Saving Seafood

Federal Agency To Study Effects Of Electric Pulses From Proposed Wind Farm On Fish

March 28, 2018 — Federal officials say they are looking at new studies of fish species that migrate off the coast of Long Island and their potential reactions to electric pulses from the transmission cables of the proposed South Fork Wind Farm, in response to concerns raised by fishermen and the East Hampton Town Trustees.

Concerns about how fish might react to the electric magnetic field, or EMF, given off by the wind farm’s foot-thick power cable when it comes ashore have become the main objection from the East Hampton Town Trustees and the South Fork’s commercial baymen.

Fishermen rely on the annual migrations of fish through the relatively shallow waters within a couple of miles of the shore on their way to summer haunts in the bays. They worry that even if the EMF pulses given off by the sort of cable that would connect to the wind farm were minor—as studies suggest—the subtle impulses could be enough to divert fish in their migrations and away from the near-shore areas.

In the earliest discussions of the issue over the last several months, representatives of Deepwater Wind have presented the results of studies conducted at the existing wind farm off Block Island and by scientists around the giant offshore wind farms in Europe, as well as laboratory tests that show the effects of EMF on migrating fish to be inconsequential.

But fishermen and their supporters have said those studies are of little reassurance to them, since they involve different scales, different types of sea floor or different species of fish than those that are of the utmost importance to local baymen.

“What they tested in Europe is not that relevant. What they tested at Block Island, with a cable one-quarter the size of this, is not that relevant,” said Gary Cobb, an East Hampton man who has been reviewing the work done thus far on EMF and other details of offshore wind development on behalf of fishermen. “And you need several years of data for any of it to be useful.”

Earlier this winter, the Town Trustees issued a call for more studies—along with an aggressive demand for financial support from Deepwater for fishermen who are impacted by the project—to examine the effects of EMF on fishes that migrate to Long Island in summer.

Read the full story at 27 East

 

New York State petitions feds demanding more equitable fluke quota

March 23, 2018 — New York State on Friday filed a petition with the federal government to demand a more equitable distribution of the commercial fluke quota, saying current rules put “unreasonable limits” on the state industry.

The petition, filed with a U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a first step, officials said, toward changing a decades-old quota that leaves New York fishermen with just 7.6 percent of a catchable annual allocation for fluke up and down the East Coast. Other states such as North Carolina and Virginia get more than 20 percent each of the coastal quota, and often travel to New York waters to catch it.

Local fishermen who have complained of the low quota for decades had been expecting a lawsuit, after state officials visiting Long Island in November vowed to make good on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo promised litigation in a visit to Montauk in 2013.

But delays by an interstate fisheries commission addressing quota inequities until the fall forced the state to file the petition as a necessary first step toward litigation, officials said.

“Quite frankly, we lost patience,” Basil Seggos, commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said in an interview. His staff worked with New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman’s office to file the petition.

“The stringent limits on commercial landings of [fluke] in New York ports have made [fluke] fishing no longer an economically viable choice” for New York fishermen, because the “limited revenue generated by a trip often cannot offset the costs, including fuel, time, and vessel wear-and-tear.”

One longtime critic of the governor’s protections for commercial fishermen called the petition effort “weak.”

Daniel Rodgers, a Southampton lawyer and director for New York Fish, a fishermen’s advocacy group, expressed concern that the petition will only further delay action that fishermen need now.

Read the full story at Newsday

 

New York: Rep. Zeldin Slams ASMFC Black Sea Bass Allocation, Calls for Equitable Fishing Quotas

March 22, 2018 — LONG ISLAND, N.Y. — Congressman Lee Zeldin (R, NY-1) issued the following statement following the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) proposed allocation for black sea bass for the 2018 season, which would unfairly cut New York State’s share by up to 12%, while other states will see their allocations grow:

“With the vast majority of Long Island fishing taking place in waters shared with New Jersey and Connecticut, such as the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound, it is unfair that New York anglers are, once again, being penalized with smaller fishing quotas than neighboring states. For my constituents, who are both fishermen and small business owners trying to attract customers, the ASFMC’s decision to, once again, cut New York off from its fair share while allowing New Jersey’s allocation to grow, is unacceptable. Two boats fishing next to each other with one allowed to catch up to double the amount of the other because they are landing the fish in New Jersey instead of New York is ridiculous and inequitable.

“That is why, when it comes to fishing quotas, tri-state parity is so important. At the state level, New York’s representatives must fight more aggressively within these regional bodies to advocate for New York’s anglers who rely on fishing as a way of life that supports so much of our local economy. If our state representatives on the ASMFC– who supported this terrible proposal and failed to fully advocate for New York– aren’t willing to fight for our anglers, then they should step aside.

“I call on all levels of government in our state to work together as one team to fight this unfair allocation and, if necessary, appeal this all the way to the Secretary of Commerce. Going into non-compliance is never the first option, but it may be the only one in taking a stand for New York anglers who year after year continue to get screwed.”

Read the full story at Long Island

 

New Yorkers rally against offshore drilling plan

February 16, 2018 — ALBANY, N.Y. — Wearing fish-shaped caps and armed with a megaphone, New York state’s leading environmental advocates protested President Donald Trump’s plan to open offshore areas to oil and gas drilling on Thursday as federal energy officials held an open house on the proposal near the state Capitol.

The group, wearing caps shaped like sturgeon, salmon and other vulnerable ocean species, included Aaron Mair, past president of the Sierra Club, and Judith Enck, the regional Environmental Protection Agency administrator under former President Barack Obama. They said Trump’s plan could devastate the environment while leaving potential renewable energy sources untouched. They called on Congress to pass a law blocking the proposal.

“We all remember the BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe,” Enck said into a megaphone, referring to the 2010 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that triggered the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. “We cannot afford that reckless activity in the Atlantic.”

Inside, federal energy officials handed out information packets and briefed members of the public on the president’s decision last month to open most of the nation’s coast to oil and gas drilling as a way of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign energy sources. Several dozen people had trickled through at the midpoint of the four-hour open house. Members of the public were encouraged to submit written comments.

William Brown, chief environmental officer at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, said he welcomed comments from opponents to the plan.

Read the full story from Associated Press at the Seattle Times

 

Dock to Dish Prepares New Seafood-Tracking System

February 8, 2018 — It’s 10 p.m. Do you know where your shipments of iced-down, black sea bass are? Or perhaps you want to check on the status of the longline boat that is catching your carton of golden tilefish from the 500-foot depths of the Hudson Canyon, located about 80 miles south of Montauk? For those who demand the freshest, most sustainable seafood, and partake in the increasingly popular and expanding Montauk-headquartered Dock to Dish community-supported fishery program, keeping an eye on your seafood order is a simple mouse click away.

“More and more people want to know where, when, and how their fish are caught,” explained Sean Barrett, a fisherman and restaurateur who founded the cooperative fishery program in 2012. “Our motto is ‘know your fisherman’ and that has not changed. Members of Dock to Dish can check in real time the status of their catch from the beginning of the fishing trip all the way until it is delivered by hand right to their doorstep. It’s just one of the many enhancements we have made since we started.”

This year Mr. Barrett hopes to improve the fishery marketplace by having the world’s first live tracking dashboard so that end consumers on land can monitor hauls of wild seafood from individual fishermen at sea in near-real time. Named Dock to Dish 2.0, the new technology bundle was created in partnership with several fish tracking companies, including Pelagic Data Systems, Local Catch, and Fish Trax. Once completed, the bundle will be open-sourced, meaning it can be replicated and used by all independent small and medium-scale fisheries operations around the world.

“Dock to Dish 2.0 is the first public-facing system to ever combine vessel and vehicle tracking with geospatial monitoring technologies on an interactive digital dashboard,” Mr. Barrett explained last month as he unloaded a catch of tilefish just outside the kitchen door of Nick and Toni’s, one of the first members of Dock to Dish’s restaurant-supported fisheries program. Fishing boats will be outfitted with solar-powered automatic data-collection monitors and application-specific wireless sensors.

Read the full story at the East Hampton Star

 

Robert Bryce: Cuomo’s latest green-power fiasco

February 5, 2018 — Since 2015, Gov. Cuomo has been hyping his scheme to remake the state’s electric grid so that by 2030 half of the state’s electricity will come from renewable sources.

But Cuomo’s ambition — to prove his renewable-energy bona fides and thus position himself as a viable Democratic candidate for the White House in two years — is colliding headlong with reality.

Indeed, two events Monday, one in Albany and the other in the upstate town of Somerset, showed just how difficult and expensive his plan has become and how New York ratepayers will be stuck with the bill.

In Albany, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority released its “offshore-wind master plan.” The agency said it was “charting a course to 2,400 megawatts” of offshore capacity to be installed by 2030. That much capacity (roughly twice as much as now exists in all of Denmark) will require installing hundreds of platforms over more than 300 square miles of ocean in some of the most navigated, and heavily fished, waters on the Eastern Seaboard.

It will also be enormously expensive. According to the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, by 2022 producing a megawatt hour of electricity from offshore wind will cost a whopping $145.90.

Offshore wind promoters claim costs are declining. Maybe so. But according to the New York Independent System Operator, the average cost of wholesale electricity in the state last year was $36.56. Thus, Cuomo’s presidential ambitions will require New York consumers to pay roughly four times as much for offshore electricity as they currently pay for juice from conventional generators.

Why is the governor pushing so hard for offshore wind? The answer’s simple: The rural backlash against Big Wind is growing daily.

