Saving Seafood

Nebraska AG joins fight against legal doctrine regarding federal regulatory authority

August 9, 2023 — Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers recently joined counterparts in 26 other states, including New Hampshire, in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn or clarify a legal precedent that could have major implications for federal regulatory authority.

Nebraska was one of 27 states that joined a July 24 filing to the Supreme Court regarding the deference that should be afforded to federal agencies when interpreting ambiguous or silent language passed by Congress. Known as the Chevron deference, the legal doctrine requires courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretation when regulatory authority is ambiguous.

The joint brief argues that Chevron has been “abused and manipulated,” allowing federal agencies to “run amok,” and contends the court should overrule or at least clarify Chevron when it decides Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (named after Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo), in its next term. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the case.

The case deals with the National Marine Fisheries Service and a regulation that requires fishing companies to have an additional person on fishing boats to track regulatory compliance. Companies must pay the monitor’s salary.

Hilgers, in a July 25 statement, said the U.S. Constitution lays out three branches of government, not four, and leaves legislative power to elected representatives, “not unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats.”

“Overturning Chevron is a critical step to restoring the Constitution’s protection against the unaccountable use of power and will help save Nebraskans from an endless number of regulations and burdens,” Hilgers said.

Read the full article at New Hampshire Bulletin 

NH joins lawsuit seeking to end fed agency overreach

July 27, 2023 — New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella has joined prosecutors from 26 other states in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down or scale back a landmark doctrine that critics say gives federal agencies unchecked powers.

“For decades now, unelected bureaucrats at federal agencies have been using a legal principle known as Chevron deference to operate like a fourth branch of the government,” Formella said.

“We now see courts deferring to federal agencies as they bend the law, grow their size, and expand their power over the everyday lives of Americans.”

The controversy stems from a Supreme Court ruling on a 1981 Environmental Protection Agency regulation in a suit against Chevron by the Natural Resources Defense Council, which claimed the agency’s rule violated the Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court disagreed, holding the agency’s definition was a “reasonable construction” of the law. The court created a two-pronged test for applying the “Chevron deference” in challenges to federal regulations.

Formella and the other attorneys general have filed a friend of the court brief on behalf of a New Jersey-based company that has challenged a federal agency ruling regarding its fishing activity in New England waters.

Loper Bright Enterprises sued Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo over a National Marine Fisheries Service regulation requiring herring fishing boats to have an extra person on board to monitor compliance with federal rules.

Fishing companies have to pay the monitor’s salary, which can run about $700 a day.

The company argued the federal agency had no authority to force it to pay for the monitor.

Read the full article at Yahoo! Finance

Federal at-sea monitors have New England groundfishermen pushing back

July 10, 2023 — If longtime New Hampshire groundfisherman Dave Goethel were an I-told-you-so kind of guy, this would be his moment.

Goethel, a 2004 National Fisherman Highliner, was the plaintiff in a 2015 lawsuit, subsequently joined by Northeast Fishery Sector 13, that opposed NOAA’s requirement that fishing vessels pay upward of $700 per day for at-sea monitors.

The case was dismissed. A federal court said it should have been filed within 30 days of the observer program’s creation, not 30 days after NOAA later decided to charge fishermen.

Goethel’s appeal was dismissed as well.

If the courts got rid of his lawsuit, they couldn’t get rid of Goethel. Now retired, his name is on an amicus (friend of the court) brief in the Supreme Court case of Loper Bright Enterprises, a family-owned herring fishing company that is raising the same issue Goethel raised.

The issue as most of us relate to it is whether the Magnuson-Stevens Act implicitly grants NOAA the authority to compel fishermen to pay observer salaries. The underlying question, however, is how much leeway a federal agency has when implementing laws passed by Congress.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NEW HAMPSHIRE: What new federal ruling on lobsters means for N.H.

June 21, 2023 —  On Friday, a federal appeals court sided with lobstermen, ruling that a federal agency went too far in imposing restrictions meant to protect an endangered whale species. 

Governor Chris Sununu celebrated the decision as a win for New Hampshire’s lobster industry. The state has hundreds of commercial and recreation trappers, according to his office, which has previously said it will do all it can to protect the state’s most important fishery. 

“I’m thrilled that the D.C. Circuit Court ruled in favor of New England’s lobstermen after New Hampshire supported their lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service,” he said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

First offshore fish farm proposed off New England

April 21, 2023 — The first offshore fish farm off from New England’s coast has been proposed by a New Hampshire group called Blue Water Fisheries in conjunction with Innovasea Systems, Inc.

The farm would be composed of about 40 submersible fish pens that would be moored roughly seven and a half miles off the coast of Newburyport, Mass.

