Saving Seafood

NOAA’s civil action against Carlos Rafael involves scallop permits

WASHINGTON — January 10, 2018 – Today, NOAA issued a charging document to Carlos Rafael, Carlos Seafood, Inc., 28 separate business entities related to Carlos Rafael, and two of Carlos Rafael’s scallop vessel captains, alleging violations of the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

This case seeks to:

  • Impose $983,528 in civil monetary penalties;
  • Deny any future application by Carlos Rafael for any permit issued by NOAA under the Magnuson-Stevens Act;
  • Revoke the seafood dealer permit issued to Carlos Seafood, Inc.;
  • Revoke 38 commercial fishing permits; and
  • Revoke the operator permits issued to two of Rafael’s scallop vessel captains.

The civil action alleges 35 violations:

Counts 1-19 are based on Rafael’s conduct involved in his recent criminal case, specifically, the misreporting of species landed. For these violations, NOAA seeks to revoke the federal fisheries permits associated with the vessels at issue in the criminal case, but does not seek monetary penalties.

Counts 20-35 involve conduct unrelated to Rafael’s criminal case. Count 20 alleges that Rafael and related entities misreported where they caught yellowtail flounder in 2012. For this violation, NOAA seeks to revoke numerous permits involved and a $140,000 penalty.

Counts 21-35 involve misreporting in the scallop fishery. NOAA alleges that on four separate fishing trips in 2013, Rafael and related entities, along with two of his fishing vessel operators, filed false reports regarding the amount of scallops harvested by four vessels. For those violations, NOAA seeks to revoke permits issued to these vessels and a $843,528 penalty.

Read more about NOAA’s action at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

South Atlantic Council Seeks Input on Proposed Changes for Atlantic Cobia Management

Public hearings scheduled via webinar with listening stations; written comment period open

January 10, 2018 — North Charleston, S.C. — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

Members of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council are soliciting public input on proposed management changes for Atlantic cobia as they consider revising the current management system. Public hearings will be held via webinar with public listening stations beginning January 22, 2018. Information on the proposed changes is now available from the Council’s website at: http://safmc.net/safmc-meetings/public-hearings-scoping-meetings/. Written comments are also being solicited using the online comment form available from the website page.

Atlantic cobia are managed in federal waters along the Atlantic coast from Georgia through New York in cooperation with the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council; two voting seats are provided to the Mid-Atlantic Council on the South Atlantic Council’s Mackerel Cobia Committee. This arrangement provides an opportunity to include the views of constituents from Virginia northwards. Cobia in federal waters off the east coast of Florida are considered part of the Gulf of Mexico migratory stock. The management boundary for the two stocks was modified following a 2013 stock assessment and annual catch limits for each stock were set. NOAA Fisheries determined the recreational catch limit for Atlantic cobia was exceeded in 2015, leading to a shortened season in 2016. Cobia harvested in both state and federal waters count toward the annual catch limit. Subsequent overages occurred during 2016 and the recreational fishery was closed in federal waters on January 24, 2017.

In order to provide for effective management and fair and equitable access to the Atlantic cobia fishery without reducing protection to the stock, the Council is considering a range of alternatives for managing Atlantic cobia, from complementary management with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to removal of Atlantic cobia from the federal management unit. The ASMFC recently approved an Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Cobia that will be implemented in April 2018. Should the Council choose to remove Atlantic cobia from the current federal management unit, the ASMFC Interstate Plan would be applied to both state and federal waters, allowing for additional management flexibility.

Public Hearings for Atlantic Cobia Management 

(Amendment 31 to the Coastal Migratory Pelagics Fishery Management Plan)

Public hearings will be conducted via webinar with listening stations as noted below. Attendance at the listening stations is encouraged but not required. During the public hearings, Council staff will present an overview of the amendment and will be available to answer questions via webinar. Area Council members or state agency representatives will be present at each of the listening stations. Members of the public will have an opportunity to go on record via webinar or at the listening stations to record their comments for consideration by the Council.

