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Fishermen Fear Damage From Wind Farms Along The Eastern Seaboard

December 4, 2017 — Fishermen are worried about an offshore wind farm proposed 30 miles out in the Atlantic from Montauk, N.Y., the largest fishing port in the state. They say those wind turbines — and many others that have been proposed — will impact the livelihood of fishermen in New York and New England.

Scallop fisherman Chris Scola fishes in an area 14 miles off of Montauk. He and his two-man crew spend 2 ½ hours motoring there, then 10 more dredging the sea floor for scallops before heading back to port.

“We have this little patch that’s sustained by myself and a few other boats out of Montauk, and a couple of guys from Connecticut also fish down here,” Scola says.

Scola — like many fishermen — is concerned about state and federal regulations. But his big concern is the prospect of hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of giant wind turbines spread out in the New York Bight, an area along the Atlantic Coast that extends from southern New Jersey to Montauk Point. It’s one of the most productive fishing grounds on the Eastern Seaboard.

“To me, building wind farms here, it’s like building them on the cornfields or the soy fields in the Midwest,” he says.

Scola belongs to the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, which is run by Bonnie Brady, the wife of a longtime Montauk fisherman. She’s an outspoken critic of the wind farms.

Read the full story at NPR

New York: Huge scallop harvest, growth in oyster farming boost East End

December 1, 2017 — An abundance of plumped-up bay scallops from waters around the Peconic Bay is giving Long Island’s East End shellfishing industry a vital boost.

With the industry already thriving from a resurgence of oysters, the plentiful scallop harvest is buoying businesses from the East End to Manhattan, where scallops and oysters from Long Island waters are prominent in fish markets and on restaurant menus.

Since the scallop season opened with a strong start in early November, fish dealers have been buying hundreds of pounds a day. The surge in volume is keeping fishermen, shuckers, wholesalers and seafood store owners busy, but it has also pushed prices down. Scallops are selling for less than $20 a pound, in some cases as low as $15, down from around $35 last year.

Some dealers had difficulty keeping up with the harvest at first, advertising for scallop shuckers on road-side signs. Customers who typically buy a pound or two are buying 4 and 5 pounds, shop owners say. Restaurants are finding ways to keep scallops on the menu.

Read the full story at Newsday

East Coast Fishing Coalition Continues Legal Challenge to Planned Wind Farm Off New York

WASHINGTON — December 1, 2017 — The following was released by the Fisheries Survival Fund:

A coalition of East Coast fishing businesses, organizations, and communities, led by the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), has taken the next step in its legal challenge to a planned wind farm off the coast of New York. FSF and its co-plaintiffs argue that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) awarded the lease for the New York Wind Energy Area (NY WEA) to Norwegian energy company Statoil without fully considering the impact on fishermen and other stakeholders, in neglect of its responsibilities as stewards of ocean resources.

The plaintiffs outlined their arguments in a brief filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. In the brief, FSF criticizes BOEM’s claim that it is not the agency’s job to resolve conflicts among new and pre-existing ocean users in the NY WEA. In an October filing, BOEM wrote that it is “not the ‘government steward of the ‘ocean commons,’’” a claim that FSF calls “unbecoming.” In fact, BOEM’s own website states: “The bureau is responsible for stewardship of U.S. [Outer Continental Shelf] energy and mineral resources, as well as protecting the environment that development of those resources may impact.”

FSF also writes that the NY WEA, an expanse of ocean nearly twice the size of Washington, D.C., is a poor location for a wind farm, and that BOEM and Statoil have alternately claimed that it is both too early and too late to raise objections to the lease. Statoil previously stated that vacating the lease would “squander the resources and the five years that BOEM has expended to date in the leasing process,” even as BOEM promises it will consider measures to mitigate the impacts of a wind farm later in the process. By then, after more time and resources have been expended, a wind farm “will be all but a foregone conclusion,” FSF writes.

Additionally, FSF argues that evaluating alternatives and considering conflicting ocean uses from the start would ultimately benefit BOEM and energy developers, ensuring they do not expend vast resources developing poorly located wind farms. The brief cites the ongoing debacle over the Cape Wind energy project, an approved wind farm off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as an example of what can go wrong when BOEM and a developer ram through an agreement and become too invested to turn back. After the project “slogged through state and federal courts and agencies for more than a decade,” delays and uncertainty have jeopardized, if not eliminated, Cape Wind’s financing and power purchase agreements, according to the brief.

