Saving Seafood

Council delays decisions on alternative fishing gear

October 7, 2025 — The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) has pressed pause on a controversial proposal that could reshape how fishermen operate in seasonally restricted federal waters.

Nora Saks with Maine Public reported that the council voted unanimously on September 25 to delay action on a regulatory framework that would permit the use of alternative gear designed to protect whales. These new on-demand or ropeless systems replace traditional vertical buoy lines with digital markers, showing gear locations electronically rather than at the surface.

Although the technology has shown promise, questions about its effectiveness, costs, and regulatory implications remain unanswered. Geoff Smith of the Nature Conservancy in Maine emphasized that while trials indicate ropeless gear can work for fixed gear fishermen, the council needs to ensure it is viable for both mobile and fixed gear operations, regardless of whether individual fishermen choose to adopt it.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Report highlights how Bristol Bay locals are losing access to commercial fisheries

October 14, 2021 — Alaska’s limited-entry commercial fisheries system may be pulling access to fisheries away from the coastal communities where they take place.

A series of research projects in the past decade has increasingly shown that limited-entry systems like Alaska’s commercial fishing permitting system or the federal-state individual fishing quota system are systematically pulling permits away from the coastal communities that traditionally depend on those industries. The most recent installment in that line of projects focuses specifically on Bristol Bay — today, the state’s most successful salmon fishery.

The report, commissioned for The Nature Conservancy, found that in the 46 years since Alaska’s limited-entry system went into place, residents in Bristol Bay’s rural communities now own 50% fewer permits. The decline is similar among younger permit holders, contributing to the overall trend: commercial fishing permit holders in the state are increasingly older and from regions other than where they fish.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Regional Council Approves Mandatory Monitoring For New England Fishing Boats

October 1, 2020 — A regional fishery council has approved a plan to require human or electronic monitors on all New England fishing boats targeting groundfish such as cod and haddock. The controversial measure seeks funding from Congress to help pay for the monitors.

Conservationists and some fishermen are applauding the New England Fishery Management Council’s decision. They say it would improve depleted fisheries by providing better data on their actual status, while providing fishermen an incentive to more precisely target species that are within set quotas.

“As they get close to their quotas they can adjust their gear and they can fish in different areas, in order to avoid those stocks that they don’t have quota for,” says Geoffrey Smith, marine program director for the Nature Conservancy in Maine.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Adjudicator shoots down objections to MSC certification of Atlantic menhaden

August 1, 2019 — An independent adjudicator has dismissed nearly all of the objections raised against granting the Atlantic menhaden fishery certification by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).

Omega Protein, the Houston, Texas-based division of Canada’s Cooke filed for the MSC label for both Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico menhaden fisheries in June 2017 and received a positive recommendation from SAI Global for the Atlantic fishery in March 2019.

But the request also received two objections, one from the Nature Conservancy and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the other by the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (TCRP), the Coastal Conservation Association and the American Sportfishing Association.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Amid aquaculture boom, report guides investors toward sustainability

May 9, 2019 — Aquaculture, the commercial farming of finfish like salmon, shellfish and seaweed, has exploded over the past 30 years, becoming a nearly $250-billion industry globally. More than half of all seafood now comes from farms, and that percentage is projected to rise if the human population expands, as expected, to 9.7 billion people over the next 30 years. However, environmental problems currently bedevil the aquaculture industry and a consensus on the most sustainable practices has yet to emerge.

A new report released May 8, “Towards a Blue Revolution,” aims to guide the private sector, NGOs and policymakers toward better aquaculture strategies that can both meet the growing global seafood demand and operate “in harmony with ocean ecosystems.”

“Transforming how we produce seafood through strategic investment in innovative, more sustainable production methods may ultimately represent the difference between a healthy, abundant, and profitable food system, and one that degrades the environment, destroys value, and fails to meet the growing food security challenge,” the report states.

Published by the Virginia-based environmental non-profit the Nature Conservancy and the New York-based impact investment firm Encourage Capital, the report urges the seafood industry to shift away from “business as usual” aquaculture practices. It argues that equally lucrative and more sustainable forms of aquaculture exist that investors would do well to nurture.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Here’s how smartphones are being used to track lost fishing gear

September 5, 2018 — Cell phones are being used by fishermen to bounty hunt for lost fishing gear for pay.

California fishermen created the retrieval project last year along with the Nature Conservancy to get ropes, buoys, pots and anchors out of the water after the dungeness fishery so they wouldn’t entangle whales, and Washington and Oregon quickly followed suit.

“They are using their cell phones and its GPS to take a picture of what the gear looked like, tell when they found it, and any identifying markings on the buoy – the vessel, the ID number, and also the latitude and longitude of exactly where they found it,” said Nat Nichols, area manager for groundfish and shellfish at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game office in Kodiak. He added that gear loss rates in different fisheries can be “anywhere from 3 to 23 percent.”

Under a special permit, the West Coast bounty hunters head out two weeks after the dungeness crab fishery closes to search for derelict gear.

“Dungies tend to be in shallower water and that means there is more wave energy and the gear can get lost or rolled up on the beach. A lot of it has a tendency to move around because it’s in the tidal surge,” Nichols said.

The fishermen get paid $65 for every pot they pull up. The gear then goes back to the original owners who pay $100 per pot for its return.

Saving whales was the prime motivator for pot retrievals on the West Coast. In Alaska’s crab and pot cod fisheries, it’s ghost fishing and gear conflicts.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Virginia: Menhaden quota bill pulled in Va. House of Delegates

March 7, 2018 — A much-lobbied bill about an oily fish that nobody eats died in the House of Delegates — but with a promise by some proponents and stern opponents to work together to push for permission to catch more.

The bill, backed by the Northam Administration, was an effort to deal with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s sharp, 41.5 percent cut in a Chesapeake Bay quota for menhaden.

But the administration and Omega Protein, the owner of the Reedville plant that processes menhaden from the bay, agreed to stop fighting over the bill and work together to convince the Marine Fisheries Commission to increase the quota.

The regional commission last year approved a more than 36,000-metric-ton cut in bay quota for menhaden caught by drawing huge “seine” nets around schools of the fish and then hauling them up onto so-called “purse seine” fishing vessels.

Currently, the old marine fisheries commission quota of 87,216 metric tons for fish caught is written into state law.

Knight had proposed removing the reference in state law to the 87,216 tons and empowering the head of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission to set a new quota after appealing, and hopefully winning, an increased quota from the regional body.

Virginia Secretary of Natural Resources Matt Strickler had argued that keeping the old quota in the Code of Virginia risked sanctions that could include an outright ban on menhaden fishing in the bay.

Environmental groups — including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, League of Conservation Voters and Nature Conservancy, as well as sports fishermen — argued that the lower quota was necessary as a precautionary measure. They fear too many young menhaden are caught in the bay, a key nursery area for the migratory fish. This could put the menhaden population at risk, as well other species, including striped bass and ospreys.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

 

Artificial Intelligence for Fisheries Monitoring

October 23, 2017 — Right now, fewer than one in five ground fishing trips in New England is monitored by an independent observer.

Fishermen say it’s too expensive, and unfair to ask them to pay the cost. The Nature Conservancy is experimenting with an alternative: video monitoring systems, and computer algorithms that could identify fish being caught and thrown overboard on every trip.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

Permit banking threat helped drive Canastra Rafael deal

October 6, 2017 — Richard and Raymond Canastra weren’t the only ones interested in buying Carlos Rafael’s New Bedford, Massachusetts-based fishing empire, Richard Canastra said in an interview with a local radio station on Thursday.

Several big corporations have approached both Rafael and the two brothers to inquire about either buying or investing in the 42-permit, 32 fishing vessel operation, he told drive-time, talk-show host Phil Paleologos on WBSM 1420 AM, in the nearby town of Fairhaven. But the “biggest competitors” Canastra said he was concerned about are non-governmental organizations that could buy Rafael’s permits and “bank” them.