Just a few hours after NYSERDA released its plan, the Somerset town board unanimously banned industrial wind turbines. The town (population: 2,700) is actively opposing the proposed 200-megawatt Lighthouse Wind project, which, if built, would be one of the largest onshore-wind facilities in the Northeast.

Wednesday, Dan Engert, the supervisor in Somerset, told me his “citizens are overwhelmingly opposed” to having wind projects built near their homes and that Somerset will protect “the health, safety and rural character of our town.”

Numerous other small communities are fighting the encroachment of Big Wind. In the Thousand Islands region, towns like Cape Vincent and Clayton have been fending off wind projects for years. Last May, the town of Clayton approved an amendment to its zoning ordinance that bans all commercial wind projects.

Read the full story at the New York Post

 

Attorneys general urge offshore drilling plan’s cancellation

February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.

“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”

Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.

The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Massachusetts: Fishing Heritage Center Opens New Exhibit

January 31, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the opening of Frozen Asset: Ice Making & the New Bedford Fishing Industry on Thursday, February 8th at 6:00 p.m. during AHA.  This exhibit explores the historic and contemporary ice industry as well as how ice contributed to the success of the commercial fishing industry. A special showing of Harvesting Ice in New England 1926- 1957 will take place at 7:00 p.m.

Ice has been used to preserve food for centuries.  From the early 1800s to the 1960s, ice was harvested from fresh water ponds and stored in ice houses throughout New England.  With the advent of refrigeration in the mid 20th century, the ice industry modernized the process of making ice through the use of refrigerant, allowing ice to be made year round.

Changes in how ice was harvested in the mid-19th century allowed ice to be cut uniformly, minimizing melting in storage and during use.  Fishermen began to carry ice to preserve their bait and their catch.  Having ice allowed crews to venture farther off shore and expand the variety of species landed fresh. Ice was used by railroads to transport the catch far from fishing ports, increasing the market for fresh fish.  With the advent of refrigeration, New Bedford fishermen could land their catch here rather than at Fulton’s Fish Market in New York City and transport fish to markets across the country by truck.

Today, ice is still used to preserve the catch and land fresh product for market. Vessels ice up before heading out to sea, taking on 15 to 40 tons depending upon the target species, trip length, and time of year.

The Center is grateful to Joseh E. Swift, Crystal Ice Company, Inc., and Woods Hole Historical Museum for the support with a special thanks to guest curators Stephanie Trott and Robert Demanche. This exhibit is funded in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Dartmouth Local Cultural Council, the Fairhaven Local Cultural Council, the Mattapoisett Local Cultural Council, and the New Bedford Cultural Council.

The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is dedicated to preserving and presenting the story of the commercial fishing industry past, present, and future through archives, exhibits, and programs.

 

Report detailing enforcement abuses barred from fisherman’s trial

January 29, 2018 — The first criminal trial of a Long Island fisherman charged in connection with a federal probe of a controversial fish-auction program is set to begin, but a report detailing fisheries enforcement abuses by the government has been barred from the trial.

Lawyers for Northport fisherman Thomas Kokell, charged in a multi-count indictment with overharvesting fluke, argued in pretrial motions that a 2010 federal inspector general’s report detailing abuses and “overzealousness” by the National Marine Fisheries Service was vital to the defense.

The Environmental Crimes unit of the U.S. Department of Justice has reached plea agreements with seven Long Island and New York City fishermen and fish dealers in connection with the six-year probe.

Most have been charged with mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy and false reporting crimes. Five received prison time or home detention, including a 74-year-old Mattituck fisherman charged with taking $78,000 in illegal fish. Fines and restitution have ranged from $150,000 to $932,000 and most lost their fishing or dealer permits.

In November 2016, Kokell was charged with conspiracy, mail fraud and falsification of federal records in connection with the illegal harvest of more than $400,000 worth of fluke. He is the first to fight the charges in court. The trial is set to begin next month.

His lawyers have argued that Kokell’s case should be handled as a civil, not criminal, case, citing findings from the inspector general’s report and the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs the fisheries.

Kokell, who was fined $120,000 in a 2006 case involving overfishing, had been a vocal critic of the marine fisheries agency‘s enforcement and legal practices.

He and his wife appeared with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) at a Port Washington dock to demand action against the fisheries agency, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at Newsday

 

Officials ask fishing vessels to slow down for right whales

January 29, 2018 — Federal officials are asking large commercial fishing vessels to slow down after nearly two dozen North Atlantic right whales were spotted in the waters off Nantucket.

The Boston Globe reports the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a statement Friday saying a voluntary speed restriction zone has been established 30 nautical miles south of Nantucket. It says 22 right whales have been seen in that area.

Mariners are asked to go around the area or to pass through it at 10 knots or less. The request remains in effect through Feb. 5.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WITF