March 15, 2017 — The following was released by NOAA:
NOAA Fisheries announces an extension of the 2016 Days-at-Sea leasing deadline for the northeast multispecies fishery. If you hold a groundfish permit for 2016, you may submit DAS leases through March 31.
The Groundfish DAS leasing function has been re-opened in Fish Online. Paper DAS lease applications must be received in our office no later than March 31.
Questions? Please contact Mark Grant at mark.grant@noaa.gov.
March 15, 2017 — Since January, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who oversees the nation’s fishery regulators, has offered hints that changes to U.S. fishery policy might be in store.
A formal fisheries policy has yet to emerge, and these are, of course, still early days for the Trump Administration. But some observers read in Ross’s recent statements a potential desire to increase fishing.
During the campaign, Trump railed repeatedly against the United States’ trade deficit. And Ross, during his Senate confirmation in January, expressed a wish to reverse the nation’s seafood trade deficit – a tall task given that the U.S. imports 90 percent of the seafood eaten here and has a USD 11 billion (EUR 10.3 billion) seafood trade deficit.
“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our freshwater, I would like to try to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net exporter,” he said at his confirmation hearing in January, according to Politico.
Then, during his first address to the department’s 47,000 employees, on 1 March, he listed a key challenge for the department of “obtaining maximum sustainable yield.” It was his only reference to the nation’s fisheries during the short speech.
“The Secretary’s remarks reflect the importance our nation’s marine and coastal fisheries resources, and his commitment to ensuring these resources are sustainable for generations to come,” John Ewald, a spokesman for NOAA Fisheries, told SeafoodSource in an email.
How Ross views fisheries matters, since his department oversees both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service. Ross will make appointments to the nation’s regional fishery management councils, and the policies he advances will have profound effects on recreational and commercial fishermen.
Those policies could mark a sharp departure from the conservation-driven policies of the last eight years. The Recreational Fishing Alliance, an early supporter of Trump’s campaign for president, sees the potential for a new day under Trump, and hopes Ross will reverse the Obama administration’s policies.
March 15, 2017 — Weather permitting, Mayor Jon Mitchell on Wednesday will be in Washington giving testimony to Congress about an underwater marine monument which former President Obama created with a stroke of the pen in 2016 over the protests of the fishing community.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument spans nearly 5,000 square miles 150 miles off Cape Cod, and it was hailed by environmentalists for preserving enormous underwater mountains and vast, deep canyons only now being explored.
Three years earlier, an underwater remotely-operated vehicle sent back pictures of incredible life forms and geological features.
“These images, shared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, demonstrated to the world that this bit of the Atlantic was an ecological hot spot, a veritable underwater Serengeti,” said the Natural Resources Defense Council.
The NRDC was among the leaders of many organizations that jumped at the opportunity to preserve the monument against human activity, fishing in particular.
March 14, 2017 — Well, Tuesday’s forecast does not include fishing, unless all weather models are off.
On top of the predicted snow, NOAA’s coastal marine forecast is calling for 30 to 40 knot winds, with gusts up to 55 knots, out of the north. The seas are expected to increase in height and reach peaks of 12 to 17 feet.
It’s not the kind of conditions for a mariner to be out on the water.
Hopefully, this time next week the Shore will be out of the grips of winter weather. The first actual day of spring is Monday.
March 10, 2017 — Judith McDowell and Bob Rheault were both drawn to Washington this week for the same reason: They wanted to salvage a threatened federal program that plays a key role in Cape Cod’s marine-dependent industries.
McDowell, the director of the Woods Hole Sea Grant program, and Rheault, the executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, were hoping to save the national Sea Grant program from elimination. The Washington Post reported last week that the program’s $73 million budget is part of a proposed 18 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
McDowell said she couldn’t comment on a budget cut she said hadn’t been officially released but was leaked to news organizations. But Rheault, who was making the rounds of congressional offices this week, was highly critical of the proposal to scrap Sea Grant, calling it a “job killer.”
His time in D.C. revealed there might be a chance the program, which President Lyndon Johnson created in 1966, could be saved, Rheault said.
“Most of the people in government who looked at Sea Grant realize it was a tremendous investment for the money,” Rheault said. “The impact (Sea Grant) has on local jobs, food production … it’s hard to say anything bad about it.”
March 10, 2017 — Though funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration amounts to less than one-half of 1 percent of discretionary federal spending, it pays outsize dividends for Maine. The people at the center of our state’s $700 million commercial fishing industry depend on NOAA’s weather forecasts, research and fisheries management services. A proposal to slash the agency’s budget is a short-sighted move that would save pennies now only to forfeit dollars later.
The White House plan, first reported last week in The Washington Post, would roll back NOAA’s budget by 17 percent. Among the targeted programs are the National Marine Fisheries Service and National Weather Service, which each would see 5 percent cuts; the satellite division, which would face a 22 percent reduction in funding, and the Sea Grant program, which would be abolished.
None of this is good news for Maine’s marine sector. National Weather Service wind and wave height forecasts are essential to fishermen. So is the research conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service, which guides decisions about where, how and when to fish and enables fishermen to build business plans around their catch. What’s more, the steep reductions in the satellite division’s budget would deprive the weather and fisheries management offices of data that are crucial to their mission, compounding the harm done by the relatively small direct cuts to the programs themselves.
March 8, 2017 — The United States Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday in federal court that David Saunders Jr. and Michael Potter pleaded guilty to federal charges regarding the illegal harvest and sale of Atlantic striped bass from federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.
According to the indictments and information in the public records, in February 2010, a special agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received information that commercial trawlers were illegally fishing for Atlantic striped bass in federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.
Upon receiving the information, NOAA engaged the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard and a patrol vessel in the area intercepted one of 17 commercial trawlers.
Based on its review, NOAA determined that in seven separate fishing trips between Jan. 27, 2009, and Feb. 9, 2010, Saunders, then Captain of the Bridgot Denise, a commercial trawler, harvested approximately 14,579 pounds of Atlantic striped bass from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). He sold the fish to a fish dealer in Wanchese, NC. The estimated fair market retail value of the 14,579 pounds of illegally harvested fish exceeds $116,000.
March 7, 2017 — The agency whose satellite photographs alert Coast residents of approaching hurricanes could see deep budget cuts, putting jobs and programs in South Mississippi in jeopardy.
The Washington Post reports it obtained a four-page budget memo which shows the Trump administration is seeking to cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget by 17 percent.
Even deeper cuts are proposed for fiscal year 2018, which starts Oct. 1, for NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research. It would lose $126 million, or 26 percent of its funds under the current budget. NOAA’s satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, the report says.
These programs have staff working at Stennis Space Center in Hancock County, along with the National Marine Fisheries Service and the National Weather Service, which both face 5 percent cuts.
The National Data Buoy Center, headquartered at Stennis under the National Weather Service, maintains a network of buoys that serve all U.S. coastal states and territories. They are used by the weather service supercomputers to produce computer-generated model forecasts of the atmosphere and climate used by recreational boaters, commercial interests and the U.S. military. The NDBC also is responsible for tsunami stations around the world.
NOAA has been at Stennis since the early 1970s and employs more than 250 federal employees and contractors, according to the NOAA website.
These early numbers frequently change during budget negotiations between the federal agency and the White House, and later between Congress and the administration, the article says. The budget figures cited by the Washington Post are part of the Office of Management and Budget’s “passback” document, and are a key part of the annual budget process during which the administration instructs agencies to draw up detailed budgets for submission to Congress.
NOAA representatives at Stennis declined comment on the budget report.
Many of these cuts are for agencies that study climate change. The budget proposal would eliminate the $73 million Sea Grant program that supports coastal research through 33 university programs, among them the University of Southern Mississippi, Mississippi State, Jackson State and University of Mississippi.
March 6, 2017 — The U.S. Senate took time out from its annual handball tournament last week and confirmed Wilbur Ross as the new commerce secretary, adding yet another billionaire to the Trump cabinet that has more of them than Danny Ainge has draft picks.
Ross is estimated to be worth about $2.9 billion, which means Commerce’s NOAA Fisheries might want to bypass Congress and put the arm on the new boss the next time its runs out of cash for at-sea monitoring.
Still, fishing stakeholders had to take some measure of comfort from his intention to make America first in the world in seafood by the reversing the trend of massive annual seafood imports.
“Given the enormity of our coastlines, given the enormity of our fresh water, I would like to figure out how we can become much more self-sufficient in fishing and perhaps even a net importer,” Ross told the senators during his confirmation hearing in January.
Bully for him. But how will he do it? Will his crusade translate into fewer regulations? Higher fishing quotas? Declaring war on seafood competitors?
The Politico website had its own suggestion:
“One action Ross could take to curb the amount of seafood the U.S. imports each year is to follow through on the Seafood Monitoring Program which the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration established during the waning days of the Obama administration,” it wrote in an analysis of the Ross confirmation. “That regulation, supported by environmental groups like Oceana, is aimed at reducing billions of dollars in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing each year by creating a traceability program to track imported seafood from point of harvest to point of entry in the U.S.”
March 6, 2017 — The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would also eliminate funding for a variety of smaller programs, including external research, coastal management, estuary reserves and “coastal resilience,” which seeks to bolster the ability of coastal areas to withstand major storms and rising seas.
NOAA is part of the Commerce Department, which would be hit by an overall 18 percent budget reduction from its current funding level.
The Office of Management and Budget also asked the Commerce Department to provide information about how much it would cost to lay off employees, while saying those employees who do remain with the department should get a 1.9 percent pay increase in January 2018. It requested estimates for terminating leases and government “property disposal.”
The OMB outline for the Commerce Department for fiscal 2018 proposed sharp reductions in specific areas within NOAA such as spending on education, grants and research. NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research would lose $126 million, or 26 percent, of the funds it has under the current budget. Its satellite data division would lose $513 million, or 22 percent, of its current funding under the proposal.