Saving Seafood

Mass. Senators and Congressmen Call on Obama Administration for More Public Input on Marine Monuments

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — October 13, 2015 — Both Massachusetts Senators and three Massachusetts Congressmen have written to President Obama calling on him to further engage regional industry stakeholders before advancing any plans to use his Executive Authority to designate a marine National Monument off the coast of New England. The Monument would potentially include Cashes Ledge in the Gulf of Maine and several of the New England Canyons and Seamounts.

In the letter, Sens. Warren and Markey, and Reps. Lynch, Keating, and Moulton urge the President to “include additional opportunities for our Massachusetts constituents to express their views on the potential designations in the context of ongoing conservation efforts,” as well as “provide more information on the potential designations, especially the objectives, geographic scope, and possible limits to activities, to help inform these additional discussions.” To date there has only been one opportunity for public input, a “town hall” meeting held last month in Providence, Rhode Island.

Their letter also notes that many of the areas under consideration for a monument designation already enjoy substantial protections. Specifically, the New England Fishery Management Council “has had in place protections for Cashes Ledge for more than a decade,” and “is currently considering management actions to protect Deep Sea corals in the region.”

The text of the letter is reproduced below:

Dear Mr. President:

For centuries, the ocean has been critical to the economy and culture of Massachusetts. As Members of Congress representing Massachusetts, we are working to ensure our coastal communities continue to thrive in the 21st century. A healthy ocean is critical for healthy coastal economies. The ocean economy of Massachusetts is worth more than $6 billion, according to the most recent economic data available. Given the unprecedented challenges our fishing industry, and the shore-side businesses that depend on it, have faced in recent years, we are acutely aware of the need for collaboration with our communities, the fishing industry, and other businesses that rely on the ocean and its resources.

We understand you are considering using your authority to make national marine monument designations of a number of submarine habitats–five coral canyons, four submarine seamounts, and an underwater mountain range known as Cashes Ledge–in the New England region of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the Chairman of the New England Fisheries Management Council discussed in his statement at NOAA’ s September 15111 public listening session in Rhode Island, the Council has long recognized the unique habitats of the deep canyons, seamounts and Cashes Ledge. The Council has had in place protections for Cashes Ledge for more than a decade and ultimately supported the continuation of protections for it in the Essential Fish Habitat amendment they adopted earlier this year. The Council is also currently considering management actions to protect Deep Sea corals in the region. Stakeholders not represented on the Council also conveyed their recognition of the conservation values of these areas.

While you have clear authority under the Antiquities Act to designate national monuments, we ask that you engage stakeholders further before making a final decision. We ask you to build on last month’s listening session in Rhode Island by expanding your stakeholder engagement efforts to include additional opportunities for our Massachusetts constituents to express their views on the potential designations in the context of ongoing conservation efforts. We also ask that you provide more information on the potential designations, especially the objectives, geographic scope, and possible limits to activities, to help inform these additional discussions.

Thank you for your attention to these requests. We look forward to further discussions with you and your administration about these designations and other actions important to support the economies of our Massachusetts’s coastal communities.

Sincerely,

Edward J. Markey

United States Senator

Elizabeth Warren

United States Senator

Stephen Lynch

Member of Congress

William Keating

Member of Congress

Seth Moulton

Member of Congress

Read the letter here

 

Reps. Moulton, Keating, Pingree Press NOAA on Monitors

The following is a excerpt from a story originally published on Friday, October 9, in the Gloucester Daily Times: 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. (Gloucester Daily Times) — October 9, 2015 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton was among a trio of congressional members who met Friday with officials from NOAA Fisheries on at-sea monitoring, telling the regulators to their face what they’ve been saying all along in official correspondence and verbal declarations.

“We made it very clear that we don’t support the costs of at-sea monitoring being shifted to the fishermen,” Moulton said after the meeting.

Moulton, along with fellow representatives William Keating, D-Mass., and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, organized the meeting to help find an alternative to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plan to stop paying for at-sea monitors on groundfish boats and shift the costs — estimated at $710 per day per covered vessel — to the federal permit holders.

“It was contentious at times, but I think we came out with some positive steps forward to address this issue,” Moulton said. “They’re not stonewalling us, but it’s clear we don’t see eye-to-eye.”

Moulton said the congressional members met, among others, with William Karp, NOAA’s science and research director at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and came away with three areas that could provide the fishermen some relief moving forward:

— A Keating proposal on behalf of hook-and-line fishermen on Cape Cod to reduce the level of at-sea monitoring coverage because of their low levels of bycatch;

— A more thorough examination of the potential cost savings afforded by electronic monitoring; and

— Exploring the possibility of Congress making NOAA’s funding of at-sea monitoring a mandatory cost rather than a discretionary cost.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

FISHTOWN LOCAL: Something smells fishy

October 12, 2015 — Okay, here we go again. Another behind-the-scenes effort has begun behind our backs, the way it happened before. The newest NOAA effort has begun toward creating a marine national monument in the Cashes Ledge area — about 80 miles east of Gloucester — as well as the deep sea coral and seamount area south of Georges Bank, traditional catch areas for our fishermen.

Former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, now secretary of state, has been quixotic and disturbingly vague on the issue, hinting that following the model of Maryland’s sanctuaries and in the Great Lakes, “We also have plans in the works, which we are pursuing for still another significant one in the Atlantic, where we don’t have the kind of presence that we want and should.” Kerry added that the Obama administration is working with senators “engaged in that particular area in order to make that happen.” Unfortunately, current senators Markey and Warren have stayed silent on the subject.

Meanwhile, concerned by what it regards as a lack of transparency and undue influence from conservationists, a House committee on Wednesday sought more answers from the Obama administration on potential plans to create a national marine monument off the coast of New England that would be fully off limits to fishing or sea-bed harvesting.

Read the full opinion piece by Fishtown Local’s Gordon Baird at the Gloucester Daily Times

Rep. Frank Guinta calls for NOAA to stop at-sea monitoring or pay for it

October 8, 2015 — A New Hampshire congressman is turning up the heat on the at-sea monitoring issue, filing a bill that would terminate the current at-sea monitoring program for fishing sectors in the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery until NOAA agrees to fully fund it.

U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta’s bill would exempt fishermen from having to “comply with the independent, third-party monitoring program” required by the NOAA unless the federal fisheries regulator “fully funds the program with funds appropriated from the administration.”

The goal of the legislation, Guinta said, is to preclude the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from shifting the cost of at-sea monitoring — estimated at $710 per day per trip — from its budget to the federal permit holders — of which, he said, there remain only nine active groundfish sector boats working out of New Hampshire ports.

“I really question why the federal government would force their financial obligation onto the boats,” said Guinta, who represents New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District and is a member of the House Financial Services Committee. “It’s unfortunate what the federal government is doing. If they require it, they should at the very least pay for it.”

Guinta also questioned why the at-sea monitoring is so expensive and why NOAA contracts the services out to third-party operators rather than performing the tasks with its own staff.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

ANTHONY FERNANDES: Mismanagement, not ‘overfishing,’ threatens industry

October 8, 2015 — “Overfishing” or “overfished” are terms used when, for any reason, the stock level of a species of fish is not at a sustainable level. It doesn’t matter what the cause.

The long-term use of these terms has hurt the fishermen in the eyes of the public. The continued use of the terms insinuates that the fisherman have been somehow circumventing the laws or pirating fish. So it’s difficult to get support from politicians or the public, and it has empowered the green groups who have grown with more donations and have been more aggressive with NMFS to add more restrictions for fisherman and increase observers under the umbrella of ending overfishing, no matter what the cost or the consequences.

