Saving Seafood

Papahanaumokuakea Review Spurs Tension With Conservation Groups, Fisheries

June 28, 2017 — President Donald Trump’s targeting of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in the northwest Hawaiian Islands for national review has revived a lopsided debate between Native Hawaiians, senators, scientists and conservation groups in favor of the monument’s designation, and an activist fishery council mainly concerned with “maximizing longline yields.”

The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council vocally opposed the monument’s expansion in 2016 during a public comment process, communicating that to the White House under the leadership of Executive Director Kitty Simonds. Simonds’ PowerPoint presentation at a recent Council Coordination Committee meeting detailed other monument areas in the Pacific under review, including the Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, explicitly criticizing the designations as an abuse of the Antiquities Act. The PowerPoint concludes, “Make America great again. Return U.S. fishermen to U.S. waters.”

Established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Acts of 1976 and 1996, WESPAC is charged with reporting its recommendations for preventing overfishing and protecting fish stocks and habitat to the Commerce Department.

While WESPAC International Fisheries Enforcement and National Environmental Policy Act coordinator Eric Kingma believe that WESPAC’s communications with the president fall within the agency’s purview of advising the executive branch, others, including Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff, consider the comments an illegal “lobby to expand WESPAC turf” and shape public policy.

WESPAC argues that monument expansion hampers longline fishermen from feeding Hawaii, which imports roughly 60 percent of the fish it eats. Pro-expansion groups such as Expand Papahanaumokuakea point out that only 5 percent of longliner take came from the monument; that longliners have recently reached their quota by summer, then resorted to buying unused blocks from other fleets; and that much of the longliners’ take, including sashimi-grade bigeye tuna, is sold at auction to the mainland U.S., as well as to Japanese and other foreign buyers. The bigeye tuna catch, moreover, has been trending upward every year since the first year of logbook monitoring in 1991. In 2014, the Hawaii longline fleet caught a record 216,897 bigeye tuna, up 12 percent from 2013.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Opposition to California Offshore Monuments Mounts After Draft Proposal Leaked

July 14, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — What do creation of national monuments have in common? A lack of transparency when it comes to discussing the potential access restrictions with stakeholders. That same closed-door effort is happening off of California, as effort mounts to create offshore monuments on both west and east coasts.

California sport and commercial interests first became aware of the proposal to establish monuments around nine seamounts, ridges and banks (SRBs) as rumors a few months ago. In June, the industry got a look at the first proposal draft. Washington State Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island, was urging California state lawmakers and West Coast members of congress in Washington, D.C., to support the proposal that could make the nine areas off-limits to commercial fishing but remain open to all recreational fishing, including charter boats.

Diane Pleschner-Steele, one of the signatories to an opposition letter, noted the proponents argue the nine areas are not significant commercial fishing areas.

“However, the fishermen I’ve spoken with hotly contest that,” Pleschner-Steele, Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, said in an email. “Those are productive fishing grounds and to lose them forever would be a huge economic blow to many fishermen, processors and local communities.”

Ranker is no stranger to proposed monuments. As a co-chair of the president’s National Ocean Council’s Governance Coordinating Committee, he is one of the advisers to the NOC that provide guidance on the development of strategic action plans, policy and research priorities. In 2013, he worked with Washington leaders to create a national monument in the San Juan Islands.

Nearly 40 people representing sport and commercial fisheries signed on to a letter opposing the designation of monuments that could include Gorda Ridges and Mendocino Ridge off of northern California; Gumdrop and Pioneer seamounts, Guide Seamount and Taney Seamounts off of central California; and Rodriguez Seamount, San Juan Seamount, Northeast Bank and Tanner and Cortes Banks off of southern California.

“We oppose the designation of California offshore marine monuments that prohibit fishing under the Antiquities Act because monument status is irreversible and the Antiquities Act process involves no public peer-reviewed scientific analysis, no NEPA analysis, no public involvement or outreach to parties most impacted – no transparency,” the opponents wrote in the July 6 letter to President Obama, the Council on Environmental Quality, the secretaries of Commerce and Interior and a number of senators and congressmen.

A joint letter from the American Albacore Fishing Association and Western Fishboat Owners Association further note that some of the proponents’ data about the economic importance of the seamounts, ridges and banks is old and outdated. Some fisheries expanded their use of the offshore areas when California imposed marine protected areas in southern California in 2012.

The groups also note the Council Coordination Committee that includes members of the eight regional fishery management councils recently made a resolution that says, “therefore be it resolved, the CCC recommends that if any designations are made in the marine environment under authorities such as the Antiquities Act of 1906 that fisheries management in the U.S. EEZ waters continue to be developed, analyzed and implemented through the public process of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.”

“in the even this proposal moves forward, we strongly support maintaining management of fisheries under the MSA, through the [Pacific Fishery Management Council],” AAFA and WFOA wrote.

The proponents state the sites are “for discussion purposes only; specific sites, boundaries and regulations will be determined through a robust public consultation process that includes tribes, fishermen and stakeholders. There is a full commitment to working with these interests to better understand the activities occurring in these areas and mitigate potential concern.”

Meanwhile, other groups also are preparing written comments in an effort to fend off the threat of limited access to the nine offshore areas as the opposition grows. It’s unlikely anyone from the seafood industry is fooled by some of the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that is taking place to create the monuments.

“In our opinion, which is informed by the lack of any attempt at collaboration with industry, this proposal is no more than legacy, political ambition and preservation being prioritized over the best available science and a multi-lateral, collaborative political process in the design of marine conservation measures,” AAFA and WFOA said in their letter.

Click here to read the letter sent to Congressman Huffman.

Click here to read the letter by Sandy Smith of the Ventura County Economic Development Association.

Click here to read the oppositon letter from the National Coalition for Fishing Communities.

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