be hitting whales in Gulf of Maine more often, study suggests

April 24, 2017 — A group of marine scientists says collisions of whales and boats off the New England coast may be more common than previously thought.

The scientists focused on the humpback whale population in the southern Gulf of Maine, a body of water off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. They found that almost 15 percent of the whales, which come to New England to feed every spring, had injuries or scarring consistent with at least one vessel strike.

The researchers, who published their findings in the March issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, said the work shows that the occurrence of such strikes is most likely underestimated. They also said their own figure is likely low because it does not account for whales that are killed in ship strikes.

“Vessel strikes are a significant risk to both whales and to boaters,” said Alex Hill, the lead author of the study, who is a scientist with the conservation group Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “Long-term studies can help us figure out if our outreach programs to boaters are effective, what kind of management actions are needed and help to assess the health of the population.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

Researchers study whales and the food they eat

April 24, 2017 — North Atlantic right whales need a lot of food each day — the caloric equivalent of 3,000 Big Macs — and right now there’s plenty of it in Cape Cod Bay, in the form of a tiny crustacean.

“The food resource is the thickest we have seen in 32 years,” Charles “Stormy” Mayo, head of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies, said of the zooplankton that whales consume.

In years past, the center’s water sampling in the bay has shown total zooplankton densities usually less than 5,000 organisms per cubic meter. While the individual zooplankton are measured in millimeters, the whales that eat them are among the largest animals on earth, reaching lengths of more than 50 feet and weighing up to 79 tons.

But on April 14, for example, the densities reached well over 40,000 organisms per cubic meter across most of the bay, according to Christy Hudak, the center’s associate scientist. Some areas west of Great Island in Wellfleet reached 72,000 organisms per cubic meter.

On that same day, more than 40 percent of the total population of right whales left in the world, 217 out of 524, were spotted in the bay.

“It might be that the food resource is particularly strong this year, and if it continues that will bode well for right whales,” biologist Mark Baumgartner of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said. “Alternatively, food in other habitats at other times of the year may be poor, leading to right whales concentrating in fewer places and fewer times, such as Cape Cod Bay in early spring.”

Scientists are looking at possible connections between the high concentration of right whales in the early spring in Cape Cod Bay and low calving rates.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Loss of Rafael’s permits could hurt New Bedford

April 24, 2017 — By late morning just before Easter weekend, three fishing vessels lined up at the docks to unload their catch, and they all belonged to one man — the local mogul known as the “Codfather,” Carlos Rafael.

“It’s a good haul,” a passing auction worker at the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction said under her breath, as crew members, some still in their orange waterproof bibs, unloaded the ice-packed fish.

For decades, Rafael’s fleet of some 40 vessels has been a staple of this city’s fishing industry, a sight as common as the seal that patrols the docks.

But now, Rafael’s recent conviction on federal charges that he cheated fishing regulations to boost his profits is putting his many vessels and permits up for grabs — potentially distributing them to ports along the New England coast. That would deliver an economic blow to New Bedford and the people who depend on the business created by Rafael’s fleet.

Rafael, 65, whose nickname given by locals derives from his brash business style, is expected to be sentenced in June to about four years in prison. Local officials are urging the federal government to keep the permits in New Bedford, home to the country’s most valuable fishing port and one of the last true ports on the East Coast.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe