Saving Seafood

Baker and Mass. congressional delegation urge federal officials to pay for ground fishing observers

August 19, 2015 — In an effort to reduce the financial burdens on the region’s struggling fishermen, Governor Charlie Baker and the state’s congressional delegation urged federal officials this week to pay for a controversial program that requires observers to monitor fishermen who catch cod, flounder, and other bottom-dwelling fish.

In a letter sent to the secretary of the US Department of Commerce, which oversees the nation’s fishing industry, Baker and the delegation expressed “serious concern” about a decision this year by the National Marine Fisheries Service to require the region’s fishermen to pay for the observer program.

Fishermen insist they can’t afford to pay for the observers, especially after major cuts to their quotas. The Fisheries Service estimates that it costs $710 a day every time an observer accompanies a fisherman to sea, and the agency’s research has suggested that requiring fishermen to cover those costs would cause about 60 percent of their boats to operate at a loss.

“To shift the cost of this ineffective program onto the fishery just as the industry begins to rebuild is not only imprudent, but irresponsible,” Baker and the delegation wrote. “This equates to an unfunded mandate that could lead to the end of the Northeast Groundfish Fishery as we know it.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

 

NOAA announces plan for endangered Hawaiian monk seal

August 11, 2015 — Federal fisheries authorities want to more than double the small population of endangered Hawaiian monk seals in the state’s main islands.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service on Tuesday released a draft management plan for the endangered species, of which approximately 200 live in the main Hawaiian Islands.

There are approximately 1,100 Hawaiian monk seals total, with most of them living in the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The species was listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act in 1976.

NOAA’s Hawaiian Monk Seal Recovery Coordinator Rachel Sprague said that while the population of monk seals in the main Hawaiian Islands has been increasing, the overall population continues to decline.

“The main Hawaiian Islands have a fairly small portion of the overall monk seal population,” Sprague said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “If climate change or sea level rise or infectious disease did get into the population, they could be really catastrophic for such a small population. Rather than thinking about trying to really do a lot of active interventions, we’re more trying to set up a situation for the future to support the monk seal population growing to a level where they could be considered recovered.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Feds Let New England Fish Go to Waste, Oceana Claims

August 3, 2015 — WASHINGTON — New federal bycatch rules are not enough to keep Northeast Fisheries from circling the drain, environmental protection group Oceana claims in Federal Court.

Oceana filed a lawsuit against the government last week for its “continued failure to create a method for monitoring the amount of wasted catch in New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries, a region spanning from North Carolina to the Canadian border,” according to an Oceana statement.

The group sued United States Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“Bycatch” is the term for the collection of ocean species other than the ones for which commercial fishery crews are fishing. Often, these fish and animals are discarded, either dead or dying, into the ocean, or when the boat reaches shore.

In its statement announcing the lawsuit, Oceana writes, “New England, in particular, has been plagued for decades by lax monitoring and overfishing. The failure to monitor catch and enforce catch limits is in part responsible for the collapse of the New England groundfish fishery, including historically important Atlantic cod populations in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, which are currently at 3 and 7 percent of their former population levels.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service 

Gulf fishermen react to bill that would transfer Red-snapper control to states

July 20, 2015 — Rep. Garret Graves (R-Baton Rouge) on Thursday introduced legislation that would transfer control of Gulf of Mexico red-snapper stocks from the National Marine Fisheries Service to a consortium established by the five Gulf states.

Graves said similar protocols have been successfully implemented along the East Coast and in Alaska, adding that “state-based management will result in more frequent stock assessments and improved regional collaboration in the collection and use of timely fishery data.”

Fisheries directors from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have grown displeased with federal red-snapper management, and began a concerted effort earlier this year to wrest control of the fishery from NMFS.

Gulf of Mexico recreational anglers have seen their access to booming red snapper stocks dwindle in recent years. In 2015, the private-boat recreational season stretched only 10 days, even though the overall harvest quota was the largest in history.

Read the full story at The Times Picayune

 

Group Petitions to Save a Prehistoric Fish From Modern Construction

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. — July 21, 2015 — The Atlantic sturgeon is among the oldest of fish species, dating from the time of the dinosaurs. It is the longest-living fish in the Hudson (up to 60 years), the largest (up to 14 feet) and the strangest-looking, with bony plates that make it look armored.

But looks can be deceiving, and the sturgeon is also endangered. Now, environmentalists say construction of the $3.9 billion replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge here is killing scores of the fish. Most of them — both Atlantic sturgeons and the smaller shortnose sturgeons, also endangered but more plentiful — have been found dead along the shore, with injuries like long gashes and severed heads, suggesting impacts from boat propellers.

“They call them living fossils,” said Paul Gallay, president of Riverkeeper, the environmental group devoted to the Hudson, “and we can’t be the generation that does them in.”

This month, the group, which is represented by the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, petitioned the National Marine Fisheries Service, a federal agency responsible for offshore living marine animals and habitats, asking it to study the problem and take immediate action.

Read the full story from The New York Times