Saving Seafood

City leaders angered by US government action against former Rafael captains

September 26, 2018 — A recent action by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to punish 22 captains of fishing vessels owned by convicted New England fishing mogul Carlos Rafael crosses the line, believe some important figures in the city of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the South Coast Today reports.

Last week NOAA filed a 51-page superseding charging document that added 20 of Rafael’s ship captains to the list of the two previously charged with violating a long list of fishing-related regulations. It seeks the revocation of 17 of the captains’ operator permits.

The captains have 30 days to request modifications to the charges against them, administrative hearings to challenge the charges, or additional time to respond.

NOAA’s latest move, which also includes increasing civil money penalties from about $1 million to $3m, builds on a civil action filed in January.

Rafael began serving a 46-month sentence in November after pleading guilty in March 2017 to operating a long-running scheme through which he submitted falsified records to the federal government to evade federal fishing quotas.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Researchers Studying What Climate Change Could Mean for Fisheries in the Northeast

September 25, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Researchers with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center are studying warming ocean waters in an effort to understand what climate change could mean for “future stock conditions and the fisheries that depend on them.”

Congress recently provided the Northeast Fisheries Science Center with funding for a fisheries climate action plan that they released in 2016. Thanks to the funding, the Science Center now has 10 projects underway to “improve stock assessments through new modeling, better surveys, and more work to understand the vulnerabilities of coastal communities to climate change.”

The Science Center is working with fishermen, along with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, State University of New York Stony Brook, Rutgers University Department of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, NOAA Earth Systems Research Laboratory, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA Ocean and Atmospheric Research, Gulf of Maine Research Institute and Delaware Sea Grant.

A list of the stock assessment projects, survey projects, modeling projects and social science projects can be found here.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

MASSACHUSETTS: NOAA’s recent Codfather update leaves New Bedford reeling

September 25, 2018 — Right when it seemed as if the seas were settling around New Bedford, Massachusetts and the crimes of disgraced fishing magnate Carlos “Codfather” Rafael, another wave of controversy has hit the beleagured city.

The latest contention in New Bedford comes in the wake of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) issuance of a 51-page superseding charging document related to the agency’s civil administrative case against Rafael, initiated in January 2018.

Earlier this month, NOAA filed the new document, which called for the revocation of 17 operator permits held by Rafael’s captains and increased the civil penalties associated with the case from just under USD 1 million (USD 983,528, EUR 834,673) to more than USD 3 million (USD 3.3 million, EUR 2.79 million). The noncriminal document also upped the number of alleged fishing law violations – ranging from misreporting species to gear, scallop, and observer violations – to 88, according to The Standard Times.

These new developments have left some stakeholders in New Bedford’s fishing industry baffled. Jim Kendall, a former fishing captain and executive director of New Bedford Seafood Consulting, told local newspaper South Coast Today that he suspects former New Bedford mayor and ex-regional administrator for NOAA John Bullard of continued involvement with the case, even though Bullard retired from his post back on 19 January.

“I’ll tell you right now, you can print it or not, but I think John Bullard still has his thumb on the scale,” Kendall said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

BOB JONES: USTR Announced Additional Duties on Chinese Seafood Imports

September 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Southeastern Fisheries Association:

Where will the seafood industry end up after the tariff war is concluded?

“Last night, at the direction of President Trump, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced that a 10 percent additional tariff would be imposed on a massive amount of Chinese imports, including imports of aquacultured seafood products effective on Monday, September 24th. The USTR additionally announced that these tariffs would increase to 25 percent on January 1, 2019.”

US fishermen can’t provide more fish to the domestic market because NOAA and the Councils have taken most of the seafood away from the non-boaters.

For instance, we can only harvest under our quotas 18,000,000 pounds of fish from Virginia through the Keys while the anglers have been gifted with 40,000,000 pounds.

