Saving Seafood

Protect the North Atlantic right whales: are you ready for the deadline?

April 22, 2022 — Northeast lobster and Jonah crab fishermen have until May 1, 2022, to make the necessary gear modifications to help protect North Atlantic right whales. Are you ready?

Announced last fall, the final rule to implement new measures to protect North Atlantic right whales is fast approaching. As compliance assistance is in place to support fishermen changing gear to protect right whales, the National Marine Fisheries Service Greater Atlantic regional administrator Michael Pentony says “these regulations are critical to protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale and keeping this valuable and important fishery open for business.”

In a “leadership message” April 20, Michael Pentony said “most participants in the Northeast lobster and Jonah crab fishery are nearly finished with the needed gear modifications and ready for the deadline. However, unanticipated supply chain delays are preventing some of the fleet from fully coming into compliance.”

“I want to assure fishermen who are making good faith efforts to comply with these new measures but are not able to procure compliant gear that we understand the difficulty of their situation,” Pentony added. “We are working closely with our state and federal enforcement partners to implement a graduated enforcement effort that will focus on compliance assistance rather than civil penalties until we have determined that localized supply chain issues have been sufficiently resolved.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA acknowledges shortage of gear to protect whales

April 22, 2022 — The federal government is acknowledging that supply chain issues will prevent all lobstermen from having gear needed to protect North Atlantic right whales before a May 1 deadline.

The rules will still go into effect on that date, but the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it will use a “graduated enforcement effort” until supply problems are resolved.

“I want to assure fishermen who are making good faith efforts to comply with these new measures but are not able to procure compliant gear that we understand the difficulty of their situation,” wrote Michael Pentony, NOAA Fisheries’ Gloucester-based Greater Atlantic regional administrator, in a letter.

“We are working closely with our state and federal enforcement partners to implement a graduated enforcement effort that will focus on compliance assistance rather than civil penalties until we have determined that localized supply chain issues have been sufficiently resolved,” he continued.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Feds to monitor 100% of New England commercial fishing to protect at-risk species

April 13, 2022 — The federal government has approved a proposal to increase at-sea monitoring of some commercial fishing trips to 100 percent.

At-sea monitors are workers who collect data on board commercial fishing boats to help inform regulations and management of species. The government approved the new, higher percentage of trip cover on Tuesday, said Michael Pentony, a regional administrator with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

The rules apply to valuable species that are harvested in the Northeast such as cod, haddock, and flounder. Pentony said the new rules will replace the old process of calculating a target for the level of monitoring coverage every year.

The coverage target will instead be 100 percent for four years as long as federal funding can support agency and industry costs, he wrote in a letter to fishery managers.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Regulators say new whale-protection rules for Maine’s lobster fleet are on the horizon

March 24, 2022 — Federal regulators said they will soon start a process to create new whale-protection rules for Maine’s lobster fleet that will go beyond the controversial regulations going into effect on May 1. The rules are being imposed to reduce the risk that endangered North Atlantic right whales will be killed by entanglements with fishing gear or ship strikes.

Michael Pentony, the regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, spoke to an online meeting of the Maine Fishermen’s Forum today.

He said that the initial rules were designed to reduce the risk to whales by 60%, but recent evidence shows that the agency must act more quickly than planned to reduce that risk even more.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Mid-water trawlers see win in challenge to Northeast herring exclusion zone

March 15, 2022 — A federal court ruling could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, after a 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.

U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled Marcg 4 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, a trade group representing companies that fish for herring and mackerel. In November 2019 NMFS approved a measure from the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.

It was a culmination of two decades of debate over the impact of mid-water trawling, and complaints from other fishermen that it caused “localized depletion” of forage fish, disrupting ecosystems and their seasonal access to groundfish, tuna and other species.

“The council recommended the midwater trawl restricted area to mitigate potential negative socioeconomic impacts on other user groups resulting from short duration, high-volume herring removals by midwater trawl vessels,” NMFS Northeast regional administrator Michael Pentony wrote in 2019 in a decision letter approving the New England council’s proposal.

But in his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept has not been adequately defined by the agency. That led him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

After years of delay, federal regulators issue sweeping fishing rules to protect right whales

September 1, 2021 — Two and half years after calling for urgent action to protect North Atlantic right whales, federal regulators on Tuesday issued sweeping rules that seek to reduce their entanglement in fishing gear, among the leading cause of death and serious injuries to the critically endangered species.