January 22, 2018 Webinar – begins at 6:00 PM

Listening Stations:

  1. Port Royal Sound Maritime Center:310 Okatie Hwy, Okatie, SC29909
  2. North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ Central District Office: 5285

Highway 70 West, Morehead City, NC 28557

  1. Georgia Department of Natural Resources Coastal Division: One

Conservation Way, Brunswick, GA 31523

January 23, 2018 Webinar – begins at 6:00 PM

Listening Station:

Hatteras Community Center; 57689 NC Highway12, Hatteras, NC 27943

January 24, 2018 Webinar – begins at 6:00 PM

Listening Stations:

  1. Haddrell’s Point Tackle: 885 Ben Sawyer Blvd, Mt Pleasant, SC29464
  2. Virginia Marine Resources Commission (The Maritime Building); 2500

Washington Ave., 4th Floor, Newport News, VA 23607 *Note: The VA location is a state-organized listening station and was arranged to provide the public in Virginia the opportunity to attend and provide comments in-person.

Registration for each webinar is required. Registration information, along with public hearing documents, video presentations, and other materials is now available from the Council’s website at: http://safmc.net/safmc-meetings/public-hearings-scoping-meetings/. An online public comment form for written comments is also available. Comments must be received by 5 p.m. February 9, 2018 to be included in the briefing book materials for the Council’s March 5-9, 2018 meeting in Jekyll Island, GA.

The Council is also asking for public input on the timing of measures proposed in Amendment 31. A Stock Identification Workshop for Cobia is scheduled to begin in April 2018 as part of a benchmark stock assessment Atlantic cobia. For additional information, contact Christina Wiegand, Fishery Social Scientist at Christina.Wiegand@safmc.net or contact the Council office at 843/571-4366.

 

John Bullard: Incomplete investigation by Rafael sector is ‘show stopper’

January 9, 2018 — John Bullard, the outgoing northeast region administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has provided a clue as to what he believes is needed to re-open groundfish harvesting in Sector IX, Carlos Rafael’s former fishing group.

“As far as we know, the sector’s enforcement committee has not yet completed an investigation of the sector’s operations issues or determined the full extent of the sector’s non-compliance,” he says in a column published in South Coast Today, a newspaper serving New Bedford, Massachusetts, the port city Sector IX calls home.

“That’s a show stopper.”

Bullard has heard plenty of criticism from the newly constituted board of Sector IX, the mayor of New Bedford, Massachusetts, out-of-work crew members and many others since he announced his decision in November to shut down all groundfish harvesting for the group nearly five months before the season was due to end on April 30.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

2018 will be good year for clam chowder, Bumble Bee, thanks to NOAA moves

January 9, 2018 — The makers and fans of New England clam chowder, including Bumble Bee Seafood, can feel confident that the kind of mollusk most often used to make the soup — ocean quahogs — will be in ample supply in 2018 thanks to two moves made recently by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Ocean conservationists, however, are not breaking out their party hats and noisemakers.

When John Bullard, NOAA’s northeast regional administrator, informed the New England Fishery Management Council last week that the agency will authorize the majority of NEFMC’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2 (OA2), many focused on the positive ramifications for scallop harvesters.

But NOAA’s approval of the council’s new plan for balancing the conservation of different sea life with the concerns of local fishermen also came with good news for harvesters of ocean quahogs and surf clams. Bullard informed NEFMC that his agency also agrees with its suggestion to provide a one-year exemption for clam harvesters to prohibitions against the controversial use of hydraulic dredging gear in the Great South Channel habitat management area (HMA), a deep-water passage that cuts between Nantucket and Georges Bank.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

NEFMC: NMFS Approves “Majority”of Council’s Habitat Amendment

January 8, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council: 

NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has approved – with two exceptions – the New England Fishery Management Council’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2 (OHA2), paving the way for sweeping change to the existing network of closed and management areas in the Gulf of Maine, Southern New England, and Georges Bank. The changes will provide better protection for both fish and habitat while eliminating closures that no longer serve their intended purpose. The final rule implementing the new regulations will not be published until later this winter, but NMFS informed the Council on January 3 of its decision to approve “the majority” of the amendment, which sets the stage for what’s to come.

