Saving Seafood

Fishermen Team Up With Scientists To Make A More Selective Net

December 14th, 2016 — Some New England fishermen are pinning their hopes on a new kind of trawl net being used in the Gulf of Maine, one that scoops up abundant flatfish such as flounder and sole while avoiding species such as cod, which are in severe decline.

For centuries, cod were plentiful and a prime target for the Gulf of Maine fleet. But in recent years, catch quotas have been drastically reduced as the number of cod of reproductive age have dropped perilously low.

For many boats, that turned the formerly prized groundfish into unwanted bycatch. And for fishermen, it can be tough to avoid cod while trying to catch other fish. The stakes are high.

“Say tomorrow I go out, have a 10,000 set of cod and I only have 4,000 pounds of quota, essentially your sector manager — the person that oversees this — would shut me down,” says Jim Ford, whose trawler is based in Newburyport, Mass.

Not only that, Ford would be forced to “lease” cod quota allowances from other fishermen to cover his overage. The cost of such leases, he says, can quickly outweigh the value of the cod that’s inadvertently caught.

“And I would pay a ridiculous price. And then you’re shut down, you can’t even go fishing,” he says.

But instead of joining the growing number of New England fishermen hanging up their nets, Ford has worked to modify the nets themselves. This summer he joined a net-maker and scientists at Portland’s Gulf of Maine Research Institute to design a trawl net that targets profitable species while avoiding cod.

Read the full story from NPR at WLRH

Trawler to be hired for study of imperiled shrimp

December 14th, 2016 — Government fishing managers will hire a shrimp fisherman from Massachusetts to help perform research about the future of the New England shrimp fishery.

The interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries say they want to hire a shrimp trawling vessel to collect samples of Northern shrimp. The fishermen will also be allowed to bring 1,200 pounds of shrimp per week to shore and sell them.

The project will begin on Jan. 15, 2017 and last eight weeks.

Regulators are also hiring shrimp trawlers and trappers from Maine and New Hampshire to collect samples.

Scientists say warming oceans have hurt the shrimp’s ability to reproduce. Regulators shut the fishery down in 2013.

They were previously a popular winter seafood item in New England and elsewhere.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Portsmouth Herald 

Court splits cases for fishing mogul, deputy

December 14th, 2016 — Federal authorities prosecuting New Bedford fishing magnate Carlos Rafael released a small trove of documents this week that made at least one thing pretty obvious: It didn’t take long for accused co-conspirator Antonio Freitas to drop Rafael into the bag once the law showed up.

The documents were attached to the government’s response to separate-but-similar motions by Rafael and Freitas to be tried individually.

They included partial transcripts from recorded conversations between Rafael and the undercover agents in which Rafael appears to talk about his family joining him in the alleged cash smuggling.

U.S. District Court Judge William Young on Monday granted the motions to sever the trials of the two defendants, with Rafael scheduled to go first on Feb. 6 in U.S. District Court in Boston.

Freitas, a Bristol County sheriff’s deputy, is set to be tried following the completion of Rafael’s trial.

Prosecutors have charged Rafael with one count of conspiracy and 25 counts of making false statements to fishing regulators about the species of groundfish he landed in New Bedford and fish he was selling off the books.

They’ve also charged Rafael and Freitas with one count each of bulk cash smuggling.

“The cash smuggling is where the co-defendant, Antonio Freitas, comes in,” the government wrote in its response to the motions.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times 

Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries seeks fisherman to catch shrimp off Massachusetts coast as part of study

December 13th, 2016 — Government officials are looking for a shrimp trawler to take part in a study of the future of the New England northern shrimp fishery.

The study is a joint effort by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries alongside the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC).

A release by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries details the study, which is intended “to collect northern shrimp samples during the winter period when the shrimp are in inshore waters, to collect data on the timing of the egg hatch, and the size, gender, and developmental stage of the shrimp.”

The chosen vessel will not have to go anywhere new beyond Massachusetts waters; they are expected to fish where they normally would when searching for shrimp. They must provide two random 4.5 pound samples each week but can otherwise sell up to 1,200 pounds of shrimp per trip. No other compensation is offered.

The northern shrimp’s population is considered “depleted” and scientists have pointed to warming oceans as a key factor in their decline. According to an ASMFC release about the ongoing moratorium on northern shrimp fishing, warming ocean temperatures suggest “an increasingly inhospitable environment for northern shrimp and the need for strong conservation efforts to help restore and maintain a fishable stock.”

The New England shrimp fishery was shut down in 2013.

Read the full story at Massachusetts Live

Partial transcript of Rafael’s meeting with undercover IRS agents revealed

December 12, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Documents filed in U.S. District Court in Boston Thursday show seafood mogul Carlos Rafael implicating his whole family in his alleged scheme to smuggle cash to the Azores and turn large catches of protected fish into large amounts of cash by selling them under the table.