The plaintiffs in this case are the Fisheries Survival Fund; the Borough of Barnegat Light, New Jersey; The Town Dock; Seafreeze Shoreside; Sea Fresh USA; Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance; Garden State Seafood Association; Long Island Commercial Fishing Association; the Town of Narragansett, Rhode Island; the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce; the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts; and the Fishermen’s Dock Co-Operative of Point Pleasant, New Jersey.

While the fishing groups hold wide-ranging views about offshore wind energy development, they all agree that the siting process for massive wind energy projects “should not be a land rush, but rather reasoned, fully informed, intelligent, and cognizant of the human environment,” according to the brief.

About the Fisheries Survival Fund
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) was established in 1998 to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Atlantic sea scallop fishery. FSF participants include the vast majority of full-time Atlantic scallop fishermen from Maine to Virginia. FSF works with academic institutions and independent scientific experts to foster cooperative research and to help sustain this fully rebuilt fishery. FSF also works with the federal government to ensure that the fishery is responsibly managed.

Long Islander James Gilmore hopes to modernize Atlantic fishing commission

November 17, 2017 — The announcement in mid-October that James Gilmore had been elected Chairman of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) came as no surprise to anglers familiar with the fishery management process at the federal level.

Voted in by the ASMFC State Commissioners from Maine to Florida, the lifelong Amityville resident had spent the past two years as vice chairman. He is also Division of Marine Resources Director for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), a position he has held for the last decade and will continue to hold.

In his new role as ASMFC chairman, Gilmore oversees both administration and policy issues for the regulatory agency’s individual species management boards. The ASMFC, a joint commission of the 15 Atlantic Coast states, coordinates the conservation, management and sustainable use of shared coastal fishery resources including finfish. That process can trigger some strong debates.

“There are some challenges we need to tackle as quickly as possible,” said Gilmore, who has over 40 years of experience in resource, habitat and fisheries management, during a phone interview on Wednesday. “We need to rethink and modernize the way we allocate fisheries up and down the coast. For recreational fishing specifically, we need better data that is current and more closely resembles what is actually taking place on the water.”

Read the full story at Newsday

Fishermen Worry Wind Farms Could Damage Business

November 17, 2017 — Fishermen are worried about an offshore wind farm proposed 30 miles out in the Atlantic from Montauk, NY, the largest fishing port in the state. They say those wind turbines – and many others that have been proposed – will impact the livelihood of fishermen in New York and New England.

“We have this little patch that’s sustained by myself and a few other boats out of Montauk and a couple of guys from Connecticut also fish down here,” Scola said.

Scola – like many fishermen – is concerned about state and federal regulations. But his big concern is the prospect of hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of giant wind turbines spread out in the New York Bight, an area along the Atlantic Coast that extends from southern New Jersey to Montauk Point. It’s one of the most productive fishing grounds on the Eastern Seaboard.

“To me, building windfarms here, it’s like building them on the cornfields or the soyfields in the Midwest,” he said.

Scola belongs to the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, which is run by Bonnie Brady, the wife of a longtime Montauk fisherman. She’s an outspoken critic of the windfarms.

Brady sums up plans by New York authorities to site 240 turbines in the Atlantic like this: “A really bad idea that’s going to make some hedge funders a nice big chunk of change and then they can move on to their next prey.”

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

State official: NY commercial fishermen ‘getting a raw deal’

November 13, 2017 — New York commercial fishermen are “getting a raw deal” in federal fisheries quotas, and the state will follow through on a lawsuit early next year if meetings in December don’t fix the problem, the state’s top fisheries official said last week.

At a meeting at the East Hampton Public Library on Thursday, Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, listened to two full hours of complaints about state and federal regulations and management of fisheries, including restrictive quotas, inaccurate fish-population data, difficulty in getting and transferring permits, and “Gestapo”-like tactics of federal observers on local fishing vessels.

Seggos in an interview after the meeting said the state would base its response to federal regulators “on the numbers we get” in the federal quota following a meeting of an interstate commission in December to divvy up the quota for fluke and other species.

Read the full story at NEWSDAY

The Future Of Offshore Wind Farms In The Atlantic

November 13, 2017 — Fishermen are worried about an offshore wind farm proposed 30 miles out in the Atlantic from Montauk, New York, the largest fishing port in the state. They say those wind turbines – and many others that have been proposed – will impact the livelihood of fishermen in New York and New England.

Scallop fisherman Chris Scola pulls out of a Montauk marina at 2 a.m. and spends the next two-and-a-half hours motoring to an area about 14 miles out into the Atlantic. Then, with the help of his two-man crew, spends about 10 hours dredging the sea floor for scallops before heading back to port.

“We have this little patch that’s sustained by myself and a few other boats out of Montauk and a couple of guys from Connecticut also fish down here.”

