Saving Seafood

Managers still fishing for better monitor plan

November 1, 2019 — The New England Fishery Management Council continues to fashion the amendment that will set future monitoring coverage levels for the Northeast groundfish fleet and now expects the measure won’t go out for public comment or hearings until early spring of 2020.

Janice Plante, spokeswoman for the council, said Thursday that the council’s various groundfish committees and panels continue work on the measure, known as Amendment 23, pouring over the full range of alternatives now expected to be presented to the council for a vote at its Jan. 28-30 meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Those alternatives, along with the draft environmental impact statement that includes the analyses for the respective alternatives, then will go out for public comment and hearings in advance of final action by the council next summer.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

‘A Whole New Industry’: N.H. To Work With Neighboring States On Offshore Wind in Gulf of Maine

October 25, 2019 — New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts will work together on large-scale offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine. Stakeholders from the three states met today in Manchester talk about the possibilities and obstacles for that new industry.

The event was hosted by the Environmental Business Council of New England at the state headquarters of Eversource, which is developing several large offshore wind projects elsewhere in the Northeast.

Taylor Caswell, commissioner of the state’s Department of Business and Economic Affairs, said at the meeting that he thinks Northern New England could add tens of thousands of jobs building these offshore turbine farms, and the transmission infrastructure to bring their power on-shore.

“This is not just a project. This is not just an individual, ‘we’re going to find a site and put a couple of turbines up,’” Caswell says. “This is the establishment of, really, a whole new industry.”

Read the full story at New Hampshire Public Radio

Beto O’Rourke promises to ‘guarantee long-term survival’ of nation’s fisheries

October 4, 2019 — Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, after visiting a small fishing business in New Hampshire a month ago, is releasing a plan Friday that his campaign says will “guarantee long-term survival” of the industry and the nation’s fisheries.

The O’Rourke campaign shared the plan with WMUR.

Visiting New England Fishmongers in Portsmouth in early September, the Democratic former U.S. House member was told by owners Capt. Tim Rider and Kayla Cox and their crew that small fishing businesses are having difficulty surviving due to an encroachment of large fishing corporations, the current trade war with China and warming ocean waters resulting from climate change.

Rider wrote in a letter to a Seacoast newspaper that O’Rourke is “the only presidential candidate that has ever cared enough to show up and listen.”

Read the full story at WMUR

Atlantic Herring Days Out Call Information and Notice of Spawning Closures for Western Maine and Massachusetts/New Hampshire in Effect September 23 through November 3, 2019

September 18, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts set effort control measures for the Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery via Days Out meetings/calls. These members are scheduled to convene via conference call on October 2nd from 9:30 to 11:30 AM to consider fishery specifications for Quota Period 4. The details of the call are as follows:

Meeting webinar: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/239062933

Join the conference call:

Phone: 1.888.585.9008

Passcode: 853-657-937

Spawning Closures

The Atlantic Herring Area 1A fishery regulations include seasonal spawning closures for portions of state and federal waters in Eastern Maine, Western Maine, and Massachusetts/New Hampshire. The Atlantic Herring Management Board approved a forecasting method that relies upon at least three samples, each containing at least 25 female herring in gonadal states III-V, to trigger a spawning closure. However, if sufficient samples are not available then closures will begin on predetermined dates.

Read the full release here

New England Herring Fishery Restricted For Several Weeks

September 12, 2019 — Commercial fishing of an important species of bait fish is going to be shut down in one of its key areas in New England for about six weeks.

Interstate regulators say the Atlantic herring fishery in the inshore Gulf of Maine is nearing a quota limit and will be subject to restrictions from Sept. 15 to Oct. 31. That means fishermen will not be allowed to bring the fish to land until that date.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

Ned Lamont, other East Coast governors push feds on wind power

August 30, 2019 — Gov. Ned Lamont and the governors of four other East Coast states are urging federal regulators not to put any additional roadblocks in the way of the country’s nascent offshore wind industry.

The governors of Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia joined Lamont in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that said offshore wind power will help strengthen America’s energy independence while creating thousands of jobs.

The group, including Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, said they’re disappointed by a recent decision to delay final permitting of the planned 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Hartford Courant

5 East Coast governors push feds on offshore wind power

August 29, 2019 — The governors of five East Coast states are urging federal regulators not to put any additional roadblocks in the way of the country’s nascent offshore wind industry.

The governors of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Virginia said in a letter Tuesday to Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross that offshore wind power will help strengthen America’s energy independence while creating thousands of jobs.

The group, including Republican Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker, said they’re disappointed by a recent decision to delay final permitting of the planned 84-turbine Vineyard Wind project south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

DAVID GOETHEL: 100% fishing monitoring is unnecessary

August 13, 2019 — I would like to correct some misconceptions and rebut some of the statements made by Ms. Johanna Thomas in her Aug. 2, 2019, opinion in the Seacoast Newspapers. Ms. Thomas sites the West coast Groundfish fleet as a success story. That is not the case as told by the fishermen on the West coast. She also fails to mention that 50% of the fleet was bought out in a $60 million-plus dollar buy out prior to the implementation of catch shares. This alone should have rebuilt stocks.

Ms. Thomas extolls the virtue of cameras on vessels but fails to point out that the fish must be placed, one at a time, on a measuring board in front of the camera which makes them just as dead as the at-sea monitoring program. She also fails to point out that this system is just as costly as at-sea monitoring but with one added detraction. Our vessels are our bathroom, bedroom and boardroom. The camera records everything and is a massive invasion of privacy and civil liberties. The city of Manchester, N.H. has been sued by the ACLU over this issue and courts in British Columbia ruled that fishermen could not be constantly recorded in the name of fishery management.

Read the full opinion piece at SeaCoast Online

All New England Senators Renew Push To Ban Offshore Drilling Off Region

May 3, 2019 — All 10 U.S. senators in coastal New England reintroduced a proposal Friday to bar oil and gas drilling from the region’s shores.

The group said President Trump’s administration was stalling on the release of a new draft of its five-year offshore leasing plan. The group of senators, led by Rhode Island Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, said that means the Atlantic continental shelf off New England is still at risk of being opened up to drilling.

The senators said drilling off New England would be bad for the economy, tourism, wildlife and the environment. New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan said the region’s coast needs to be “off limits.”

The senators said tourism, fishing and recreation generate more than $17 billion for New England annually, according to the National Ocean Economic Program, and it would harm the five coastal states to jeopardize that revenue with drilling.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WBUR

New England Fisheries Officials, Lawmakers Want NOAA To Slow Proposed Rules On Lobster Gear

April 24, 2019 — The top marine resources officials from Maine and New Hampshire, joined by Democratic U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District, are sharply criticizing the federal government’s efforts to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale and are calling for a slowdown of plans to impose new rules that could be costly for New England’s lobster fleet.

In a letter sent Friday to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the commissioner of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, Patrick Keliher, and his counterpart in New Hampshire say federal fisheries managers botched the rollout of a new and apparently flawed risk-assessment model.

It’s supposed to help measure the effectiveness of various strategies to reduce the chance that whales will be injured or killed by entanglement in fishing gear, from using weaker rope or breakaway rope for hauling traps to a specialized gadget that would cut line when a whale becomes entangled, imposing trap limits or targeted closures of areas where whales are known to be swimming.

“There are some things that are coming out of that tool and some questions that we have about the model or some of the ideas in it that doesn’t really pass the straight-face test for us,” says Erin Summers, Maine DMR’s point-person on the whale issue, during a NOAA webinar introducing stakeholders to the risk-assessment model.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio