Saving Seafood

Carlos Rafael Trial Delayed

January 24, 2017 — The federal trial of New Bedford fishing kingpin Carlos Rafael has been pushed back more than a month to March amid indications that Rafael is looking for a deal from federal prosecutors.

U.S. District Court Judge William Young, sitting in Boston, approved the defense’s request to reschedule the start of the trial to March 20 to accommodate a scheduling conflict for one of Rafael’s attorneys. It is the second time the original Feb. 6 trial date has been extended.

The motion for a continuance filed by Rafael’s attorney William H. Kettlewell also indicated that Rafael is speaking with prosecutors about resolving the charges in the 27-count indictment before the matter goes to trial.

“The short continuance requested in this motion will allow counsel time to complete (another) trial and complete discussions with the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding resolving the matter short of trial,” Kettlewell wrote in his motion.

Kettlewell did not immediately respond Monday to a request for comment on the rescheduling or the possibility of a pre-trial deal.

Rafael, known widely as the “Codfather” to reflect his expansive fishing fleet of at least 36 commercial fishing vessels and significant waterfront holdings, is accused of 25 counts of lying to federal fishing regulators about the value and species of his seafood landings and selling portions of those landings off the books.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA Fisheries to move into historic renovated New Bedford Custom House

January 23, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The historic Custom House building looks a little like a construction site right now with a tarp covering one side, but come March it will have new tenants and a new stairway on the William Street side, federal officials said.

Patrick Sclafani, a spokesman for the General Services Administration, said in an email to The Standard-Times that NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) will be locating there in March and the interior renovations are being done in advance of their arrival.

NOAA’s Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region Stakeholder Engagement Division and NOAA seafood inspectors will be moving into the building then. Currently, the U.S. Custom and Border Protection agencies are there.

The marble floor tiles are being refurbished and a new subfloor is being installed to the building’s first floor main corridor, he said. The building, which was built in 1836, has two floors.

The contractor is also installing new granite exterior stairs on the William Street side of the building that were removed many years ago, he said.

The new stairs will be “architecturally and historically accurate to their original state,” and should be done by approximately March, he said. The reconstructed stairs will be for the exclusive use of NOAA.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A day in the life of a scallop boat captain

January 23, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — “We’re really pleased to see such a great turnout,” Fishing Heritage Center Director Laura Orleans told the standing-room-only crowd filling the center on Jan. 11. The capacity audience was there to hear Fairhaven scallop boat captain Chris Wright talk about “A Day in the Life” of the master of not one but two local 200-foot scallopers.

Pleased, but not surprised at the big turnout. “It’s no surprise because Chris Wright is one of my favorite captains,” Orleans said. By the end of the interesting lecture on his life at sea, and a spirited question-and-answer session, Wright was the favorite scallop boat captain of everyone in the room. 

“Don’t be in awe of us” braving fierce winds and mountainous waves far offshore, Wright suggested modestly at one point in the question-and-answer period. “It’s just what we do.”

What Wright does is skipper the Huntress out of Fairhaven, and the Nordic Pride, based in New Bedford. A shared captain is not uncommon these days, with each scallop boat limited by fishing regulations to a maximum of 75 days at sea, he noted.

“I’m getting ready for my 29th year as a captain,” Wright said, looking back on a life at sea that started with summer and vacation work on his father’s fishing boat as a youth, and through college. He graduated from a maritime academy in 1983, and spent a year working on commercial vessels, traveling far and wide over the oceans.

“But it was too much time away from home,” he suggested. “After a while, I went back home and started fishing.” 

He said he is lucky to have found two good boat owners to work for, and build long-term relationships with over the decades. He alternates trips on the two vessels, helming each for 10 or more trips per year with the same crew.

A captain spends much of his time on shore preparing for the next trip, with each fishing voyage lasting from 10 to 14 days. If the maximum catch allowed for that trip is 17,000 pounds of scallops, the boats generally stay out as long as is needed to get close to the allowed harvest.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Carlos ‘Codfather’ Rafael to talk with prosecutors about resolving criminal case

January 23, 2017 — Indicted New Bedford scallops magnate Carlos “Codfather” Rafael has asked the court to postpone his upcoming trial in part to pursue talks with prosecutors about “resolving” the matter, court documents show.

One of Rafael’s attorneys, William Kettlewell, asked the Massachusetts federal court of judge William G. Young to postpone Rafael’s Feb. 13 trial to at least March 20. Young granted the order.

The delay, the second in recent months, is required as Kettlewell is expected to represent a different client in a two-week trial beginning on Jan. 30, the lawyer wrote. But, that time can also be used for negotiations with prosecutors about a possible settlement.

“The short continuance requested in this motion will allow counsel time to complete that trial and complete discussions with the US Attorney’s Office regarding resolving this matter short of trial,” Kettlewell wrote in the motion.

He did not respond to requests from Undercurrent News for comment.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester receives $20K to help city sell seafood

January 23, 2017 — The city has received a $20,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and plans to use the funds to bolster its Gloucester Fresh marketing campaign for locally landed seafood.

“These funds will enable us to continue our outreach efforts on behalf of the Gloucester Fresh campaign,” said Sal Di Stefano, economic development director for the city. “It really came as an extension of the “Local Foods, Local Places” initiative we’ve already engaged in with the USDA.”

Bolstering the Gloucester Fresh campaign may be the short-term goal, but Di Stefano said the city hopes the $20,000 can be used to leverage larger sums that would enable it to launch a product development test kitchen.