The Nature Conservancy has been making an effort to buy up fishing permits in coastal towns, especially for groundfish, and leasing quotas to fishermen for more than a decade. Geoff Smith, marine director for the NGO’s Maine chapter, estimated that between 12 and 15 groundfish permits have been bought in New England over the past seven years, but he said the Nature Conservancy has not met with Rafael or anyone to make an offer for his permits.

“We’re not interested,” he told Undercurrent Friday. “…We’ve had no contact and we have no plans to contact anyone.”

Smith’s group was interested, two years ago, in obtaining at least one of the groundfish permits now owned by Rafael, according to Canastra.

“There was only one offer up in Maine and that was from the NGO, and I believe it was Nature Conservancy,” Canastra said, adding: “So do you want to see those permits go to an NGO, where it can be put on a shelf or the permit could be leased out to their favorites? That’s been happening since sectors.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: Canastra Brothers Offering $93 Million for Carlos Rafael’s Fishing Fleet

October 5, 2017 — Last week in court, it was publicly revealed that the potential buyers of Carlos Rafael’s fishing fleet are brothers Richard and Ray Canastra, owners of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This morning, Richard Canastra appeared on WBSM to confirm that the brothers have entered into a memorandum of agreement with Mr. Rafael to buy his fleet for $93 million.

“We wanted to keep everything in New Bedford,” Mr. Canastra said. “Ray and I had to make a decision – do we want to do this? I’m 56 years old, Ray is 60 years old. It’s a big task…at this later stage in our life. We believe that it’s the right thing to do for New Bedford. The waterfront has been good for us since 1986, [we] started the auction in ’94, and we’d hate to see the industry collapse because of what Carlos did in the past.”

When asked about those who have raised questions about the relationship between the Canastras and Mr. Rafael, Mr. Canastra  said, “I look at it this way. We are the largest fish auction in the United States, and Carlos Rafael is the largest boat owner on the East Coast.” He said that although the Canastras and Mr. Rafael are friends, the negotiations became tense, and there was a period where tensions ran so high that the brothers and Mr. Rafael did not speak for three weeks. 

Mr. Canastra also discussed competition with NGOs over the permits. “Our biggest competitors here are the NGOs and people up in Maine who are in cahoots with the NGOs,” he said. He described a situation in 2015 in which Mr. Rafael purchased quota from a Maine seller at fair market value when no one else would. “There was only one offer up in Maine and that was from the NGO, and I believe it was Nature Conservancy. So do you want to see those permits go to an NGO, where it can be put on a shelf or the permit could be leased out to their favorites? That’s been happening since sectors. It was a fair deal, and everyone wants it back now.”

“There are groups up in Maine that believe that these permits should be dissolved back into the industry, or even given back to them,” Mr. Canastra added. “In reality, if they dissolve all these permits into the industry, every permit holder would receive anywhere between 200 to 300 pounds of each species, so it would not really gain anything for that permit holder but it would destroy New Bedford.”

The following is excerpted from WBSM’s exclusive article on the potential transaction:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — One of the owners of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction in New Bedford is shedding more light on a proposed deal to buy [Carlos Rafael’s] fishing fleet.

Carlos Rafael has been sentenced to 46 months in prison for his illegal fishing scheme, and cannot be involved in the fishing industry during that time and three years after his release.

In an exclusive interview with WBSM’s Phil Paleologos, Richard Canastra confirms he and his brother, Ray, have entered into a memorandum of agreement with Rafael to buy his business, Carlos Seafood, Inc, for $93 million.

“We know boats. We know the business. We’re doing this to keep this in New Bedford,” said Canastra. “My plan is to get out, hopefully, in ten years when things lighten up and it can be sold properly instead of this fire sale where people want everything for nothing.”

Read and watch the full story at WBSM