Rafael is also quoted as boasting that he pressured Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M. Hodgson, into giving Deputy Sheriff Antonio Freitas a raise and promotion, and in turn using Freitas to get large amounts of cash around immigration and customs at Logan Airport.

The document is an official response to requests by Rafael and Freitas to be tried separately to preserve their individual rights.

The items are contained in a partial transcript of a meeting Rafael had with two men he thought were Russian businessmen but who were actually IRS agents operating under cover to learn how Rafael did business.

Rafael explained that as many as eight people in his family would make the trip to the Azores carrying cash that Freitas could bypass from customs.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Commercial fishermen ask court to block NY offshore wind energy lease

December 12, 2016 — Commercial fishing industry groups are asking a federal court to delay a planned Dec. 15 federal lease auction of 127 sq. mi. of seafloor off New York for wind energy development.

Led by the Fisheries Survival Fund, representing the East Coast sea scallop fleet, the organizations – joined by coastal towns where fishing is a major employer – seek an injunction against U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

The move comes after months of circling by BOEM and commercial fishing interests from Massachusetts and New Jersey – including the prosperous sea scallop industry, which has enjoyed historic abundance and high prices for the shellfish. They fishermen were joined in the action by Narragansett, R.I., New Bedford, Mass., and Barnegat Light, N.J., where fishing provides good employment.

In their complaint, the critics say BOEM “grossly underestimated” the level of fishing activity in the proposed New York Wind Energy Area, a shortcoming industry advocates tried to remedy by providing tracking data from boats towing for scallops and squid.

Fishermen say the results show “spaghetti tracks” demonstrating that proposed lease areas are important fish habitat and seafood sources.  In court papers, captain James Lovgren from the Fishermen’s Dock Cooperative in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., recounted bringing plotter data to BOEM that showed “the proposed windmill site was completely covered by track marks from the vessels.”

Lovgren says he and other fishermen were not notified of subsequent public listening sessions held by BOEM, despite having provided their contact information.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: The long view on offshore wind

December 12, 2016 — A consortium of entities with fishing interests – including the City of New Bedford – aims to block Thursday’s auction for wind rights in the ocean off of Long Island, claiming the fishing industry hasn’t had a full seat at the table.

One can readily see the value in the Edison’s saying above by comparing how the steadily advancing offshore wind industry has been greeted by fishing interests in New York and Massachusetts. While the federal government has been less than perfect in its consideration of Northeast fishing resources – see the recent ocean monument designations as an example where fishing interests’ reasonable options were ignored to the detriment of future harvests – the auctions that produced three leases for wind farms off the Massachusetts coast demonstrated effective outreach from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to fishermen. As a result, Massachusetts sits prepared, ready to answer when opportunity knocks, and New York is on tenterhooks.

This example illustrates the strategic commitment made in the Bay State and that has been broadly demonstrated regarding offshore wind. From academics and job training, to infrastructure and research, the coordination being described by varied activities should be cause for patient, measured optimism here.

Business and political leaders here have recognized that there are numerous assets waiting to be plugged in to the massive system required to support a mature and significant offshore wind industry. They have so far been patient enough to develop synergies organically.

Workforce development has begun with wind-specific programs in Bristol Community College and UMass Dartmouth, and at UMass Amherst, where wind energy research and development were born in 1971. The industry will benefit from the theoretical in Amherst to the most practical at UMass Dartmouth, where graduate programs in environmental policy and law help the legal framework to evolve, and where the rapidly expanding School of Marine Science and Technology provides unique, invaluable expertise on the geology and biology where turbines will be installed, in its backyard, so to speak.

Similarly, improvements to railways into New Bedford and assessments of waterfront land use will pay off as state assets like New Bedford’s South Terminal and the Charlestown blade testing facility become more and more useful.

Read the full editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Tagging study of gray seals could cost a half million dollars

December 12, 2016 — NANTUCKET, Mass. — As David Pierce sat at the table at the Nantucket Seal Symposium last month, he said one image came to mind: private pilot Aaron Knight’s video from April of miles of gray seals, a dozen deep, cheek by jowl, banding the Monomoy shoreline.

Recently appointed as director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, Pierce is a veteran of decades of fisheries negotiations as former director Paul Diodati’s proxy on the New England Fishery Management Council. Fishery managers live and die by population estimates – known as stock assessments – that help set sustainable catch levels for commercial fishermen, so it was disconcerting to hear that the same level of science had not been applied to the predators who eat them.

“The determination of population size is extremely important, especially in the context of ecosystem management in New England,” Pierce said. “If (gray seals) are out there in large numbers foraging, what might their impact be on the Georges Bank ecosystem?”

The answer will not be coming any time soon, according to federal fisheries officials at the symposium.