Because the stock is declared overfished, the solution always falls to more layers of fishing restrictions in the form of an emergency action, a framework adjustment or a full amendment, depending on the severity. There is no requirement to find out exactly what was wrong with prior plans, leaving no feedback loop to correct the problem or problems. Nobody is held accountable for their analysis, their science or their models, therefore it rarely changes and the burden is placed squarely on the backs of the fishing industry: Somehow, it is their fault, even though they fished according to what NMFS and these regulations required and landed what they were legally allowed to land.

So here we go with another framework. Is this one going to work? Why didn’t the previous dozens of frameworks work for Gulf of Maine cod? Are we doing the exact same thing over and over and expecting different results?

A good analogy for this was watching the recent Hurricane Joaquin coming across the Atlantic and hitting the Bahamas. There were several tracking models displaying what the projected track was going to be up the East Coast. I counted 10 different tracks by 10 different models. The one that was correct was the Euro model, and it was the one I saw the least. It was right, the rest of the models were wrong in there projections, but used together one could understand the scope of possibilities, and that was helpful. But if they had only shown one model and that was wrong, how helpful would that have been?

That is why the fishing industry is so frustrated. It has been under the wrong model or fishery plan for a long time now for Gulf of Maine cod. How much would you depend on the Weather Channel if they were wrong over and over because they were using the wrong model or only showing the result of one model or using the wrong data?

The fishermen are not the cause of the failure of these fishery management plans. They fish within the regulations approved by NMFS. They all have satellite tracking devices (required for all groundfish boats for more than 10 years) to show NMFS where they are fishing and they bring observers by law whenever NMFS says so. The fishery management plans fail because the plan itself is flawed in some way. The industry has been on this rollercoaster ride since the early 1990s. A better term to use next time a stock update determines a fish species is below a level required by the fishery management plan should be: The stock is mismanaged and mismanaging still occurring.

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

 

At “Our Oceans” Conference in Chile, Obama announces the first new marine sanctuaries in 15 years

“Several advocacy groups have been pressing the administration to declare two new national marine monuments off New England’s coast: Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts, which are home to a major kelp forest and network of deepwater corals, respectively. But some local fishing operators raised objections to the designations of the two areas in the run up to the global conference, and the president did not use his executive authority to put them off limits.”

The following is an excerpt from a Washington Post story, written by Chelsea Harvey with contributions from Juliet Eilperin: 

WASHINGTON (The Washington Post) October 5, 2015 — In a video message to conference attendees, President Obama announced plans for two new marine sanctuaries, one off the coast of Maryland, and the other in Lake Michigan. They’ll be the first new national marine sanctuaries designated by the federal government in the past 15 years.

One of these sanctuaries will be an 875-square mile section of Lake Michigan off the shore of Wisconsin, which is recognized for its collection of nearly 40 known shipwrecks, some of which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The other sanctuary is a 14-square mile area of the Potomac River, which includes Maryland’s Mallows Bay – an area known for its ecological significance, according to the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and home to bald eagles, herons, beavers, river otters and numerous species of fish.

…

Several advocacy groups have been pressing the administration to declare two new national marine monuments off New England’s coast: Cashes Ledge and the New England Canyons and Seamounts, which are home to a major kelp forest and network of deepwater corals, respectively. But some local fishing operators raised objections to the designations of the two areas in the run up to the global conference, and the president did not use his executive authority to put them off limits.

Marine national monuments differ from marine sanctuaries in that they can be established by presidential proclamation, whereas sanctuaries are designated by NOAA and require extensive public input – however, they can offer similar protections and human use restrictions over marine ecosystems.

The United States is also announcing several other plans aimed at protecting marine resources. In Chile for the conference, Secretary of State John F. Kerry announced the launch of Sea Scout, a global initiative targeting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing by uniting world leaders, expanding technology and information-sharing and identifying illegal fishing hot spots. NOAA also has plans to expand the development of a technology known as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite, which detects boats and may help alert nations to illegal fishing activities. The technology will be implemented in several nations in 2016, including Indonesia and the Philippines.