The controversial rules, which advocates for the whales say don’t go far enough and come too late, aim to reduce the risk of death and serious injuries from entanglements by 69 percent, they said. The population of right whales has declined by a quarter over the past decade, with fewer than 400 left.

But they come with a significant cost for many fishermen, many of whom consider the rules unfairly onerous. Regulators estimate they will cost the fishing industry as much as $20 million in the first year and up to $91 million after six years, accounting for implementation and a diminished catch.

“The new measures in this rule will allow the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries to continue to thrive, while significantly reducing the risk to critically endangered right whales,” said Michael Pentony, regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in New England.

The rules will require reductions in the number of vertical lines that lobstermen and Jonah crab fishermen use to connect their traps on the seafloor to buoys at the surface. Those reductions will come as a result of new fishing closures and requirements that fishermen connect more of their traps to each other on the bottom with trawl lines.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Federal plan to save right whales has Gov. Mills concerned about Maine’s lobster industry

March 4, 2021 — Gov. Janet Mills has “grave concerns” about a federal plan to save the North Atlantic right whale from extinction, citing its impact on Maine’s lucrative lobster industry.

In a letter to Michael Pentony, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s regional fisheries manager, Mills said she proposed rules aimed at reducing whale entanglement in fishing gear would “necessitate the complete reinvention of the Maine lobster fishery as we know it.”

“The state of Maine is adamant that our federal government must take aggressive action to remedy the inequities of this framework in the years ahead,” Mills wrote.

NOAA is drafting new rules to reduce the possibility of entanglement of right whales in “vertical” line fishing gear such as lobster traps. The rules are set to be finalized on May 31.

Mills’ comments were accompanied by a detailed analysis of NOAA’s plan, pointing out flaws in the research and the federal agency’s assumptions about the impact of vertical gear.

Read the full story at The Center Square

Maine’s governor outlines “grave” concerns regarding right whale lobster measures

February 23, 2021 — U.S. State of Maine Governor Janet Mills has written a letter to NOAA Fisheries outlining “grave concern” over the latest Biological Opinion that has been drafted for 10 fishery management plans in the Greater Atlantic Region – including the state’s lucrative lobster industry.

Mills, in a letter to NOAA Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator Michael Pentony, said the framework could have drastic consequences for the state’s lobster industry, which was a USD 485 million (EUR 399 million) industry in 2019 and is by far Maine’s most valuable fishery. The framework is being established in order to increase protection for the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Mid-Atlantic council calls for extending observer waiver through 2020

August 17, 2020 — On the eve of NMFS resuming at-sea observer coverage, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council asked the agency to again extend its covid-19 waiver on deploying observers in the Greater Atlantic region.

“Given the continued transmission of the covid-19 virus, we do not believe the observer program can be safely operated at this time,” wrote council chairman Michael Luisi in an Aug. 13 letter to NMFS regional director Michael Pentony and Jon Hare, science and research director at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, when we last communicated on this issue (June 23, 2020), the 7-day new case average was under 30,000 new cases per day. On August 11, 2020, the national 7-day average of new cases was over 52,000 new cases per day,” the letter states.

“Given the ongoing community transmission of the virus and the particularly high risk of transmission in the close quarters onboard a vessel, we believe that deploying observers on fishing vessels at this time poses an unwarranted risk to fishermen, observers, and associated communities.”

Council members talked about that concern during their online August meeting this week and approved a recommendation to extend the observer and monitor waiver on permitted commercial fishing vessels through Dec. 31.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA Fisheries Announces Fishing Opportunity in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization

July 27, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is soliciting interest in multi-year fishing opportunities in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) Regulatory Area.  Primarily as a result of a five-year transfer arrangement with Fisheries and Oceans Canada for 1,000 mt of yellowtail flounder, we intend to issue permits for up to five years.  A multi-year permit would increase market stability and ease the permitting process, allowing authorized vessels to plan and fish for the duration of the new yellowtail arrangement.

Interested vessels should review the requested information in the Federal Register announcement and submit letters of interest to Michael Pentony, US Head of Delegation, as described in the announcement by August 11, 2020.

Read the full release here