Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: West Tisbury School students learn about sustainable seafood

May 25, 2017 — West Tisbury School students enjoyed clam chowder and a lobster boil for lunch on a recent Friday, part of their “local catch of the day” program, and learned from local experts how choosing sustainable seafood supports New England fishermen.

The event on May 19 at the West Tisbury School gave students the opportunity to learn firsthand what the ocean has to offer. It was part of a celebration of Island Grown Schools’ “harvest of the month.” The organization brings garden-based learning and locally sourced food to Island schoolchildren, and seafood was the local harvest for the month of May.

Jared Auerbach, the founder of Boston-based regional seafood purveyor Red’s Best, which supplies seafood to the school, shared with students the importance of eating locally-sourced and sustainably-harvested fish.

“Let mother nature dictate what you’re going to eat,” Mr. Auerbach said.

Read the full story at The Martha’s Vineyard Times

Barnegat Light Scalloper ‘Apparently Fell Overboard’ and Dies in Massachusetts

May 24, 2017 — The Fishermen’s Story Memorial at the tip of Barnegat Light will have another name engraved in memory of commercial fishermen who died in their line of work, this one Pete Benya.

“Barnegat Light is again mourning the loss of one of our own,” says the Facebook page of the Fishermen’s Story Memorial Fund.

Capt. Pete Benya, 59, died the weekend of Sunday, May 14, when his body was found floating in Saquatucket Harbor, Mass., and later identified, according to the Cape and Islands district attorney’s office.

Benya owned the Resolute and had been scalloping out of Barnegat Light for several years.

“Pete was making a few trips out of Harwich, Mass., and apparently fell overboard while at the dock,” said representatives from Lighthouse Marina, his home port in Barnegat Light.

“He will be sorely missed.”

Beth Mears, on behalf of the marina and the Fisherman’s Story Memorial, said having Benya’s name engraved on the monument  is “in the works.” She said she hopes to have it done in time for the Blessing of the Fleet on June 19 but is not sure if the work will be completed by then. The monument was erected in 2013 after Mears’ brother, Jimmy, was lost at sea.

Read the full story at The Sandpaper

Carlos Rafael wins sentencing delay

May 24, 2017 — The sentencing of New Bedford fishing mogul Carlos Rafael has been moved off another month and he now is expected to hear his fate on July 28 in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Rafael, who pleaded guilty in late March to falsifying fish quotas, conspiracy and tax evasion, requested the extension. He said he needs more time gather and provide the relevant — and voluminous — financial records that are the center of the federal government’s case against him.

Rafael, 65, initially was set to be sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge William G. Young on June 27.

“The short continuance requested in this motion will allow Mr. Rafael to complete this process such that the information can be presented in the pre-sentence report and considered at sentencing,” William H. Kettlewell, Rafael’s attorney, wrote in his motion for the extension.

Prosecutors did not oppose the extension.

Under his plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Rafael may have to surrender up to 13 of his groundfishing vessels and must pay almost $109,000 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

Rafael, known throughout New England as the “Codfather” because of his vast vessel and permit holdings, could face up to 76 months in prison on the three charges — far less than the up to 20 years he would have faced under the original 27-count indictment.

Federal prosecutors have recommended a prison sentence of 46 months and a significant period of supervised release.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

How Maine came to play a central role in an international eel smuggling scheme

May 23, 2017 — Years after officials launched an investigation into baby eel poaching on the East Coast, the first of several men to plead guilty to participating in the wildlife trafficking ring was sentenced last week in a federal courtroom in Maine.

Michael Bryant, 40, a former Baileyville resident who now lives in West Yarmouth, Massachusetts, is one of more than a dozen men who the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service says poached thousands of pounds of the baby eels, also known as elvers or “glass” eels, from 2011 through 2014. Since 2011, elvers on average have fetched around $1,500 per pound for fishermen, and netted more than $4 million total for the 12 convicted poachers who have pleaded guilty to federal charges in South Carolina, Virginia and Maine.

Maine found itself at the center of a criminal enterprise that illegally netted elvers along the Atlantic seaboard, where most states ban their harvesting, and then shipped the eels overseas to feed East Asia’s voracious seafood appetite, according to investigators.

Bryant and other poachers benefitted from a combination of environmental, economic and regulatory factors earlier this decade that created an unexpected boon for elver fishermen in Maine, where the vast majority of the country’s legal elver harvest occurs. Maine, one of only two states with legal elver fisheries, has approximately 1,000 licensed elver fishermen who over the past seven years have caught 81,000 pounds of elvers valued at more than $126 million. South Carolina, the other state, issues only 10 licenses each year and has much smaller harvests.

Last October, Bryant was one of seven men who pleaded guilty in federal court in Maine to trafficking in poached elvers. According court documents, Bryant did not have a fishing license but caught 207 pounds of elvers in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Virginia over four consecutive springs, from 2011 through 2014. He sold them to unscrupulous dealers or middlemen, with roughly half his catch being funneled through Maine, for an average of $1,600 per pound, netting a total of $331,084, according to authorities.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

EDF proposes steep fines on Rafael to create ‘Groundfish Monitoring Fund’

May 23, 2017 — Carlos Rafael can do some good for the fishing industry, fishermen and fish stocks he so badly damaged during his decades of fraud, argue Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) leaders Matt Tinning and Johanna Thomas in a recent opinion piece in South Coast Today. 

