Saving Seafood

Government shutdown costing New Bedford fishing company more than $17,000 a week

January 16, 2019 — The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is beginning to affect the most valuable fishing port in the country.

The partial shutdown reached day 25 on Tuesday, which means many offices within NOAA have been closed for more than three weeks.

“Our shell stock has dwindled because I have one boat in limbo and only one boat that’s fishing,” CEO and President of Nantucket Sound Seafood LLC Allen Rencurrel said. “So we’re definitely feeling the effect of the government shutdown.”

Without an open government, Rencurrel can’t get federal approval for leasing licenses or “tags.” It’s led Nantucket Sound Seafood to only have one vessel to harvest clams in federal waters and one in state waters.

The regulations in state waters are far more restrictive including less quota.

Without receiving approval for leasing, Rencurrel estimated losses exceeding $17,000 a week.

“And that’s the smallest boat in the fleet,” he said.

It’s just one example of the fallout the New Bedford fishing industry is feeling in dealing with the shutdown in Washington. While monitors and observers continue to police quotas, other aspects of the shutdown have crippled production on the waterfront.

“I think the industry would pay them to go in to work for a week. Just to get all the transfers done,” Rencurrel said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

DON CUDDY: New England surf clam fishery is headed for disaster

January 7, 2019 — When it comes to fishery management controversy never seems to be too far away. Last month you may have read about the dubious nature of a decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to close a large area of Nantucket Shoals to fishermen who harvest surf clams there, ostensibly to protect fish habitat. Questionable actions such as these undermine industry confidence in fishery regulators and serve only to alienate, and embitter, fishermen and the many others on the waterfront whose livelihoods are threatened by such draconian measures. With respect to protecting fish habitat allow me to quote from NOAA Fisheries’ own web site (fishwatch.gov) which bills itself as ‘U.S. Seafood Facts.’ The salient quote, with respect to the Atlantic surfclam, spissula solidissima, is this: “Fishing gear used to harvest surfclams has minimal impacts on habitat.” In spite of this fact these traditional grounds have now been designated as essential fish habitat and clamming is banned there indefinitely. NOAA also tells us that surfclams support a valuable fishery. Well, come April 9 it will not be nearly as valuable for those who participate in the harvest and that includes fishermen and shore workers in New Bedford, Gloucester and Bristol, Rhode Island where Galilean Seafood employs around 120 people in this fishery.

“There were five areas out there where we harvested our clams and the two areas with the most historical tows are the ones they closed,” Alan Rencurrel told me. Alan knows surf calms. He owns Nantucket Sound Seafood in New Bedford where the clams he catches are hand shucked. “If you steam ’em open they get chewy,” he said. He’s been fishing on the Shoals since 1992. “And there were boats out there before me.”

He also played me some high-resolution video, taken from a dredge-mounted camera, showing the sea bed in the area known as the Rose and Crown, the largest of the areas to be closed. There were no fish, rocks or cobble to be seen, just a solitary skate, on a sandy bottom littered with old mussel shells. “We can’t tow over rocky bottom like a scallop dredge,” he told me. It’s too hard on the gear and anyway clams prefer sand bottom, he said. Conversely, groundfish such as cod and haddock are found on hard bottom.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Vital surf clam harvesting grounds closed by New England Fishery Management Council

December 5, 2018 — Clamming captains, business-owners and attorneys huddled in the lobby of the Viking Hotel on Tuesday sharing disbelief and despair over a decision by the New England Fisheries Management Council that will close vital harvesting grounds.

“A lot of these guys are going to go out of business,” owner and president of Nantucket Sound Seafood LLC Al Rencurrel said. “Obviously the economic impact, they didn’t view that, did they?”

Heading into the meeting, the surf clam industry hoped for the approval of “Alternative 2,” which would continue an exemption in its fishing areas but would modify boundaries including seasonal areas. It also called for increased monitoring with 5-minute vessel monitoring system to locate where the vessels are fishing. The clam industry would also fund a research project that NOAA would undertake to examine the habitat.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times