Scola gives me an earful about state and federal regulations, but the thing that really has his dander up these days is the prospect of hundreds, and perhaps even thousands, of giant wind turbines spread out in the New York Bight, an area along the Atlantic Coast that extends from southern New Jersey to Montauk Point. It’s one of the most productive fishing grounds on the Eastern Seaboard.

“To me, building windfarms here, it’s like building them on the cornfields or the soyfields in the Midwest.”

Scola belongs to the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, which is run by Bonnie Brady, the wife of a longtime Montauk fisherman. She’s an outspoken critic of the windfarms.

Read the full story at WSHU

New York businessman gets 1½ years for dealing in black market eels from Virginia

November 3, 2017 — NORFOLK, Va. — Tommy Zhou knew what they were doing was illegal, according to court documents.

American eel stocks were low as Asian markets rushed to buy more, and strict caps were being imposed on U.S. fishermen.

And, he said, he was willing to spend $200,000 to have them killed if they betrayed him.

Zhou, 42, of New York, was sentenced Friday to 1½ years in prison for illegally trafficking more than $150,000 worth of juvenile American eels, also known as “elvers” or “glass eels.”

Federal guidelines recommend a sentence of at least one year and four months.

Trial Attorney Shane Waller of the Department of Justice’s Environment and Natural Resources Division declined to comment, as did Zhou’s attorneys.

According to court documents, Zhou established a seafood distribution company in 2010 in New York. The company, known as Wilson Group Sea Trading LLC, imported and exported seafood.

Read the full story at the Virginian-Pilot

Maine man gets 2 years in federal prison for trafficking in baby eels

October 26, 2017 — A Waldoboro man has been sentenced in federal court to serve two years in prison for his role in an East Coast scheme that trafficked in millions of dollars in poached baby eels.

Richard D. Austin, 40, pleaded guilty in April to violating the federal Lacey Act by trafficking in baby eels, or elvers. He was accused of illegally harvesting roughly $190,000 worth of elvers in Massachusetts and Virginia from 2013 to 2015 and of selling the poached elvers to dealers in Illinois and New York.

Austin is the first to be sentenced to prison time of 18 men charged as a result of the so-called “Operation Broken Glass” federal investigation. All 18 men have pleaded guilty in the scheme but only five have been sentenced so far.

Appearing Wednesday in a federal courtroom in Norfolk, Virginia, Austin was ordered to report to federal officials to begin serving his sentence on Dec. 11 at a prison not yet selected. He also was ordered to serve three years of supervised release after he completes his prison term. He was ordered to pay a special assessment off $100 but was not ordered to pay any fines or restitution.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

The FDA Warns One of New York’s Most Expensive Restaurants over Seafood Import Violations

October 26, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — One of New York’s most expensive restaurants is in some trouble with the Food and Drug Administration over its fresh fish.

Masa, which earned three Michelin stars for its $595 tasting menu (before drinks and tax), received a warning letter from the FDA dated Oct. 16 alleging violations of federal rules that govern seafood imports. “Your fresh trevally and fresh Katsuwonus pelamis (Katsuo), also known as skipjack tuna or bonito,” the agency wrote in a letter published online this week, “have been prepared, packed, or held under insanitary conditions whereby they may have been rendered injurious to health.”

“We take FDA regulations very seriously and, of course, food safety is always a priority. We are working closely with our purveyors in Japan to get this resolved quickly,” said Tina Clabbers, a representative for Masa, in an email.

While the the FDA doesn’t typically regulate individual restaurants, the agency has jurisdiction over seafood importers. Inspectors visited Masa on June 22, according to the letter, which redacted the name of the restaurant’s fish supplier.

The letter doesn’t specify the precise nature of the violation, and a spokesperson in the FDA’s New York district office was not available for comment.

The regulation for which Masa was cited requires fish importers to ensure that foreign suppliers meet the same standards for safety that domestic processors must adhere to. The FDA warning letter says the restaurant “must implement an affirmative step” to comply with the seafood import rules but failed to do so for the aforementioned fresh trevally and Katsuo.

Affirmative steps could include getting records from foreign suppliers about their compliance with FDA standards, inspecting the foreign facility or other actions to verify that the fish is up to code.

High-end sushi chefs have clashed with regulators before over rules that require that fish intended for raw consumption be frozen before serving. The freezing process is intended to kill pathogens. Masa’s 20-plus course omakase menu uses ingredients “only in their freshest most delicious state,” according to its website.

New York City health inspectors gave Masa an A grade in July 2016. The health department did not cite any violations regarding fresh fish.

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