Two of the Council’s proposed habitat management areas (HMAs) were disapproved:

  • Cox Ledge in Southern New England; and
  • Eastern Georges Bank, which called for the removal of Closed Area II as currently configured, replacing it with new management areas that would have allowed fishermen to access the abundant scallop resource on the Northern Edge.

Council Executive Director Tom Nies said, “Naturally we’re disappointed that our proposed Closed Area II changes were not approved, but the fact that the vast majority of the amendment will be implemented is a solid endorsement of the work the Council and staff did to dramatically change the closure system off New England.”

As for the disapproved measures, Nies said, “We’ll be discussing NMFS’s comments at our late-January meeting, and the Council may decide it wants to revisit these issues going forward.”

The habitat amendment has five key purposes, which are to: (A) designate essential fish habitat (EFH) by lifestage for each species managed by the Council; (B) minimize the adverse effects of fishing on EFH to the extent practicable – a monumental undertaking that took years to carry out using the state-of-the-art Swept Area Seabed Impact model known as SASI; (C) identify other actions to encourage conservation and enhancement of habitat; (D) improve protection of habitats on which juvenile groundfish depend; and (E) improve protection of spawning groundfish.

The Council used six types of management approaches to achieve these purposes: (1) the EFH designations; (2) Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (HAPCs); (3) Habitat Management Areas; (4) Spawning Management Areas; (5) Dedicated Habitat Research Areas; and (6) changes to approaches involving framework adjustments and monitoring.

NMFS approved:

  • All of the Council’s EFH designations;
  • All of the HAPC designations, including: (a) the two existing ones for Atlantic Salmon and Northern Edge Juvenile Cod, (b) four new ones called Inshore Juvenile Cod HAPC, Great South Channel Juvenile Cod HAPC, Cashes Ledge HAPC, and Jeffreys Ledge/Stellwagen Bank HAPC, (c) 11 deep-sea canyons, and (d) two offshore seamounts;
  • Most of the Habitat Management Area measures, including: (a) establishing new HMAs in Eastern Maine and on Fippennies Ledge where mobile bottom-tending gear is Hake and red crab along the slope between Heezen and Nygren Canyons. – 2013 Northeast U.S. Canyons Expedition image. prohibited, (b) maintaining the Cashes Ledge Groundfish Closure Area with current restrictions and exemptions, (c) modifying both the Cashes Ledge and Jeffreys Ledge Habitat Closure Areas, which are closed to mobile bottom-tending gear, (d) prohibiting all fishing gear except lobster pots in the Ammen Rock Area, (e) maintaining the Western Gulf of Maine (WGOM) Habitat Closure Area, which is closed to mobile bottom-tending gear, (f) aligning the boundaries of the WGOM Groundfish Closure Area to match the WGOM Habitat Closure Area, (g) exempting shrimp trawling from the northwest corner of the WGOM areas, and (g) identifying the existing Gulf of Maine Roller Gear restriction as a habitat protection measure

Also related to Habitat Management Areas, NMFS approved the Council’s proposals to open up prime scallop fishing bottom in Closed Area I and the western portion of the Nantucket Lightship Area. In short, the current Closed Area I Habitat and Groundfish Closure Area designations will be removed, as will the Nantucket Lightship Habitat and Groundfish Closure designations.

Instead of keeping these less-effective habitat/groundfish areas in place, the Council established a Great South Channel HMA, which will be closed to: (1) mobile bottom-tending gear throughout the area; and (2) clam dredge gear in the northeast section (see map on page 1). NOTE: Clam dredge gear will be allowed throughout other parts of the area for one year while the Council considers refinements through a Clam Dredge Framework, which is under development. OHA2 also created a new research area for Georges.

