Saving Seafood

Monkfish Money to Allow Study of the New England Fishery

June 13, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government says two projects designed to improve the future of the monkfish fishery will receive more than $3.7 million in grants.

The grants are going to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and Cornell University Cooperative Extension.

The monkfish fishery was worth more than $18 million in 2014. It is based in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Fishermen also land monkfish in other states including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network

MASSACHUSETTS: Local Organizations to Receive Fishing Grants

June 10, 2016 — BARNSTABLE, Mass.  – Several grants will be awarded to regional groups and projects through the Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program to assist the needs of fishing communities.

NOAA Fisheries announced 50 projects across the nation that will receive $11 million for projects that will support economic opportunities and build and maintain resilient and sustainable fisheries.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will receive more than $268,000 to model the impact of climate change on larval connectivity and the recruitment of the American lobster off of Southern New England.

Over $105,000 will go to the Aquacultural Research Corporation in Dennis to create commercial opportunities by piloting surf clam aquaculture techniques.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Aquarium’s New Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life to Focus on Fisheries Conservation, Aquaculture, Marine Mammal Health, Research

June 10, 2016 — The New England Aquarium is celebrating the launch of its new Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life in Boston, a scientific institute focusing on fisheries conservation and aquaculture solutions, marine mammal research and conservation, habitat and ecosystem health, and marine animal health – a major new initiative for the Aquarium.

“The New England Aquarium has done excellent research and conservation work for 40 years,” said Nigella Hillgarth, the Aquarium’s President and CEO, who marked her second anniversary in late May and sees the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life as the culmination of her work to date to raise the profile and public understanding of the Aquarium’s vital marine science work internationally.

“The idea of combining our strengths to create a center of excellence that can focus on solving some of the anthropogenic problems of the oceans was the right thing to do,” particularly around climate change, said Hillgarth who sought to create the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life so scientific research can help shape international conservation policy.

Hillgarth and the Aquarium’s Board of Directors joined Massachusetts Environmental Secretary Matthew Beaton, National Geographic underwater photographer and Aquarium Explorer in Residence Brian Skerry along with other dignitaries on Wed. June 8 to celebrate the launch at the Aquarium’s Simons IMAX Theatre.

Read the full story at Newswise

Fishing Partnership Named Community Health Worker Program of the Year

Fishing Partnership Support Services has been named “Program of the Year” by the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers in recognition of the work performed by the partnership’s patient navigators. Several of the navigators gathered after the award with partnership leaders. From left, are: Angela Sanfilippo, J.J. Bartlett, partnership president; Lori Caron, Shannon Eldredge, Nina Groppo, holding award trophy; Lauren Hakala, partnership director of community health; Morgan Eldredge and Monica DeSousa. Navigators Debra Kelsey and Verna Kendall were not present.

Fishing Partnership Support Services was named “Program of the Year” by the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers. Several of the navigators gathered after the award with partnership leaders. From left: Angela Sanfilippo; J.J. Bartlett, partnership president; Lori Caron; Shannon Eldredge; Nina Groppo, holding award trophy; Lauren Hakala, partnership director of community health; Morgan Eldredge and Monica DeSousa. Navigators Debra Kelsey and Verna Kendall not pictured.

June 10, 2016 — The following was released by the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers:

The Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers has presented its 2016 Community Health Worker Program of the Year Award to Fishing Partnership Support Services, an organization serving commercial fishermen and their families.

Presented during the association’s recent annual conference in Norwood, the award honors the partnership for optimizing the work and impact of patient navigators, a category of employees within the field of community health work.

The Fishing Partnership employs patient navigators at four coastal sites in Massachusetts and one in Maine, where they help fishermen obtain affordable health coverage, enroll in free safety trainings, get tested for various health risks, and connect with providers of services that run the gamut from legal aid and financial counseling to substance abuse treatment and family counseling.

All Fishing Partnership navigators reside in the communities where they work; in most cases, they have resided there for years, if not for their entire lifetimes. The navigators also have personal histories that relate directly to the fishing industry. Their ranks include women who are spouses, partners, siblings and children of fishermen. One navigator is a fisher herself.

In designating the Fishing Partnership as its Community Health Worker Program of the Year, the Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers recognized the deep community roots of the organization’s navigators.

“Fishing Partnership navigators are visible and trusted members of their communities,” said association director Lissette Blondet. “They know their communities well and are well known in their communities. This makes them especially effective and productive.”

Blondet said that her association regards the navigators as “living witnesses to the value and the dignity of their neighborhoods, their towns, and the people they serve.” She added, “We have many good community health workers and community health programs in Massachusetts but very few of them adhere to best practices, across the board, the way the partnership and its navigators do.”