The kitchen, at a site to be determined, would be operated by a partnership of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association and SnapChef.

“It would be a seafood testing and demonstration kitchen that could be utilized by companies for developing new products that could ultimately be marketed under the Gloucester Fresh brand,” Di Stefano said. “It also will be used for workforce training for the culinary industry.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Scientists, fishermen can set the stage for a new way to protect the Gulf of Maine

January 23, 2017 — There’s long been an undercurrent of mistrust between fishermen who make their livelihoods from the Gulf of Maine and the scientists whose surveys and calculations determine the amount of fish they can catch.

That, in part, is because it can seem as if fishermen and scientists are talking about two different Gulfs of Maine when they discuss the size of the cod population.

Scientists document a groundfish stock in perpetual decline with an outlook that doesn’t seem to have changed much in response to increasingly restrictive limits on the amount fishermen can catch. They note a species that has struggled to recover after more than a century of overfishing and now faces the added challenge of rebuilding in an area of the ocean that’s warming faster than 99 percent of the rest of the world’s oceans. Indeed, researchers from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and elsewhere have found that warming waters reduce the number of new cod produced by spawning females and reduce the likelihood that young fish will survive to adulthood.

Fishermen, meanwhile, report something different.

“This is uncalled for,” Joseph Orlando, a cod fisherman who fishes off the coast of Gloucester, Massachusetts, told NPR in 2014 after regulators cut the Gulf of Maine cod fishing season short that year. “There’s more codfish out there. There’s always been.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

New rules for New England shrimp fishing might go to public

January 17, 2017 — The public might soon have a chance to comment on potential new fishing rules that could help bring New England’s shrimp back into markets.

Northern shrimp were once a popular seafood, but the commercial fishing industry for them has been shut down since the stock collapsed in 2013.

Interstate regulators are working on new rules about how to manage the fishery if it does eventually reopen.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says options include state-by-state allocations and the mandatory use of certain kinds of gear to prevent harvest of young shrimp.

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

MASSACHUSETTS: Seafood company’s future in question

January 16, 2017 — Illinois-based Mazzetta Co. remains mute on the fate of its Gloucester Seafood Processing subsidiary, but a state agency on Friday confirmed it has spent about five months helping place workers laid off from the Blackburn Industrial Park facility.

Ken Messina, business service manager of the state’s Executive Office of Workforce Development, said staffers from his agency’s Rapid Response Team first began working with GSP management in August and were at the seafood processing plant as recently as last week.

“We were able to help them with their layoff situation,” Messina said. “Last week was the last meeting that we had up there. For us, it was the end of the closure.”

Officials from Mazzetta, based in Highland Park, Illinois, have not responded to multiple requests for comment, so it is unclear whether the layoffs — which Messina pegged at about 175 — will lead to the international seafood company completely shuttering the Gloucester business it opened in 2015.

Silence from the top

Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken on Friday said she hasn’t heard a word from Mazzetta or local GSP officials since she met with GSP executive Dave Fitzgerald about three months ago at City Hall.

“They didn’t say anything about layoffs then and they didn’t say anything about closing,” Romeo Theken said. “They don’t call the city when they’re laying people off. They call the city when they’re closing and I have not received a phone call from them saying they’re shutting the doors.”

Romeo Theken conceded she also heard reports from constituents about large layoffs at GSP, but was unaware the state’s Executive Office of Workforce Development had been working with the company for five months.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fish column debuts

January 16, 2017 — There’s a whole, wide world of fishing and maritime stories taking place outside the realm of Cape Ann and New England, stuff that doesn’t necessarily merit full stories here in the Gloucester Daily Times, but still is worth knowing.

And that brings us to FishOn, a new weekly roundup column that will feature fishing-related briefs and items from around the globe, as well as serving as a forum for advancing important public meetings and events related to commercial and recreational fishing.

The column is scheduled to run in print and online on Mondays and public submissions are welcome. The column is strictly for the purposes of entertainment and information. So, no wagering.

Slow down, enjoy the spawning

You think it’s easy being a salmon? Think it’s all just swimming around, searching for a little nosh and nookie? Well, think again.

In a study produced at Sweden’s Umea University, researchers claim that human anti-depressants that make their way into salmon habitats are having a debilitating effect on young Atlantic salmon.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Maine scallop prices have surged to a record high

January 16, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s scallops have surged to a record high price at the docks this winter after several years of rising in value, according to fishing regulators in the state.

Fishermen harvest Maine scallops with dragging boats or by hand while diving in frigid waters. The scallops are selling for about $13.50 per pound at the dock, the scallop manager for the state Department of Marine Resources said. In 2015, they sold for $12.70, which was a record, and more than three times the price in 2004.

The state’s scallops are sought after in the culinary world and typically sell for about $20 to $25 per pound to customers, which is slightly more than other sea scallops.

This year’s high prices are a boon to fishermen, who seem to be catching about the same amount as last year, said Dana Black, a fisherman out of Blue Hill. He said fishermen have been able to catch large, meaty scallops that are especially prized by buyers.

“This year shouldn’t be any less than last year – in fact, it could be better,” Black said.

Scallop season in Maine runs from December to April, with December often a busy month. But bad weather this December held back some of the fleet from getting on the water. The state is affording fishermen extra days at sea to compensate.

Maine’s scallop fishery is a small piece of the worldwide industry based around the shellfish. The U.S. scallop fishery, based mostly in Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey, was worth more than $400 million last year.

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