Learn more about how the Closed Area I and Nantucket Lightship actions will be impacting scallopers at: http://s3.amazonaws.com/nefmc.org/NEFMC-Scallop-FW-29-Advances-Following-Habitat-Decision.pdf

Two new Dedicated Habitat Research Areas (DHRAs) will be established through this habitat amendment as well, each with a three-year sunset provision. One is on Stellwagen Bank within the Western Gulf of Maine Closure Area, and the second is on Georges Bank in what is the current Closed Area I South Habitat Closure Area. These areas will be the focus of coordinated research to improve understanding of the ecological effects of fishing across a range of habitats and, ultimately improve model forecasts. The Council identified a set of priority research questions that the DHRAs should address. The questions are based on four broad focus areas: (1) gear impacts; (2) habitat recovery; (3) natural disturbance; and (4) productivity.

View the release in its entirety here.

 

John Bullard: Sector IX board’s failure to act stopped its fishing

January 8, 2018 — For New Englanders, Atlantic cod is not just another fish. The Sacred Cod that hangs in the Massachusetts State House is testament to the cod’s place in our culture and history.

For centuries, we fished for cod, and, as we watched the stock decline, we tried various ways to protect the resource that is considered as much a birthright as a commodity.

In 2009, the New England Fishery Management Council under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, agreed to try a system called “catch-shares,” which worked well on the West Coast.

The idea was simple: figure out how much fish from a particular stock can be sustainably caught— the “total allowable catch”—and divide that among fishermen.

By allocating quota, fishermen would have more control over when and how they fish, and — fishermen could fish when the weather and markets were most favorable. Catch shares eliminated the “race to fish” once a season opens.

A catch-share system allocating shares to groups of self-selected fishermen called ‘sectors’ went into place in the New England groundfish fishery in 2010. Within these sectors, fishermen organized themselves, determined how to fish their quota, and established other rules by which they would operate.

All sectors then submitted an operations plan to NOAA Fisheries and, under that plan, were responsible for policing themselves. The primary responsibility of a sector is to keep within its quota and account for its catch.

While most sectors have done a great job meeting this responsibility, Sector IX failed miserably over many years.

The former sector president, Carlos Rafael, is now behind bars for years of falsifying catch information, such as calling catch of low-quota, high-value cod, high-quota, lower-value haddock. He also admitted to tax evasion and bulk money laundering, all from his fishing operation.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard Times

 

Fishing officials ease restrictions in waters off New England

January 8, 2018 — After 15 years of research and deliberation, federal fishing officials this week approved a landmark set of regulations that will open a large swath of the region’s waters to fishing while maintaining other closures to protect vulnerable species.

The opening of one area east of Nantucket, closed since the 1990s, could be extremely lucrative, allowing fishermen to catch as much as $160 million worth of additional scallops in the coming fishing season, regulators estimate.

“The scallop industry is thrilled to be able to access significant scallop beds,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington D.C., which represents the scallop industry. “Allowing rotational scallop fishing on these areas will increase the scallop fishery revenue in the short term and in the long run.”

Yet many in the industry had hoped that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would go further.

Minkiewicz and others objected to the decision to maintain the ban on fishing on the northern edge of Georges Bank, where there are significant amounts of scallops but also vulnerable species such as juvenile cod.

Minkiewicz said the industry would continue to press NOAA to reconsider opening those fishing grounds.

“The scallop industry respectfully disagrees with [NOAA’s] conclusion that allowing limited scallop fishing [there] . . . was not consistent with the law,” he said.

NOAA officials said that opening such areas could be harmful to some fish.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Can you hear me? NOAA studies boat noise and fish

January 8, 2018 — NOAA scientists studying sounds made by Atlantic cod and haddock at spawning sites in the Gulf of Maine have found that vessel traffic noise is reducing the distance over which these animals can communicate with each other.