The Massachusetts Association of Community Health Workers is a statewide professional organization for community health workers from all disciplines. It is dedicated to strengthening the profession of community heath work and raising awareness and appreciation of the vital roles community health workers play in society.

It is “extremely gratifying” to be given the Program of the Year Award, said J.J. Bartlett, president of the Fishing Partnership.

“Our navigators have all been with the partnership for years,” he said, “yet their commitment to helping fishermen and the families of fishermen has only gotten stronger. We owe this award to their extraordinary dedication.”

Established in 1997, the Fishing Partnership was originally a provider of health coverage to fishermen. It continued in that role until 2011, when it transitioned to being a provider of a various services to fishermen, acting like a virtual human resources bureau within the industry. “We continue to develop our programming to address the changing needs of this population,” said Bartlett.

The dilemma of a fisherman whose wife lost her job in 2013, and with it the family’s health insurance, is typical of those solved by navigators.

“Due to the nature of my business, my wife being close to retirement, and having some family assets, we did not ‘fit’ into the application scenarios envisioned by the Massachusetts Health Connector,” this fisherman recently recalled. “We ended up in a seemingly unending nightmare of red tape…Without your help, I would never have been able to find my way through this process – and I am a well-educated person. Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation for your work and dedication in helping my family over the past 15 months.”

There are many instances when a partnership navigator, due to her knowledge, contacts and high local profile, is asked to help a person or a family from her community who is not a fisherman or a member of fisherman’s household. They always respond affirmatively.

A case like this, cited in the Community Health Worker Program of the Year award documents, involved a navigator who donated six hours to helping a homeless family of six enroll in MassHealth, the state and federally supported health coverage program.

“Our community health workers, our navigators, see their role as more of a calling than a job,” said Bartlett, the Fishing Partnership president. “They don’t stop helping at 5 o’clock. If someone is badly in need of assistance, they’ll see them on a Saturday or a Sunday. They always go the extra mile.”

The Fishing Partnership has its administrative office in Burlington and its patient navigator offices in Gloucester, Plymouth, New Bedford and Chatham, Massachusetts, and in Kennebunk, Maine. Its Massachusetts navigators are:

Angela Sanfilippo and Nina Groppo of Gloucester; Lori Caron of Plymouth; Debra Kelsey, Verna Kendal and Monica DeSousa of New Bedford; Morgan Eldredge and Shannon Eldredge of Chatham.

MASSACHUSETTS: South Shore lobster fishermen seek exemption from closure

June 9, 2016 — Finding ways to share the seas with important marine creatures, such as right whales, while keeping business afloat is a priority for local lobstermen and fishermen.

Representatives from local fishermen’s associations may have a solution they hope can lead to an exemption in a federally mandated closure that grounds local fishermen from Feb. 1 to April 30.

The closure encompasses nearly 3,000 square nautical miles, including parts of Massachusetts Bay and the waters around Cape Cod. It was first implemented in 2015 and affects fishermen who use vertical lines, such as lobster fishermen.

The goal behind the closure is to protect the right whale from possible entanglements. Since before the closure began, the fishermen have been looking for a compromise so they can help protect the endangered species without hurting their livelihoods.

“The commercial lobstermen want to coexist with the right whale. I don’t want to kill the whale, and I want to catch lobsters. We need to come up with a plan to make everyone happy,” said John Haviland, a Marshfield fisherman and president of the South Shore Lobster Fisherman’s Association.

The solution that may be the key to an exemption is a type of sleeve local fishermen have been trying out for about two years.

The sleeves wrap around the vertical lines, which are cut into 40-foot segments. Though the lines themselves break at around 4,000 pounds of pressure, the sleeves break with about 1,700 pounds of pressure—about the strength of the whale.

Read the full story at the Marshfield Mariner

MASSACHUSETTS: South Shore ground fishermen skeptical of plan to use digital cameras for monitoring mandate

June 9, 2016 — A program to get New England fishermen using video technology instead of human monitors to track their adherence to catch limits and document fish discarded from boats is getting mixed reviews in South Shore fishing ports.

Longtime commercial fishermen from Marshfield and Scituate said the project to equip some groundfishing boats with digital cameras comes with numerous pitfalls, including cost burdens and concerns about how video footage would be used.

Beginning this week, up to 20 groundfishermen from the Maine and Cape Cod will use three to four cameras to document fish handling on their vessels. At the end of each fishing trip, boat captains will send hard drives to third-party reviewers, who will view the footage and determine how much fish was discarded.

The Nature Conservancy is overseeing the project and hailed it Tuesday as a “new era in fisheries monitoring” that would be less costly than the current federal mandate, which requires having human monitors aboard boats on a percentage of fishing trips – at a cost to the fishermen of more than $700 a day.