The Sea Scout initiative “provides a real opportunity to improve coordination and information sharing around the world as a way to combat illegal fishing,” said Beth Lowell, senior campaign director for Oceana, in a statement to The Post. According to Lowell, the biggest challenges to combating illegal fishing are an untraceable global seafood supply chain and a lack of enforcement. And on these fronts, there’s still more to be done.

“The first step to effectively stop IUU fishing and seafood fraud is to require catch documentation for all seafood sold in the U.S.,” Lowell said. “While Oceana applauds the president’s task force for taking great steps in the right direction, full-chain traceability is ultimately needed for all U.S. seafood to ensure that it’s safe, legally caught and honestly labeled.”

Read the full story from the Washington Post

Read Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks here

 

GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES: Mixed messages for the fishing industry

October 5, 2015 — Last week brought a mix of news for the region’s fishermen, some of it straight-out bad, some offering a glimmer of hope for the future of one of New England’s oldest industries.

We’ll start with the bad news — the state’s rejection of the so-called “Gloucester Plan” for distributing the last batch of U.S. fishery disaster aid to Massachusetts fishermen with federal permits.

The local plan would have shared the remaining $6 million and $7 million of federal among fishermen with federal permits who landed at least 20,000 pounds of groundfish in any season between 2012 and 2014. That plan would have ensured the money went to the boats most affective by the closing of large swaths of the North Atlantic to fishing.

Instead, the stead opted for a plan with much lower standards.

Read the editorial from the Gloucester Daily Times

Obama announces new measures to crack down on illegal fishing

WASHINGTON — October 5, 2015 — The Obama administration on Monday announced plans to further crack down on illegal fishing, a global problem that can hurt both fishing communities in impoverished nations and the seafood industry in the United States.

As part of a package of initiatives announced in a video message to participants at a major oceans conference in Chile, President Barack Obama announced new steps to tackle illegal fishing. They include the launching of a program called “Sea Scout,” designed to increase cooperation among nations seeking to identify and prosecute illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing around the globe.

Experts say the problem is extensive around the world.

The Pew Charitable Trusts said the issue is difficult to quantify, but that experts estimate that illegal and unreported fishing cost the global economy up to $23 billion annually.

Read the full story from the Miami Herald

NOAA Announces Gulf Red Grouper to Close Oct. 8

October 2, 2015 — Recreational Fishing Season will close on October 8, 2015

The recreational harvest of red grouper in the Gulf of Mexico will close at12:01 a.m., local time, on October 8, 2015, and remain closed until January 1, 2016.

Red grouper catches in early 2015 were substantially higher than the same time periods in previous years. Because the recreational red grouper season closed in October 2014 under a higher bag limit, in May 2015, at the request of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, NOAA Fisheries reduced the bag limit to 2 fish with the intent to extend the fishing season for the entire year. However, fishermen have told us abundant red grouper are being found closer to shore in shallower water this year, making them more accessible to the recreational sector. Despite the reduced bag limit, the 2015 landings data indicate the 1,900,000-pound recreational annual catch limit will be harvested by October 7, 2015.

Read the full story from The Fishing Wire

Fisheries of the South Atlantic; South Atlantic Fishery Management Council; Public Meeting

October 2, 2015 — The following notice was released by NOAA:

ACTION: Notice Of A Public Meeting.

SUMMARY: The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council will hold a meeting of its Habitat Protection and Ecosystem-Based Management (Habitat) Advisory Panel (AP) in N. Charleston, SC. The meeting is open to the public.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

  • DATES:
  • ADDRESSES:
  • FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
  • SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
    • Special Accommodations

DATES: The meeting will be held from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, November 17, 2015, and from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 18, 2015.

ADDRESSES:

Meeting address: The meeting will be held at the Florida Fish and Wildlife and Resources Institute (FWRI), Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 100 8th Ave. SE., 3370, St. Petersburg, FL; telephone: (727) 896-8626.

Council address: South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 4055 Faber Place Drive, Suite 201, N. Charleston, SC 29405.

Read the full notice from the Federal Register here