In the Gulf of Mexico it seems when the red snapper needs 6,000,000 more pounds, nothing is based on science or process but rather by a stroke of the pen, the Secretary of Commerce can issue a ‘temporary rule re-opening the private angling component of the red snapper fishery in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) for the 2017 season on select weekend and holiday dates through Labor Day , September 4, 2017.’ (Page 1 of Motion for Summary Judgement between two environmental groups and Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce-Case 1:17-cv01408-ABJ)Basically Commerce could not be punished because their temporary rule expired before the case got to the judge so everything was moot. The recreational fishing industry’s powerful vendors won again. Not Rule of Law.

It is good that qualified members of the domestic shrimp industry are compensated from tariffs received from foreign countries. It is bad that the domestic seafood industry as a whole was supposed to have a dynamic seafood program in place from the tariffs collected under the Saltonstall-Kennedy legislation but somehow, most of these tariffs are used for salaries and upkeep on NOAA facilities instead of going to where they should go.

Senators Kerry and Snowe tried to fix this in 2012 and it needs to be tried again. Tax money the anglers bring in from foreign tackle go to their issues. NOAA needs to do what the original act demands.

“The Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Act directs 30% of the duties on imported fish products to a grant program for research and development projects to benefit the U.S. fishing industry. It is estimated that for 2010, the total duties collected on the imports of fishery products was $376.6 million. The S-K Act directs 30% of that total to be transferred to the Secretary of Commerce. In 2010, that equaled $113 million. Of that $113 million, $104.6 million went to NOAA’s operations budget, and only $8.4 million was used by NOAA for grants for fisheries research and development projects. We believe that we should follow the original intent of Senators Leverett Saltonstall and John F. Kennedy and restore this funding to help the fishermen and communities for whom it was originally intended.”
https://californiawetfish.org/fishingnews/tag/saltonstall-kennedy-act/

Ample S-K funds for honest stock assessments and for treating the “providers of seafood for non boaters i.e. commercial fishermen” as an important and vital sector of the society. We have been oppressed by NOAA policies for too long.

NOAA officials say seal die-off linked to virus

September 24, 2018 — Gray and harbor seals have lured sharks in increasing numbers into Cape Cod waters, with tragic results, but the burgeoning seal population is taking a hit from viruses.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued an unusual mortality event alert for both species of seal in the Gulf of Maine.

From July 1 to Aug. 29 (when the alert was issued) 599 seals were found dead (137) or ill and stranded (462) on New England shores. In the few weeks since that number has soared to 921. Most of those were in Maine (629), with 147 in New Hampshire and 125 in Massachusetts.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

For comparison the nearly 500 seals found last month is roughly 10 times the number that stranded in August of 2017.

“That is attributed to the influences of disease,” noted Terri Rowles, NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program coordinator.

Read the full story at the Eastham Wicked Local

 

New Bedford shocked by NOAA’s latest move in Carlos Rafael case

September 24, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Jim Kendall sees fingerprints on NOAA’s most recent allegations that go beyond Carlos Rafael and loop 22 of his captains into the agency’s non-criminal civil action.

“I’ll tell you right now, you can print it or not, but I think John Bullard still has his thumb on the scale,” the former fishing captain and executive director of New Bedford Seafood Consulting said.

Kendall backed up his claims by saying, “because I know John. He’s a vindictive SOB.”

Bullard is the former mayor of New Bedford, but in this case more importantly acted as the regional administrator for NOAA when Rafael was criminally indicted, pled guilty and was sentenced. Bullard also imposed a groundfishing ban on Rafael-owned vessels.

Except Bullard retired Jan. 19, about nine months before NOAA filed the updated charging documents on Sept. 10.

“A comment like that is insulting to all the people who do very important and hard work in the enforcement arena,” Bullard said. “They just follow the facts and where the facts lead. The only scales are the scales of justice. Nobody’s influencing. The only thing they are following is the facts.”

Bullard was at the helm when NOAA first filed charging documents on Jan. 10.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Fishermen facing cuts to Georges Bank stocks

September 24, 2018 — The New England Fishery Management Council is expected to vote this week on the 2019 total allowable catch limits for three Georges Bank groundfish stocks the United States shares with Canada, with significant reductions expected for each stock.