As a result, daily behavior, feeding, mating, and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish may be altered, according to a study published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Three sites in Massachusetts Bay included two inside Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, a region well known to whale-watchers from the Cape because whales feed in the plankton-rich bank, and one inshore south of Cape Ann. All were monitored for three months by researchers at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) laboratory in Woods Hole, and at the sanctuary offices in Scituate.

Vocalizations, such as Atlantic cod grunts and haddock knocks, were recorded by bottom-mounted instruments at each site during spawning in winter and spring.

“We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity for Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks,” said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist in the passive acoustics group at the NEFSC and SBNMS and lead author of the study.

“Both fluctuated dramatically during the study. The sound levels appear to be largely driven by large vessel activity, and we found a signification positive correlation with the number of Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracked vessels at two of the three sites.”

AIS is an automatic tracking system, used on ships and by vessel traffic services. It provides information on a vessel, such as its unique identification number, position, course and speed, which can be displayed on a shipboard radar or electronic chart display.

Read the full story at the Wicked Local

 

‘Groundbreaking’ fish protection plan in place in Northeast

January 5, 2018 — The following is excerpted from an article by Doug Fraser of the Cape Cod Times:

After 14 years of research, negotiations, hearings and two additional years of review, New England has a plan that uses science and the latest technology to decide which areas are important for the critical life stages of fish and shellfish species and how to protect them.

John Bullard, the regional director of NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, informed New England Fishery Management Council Chairman John Quinn in a letter Wednesday that his agency had approved most of their fish habitat protection plan.

“It was a massive undertaking and your staff, especially Michelle Bachman, should be proud of their groundbreaking work that went into supporting this amendment,” Bullard wrote in the letter. The council staff, along with researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service, state fisheries agencies, and universities, especially the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, put together models that incorporated photographic and other surveys of the ocean bottom with known areas of fish concentration and other research on spawning and other life stages, that helped the council evaluate what should be protected and how.

“The fact that it dragged on so long, people miss how groundbreaking this really is,” said Tom Nies, the New England council’s executive director. Two decades ago, habitat closures were decided based on drawing a line around areas where fish were congregating, Nies said. Now, with a model that compares the sea bed with the impact of fishing, they can make decisions he feels will have greater significance to restoring and protecting fish stocks. Plus, the habitat plan also set aside research areas to investigate the link between habitat and fish productivity, a piece of the puzzle that has seen relatively little conclusive research.

“If you compare where we are with this amendment in terms of how they were developed and analyzed versus the original habitat areas in 2002 and 2003, we are light years ahead of where we were then,” Nies said.

Scallopers from both the big boat and small boat fleets, which are often at odds, traveled to Washington in October to lobby [U.S. Rep. William] Keating and other congressmen on getting NMFS to finish its review of the habitat plan and open the area up to scalloping before that population died off. Their message was that allowing them into scallop-rich, nonessential fish habitat meant they spent far less time towing their heavy dredges through areas fish do use.

“From our perspective, it’s really heartening that they heard our concerns,” said Seth Rolbein, director of the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, speaking for the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

David Frulla, an attorney and lobbyist representing limited access scallop vessels, and Fisheries Survival Fund attorney Andrew Minkiewicz agreed the council and NOAA made the right decision in closing the Great South Channel and opening the scallop grounds in what is known as Closed Area I. But they felt that there was just as much evidence to open up a portion of a second closed area on Georges Bank over 100 miles east of the Cape that had historically produced as much as 50 million pounds of harvested scallops. Bullard said more information would be needed for his agency to do that right now.

“There are only so many highly productive scallop beds, and this is one of them,” Minkiewicz said. Frulla admitted that the bottom there is more complex and may be harder to determine its value to fish, but Minkiewicz said adding another prime scallop area keeps scallopers away from the bottom where fish do congregate.

Assistant Regional Administrator Michael Pentony told Quinn in an email that his agency expected to publish the final rule containing the regulations to implement the plan this spring.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times