Saving Seafood

Scallop Fishermen will be Allowed to Catch More Next Year

November 17, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine – The federal government plans to allow scallop fishermen to catch more shellfish next year as consumer demand grows.

The New England Fishery Management Council on Wednesday approved rules for the fishing year that begins spring 2017. The rules are expected to yield about 47 million pounds of scallops.

The decision represents a slight increase from this year’s rules, which are expected to allow fishermen to catch 46.9 million pounds of scallops. That was a 30 percent increase from the 36 million pounds of scallops fishermen landed in 2015.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Maine Public Radio

Regulators to Discuss Localized Depletion of Herring

November 16, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. – The New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Newport, Rhode Island tomorrow and an organization that supports local fishermen will push for a buffer zone to move midwater trawlers further off shore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking to move the large herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat coastal fisheries.

The management council will discuss ways to address “localized depletion” in the herring fishery, which is a key source of food for whales and larger fish.

“Our concern is that they are depleting the forage species that we need for tuna, stripers, cod, haddock, dogfish, the whales – all of that stuff is the food chain and they are sucking up the lower end of it,” said Bruce Peters, an Orleans fisherman from the vessel Marilyn S.

Current regulations allow for the midwater trawlers to fish beyond three miles from shore from Provincetown past the Islands.

A vessel tracking program showed about a half dozen trawlers about three or four miles off the Coast of Orleans and Eastham along the back side of the Cape earlier this week.

“They have huge boats. They can go to Georges Bank. They can go offshore. They can fish herring pretty much anywhere,” Peters said. “Our small-boat fleets are 30 to 40-foot boats. We don’t have the luxury of being to go way, way offshore like that.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

New England Fishery Management Council Previews Deep-Sea Coral Amendment Analysis; Addresses Marine National Monument Overlap Issues

November 16, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council received a briefing yesterday from its Habitat Committee regarding preliminary Deep-Sea Coral Amendment analyses covering: (1) potential impacts of fishing activity on corals; and (2) available fishery effort and revenue data.

The Council also made two decisions related to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which President Obama established on Sept. 15, 2016 using his authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906. Although the President designated the monument, his proclamation directed the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, to manage the activities and species within the area under the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and other federal laws.

In an Oct. 21 letter to the Council, John Bullard, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, asked the Council to amend its fishery management plans to “reflect the action of the President and implement the appropriate fishing regulations for the Marine National Monument.”

The Council discussed the request and decided not to develop its own amendment since it did not designate the monument. This means the Commerce Department will fulfill the President’s charge through a secretarial amendment.

Bullard said public hearings would be held under the secretarial action and any proposed amendments would be sent to both the New England and Mid-Atlantic Councils for “consideration and comment.”

The Council also debated a motion it had postponed during its September meeting to move all proposals in the Deep-Sea Coral Amendment that overlap with the Marine National Monument to the “considered but rejected” portion of the amendment.

After considerable debate, the Council voted to keep the overlapping alternatives in place for further consideration and analysis, noting that it was important to move forward with the coral protection process it had begun before the monument was designated.

Regarding the current list of alternatives in the coral amendment, the Council did vote to add an additional option to the mix.

For background, the Council is proposing to protect corals through the development of two types of coral zones – discrete areas and broad areas, which are defined as follows.

  • “Discrete Areas” designate narrowly defined coral zones in the Gulf of Maine, for single canyons, and on individual seamounts; and
  • “Broad Areas” designate a coral zone along the entire shelf-slope region between the US/Canada Exclusive Economic Zone boundary and the New England/Mid-Atlantic Council boundary.

Broad zones are meant to prevent the expansion of fishing effort into additional deep-water habitats. The Council is considering various minimum depth contours for defining these zones.

The Council further debated whether to continue developing potential lobster trap/pot restrictions in the inshore Gulf of Maine coral zones, which are offshore the state of Maine’s waters near the Outer Schoodic Ridge area and west of Mt. Desert Rock.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources and Maine lobstermen requested that the Council provide an exemption for lobster and crab fishing within these zones, arguing that the inshore lobster fishery in this area is the primary economic driver for two Downeast Maine coastal counties encompassing at least 15 harbors.