“Leaders in the fishing industry have made two demands that we support: Carlos Rafael should never again be allowed to fish, and his groundfish quota should be redistributed to other participants in the fishery who were among his victims. We propose a third remedy: He should face steep fines and asset seizures proportionate to his crimes, and the proceeds should be used to fix system failures that allowed his criminality to flourish.”

Specifically, they call for the creation of a a Groundfish Monitoring Fund. Tinning is senior director of the EDF’s US oceans program; and Thomas is the New England regional director for EDF.

They argue, “One of the major causes of the New England cod crisis, and a key enabler of Rafael’s crimes, is inadequate monitoring of the groundfish fleet,” they state in the article. “Only one out of 10 groundfish boats carries an at-sea observer, and there are no monitors to document catch when fishermen bring their harvest to land. As a result, participants in the fishery can’t have confidence that all are abiding by fishing rules, and little accurate information on fishing activity exists upon which to base harvest limits. It is no wonder that Rafael’s massive fraud went undetected for so long, or that this fishery has one of the worst records of stock recovery in the country.

“A Groundfish Monitoring Fund could turn this fishery around. In other places, like the U.S. Pacific and British Columbia, successful groundfish monitoring programs have helped resuscitate stocks and put fishermen on a level playing field. There are growing calls for New England to adopt similar innovations, and the Fishery Management Council recently kicked off an amendment process that could get this done. A major remaining challenge, however, is the cost burden of effective monitoring. If a Groundfish Monitoring Fund could overcome that hurdle by helping underwrite costs, it could be a historic breakthrough.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: How to Catch a Hungry Student? Bait the Hook With Fresh Fish

May 23, 2017 — Fish belongs in schools. Jenny DeVivo, head chef at the West Tisbury School, certainly thinks so. In November she began Fish Fridays at the school, partnering with Red’s Best, a seafood wholesaler, to provide the school with locally caught, underutilized fish on a weekly basis.

All year long students have been enjoying fresh fish lunches, and on Friday they met the whole fish food chain at the Massachusetts Farm to School’s Harvest of the Month seafood celebration.

The interactive event organized by Ms. DeVivo featured booths run by Cottage City Oysters, the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, Island Grown Initiative, the Wampanoag tribe natural resources department and the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. Throughout the day the students learned about sustainable fishing and how the latest lunch initiative supports local fishermen. Students also posed with monkfish, squid, lobsters and more at a photo booth. Then they enjoyed meals that included fresh pollock, mussels and lobster.

There were also numerous educational opportunities as they watched a demonstration of mussels cleaning algae-filled water, saw how fish create fertilizer that grows the salad greens they eat every day and learned about the efforts of the Wampanoag tribe to track the Island’s herring population.

In one presentation, Jared Auerbach, founder of Red’s Best, explained the process of how local fish ends up on their lunch trays. He emphasized that the school’s demand for fish is “playing a really important part in our thriving local fishing community.”

The partnership entails a weekly commitment to purchase a set quantity of fish at a fixed price. The fish­ — whatever is fresh and abundant at the moment — is caught by members of the Menemsha Fish House and then processed by Red’s Best and distributed to the school.

Ms. DeVivo described the initiative as “the missing piece to the local puzzle that I had been searching for,” supplementing the cafeteria’s Island sources for meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables and fruit. As she serves up the latest catch each week, she tells the students the story of who caught it and where it was caught.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

EDF: Rafael’s assets should be seized, fund fishery restoration

May 21, 2017 — After decades of fraud, Carlos Rafael can finally do some good for the fishing industry, fishermen and fish stocks he so badly damaged.

Mr. Rafael reaped tens of millions of dollars, mislabeling millions of pounds of fish to mislead regulators and exceed quota limits. In the process, he was not just breaking the law — he was undermining sustainability in the New England groundfish fishery, cheating his fellow fishermen of their future.

Mr. Rafael amassed an empire of more than 40 fishing boats and 44 fishing permits, making his one of the largest commercial fishing companies in the country. Now, having pleaded guilty to a raft of charges including false labeling, conspiracy and tax evasion, he faces the potential for serious jail time when he is sentenced on June 27. But that should just be the beginning. NOAA, the IRS and the federal judge in this case have an unprecedented opportunity to dispense justice in a way that can transform this iconic fishery.

Leaders in the fishing industry have made two demands that we support: Carlos Rafael should never again be allowed to fish, and his groundfish quota should be redistributed to other participants in the fishery who were among his victims. We propose a third remedy: He should face steep fines and asset seizures proportionate to his crimes, and the proceeds should be used to fix system failures that allowed his criminality to flourish.

