May 9, 2016 — The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues on Friday, May 20th at 7:00 PM with Fishing for Knowledge: Cooperative Research for Sustainable Fisheries in New England. Dock-u-entaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, and the Working Waterfront Festival. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month beginning at 7:00 PM in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, located at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge.
SALEM NEWS: A small victory for at-sea monitoring
May 9, 2016 — New England fishermen got some good news last week when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans to scale back the amount of on-board monitoring required of the commercial fleet. However, there is still work to be done.
Late last week, NOAA said it will cut monitoring to 14 percent of all vessel trips for the season that began May 1. That’s down from about 24 percent of trips in 2015.
“Fishermen appreciate the changes and the evolution of the at-sea monitoring program,” Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, told reporter Sean Horgan. “We think what they’ve done is prudent and responsible.”
Maine lobster suppliers strategize to foil EU ban
May 9, 2016 — Maine lobster suppliers met behind closed doors with dealers from some of Europe’s biggest lobster importing countries in Brussels last week to discuss a pending ban on importing live North American lobsters into Europe.
The six Maine companies joined their Massachusetts and Canadian peers, as well as national trade officials, to discuss the proposed ban with buyers and trade officials from eight European countries, including the three biggest importers of Homarus americanus: France, Italy and Spain. The meeting occurred at the world’s largest seafood industry trade show, said spokesman Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute, an American seafood industry trade group.
About 75 people met for 90 minutes to talk about how to avoid the all-out ban that Sweden asked the European Union to adopt in March after finding North American lobsters in European waters.
“Brussels was productive,” Gibbons said. “Unnecessarily excluding live North American lobsters from that market would have real impacts on both sides of the Atlantic, sales and jobs. So, no one is taking this lightly.”
In March, Sweden petitioned the European Union to declare the North American lobster an invasive species, which would ban live imports to the EU’s 28 member states. It based its petition on an 85-page risk assessment that claims the discovery of a small number of North American lobsters in the waters off Great Britain, Norway and Sweden over the last 30 years, including one female lobster carrying hybrid eggs, proved cross-breeding had taken place. The Swedish scientists say a ban would protect the European lobster from cross-breeding and diseases carried by the North American lobster.
MASSACHUSETTS: Hometown team running new fish plant
May 9, 2016 — Gloucester Seafood Processing Inc. is based in Gloucester. It is a stand-alone subsidiary of Mazzetta Co., which is not.
Problem?
Well, this is Gloucester, where life tends to be a tad provincial, as you might expect from a city that coined the phrase “up the line” to deal with the remainder of the North American continent.
It’s not surprising then that the arrival of Gloucester Seafood Processing about a year ago at the former Good Harbor Filet plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park was greeted with a measure of uncertainty and — in some quarters — downright suspicion and veiled whispers of carpet-bagging.
“The whole thing, while the place was being set up, was that we wanted it run by local people,” said Dave Fitzgerald, the New Zealander brought in by Highland Park, Illinois-based Mazzetta for the plant’s startup. “You see some of those comments about, ‘Here’s that company from Chicago’s going to take everything out of here.’ It’s not that. It’s a locally run company.”
Fitzgerald, as he uttered those words, sat at the head of a table in a conference room inside Gloucester Seafood Processing’s administrative offices, surrounded by front office colleagues, all of whom are sons and daughters of Gloucester.
Regulation Change May Keep Cape Scallop Fishermen in Local Waters
May 9, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Local small boat scallop fishermen will be able to fish an area of local waters that has been closed since 2014.
The New England Fishery Management Council has changed regulations to allow for scallop fishing in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area which is about 65 miles southeast of Cape Cod.
Council scientists have assured there will not be any conservation concerns from allowing limited amounts of fishing.
“They decided it doesn’t warrant an entire opening for the whole fleet,” said Bob Keese, a scallop fisherman out of Chatham on the F/V Beggar’s Banquet. “But there are plenty of scallops out there right now to warrant an opening for a small-boat fleet.”
The reopening of the Lightship area will also allow for the depleted near shore waters a chance to replenish, Keese said.
Scallopers to White House: Marine monument a bad idea
May 6, 2016 — A fishing trade group that represents scallopers from Maine to Virginia has joined Northeast groundfishermen in opposing the designation of any marine national monuments in New England waters.
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) penned a May 4 letter to Obama administration officials stating its opposition to the establishment of the monuments while also criticizing the unilateral process — presidential decree through the Antiquities Act — being considered for designating them.