The Council acknowledged the importance of these coral zone areas to the lobster fishery but was not prepared to completely eliminate lobster gear restrictions from consideration at this stage of the amendment process. Instead, it will continue to develop inshore Gulf of Maine coral zone alternatives that may restrict these gears but will include an option to exempt lobster trap/pot fishing.

New England Fishery Management Council Approves Skate Limited Access Scoping Document; Hears Progress Report on Whiting Amendment 22 Analyses

November 15, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

During discussions that addressed two of the last remaining open access fisheries in the region, the New England Fishery Management Council today:

  • Approved a scoping document for Amendment 5 to the Northeast Skate Complex Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to consider limited access in both the skate bait and non-bait fisheries; and
  • Received a progress report on Amendment 22 to the Northeast Multispecies FMP, which will include alternatives to limit access to small-mesh multispecies.

The skate complex is made up of seven species: barndoor, clearnose, little, rosette, smooth, thorny, and winter skates. The bait fishery primarily targets little skate, along with a small percentage of juvenile winter skate, while the non-bait fishery primarily targets adult winter skate for the wing market.
Control dates already are in place for both fisheries – July 30, 2009 for the bait fishery and March 31, 2014 for the non-bait fishery. The Council asked the National Marine Fisheries Service to publish the control dates after skate fishermen expressed concern that unrestrained increases in fishing effort by new entrants

Advancing to the next step of the process, the Council is now preparing to conduct scoping hearings early in the new year to give the public an opportunity to raise concerns or make suggestions about the range of alternatives for Skate Amendment 5. The purpose of the amendment is to consider developing a limited access program for the skate bait and non-bait fisheries, potentially with qualification criteria, permit conditions and categories, and other related measures.

Whiting Limited Access Under Consideration in Amendment 22

The Council also received a progress report on Amendment 22, which contains alternatives to potentially limit access to the small-mesh multispecies fishery. Participants in this fishery target red hake, silver hake, and offshore hake. Silver and offshore hake typically are referred to as “whiting.”

The Council held five scoping hearings in December 2015 to solicit initial input on the amendment and now is developing qualification criteria alternatives using a preliminary analysis of fleet history. The Whiting Plan Development Team (PDT), Whiting Advisory Panel, and Whiting Committee still have a considerable amount of work to do before the Council can select alternatives for the draft amendment that will be taken to public hearing. However, the Council took an early look at three alternatives that the PDT will begin to analyze. Two use a five-year, 2008-2012 qualification period – up to the Nov. 28 cutoff for the control date – and one uses a 1996-2012 qualification period. Each alternative has a high- and low-level permit status, potentially having different possession limits. As a first cut, the Whiting Committee identified three sets of qualification criteria representing the cumulative poundage (all five years combined) needed to qualify under the proposals:

  • First Alternative – 500,000 pounds for the high level permit and 100,000 pounds for the low level permit under the 2008-2012 qualification period;
  • Second Alternative – 1,000,000 pounds for the high level permit and 20,000 pounds for the low level permit under the 2008-2012 qualification period; and
  • Third Alternative – 1,000,000 pounds for the high level permit and 200,000 pounds for the low level permit using the 1996-2012 period.

NEFMC Nov. 15-17 Meeting, Live Streaming Information

November 9th, 2016 — The following was released by New England Fishery Management Council: 

The New England Fishery Management Council will hold a three-day meeting that begins Tuesday, Nov. 15 and runs through Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016.  The public is invited to listen-in via webinar or telephone.  Here are the details.

MEETING LOCATION:  Hotel Viking, 1 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI  02840   

START TIME:  The webinar will be activated at 8 a.m. each day.  The meeting is scheduled to begin at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. on Wednesday, and 8:30 p.m. on Thursday.  The webinar will end at approximately 6:00 p.m. EST or shortly after the Council adjourns each day.

WEBINAR REGISTRATION:  Online access to the meeting is available at:

https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/5076443364503342594

CALL-IN OPTION:  To listen by telephone, dial +1 (631) 992-3221.  

The access code is 752-565-833.  

Please be aware that if you dial in, your regular phone charges will apply.

AGENDA:  The agenda and all meeting materials are available on the Council’s website at:

http://www.nefmc.org/calendar/november-2016-council-meeting.

THREE MEETING OUTLOOK:  A copy of the New England Council’s Three Meeting Outlook is available here.

QUESTIONS:  If you have questions prior to or during the meeting, call or email Janice Plante at (607) 592-4817, jplante@nefmc.org.

Janice M. Plante

Public Affairs Officer

New England Fishery Management Council

(607) 592-4817

Email:  jplante@nefmc.org

Web:  www.nefmc.org

The Bycatch That Gives You a Haddock

November 4, 2016 — Starting in October, the federal government began a pilot project to test electronic monitoring on midwater herring trawlers fishing in “groundfish closed” areas off the coast of New England, two of which are in the rich spawning grounds on the continental shelf known as Georges Bank. The yearlong project will help regulators decide whether cameras can replace people as observers to regulate herring trawlers’ catch of haddock.

But before the study is finished, the New England Fishery Management Council will be working to loosen the rules on how much haddock herring trawlers can catch.

Since 2011, government observers have been required on any trips trawlers make to those areas, as part of a program to limit incidental catch, often called “bycatch,” of untargeted fish species. In the case of herring fishing, the biggest bycatch concern on Georges Bank has been haddock, a species on the rebound after the groundfish collapses of the mid-1990s.

But the monitoring program has been expensive. A recent amendment to all Northeast fisheries plans required the industry to assist in funding its overseers, increasing pressure to bring down costs.

Federal regulators believe electronic monitoring could be the answer.

“This year we’ll get really good (human) observer coverage — 440 sea days — so we’re going to compare what the observer sees and what the camera sees,” said Daniel Luers, a monitoring expert at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries office of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “The contractors will watch all the videos, and then NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) will watch to confirm that what the contractors have seen correlates with the observers.”

What they’re looking for are “discard” events, where fishermen dump unwanted fish back into the sea — rather than reporting the bycatch and facing fishing closures.

Read the full story at Eco RI News

MAINE: Regional Ocean Plan Likely to Be Approved by Thanksgiving

November 4, 2016 — The Northeast Ocean Plan will be the first coordinated ocean strategy of its kind in the country when it is adopted by the National Ocean Council. That is likely to happen before Thanksgiving.

The Ocean Plan will not create new laws, regulations or penalties, but it will increase oversight of the area between the high-tide zone to 200 miles out to sea while coordinating 140 federal laws that regulate ocean activities in the Northeast.

That sounds overwhelming. It isn’t. The heart of the new plan is an easy-to-use data mapping tool that shows which laws apply to an activity or location and which agencies oversee them. Different uses, habitats, shipping lanes, infrastructure and more can be layered on one map to identify jurisdiction and potential conflicts.

The regional plan was developed in response to the 2010 Executive Order on Ocean Policy which requires better coastal and ocean management. Members from six Northeastern states, ten federal agencies, ten tribes and the New England Fisheries Management Council formed the Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB) to help craft it.

The goal is to coordinate planning based on regional information, even as the ocean environment and marine uses change. Improving and understanding marine life and habitats and ecosystem-based management are important guiding principles.

The Northeast states, which already have a history of working together on fisheries issues, started work on the ocean plan in 2012. The final draft was released for review October 19, making the Northeast Region the first in the country to complete a regional plan.

The Northeast RPB sought public and scientific input through hundreds of informal gatherings and public meetings over the past four years while drafting the plan. Part of their research included going to fishing wharves and small towns to get input. Planners incorporated the public comments and their responses into the final plan.

If the Northeast Ocean Plan is approved later this month as expected, implementation will soon follow. The Northeast Ocean Data Portal, which allows instant mapping of different ocean values and uses based on peer-reviewed data, makes it easy to identify where interests overlap and which agency has jurisdiction.

Read the full story at The Free Press Online 

Information Demanded on U.S. Fishery Council

November 3, 2016 — WASHINGTON — A nonprofit backed by Koch brothers money sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday for information on how it selects members of the New England Fishery Management Council, which regulates fishing off the coasts of five states.

“There is danger for politicization in how members are actually chosen,” the Cause of Action Institute says in its federal complaint against the NOAA, a branch of the Department of Commerce.

The Cause of Action Institute describes itself in the lawsuit as “a nonprofit strategic oversight group committed to ensuring that government decision-making is open, honest, and fair.” It generally opposes government regulation, particularly in the energy industry.