Specifically, we are calling for the creation of a Groundfish Monitoring Fund. One of the major causes of the New England cod crisis, and a key enabler of Rafael’s crimes, is inadequate monitoring of the groundfish fleet. Only 1 out of 10 groundfish boats carries an at-sea observer, and there are no monitors to document catch when fishermen bring their harvest to land. As a result, participants in the fishery can’t have confidence that all are abiding by fishing rules, and little accurate information on fishing activity exists upon which to base harvest limits. It is no wonder that Rafael’s massive fraud went undetected for so long, or that this fishery has one of the worst records of stock recovery in the country.

A Groundfish Monitoring Fund could turn this fishery around. In other places, like the U.S. Pacific and British Columbia, successful groundfish monitoring programs have helped resuscitate stocks and put fishermen on a level playing field. There are growing calls for New England to adopt similar innovations, and the Fishery Management Council recently kicked off an amendment process that could get this done. A major remaining challenge, however, is the cost burden of effective monitoring. If a Groundfish Monitoring Fund could overcome that hurdle by helping underwrite costs, it could be a historic breakthrough.

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

JOHN PAPPALARDO: What justice looks like for our fisheries

May 20, 2017 — The high-profile arrest of Carlos Rafael followed by his guilty plea to lying about the fish he caught and sold is final proof of the existence of a devastating rogue wave that has battered the historic New England fishery.

Rafael tainted an entire industry, making fools of hardworking, honest fishermen who have been playing by the rules under increasingly difficult circumstances.

It’s entirely possible that his illegal reporting distorted the scientific analysis that powered our fish population assessments. By mislabeling depleted species and selling them as abundant species, Rafael kept scientists from making honest estimates of how much fish actually was in the water. Public policy was built on bad assumptions, which in turn created double damage — lowering limits on the amount of fish honest fishermen were allowed to bring to shore while at the same time stealing the resource we are all committed to rebuilding.

Now comes the crucial question: What does justice look like in the aftermath of an admitted economic and environmental crime of this magnitude?

First, Carlos Rafael should be banned from commercial fishing, forever.

Second, the fishing quota he owns (pounds of fish allowed to be landed each year) should be redistributed to all of the fishermen in our region, because they are the ones most damaged by his criminal enterprise.

Third, additional revenue on his assets, whether from outright confiscation and sale, or fines and penalties, should be used to fund major improvements in how our fisheries are monitored and studied. This is the only way to assure that the same thing won’t keep happening over and over again, to protect honest fishermen and to revive fish populations.

While most fishermen are hardworking and law-abiding, making a living in a dangerous but gratifying way, we need to acknowledge that Rafael is not the only person to game the system (though he’s likely the worst). This is the moment to learn from what he was able to pull off and shut the door on anyone who aims to steal public resources from the ocean, other fishermen and the American public.

By Rafael’s own estimation, his fleet is worth between $75 million and $100 million. In the plea bargain proposed in return for his guilty plea, only 20 percent of his holdings (13 vessels and permits worth about $15 million) would be confiscated. This would leave him with $60 million or more of assets.

Read the full opinion piece at the Cape Cod Times

Warming water threatens fishing ports

May 22, 2017 — The continued warming of the Gulf of Maine is expected to pose additional threats to the region’s commercially important species of seafood — and by extension to the fishing communities that harvest them, according to a new study.

The study, jointly compiled by researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Nature Conservancy, draws the link between the region’s unprecedented warming and concerns about the ability of species to find new, sustainable habitats.

“These changes will directly affect fishing communities, as species now landed in those ports move out of range, and new species move in,” said the authors of the study that appears in journal Progress in Oceanography.

The migration of a spectrum of species could create “economic, social and natural resource management challenges” throughout the region, according to the study.

“The projections indicate that as species shift from one management jurisdiction to another, or span state and federal jurisdictions, increased collaboration among management groups will be needed to set quotas and establish allocations,” the researchers concluded. 

At the heart of the concern is the startling rate at which the Gulf of Maine is warming.

Previous research has shown the region’s surface waters are warming faster than 99 percent of the Earth’s oceans and the study’s researchers project the region will continue to warm “two to three times faster than the global average through the end of this century.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Gulf of Maine will become too warm for many key fish, report says

May 22, 2017 — A new study by federal fisheries scientists predicts the warming of the Gulf of Maine will cause a dramatic contraction of suitably cool habitat for a range of key commercial fish species there. On the other hand, lobsters are more likely to find hospitable areas.

The study by seven scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, used a high-resolution global climate model and federal fisheries survey data to model how key fisheries species would likely be affected by predicted warming over the next 80 years.

The results confirmed previous research using other models and methods that found that the Gulf of Maine can be expected to become increasingly uncomfortable for many of the cold-loving species that have thrived here for all of recorded history but are at the southern ends of their ranges. Those include cod, haddock, redfish, plaice and pollock.

“The main message here is how important it is to understand the potential magnitude of the changes that you see when you get a finer, higher-resolution view of the implications of changing sea temperatures,” says co-author Michael Fogarty, chief of the ecosystem assessment program at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The scientists caution that the research analyzes just one factor – albeit an important one – the distribution of thermally appropriate habitat for each of 58 species. Their results predict the changes in the amount and location of such habitat but don’t account for many other factors that can influence the future populations of the species themselves, such as what happens to what they eat or what likes to eat them, or how the increasing acidity of the ocean – another product of climate change – will affect each.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald