Saving Seafood

Public invited to meetings of fishing regulators

May 12, 2017 — Gloucester, Massachusetts will sit at the epicenter of the national fishery management universe next week when top regulators from around the country gather here for three days of overviews of the nation’s individual fisheries.

The Council Coordination Committee, which includes chairmen and directors of the eight regional fishery management councils, is set to discuss issues such as national monuments and sanctuaries, habitat, recreational fisheries, enforcement and legislation.

The meetings at the Beauport Hotel Gloucester are being hosted by the New England Fishery Management Council, which was determined to hold them in a working commercial fishing port, according to NEFMC Executive Director Tom Nies.

Nies said the meetings give the geographically diverse regulators — who hale from Alaska to the Caribbean — the chance to discuss issues that cut across all of their councils. It also affords NOAA Fisheries the opportunity speak to the collective councils as a single group.

“We meet twice a year and it’s really the only time all eight council have the chance to discuss national-level policy issues and issues that other councils are facing that we may face ourselves in the future,” Nies said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Nation’s fish leaders meeting in Gloucester next week

May 10, 2017 — Leadership teams from the nation’s eight regional fishery management councils will convene in Gloucester next week to discuss national marine monuments, habitat and other fishery management issues.

The meeting of the Council Coordination Committee, which includes the chairmen, vice chairmen and executive directors of the eight regional fishery councils, is set for the Beauport Hotel on Commercial Street, May 15 to 18.

The first day is set aside for internal organizational meetings, with the principal agenda items scheduled for the following three days, according to Janice Plante, spokeswoman for the New England Fishery Management Council.

Plante also said the NEFMC plans to have its September meeting at the Beauport Hotel.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Fishermen, Conservationists Go Head To Head Over East Coast Underwater National Monument

May 9, 2017 — New England fishermen are hoping President Donald Trump will reverse an undersea monument designation they say has cut them off from nearly 5,000 square miles of valuable fishing grounds off the coast of Cape Cod.

Trump last month directed the Department of the Interior to conduct a sweeping review of national monument designations over the last two decades, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, which President Barack Obama declared the first undersea national monument in the Atlantic Ocean in September.

The area is a “spectacular landscape” home to a “whole diversity of otherwordly creatures that most people are not familiar with,” said Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium who helped secure the designation and has conducted research in the area. There are undersea canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon and extinct underwater volcanoes “taller than anything east of the Rockies” with a variety of species of fragile coral, he said.

But Joseph Gilbert, owner of Stonington-based Empire Fisheries, said since the designation, “we’ve been pushed to other areas” creating unnecessary competition and pressure as more boats are fishing in a smaller area. Fishermen, who have been using the area for 200 years, Gilbert said, were given just two months to get out.

Obama used the Antiquities Act of 1906 to declare the area a national monument, and that’s what’s at the heart of Gilbert’s objections, he said. Using the Antiquities Act circumvented the New England Fishery Management Council, the normal process for fishery management, and allowed for less input from the industry, Gilbert said.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

Other New England Groundfish Sectors Demand Equitable Distribution of Rafael Permits

May 8, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Sustainable Harvest Sector, one of the fishery cooperatives authorized by the New England Fishery Management Council, has called again for NMFS to redistribute Carlos Rafael’s fishing permits to the entire industry, by returning the catch history to the entire region.  Below is a statement from the Board of this Sector, making the case as to why NMFS should act in this manner. [Saving Seafood Editor’s Note: The Board of this Sector consists of Frank Patania, Anthony Fernandes, Phil Ruhle, Jr., Maggie Raymond, James Odlin, Marshall Alexander]

They also rightly state that any geographic preference, such as permanently awarding a portion of quota to New Bedford, requires an extensive public consultation and rulemaking, as such geographic allocations are outlawed under Magnuson except in very special and specific cases.

Fair and Just Compensation in the Case of Carlos Rafael

As Carlos Rafael’s criminal case of money laundering and fishery fraud winds toward closure, the National Marine Fisheries Service must confirm how to re-allocate Rafael’s fish harvesting privileges.  The government plans to seize thirteen vessels and fishing permits. That still leaves Rafael with dozens more boats and permits to continue operating, and many fishermen believe he should be expelled from the fishery entirely.  But whether it’s thirteen permits seized or the three dozen he owns, each one has some amount of fishing rights ‘attached’ to it which must be re-allocated.

The New England Fishery Management Council is the primary federal body which controls quota allocation, and it already has a re-allocation mechanism in place.  Several years ago, the Council voted that the harvesting rights attached to any permit surrendered to the government would be proportionally redistributed to all remaining permits in the fishery.

Though the Council perhaps did not envision a seizure of this magnitude, the mechanism actually works quite well here.  Carlos Rafael has a long history of breaking a myriad of fishing rules, including quota-busting, violations of fishing time limits, closed area incursions, and false catch reporting to the government.  The nearly twenty publicly available settlement agreements with the government follow a timeworn, repeat pattern: A violation, followed by a negotiated fine which is just the cost of doing business in a criminal enterprise.

Rafael stole from every other fisherman in New England.   Over the last five years, his boats poached fish from waters off Downeast Maine to the Rhode Island coast.  While everyone else was suffering under severe cuts to their allowable catch of cod and flounder, Rafael simply decided those cuts didn’t apply to him, and smuggled the fish ashore anyway.

So the Council’s re-allocation mechanism rewards those who play by the rules.  If offers some relief to fishermen working under stringent catch limits which might be a bit higher if not for Rafael and his complicit captains.   It buttresses the logic that as the crimes were committed throughout the region, relief should be distributed throughout the region as well.

The City of New Bedford believes Rafael’s thirteen permits should be confiscated, then locked to that port in perpetuity.  This is an understandable position but is morally bereft.   Locking the quota to that port denies redress to the vast majority of Rafael’s victims.  The City of New Bedford has only benefitted from Rafael’s continuous criminal acts.  It is unseemly to enjoy those benefits for twenty years then, once the scam is exposed, seize them for all time.

New Bedford is by far the nation’s richest fishing port and has been for at least a decade, landing $300-$400 million of seafood annually. In contrast, the entire New England groundfishery is presently worth $60 million.  It is a vibrant and diverse waterfront which will not, by the Mayor’s own admission, succumb to Rafael’s misdeeds.  And New Bedford will benefit from the Council’s mechanism, via quota re-allocation to other boats already based in that port.  Everybody gains.

Neither the governing Council, nor the National Marine Fisheries Service which implements the Council’s policy directives, has ever contemplated restricting quota even to the New England states, never mind individual cities.  Changes of that magnitude take years to develop and mountains of public input – which the Council already conducted, as part of its fishery management plan.  The redistribution mechanism is already in place, it has passed legal muster, and – particularly in this case – it is just.

Board of Directors

The Sustainable Harvest Sector

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Fishing and offshore wind can co-exist, leaders say

May 3, 2017 — New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell and about 20 civic, business, and academic representatives spent the first full day of their wind-focused trade visit to England Tuesday in Grimbsy, the largest fishing port in the world in the 1950s — which gives the New Bedford group food for thought.

New Bedford has landed the highest dollar-value catch in the United States for 16 years running. But in Grimsby and England at large, the fishing industry declined sharply in the 20th century following a period known as the “Cod Wars,” when Iceland asserted territorial authority over waters where English vessels were fishing.

Thus, as SouthCoast leaders learn from Grimsby about its success in offshore wind, they also have their minds on fishing, and how the two industries can coexist.

Around 5:45 a.m., some of the New Bedford group left their hotel for the Grimsby Fish Auction. Grimsby still handles about 70 percent of all the fish processed in the United Kingdom, according to Neil Mello, Mitchell’s chief of staff.

Among the auction visitors was John F. Quinn, a former member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives who now chairs the New England Fisheries Management Council. Asked if he could see evidence that offshore wind is compatible with the fishing industry, he said, “most certainly.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford-Standard Times

Fishery Management Councils to Meet May 15-18 in Gloucester

May 2, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council: 

Leadership teams from the nation’s eight regional fishery management councils will be gathering in Gloucester, MA for the spring 2017 Council Coordination Committee (CCC) meeting.

The CCC is comprised of the chairs, vice chairs, and executive directors of the New England, Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Pacific, Western Pacific, and North Pacific Fishery Management Councils. CCC chairmanship rotates annually among the eight Councils.

