Saving Seafood

More Measures Proposed for Western Pacific Longliners as Managers Agree to Electronic Reporting

September 22, 2020 — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council concluded its 2020 third-quarter meeting recently with actions related to electronic reporting for Hawaii longline fisheries, annual catch limits for grey snapper (uku) for years 2022-2025 and more.

Hawaii longliners and those greater than 50 feet long in the American Samoa longline fleet will have to use electronic logbook reporting by the middle of next year, the Council approved in an amendment to the fishery management plan. Under the amendment, vessel operators must record and submit logbook data within 24 hours after completion of each fishing day using an electronic logbook application certified by the National Marine Fisheries Service. In the event of technology malfunction, vessel operators would be required to submit the logbook data by paper or electronically within 72 hours of the end of each fishing trip. The recommended date for implementing mandatory electronic reporting is by July 1, 2021; the regulatory amendment is pending approval by the Secretary of Commerce.

Read the full story at Seafood News

HAWAII: Paintballs to deter monk seals? NOAA seeks feedback on marine mammal deterring methods

September 17, 2020 — Should people be able to use rubber bullets and even paintballs to deter Hawaiian monk seals from coming too close to fishing gear and property?

Those are some of the tactics NOAA wants to hear your feedback on.

The National Marine Fisheries service is proposing a rule in the federal registry on “Guidelines for Safely Deterring Marine Mammals.”

The Hawaii Marine Animal Response has already expressed their concerns with the proposals, saying in a social media post, “These proposed deterrence methods could make the existing desired Hawaiian monk seal interaction guidelines confusing for people who live and fish in Hawaii.”

Read the full story at Hawaii News Now

Trial delayed for U.S. captain held in British Virgin Islands

September 11, 2020 — Michael Foy, the U.S. longline captain jailed in the British Virgin Islands since June 11, has seen his trial postponed on Tortola until Oct. 1 as the island goes through another round of covid-19 partial shutdowns, according to Foy’s family.

Foy, 60, of Manahawkin, N.J., was initially charged with illegal entry in violation of the island’s covid-19 precautions, then with a charge of illegal fishing, although he had been fishing south of Puerto Rico.

Foy and his local attorney arrived in court as scheduled Sept. 9 only to be told the hearing was rescheduled, according to his brother Joe Foy.

Responding to urgent requests from his lawyers in Tortola and the U.S., the National Marine Fisheries Service produced 27 pages of documentation from Foy’s vessel monitoring system, with data showing he fished far from BVI waters. They have that evidence in hand for when they do get a court hearing, according to Joe Foy.

Michael Foy’s vessel Rebel Lady was laid to offshore June 8, waiting for customs clearance to enter the port of Road Town as he had done many times before, but Foy was arrested after BVI authorities instructed him to follow a customs vessel into the harbor.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Judge orders new fisheries impact analysis on right whales, decides not to close fishery

September 10, 2020 — United States District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., handed down his remedy Aug. 19 to the National Marine Fisheries Services, which he ruled last spring had violated the Endangered Species Act in licensing the fisheries in the northeastern U.S.

He gave the NMFS until May 31, 2021, to conduct a new biological opinion on the fishing industry’s impacts on the endangered right whale species and measures to decrease whale deaths caused by the industry, vacating the previous biological opinion.

Earlier this year he found that the NMFS had failed to file an incidental take report in 2014 after discovering the vertical lines used in the fishing industry could be responsible for up to three whale deaths a year, which is more than the species can sustain, according to NMFS’ own calculations.

Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife and the Humane Society of the United States, the plaintiffs in the case, requested over 5,000 square miles south of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where large numbers of whales congregate, be closed to vertical line fishing.

Intervenors in the case argued that closing off that area to fishing would place more nets outside its boundaries, creating a situation where lines are closer together, increasing entanglement risks for whales trying to reach the area considered for fishing closure.

The judge decided against the plaintiffs’ request because there is no legal precedent for such an action, he said in his opinion. He decided it would be too detrimental to the New England fishing industry that is already struggling because of the coronavirus.

Read the full story at Village Soup

Court Rules NMFS Needs to Better Manage Anchovies, CA Wetfish Assoc. Pushes Back

September 9, 2020 — For the second time in two years, a federal court has ruled that National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) violated the nation’s fishery management law — the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act or MSA — by not using the ‘best available science’ in setting static catch limits on a widely fluctuating anchovy biomass. But an important industry group of harvesters and processors who are also involved in scientific research projects, take issue with the decision.

“Long story short, the judge ruled on a ‘what if’ worst case scenario, not on the reality of anchovy abundance now, or our little anchovy fishery, which food habits studies have shown take less than 1 percent of the anchovy consumed by predators,” said Diane Pleshner-Steele, the executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. The CWPA is also an intervenor-defendant in the suit.

Read the full story at Seafood News

‘Amazing’ halibut, one of the largest fish in the Gulf of Maine, are making a comeback

September 3, 2020 — Halibut are one of the largest fish in the Gulf of Maine, second only to bluefin tuna, swordfish and large sharks. Historically they were a mainstay of the fishing industry along with cod.