Last December, South Shore fishermen threw their support behind a lawsuit filed by the nonprofit Cause of Action on behalf of Northeast Fishery Sector 13, which represents fishermen from Massachusetts and New Hampshire down to North Carolina. The federal lawsuit challenges the legality of the federal mandate and came in the aftermath of news that government funding to cover the cost of monitors was running out.

Christopher McGuire, The Nature Conservancy’s marine program director, said his group has begun working with National Marine Fisheries Service personnel in hopes of winning approval for the video-monitoring program.

If video monitoring can deliver verifiable data at an affordable cost, McGuire expects federal approval to come within two years.

South Shore fisherman Ed Barrett questioned whether there would be any cost savings, saying the camera equipment would cost thousands of dollars.

“Then someone has to sit in a cubicle and watch the video,” said Barrett, who lives in Marshfield. “ In a multi-species complex like we have in New England, it’s impossible for the video to pick out which fish are being discarded.”

Read the full story at the Patriot Ledger

 

NOAA grants SMAST $1.6 million for monkfish study

June 9, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass — Researchers at the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology have won a federal grant valued at $1.6 million to conduct research into the growth and movement of monkfish, NOAA announced Tuesday.

The grant is part of a unique “research set-aside” program that pays for at-sea research not with direct dollars but with fishing opportunities whose proceeds pay for the researchers and for the boat they are using.

In the case of SMAST, where Dr. Steven Cadrin and research technician Crista Bank will be doing the study, 250 days at sea allocated in the grant each year for 2016 and 2017 should produce $1.361 million to pay for the boat and $270,000 for the research over two years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The research set-aside program began with scallops, according to Ryan Silva of NOAA. “There are no federal funds awarded, instead there are fisheries resources,” he told The Standard-Times

Cornell University also won an award that is slightly larger than that of SMAST.

Silva said that the research set-asides are the concept of the New England Fisheries Management Council, and are unique to the Northeast fishery. “Periodically we hear from other regions,” he said, but to date none have duplicated this program.

NOAA said in its announcement that “SMAST will tag juvenile monkfish to improve monkfish growth estimates, a critical parameter for the model used in the monkfish stock assessment.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Gloucester seafood executive indicted on tax fraud charges

June 9, 2016 — The U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston has indicted Richard J. Pandolfo, a senior executive at Gloucester-based National Fish & Seafood, on four counts of filing false federal tax returns between 2009 and 2012.

The Pandolfo indictment, unsealed Wednesday night, comes seven months after Jack Ventola, then president and part-owner of National Fish & Seafood, stepped down following his federal indictment on conspiracy to defraud the United States government by failing to pay taxes on about $2 million in income he received between 2006 and 2009.

The Ventola case has not yet gone to trial, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office in Boston.

According to the federal indictment, Pandolfo, 70, of North Andover, received about $95,000 in “supplemental income” from Ventola — some directly to Pandolfo and others to his wife — and did not accurately report or pay taxes on about $90,000 of it.

The indictment also alleges that other payments were made to a shell company established in the name of Pandolfo’s wife, who is not named in the indictment, and were directed to it through a shell company controlled by Ventola.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Chinese travel pros test Gloucester’s waters — and lobster

June 9, 2016 — The world, it seems, keeps coming to Gloucester. And eating pretty well when it’s here.

The last two years have seen the city’s international profile grow significantly through its participation in events such as the Seafood Expo North America in Boston and subsequent city-organized visits to America’s oldest seaport by seafood buyers from around the world.

In April, the city hosted a large delegation of Chinese seafood buyers and executives to lay the groundwork for potentially generating more seafood trade — particularly lobsters — between Gloucester and the most populous country on the planet.

Each of the events has usually involved a luncheon showcasing the bounty of seafood that local fishermen pull from the waters around Cape Ann and the Gulf of Maine.

On Wednesday, the city shifted gears a bit by welcoming a group of 10 travel and tour professionals from Sichuan Province in southwest China. The group is being hosted by the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism to explore bringing more Chinese tourists to Massachusetts — and, by extension, Gloucester.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASS. STATE REP. BILL STRAUS: Baker has the right to change board’s makeup

June 9, 2016 — To the editor:

On May 24, your paper published an article regarding the action of the Baker administration in replacing seven of the nine members of the state’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission.

All seven members whom Gov. Baker replaced were serving as hold overs whose statutory terms had long expired; five of them had begun on the panel as appointees of Republican governors going back to 1991.

I believe the new appointees reflect a diverse experience in fisheries and no one quoted in your article could credibly assert that the new members aren’t qualified for this panel.

Read the full letter at the Gloucester Times