The committee meets twice each year to discuss issues relevant to all fishery management councils. The National Marine Fisheries Service – often called NOAA Fisheries – annually hosts the first meeting, which for 2017 was held Feb. 28-March 1 in Arlington, VA. The New England Council is serving as this year’s CCC chair and will be hosting the May 15-18 spring meeting at the Beauport Hotel on the Gloucester Harbor waterfront. The public is welcome to attend.

Principal agenda items will be discussed Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, May 16-18, beginning at 8:30 a.m. each day. The eight Councils will take part in a Round Robin on Tuesday morning. Council deputy directors will meet concurrently and report to the full CCC on Thursday, May 18. Copies of the agenda will be available shortly. Hotel information can be found at http://www.beauporthotel.com.

Read the full release here

Series of Coral Protection Hearings Planned for New England

May 1, 2017 — Federal fishery managers will hold a host of public hearings in New England and New York about a plan to protect corals in key East Coast fishing areas.

The New England Fishery Management Council is hosting seven public hearings about alternatives it is considering about the protection of corals in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.

The hearings will take place from May 22 to 25 in Montauk, New York; Narragansett, Rhode Island; New Bedford, Massachusetts; Gloucester, Massachusetts; Portsmouth, New Hampshire; and Ellsworth, Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CapeCod.com

NEFMC Announces Coral Amendment Public Hearing Schedule

May 1, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council will hold seven public hearings on its Draft Omnibus DeepSea Coral Amendment to collect input from fishermen and other stakeholders on the alternatives being considered to protect corals in the inshore and offshore Gulf of Maine and in the offshore canyon/slope region south of Georges Bank.

Hearings will be held May 22 through May 25 in five states – New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine sequentially – and then a webinar hearing will wrap up the series on May 26.

The alternatives in the amendment are designed to reduce potential impacts of fishing activity on corals. Restrictions on bottom-tending mobile and fixed gear are listed among the alternatives. However, the Council is considering possible exemptions for some or all types of fixed gear, such as lobster traps, deepsea red crab pots, and gillnets. At its April 20-22 meeting in Mystic, CT, the Council selected “preferred” alternatives. Some of these selections included fixed gear exemptions.

Read the full release here

MELISSA WATERMAN: Marine Matters: A Feeling of Relief Down East

April 27, 2017 — Well, they did it. At its April 17 meeting in Connecticut the New England Fisheries Management Council reaffirmed the economically vital place that lobster fishing has in this state by exempting lobstermen from restrictions that may flow from the council’s Omnibus Deep Sea Coral Amendment.

The decision qualifies as a Big Deal. The council has been considering ways to protect deep-sea corals found within the Gulf of Maine and along the continental shelf for several years. Protecting a living creature that is not a fish is new ground for the council, which draws its regulatory authority from the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act. But revisions to the act in 2006 gave the council “discretionary authority” to protect deep-sea corals in New England. Thus, creation of the Omnibus Amendment, the provisions of which will be applied to all of the council’s 28 fisheries management plans.

The amendment identifies four coral areas in the Gulf of Maine as well as several canyons south of Georges Bank for protection. Two Gulf of Maine sites are places where Maine lobstermen set their traps — Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mt. Desert Rock.

You and I would look at the two locations and say, “Hmmmmm. Water.” Lobstermen, on the other hand, look at the water and envision what lies beneath it, the rocky seabed on which lots of lobsters live in their individual burrows.

So, when the council stated last year that it was considering closing those two areas to all bottom-tending gear, Down East lobstermen took notice. Such closures would mean no fishing for lobster or red crab, another commercially valuable species. In January, the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) asked the council to specifically exempt lobster fishing from possible closed-area restrictions. The council replied that it was too early in the amendment process to exempt any fishery. It asked, instead, for more information about the economic value of these two areas.

Read the full opinion piece at The Free Press

New management could be coming to East Coast herring fishery

April 27, 2017 — Federal fishing regulators are considering a host of alternatives about new ways to manage the herring fishery.

Atlantic herring is a major industrial fishery on the East Coast, including in Gloucester, with fishermen frequently bringing more than 200 million pounds of the little fish to shore every year.

Herring are used as human food and bait for other fisheries, such as lobsters. The catch of herring off of New England has been inconsistent in recent years, leading to volatility in the lobster bait market.

The New England Fishery Management Council is considering nine alternatives about how to manage the fishery. The options would allow for measures such as area closures and restrictions on types of gear.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times