According to Julia Beaty in “A History of the Atlantic Halibut Fishery in Downeast Maine,” halibut were regularly discarded as a trash fish until the late 1800s when New Englanders began icing their catch and selling fresh fish instead of salting them. Schooners began leaving from New England ports to hunt these huge fish with gangs of baited hooks. This caused a massive overfishing and subsequent decline of their numbers by the early 1900s. The numbers declined so drastically in the late 19th century that they are just now rebounding.

The National Marine Fishery Service began regulating the halibut fishery in the 1990s and there is a one fish per trip per boat limit on catch. This has been a boon to their rebound.

This past spring while fishing for haddock my husband, David, caught four huge halibut. They ranged in size from 40 to 60 pounds. In the past, he has caught one or two a year which were large enough to be legal to keep. The current minimum size is 41 inches. My husband caught two halibut near Jeffrey’s ledge in the mid-1990s which weighed 120 to 140 pounds. These were the largest ones he has caught. The record halibut was caught in 1917 and weighed 700 pounds! Normally they range in size from a foot and a half to 6 feet and weigh a few pounds to 150 pounds. I have not found anything written in literature about this, but David has noticed a strange thing about halibut, they seem to swim in pairs. He has found that if he catches one halibut in an area, he can go back to the same spot the next day and almost always catch a second one.

Read the full story at SeaCoast Online

WASHINGTON: Navy, state clash over increased testing that could harm whales, marine life

September 2, 2020 — Navy and state leaders are at odds over a proposed rule for military testing in Puget Sound and coastal waters of Washington that allows the increased potential to harass and harm marine life, including the endangered and fragile Southern Resident orca population.

The Navy, in seeking approval from the National Marine Fisheries Service, is seeking to conduct testing and training involving a number of activities — firing torpedoes and projectiles, detonating bombs up to 1,000 pounds, using underwater sonar, piloting undersea drones and more. A proposed new rule would allow for the potential “take” — a term meaning “to harass, hunt, capture, or kill, or attempt to harass, hunt, capture, or kill any marine mammal” — of Southern Resident orcas from twice a year to up to 51 times, though federal officials say no conditions that could injure one of the 73 known remaining southern residents would be allowed.

On Friday, the state’s Department of Ecology pushed back with demands to constrict the Navy’s testing, including increasing the whale buffer zones to at least 1,000 yards and ceasing sonar exercises when orcas are spotted. The agency also asked for the Navy to use real-time whale alert systems like those used by the Washington State Ferries.

Read the full story at the Kitsap Sun

Agency Must Rebuild Atlantic Cod Stocks, Lawsuit Says

September 1, 2020 — The National Marine Fisheries Service is failing to develop a plan to rebuild Atlantic cod stocks that have been depleted by overfishing, according to a lawsuit filed in a Washington federal court.

The agency’s failure is arbitrary and capricious and violates the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, under which NMFS has a mandatory duty to rebuild fisheries as quickly as possible, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Read the full story at Bloomberg Law

Trump Eyes Aquaculture Boom, but Environmentalists Dig In

August 31, 2020 — President Donald Trump wants to dramatically expand aquaculture production in the United States, but a coalition of environmentalists believes his plan would be bad for the oceans, unnecessary for food security and difficult to implement.

Trump’s bid to grow fish farming is designed to address the so-called “seafood deficit,” which refers to the fact that nine-tenths of the seafood Americans eat comes from overseas. The seafood trade gap with other countries approached $17 billion in 2017, according to one federal government report.

The president issued an executive order in May that promised broad changes in how the U.S. regulates fish farming. It included provisions to expedite the development of offshore aquaculture in deep federal waters. That sector of the industry has yet to emerge in the U.S., where most aquaculture takes place near shore where farmers grow salmon, oysters and other popular seafood items.

The Trump administration and the aquaculture industry said the order, which is being implemented now, represents common sense steps to ease the burden of rules on fish farmers. But environmental groups said it threatens to increase pollution and over-development in the ocean at a time when many consumers aren’t buying seafood.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Judge refuses to shut down lobster industry

August 28, 2020 — Maine’s lobster industry last week got a bit of a break—two breaks, actually—with developments from Washington.

First, on August 19, Federal District Judge James Boasberg refused to shut down the lobster fishery as many feared he would. Environmentalists had asked him to do so while the National Marine Fisheries Service comes up with new rules to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Two days after the judge’s ruling, the Trump administration announced it had made a mini-trade deal with the European Union to remove tariffs on lobsters for the next five years.

“We’re on a roll,” said David Sullivan, representative for the Maine Lobstering Union, in a phone interview.

Paul Anderson, executive director of the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, said in an email those two developments were good news for lobstermen. They haven’t had much lately. The COVID-19 pandemic depressed lobster prices by shutting down restaurants, casinos and cruise ships.

“The overall market conditions for lobster are still in flux,” Anderson said. “But we’re still fishing, the shedders are now in the condition that they can be shipped, and domestic consumption and local processing are happening. The price is still low, but it ticked up a bit in Stonington this week.”

Read the full story at the Penobscot Bay Press