The Los Angeles Times described it last year as “a small group of lawyers funded by the Koch network.” Its then-director Daniel Epstein formerly worked as an attorney for the Charles Koch Foundation, and by 2013 most of Cause of Action’s funding came from the Donors Trust, “a nonprofit group through which the Kochs and their allies distribute tens of millions of dollars without needing to disclose the source of the funds,” the Times reported in its Feb. 7, 2015 article.

In its July 13 FOIA request, Cause of Action sought information on how the Secretary of Commerce and NOAA select members in the New England Fishery Management Council, which regulates fishing off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

“The records at issue in this case, which include records of communication between high-ranking agency officials, will permit the public to understand how the most recent round of membership selection for the NEFMC was handled, and whether that process was at all tinged by political considerations or other untoward government action,” the complaint states.

Cause of Action claims that NOAA has never disclosed information about how it selects members of the eight regional regulatory councils operating under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, and that the membership might not accurately represent the fishing industry.

The complaint cites environmental studies professor Thomas A. Okey of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, who suggested in a 2003 paper that representation in the industry is “generally skewed towards the larger corporate interests that support larger sized vessels, whereas the small-scale vessel fleets that are the traditional core of coastal communities (and more likely to have conservation interests) are often less represented.”

Cause of Action says the secretary of commerce and National Marine Fisheries Service-supervised councils wield “significant independent power.”

“They propose Fishery Management Plans, amendments, and framework adjustments; they conduct hearings; and they determine annual catch limits. The FMCs even have the ability to constrain the Secretary of Commerce,” the complaint states, abbreviating Fishery Management Council.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Regional Ocean Plan Likely to Be Approved by Thanksgiving — Maine to Benefit

November 3, 2016 — The Northeast Ocean Plan will be the first coordinated ocean strategy of its kind in the country when it is adopted by the National Ocean Council. That is likely to happen before Thanksgiving.

The Ocean Plan will not create new laws, regulations or penalties, but it will increase oversight of the area between the high-tide zone to 200 miles out to sea while coordinating 140 federal laws that regulate ocean activities in the Northeast.

That sounds overwhelming. It isn’t. The heart of the new plan is an easy-to-use data mapping tool that shows which laws apply to an activity or location and which agencies oversee them. Different uses, habitats, shipping lanes, infrastructure and more can be layered on one map to identify jurisdiction and potential conflicts.

The regional plan was developed in response to the 2010 Executive Order on Ocean Policy which requires better coastal and ocean management. Members from six Northeastern states, ten federal agencies, ten tribes and the New England Fisheries Management Council formed the Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB) to help craft it.

The goal is to coordinate planning based on regional information, even as the ocean environment and marine uses change. Improving and understanding marine life and habitats and ecosystem-based management are important guiding principles.

The Northeast states, which already have a history of working together on fisheries issues, started work on the ocean plan in 2012. The final draft was released for review October 19, making the Northeast Region the first in the country to complete a regional plan.

The Northeast RPB sought public and scientific input through hundreds of informal gatherings and public meetings over the past four years while drafting the plan. Part of their research included going to fishing wharves and small towns to get input. Planners incorporated the public comments and their responses into the final plan.

If the Northeast Ocean Plan is approved later this month as expected, implementation will soon follow. The Northeast Ocean Data Portal, which allows instant mapping of different ocean values and uses based on peer-reviewed data, makes it easy to identify where interests overlap and which agency has jurisdiction.

Read the full story at The Free Press

New England Fishery Management Council Seeks Scientific and Statistical Committee Candidates

November 1, 2016 — The following was released by the NEFMC:

The New England Fishery Management Council (Council) is seeking qualified candidates to serve on its Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC).  The three-year appointments begin Jan. 1, 2017 and run through Dec. 31, 2020.  Individuals may nominate themselves or be nominated by others.  All application materials must be received by 5 p.m. on Dec. 15, 2016.

The purpose of the SSC is to assist the Council in the development, collection, and evaluation of statistical, biological, economic, social, and other scientific information relevant to the development of fishery management plans.

SSC nominees should have expertise in statistics, fisheries biology, marine ecology, economics, sociology, anthropology, or other social sciences as they apply to fisheries management.  SSC members are expected to provide independent, scientific advice to the Council.

Additional information about SSC responsibilities and details about how to submit nominations is available on the Council website at candidates or announcement.

Information about previous SSC meetings and related business is available at SSC activities.