Blue Water Fisheries hopes to grow millions of pounds of salmon and steelhead trout on the farm, as well as lumpfish for a research study. However, the group will have to go through many approvals with NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency before it is a set-in-stone project.

The farm will acquire all-female trout eggs from Trout Lodge and Riverance hatcheries of Rochester, Wash. The eggs are deemed as disease-free and will be hatched in the farm’s freshwater hatchery for up to eight months before being acclimated to saltwater and then be transferred into the offshore SeaStations.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

1st ocean fish farm proposed for East Coast off New England

April 10, 2023 — A New Hampshire group wants to be the first to bring offshore fish farming to the waters off New England by raising salmon and trout in open-ocean pens miles from land, but critics fear the plan could harm the environment.

The vast majority of U.S. aquaculture, the practice of raising and harvesting fish in controlled settings, takes place in coastal waters or on land, in tanks and ponds. But New Hampshire-based Blue Water Fisheries wants to place 40 submersible fish pens in water about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) off Newburyport, Massachusetts, on two sites that total nearly a square mile, according to federal documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

The farm would grow millions of pounds of Atlantic salmon and steelhead trout, two popular seafood species, documents state. The proposal needs a battery of approvals, and would be the first of its kind off the East Coast.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Expert: New England herring industry to receive $11M

June 2, 2022 — The federal government is giving $11 million to New England herring fishermen following a declared disaster within the industry.

However, some experts claim the situation was avoidable.

Overfishing herring created the situation in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England, according to Niaz Dorry, director of the North American Marine Alliance.

In November, the federal government declared a “fishery disaster” allowing assistance in tax dollars to flow into the region, the Gloucester Daily Times in Massachusetts reported. Maine will receive $7 million, Massachusetts over $3.2 million, New Hampshire will receive $600,000, and Rhode Island is set to receive $241,299.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

Haul of Atlantic cod, once abundant, reaches new low

May 10, 2022 — One of the oldest fishing industries in the U.S. sank to a new low in catch last year, signaling that efforts to rebuild the fishery still have a long way to go.

New England fishermen have caught Atlantic cod for centuries, but the catch has dwindled over the last decade due to overfishing, restrictive fishing quotas, and environmental changes. The vast majority of the fish come to the docks in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Maine fishermen brought fewer cod to the docks last year than any other in recorded history, state regulators said earlier this month. The state’s catch, which was more than 20 million pounds in the early 1990s, was less than 50,000 pounds last year, state records show.

Cod are the fish of choice for fish and chips in the U.S., but the industry’s collapse has left the country dependent on imports from countries such as Iceland. Russia is another major exporter, but the U.S. banned imports of Russian seafood due to the invasion of Ukraine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at News Center Maine

 

Cultivating Tomorrow’s Fisherman Across New England

May 10, 2022 — The kids who hung around Perkins Cove, Maine, back in the 1960s wanted to be fishermen. By the time we were 10 or 12 years old, the ocean, boats, and fish had cast their spell on us. We knew who Mickey Mantle and Carl Yastrzemski were, but our heroes parked their pickups by the bait wharf and harpooned bluefin tuna from their boats.

We dreamed not so much of hitting home runs but of chugging into the harbor at night and unloading 600-pound giants in front of awestruck tourists peering down from the wharf.

Quite a few of us wound up fishing, at least for a while. And some of us still do.

But times have changed. And as fishing’s fortunes have declined, so, too has the number of aspiring fishermen.

“It has become painfully evident that our area is suffering from the ‘graying of the fleet,’” says Andrea Tomlinson, founder and executive director of the nascent, New Hampshire-based New England Young Fishermen’s Alliance. The Alliance’s mission is to provide aspiring fishermen with a pathway into the fleet. “This is a project I have been trying to develop for over four years.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Commercial fishermen in four northeastern states sharing $11M in federal assistance

May 10, 2022 — Commercial fishermen in four northeastern states will share $11million of federal government assistance.

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo announced Thursday that the herring industry in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island will get financial assistance to recoup losses in the Atlantic herring industry which was declared a “fishery disaster” by the federal government last year.

Herring are a crucial part of the region’s commercial fishing industry because they are used for bait, which has been in short supply in recent years, according to federal regulators.

Maine will be getting the largest chunk of the funding, or nearly $7.2 million, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which says it will work with the Maine Department of Marine Resources to administer these funds.

“The drastic reduction in Atlantic herring quotas has caused significant losses in primary income and threatened job security for many in the herring industry,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who pushed for the federal relief funds. “This financial assistance provided through the designation is crucial to the survival of Maine’s Atlantic herring fishery.”

New Hampshire is getting $600,000 from the allocation, according to the federal agency, which was welcomed by members of the state’s congressional delegation.

Read the full story at The Center Square