“It’s just an expensive number to get,” said Sean Hayes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration branch chief for protected species in the Northeast.

Kimberly Murray, coordinator of the seal research program at NOAA Fisheries Northeast Fisheries Science Research Center in Woods Hole, said it could cost as much as a half million dollars to conduct the tagging study alone.

The operational budget for seal research is around $10,000, Hayes said, although that doesn’t include the salaries for the two full-time and two part-time employees in the program.

Federal agencies are required to stick to the budgets they are allocated by Congress, and NOAA can’t shift money around among species. Because of their historic comeback from virtual extinction in New England waters, gray seals are far down on the budget priority list, Hayes explained, and get minimal funding. To put more money into seal research, he’d have to take it from other programs for more highly endangered species such as right whales during the budget process, and make a successful plea to put that amount into seals.

“We definitely want to try and find the resources to do the whole population count, but competing resource priorities from headquarters for species like the right whales, or a roof collapse at a science center, that comes up every year,” Hayes said. “Headquarters is getting hit by all the science centers. Everyone has an urgent priority.”

The region’s fishermen have been asking in vain for years for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division to give them a true population number for gray seals to gauge their impact on fish stocks such as cod, haddock, flounders and striped bass. With the arrival of hundreds of great white sharks to inshore waters of Cape Cod every year, to feast on members of the largest gray seal colony in the U.S., new voices have emerged with concerns about public safety.

“Where is this headed and how are we going to know at what rate this population is increasing if we don’t know what the number is now?” asked Orleans Natural Resources Manager Nate Sears.

Their resurgence is both a Marine Mammal Protection Act success story and a cause for concern.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Court Accepts New Bedford Mayor’s Declaration in Support of Lawsuit Against BOEM

December 9, 2016 — WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – This morning, the court accepted a declaration by New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell in support of a lawsuit filed yesterday by a group of 12 commercial fishing organizations, businesses and municipalties including the Fisheries Survival Fund and the City of New Bedford. The lawsuit alleges the federal government’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), failed to adequately consider the voices of commercial fishermen in the consideration of a proposed offshore wind farm off the coast of New York.

“During my administration, the City also has become a national leader in the development of the offshore wind industry,” said Mayor Mitchell. “Among other initiatives, my administration established the New Bedford Wind Energy Center, the only local economic development agency of its kind in the US, and has facilitated investment in port infrastructure and workforce training programs to support the industry.”

When BOEM previously designated wind lease areas off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, New Bedford worked hand-in-hand with BOEM to ensure fishing voices were considered. Consequently, the wind lease areas were drawn in such a way that they had minimal impact on the commercial fishing industry. In the case of the proposed New York wind farm, however, BOEM, according to the Mayor, has failed to take the same steps to ensure commercial fishing voices are heard.

“The City of New Bedford is joining this lawsuit because in its assessment of the New York Bight for offshore wind development, BOEM has not properly considered the legitimate concerns of the fishing industry,” said Mayor Mitchell. “I believe the opening of the New York Bight for offshore wind leasing, as currently proposed, will cause direct harm to existing fishing interests in New Bedford and elsewhere.”

Read Mayor Mitchell’s full declaration here

Fishing interests, New Bedford sue feds over New York wind turbines

December 9, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD – The New Bedford-dominated northeastern scallop industry, aided by fishing interests in four states, is suing the federal government to try to block a 127 square-mile wind turbine development in what they say are crucial fishing grounds south of Long Island.

The complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., seeks an injunction to stop a Dec. 15 auction in which the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is selling a lease on the location. The scallop industry group Fisheries Survival Fund is leading a dozen plaintiffs, including the City of New Bedford, the Town of Narragansett, R.I., the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, and other entities in Rhode Island and New Jersey.

“The people that make their living on the water were the last ones considered, not the first,” said David Frulla, attorney for the plaintiffs.

Important for scalloping, the area is also one of five main locations to fish for squid in the northeast, he said.

The plaintiffs allege that the bureau has not done enough to seek alternate locations to the one sought by an unsolicited proposal from three New York energy companies: New York Power Authority, Long Island Power Authority, and Consolidated Edison. The companies want to put 194 turbines on about 81,000 acres, according to the complaint.

The complaint says that rather than seek alternatives now, the bureau has deferred analyzing the appropriateness of the site until years from now, after the developers have already invested a substantial amount money.

“In effect, (the bureau) has permitted private companies to lay claim to valuable ocean areas without an adequate public process,” the complaint says.

Bureau spokeswoman Tracey Moriarty said when the agency received the proposal, it embarked on a competitive lease process that included public comment, and it deleted 1,780 acres known as Cholera Bank after the National Marine Fisheries Service identified it as a sensitive area.

Read the full story from the New Bedford Standard-Times