The council, set to meet Monday through Thursday in Plymouth, will discuss total allowable catch, or TAC, recommendations by both the science-based Transboundary Resource Assessment Committee and the management-based Transboundary Management Guidance Committee.

The latter, however, is expected to hold more sway in developing the 2019 limits. The U.S. and Canada already have negotiated the catch limits within the TMGC recommendations for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, Eastern Georges Bank haddock and Eastern Georges Bank cod.

For Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, which is a critical bycatch stock for the scallop industry, the TMGC recommends the lowest catch limit on record — 140 metric tons, or a 53 percent reduction from the 300 metric-ton TAC in 2018.

The recommendation calls for the U.S. to receive 76 percent of the total, or 106 metric tons. That is down from 213 metric tons in 2018.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NEW BEDFORD STANDARD-TIMES: Moving NOAA research center to New Bedford is a good idea

September 24, 2018 — Most SouthCoast residents are well aware that relationships between local commercial fishermen and government regulators are frequently tense.

This newspaper alone regularly documents disagreements between them on issues as diverse as how endangered specific fish species are, how effective groundfish catch-share systems are, and who is financially responsible for at-sea monitoring.

Whatever the concern, it’s not surprising when the two groups approach an issue from opposing points of view.

So the city’s proposal to improve dialogue between fishermen and government scientists by bringing them together to coexist on the New Bedford waterfront is a welcome one and one that has the potential to build trust where very little has existed in recent years.

The idea to relocate NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center from Woods Hole to New Bedford was first proposed two years ago, when NOAA announced it would review its aging and increasingly out-of-date Woods Hole facilities and consider new sites. In response, Mayor Jon Mitchell, the Economic Development Council, harbor officials and others sent a detailed letter to then NOAA administrator Kathryn Sullivan to consider the many benefits of moving its research center to the nation’s highest grossing commercial fishing port.

The city’s argument was that by placing both groups in close proximity, NOAA “could at last begin to break down barriers to communication, and repair the distrust that has plagued the relationship between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the fishing industry in the Northeast for decades,” according to the city’s proposal.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

NOAA seeks $3 million in fines from Carlos Rafael

September 24, 2018 — Carlos Rafael sits in federal prison, nearing the end of the first year of his 46-month sentence for bulk smuggling and lying for at least four years about the nature and value of his landings.

But that doesn’t mean NOAA is done with the man known as “The Codfather” or many of his vessel captains.

The federal fisheries regulator has updated the civil case against the convicted fishing mogul, more than doubling the number of violations to 88, seeking to revoke 42 of Rafael’s federal fishing permits and increasing the total amount of civil penalties against Rafael, his partners and some of his captains to $3,356,269 from the $983,528 contained in the original charging document.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also said it will seek to prevent “Rafael or his agents” from applying for any NOAA permits in the future.

The new charging document also takes aim at the vessel captains that ran Rafael’s fleet throughout his era of malfeasance.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA seeks $3 million in civil fines against Carlos Rafael

September 21, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — NOAA hasn’t removed Carlos Rafael from its crosshairs. It’s requesting more than $3 million from the fishing tycoon and also took aim at 20 additional Rafael captains in a civil action filed last week, the governing agency told The Standard-Times on Thursday.

NOAA issued superseding charging documents in its civil administrative case involving Rafael on Sept. 10, which added charges and included more respondents than the original document NOAA issued Jan. 10.

The new document seeks to revoke 42 of Rafael’s federal fishing permits, prevent Rafael or his agents from applying for NOAA permits in the future, and increase the total monetary penalties sought from $983,528 to $3,356,269.

NOAA said Thursday that it does not comment on ongoing litigation.

The documents, which are non-criminal, also increased the number of alleged violations of federal fishery laws from 35 to 88 in addition to lassoing 20 of Rafael’s captains into the civil action. The original documents included only two captains. NOAA also is seeking to revoke operator permits of 17 fishing vessel captains for Rafael.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times