“A monument designation, with its unilateral implementation and opaque process, is the exact opposite of the fisheries management process in which we participate,” FSF legal counsels David Frulla and Andrew Minkiewicz wrote to Christy Goldfuss and Whitley Saumwebber, executives in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Public areas and public resources should be managed in an open and transparent manner, not an imperial stroke of the pen.”
The FSF letter comes almost two months after Goldfuss, the managing director of the White House environmental council, told fishing stakeholders at a March 24 meeting in Boston the White House has shelved the proposal pushed by environmental and conservation groups to establish a marine national monument about 80 miles east of Cape Ann in the area around Cashes Ledge.
Eric Hansen: Atlantic marine monument would harm fisheries
May 6, 2016 — With President Obama leaving office in less than a year, environmental groups have urged him to once again use executive authority via the Antiquities Act to declare a new marine national monument, this time in the Atlantic Ocean. Such a proposal, which circumvents all established rules and procedures, is fundamentally undemocratic, and would put a stranglehold on the commercial fishing industry.
A presidential declaration of a new national marine monument would result in potentially thousands of acres of prime fishing ground being closed off to fishermen. This would lead directly to increased costs for seafood processors, restaurants, and yes, seafood consumers. All of this will be done through a process that solicited little public input or stakeholder engagement and disregards the current, successful management process.
Such a declaration would also go against rules set out by President Obama himself. Specifically, Executive Order 13563 details the manner in which new regulations should be created and implemented. In that document, the guidelines were very clear: Regulations should not hinder the economy, should be implemented following public engagement and participation, should be based on best available science, and should be flexible.
Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times
Northeast Fisheries Science Center director retiring
May 5, 2016 — The head of NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole has announced his retirement in September from federal service after just under four years as head of the center.
Bill Karp came to Cape Cod after serving many years in the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, and has 30 years of fisheries research experience.
The science centers conduct most of the fisheries research regulators then use to set policies and quotas, and is often in the middle of sharp disagreements between researchers and the commercial fishing industry.
Fishing panel urges Obama to forgo Atlantic sea monument
May 5, 2016 — A key interstate fishing commission is calling on the White House to shoot down or dramatically limit a proposal for a national monument in the Atlantic Ocean.
Environmentalists want President Barack Obama to protect the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts, a chain of undersea formations about 150 miles off Massachusetts.
A policy board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says Wednesday that it’s taking a position against the proposal. The commission manages fisheries in East Coast states.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald
ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Approves Draft Addendum I for Public Comment
May 5, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Comission:
Alexandria, VA – The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved Draft Addendum I to Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Atlantic Menhaden for public comment. The Draft Addendum proposes modifying the FMP’s bycatch allowance provision. Specifically, it considers allowing two licensed individuals to harvest up to 12,000 pounds of menhaden bycatch when working from the same vessel fishing stationary, multi-species gear – limited to one vessel trip per day. Bycatch represents less than 2% of the total coastwide landings.
The practice of two permitted fishermen working together from the same vessel to harvest Atlantic menhaden primarily occurs in the Chesapeake Bay pound net fishery. This practice enables the fishermen to pool resources for fuel and crew. However, the practice is currently constrained by the FMP’s bycatch allowance provision, which includes a 6,000 pound/vessel/day limit. The Draft Addendum seeks comment on whether the provision should be revised to accommodate the interests of fixed-gear fishermen who work together, as authorized by the states and jurisdictions in which they fish.
The intent of Draft Addendum I is to add flexibility to one element of the bycatch allowance provision while the Board prepares to address menhaden management more comprehensively through the development of Draft Amendment 3 to the FMP over the next two years. A subsequent press release on the public hearing schedule and Draft Addendum I availability will be distributed once state hearings have been scheduled.
In a separate action, the Board extended the episodic event set aside program until the finalization of Amendment 3. It also conditionally approved a request from New York to be added as an eligible state. The program reserves 1% of the coastwide total allowable catch to be used by New England states in areas and times when menhaden occur in higher abundance than normal. Rhode Island opted into the program in 2014 and 2015, and harvested a portion of the set aside each year. As a result of the Board’s decision to extend the program, the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut remain eligible to participate in the program in 2016.
New York is currently reporting unusually large amounts of menhaden in the Peconic Bay estuary, raising the potential for more large fish kills, similar to last year, as the waters warm. New York sought Board approval to participate in the episodic event set aside program so fishermen can harvest a portion of the large build-up of menhaden in the Peconic Bay estuary to mitigate the impacts of additional fish kills. The Board approved the request subject to a one million pound harvest cap under the episodic event set aside.
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