Saving Seafood

The Battle Over Fish Farming In The Open Ocean Heats Up, As EPA Permit Looms

September 19, 2019 — Americans eat an average of 16 pounds of fish each year, and that number is growing. But how to meet our demand for fish is a controversial question, one that is entering a new chapter as the Environmental Protection Agency seeks to approve the nation’s only aquaculture pen in federal waters.

Fish farming has been positioned by its boosters as a sustainable alternative to wild-caught seafood and an economic driver that would put our oceans to work. So far, restrictions on where aquaculture operations can be located have kept the U.S. industry relatively small. In 2016, domestic aquaculture in state-controlled waters accounted for about $1.6 billion worth of seafood, or about 20 percent of the country’s seafood production.

But the biggest potential home for aquaculture, federally controlled ocean waters, has so far been off limits. States control up to three miles offshore from their coastlines, but between three and 200 miles falls under federal control. Attempts to introduce aquaculture in federal waters have so far been stymied by concerns about aquaculture’s impact on ocean ecosystems and wild fisheries.

Read the full story at WVTF

With environmentalist support, Alaska Rep Don Young files anti-aquaculture bill

May 7, 2019 — Alaska Rep. Don Young filed legislation on Thursday 2 May that would ban U.S. officials from allowing the establishment of new commercial aquaculture operations in federal waters.

Young’s bill, the Keep Fin Fish Free Act, would keep both the Secretary of the Interior and the Commerce Secretary from permitting fish farms in the United States’ Exclusive Economic Zone unless specifically authorized by Congress.

Young, a Republican, is the senior member of the House of Representatives. He also is a key legislator when it comes to legislation regarding the seafood industry.

“The seafood industry is critical to Alaska’s economy, and we must be doing all we can to protect the health and integrity of our state’s wild fish stock,” he said in a statement. “If not properly managed, industrial aquaculture operations threaten Alaska’s unique ecosystem with non-native and genetically modified fish species. My legislation takes needed steps to prevent the unchecked spread of aquaculture operations by reigning in the federal bureaucracy, and empowering Congress to determine where new aquaculture projects should be conducted.”

Young’s bill was immediately supported by numerous environmental organizations, including Friends of the Earth, the Institute for Fisheries Resources and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Local Catch hosts discussion on supply chain issues in wake of Sea to Table expose

October 9, 2018 — Local Catch, a community-of-practice made up of fishermen, organizers, researchers, and consumers, had its first webinar in a series exploring the implications of the Associated Press story on Sea to Table.

That story, which was published in June, accused the company of falsifying the origins of its seafood and potentially being linked to slave labor in Indonesia. Given the overlap in mission between Sea to Table and a number of other fishing organizations and nonprofits, Local Catch’s first webinar – titled “Slow Fish 201: Good, clean, fair seafood supply chains” – was focused on discussing what other suppliers can do counteract any negative publicity, and how they can ensure they avoid similar pitfalls.

“What is the overall impact of the Sea to Table Story?” said Colles Stowell, moderator of the discussion and the founder of One Fish Foundation.

Coordinator of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance Brett Tolley said that the accusations levied against Sea to Table, and the adoption of similar policies by many organizations, are an inevitable symptom of the rising interest by consumers in the sustainability and origins of their seafood. The Slow Fish movement, at its core, developed as a way to connect people to harvesters and smaller fishing communities.

“The popularity of this model is giving rise to co-optation,” Tolley said. He pointed to the Fulton Fish Market, which re-branded itself with the moniker “community supported fishery,” which Tolley said is at odds with the smaller, local seafood driven model of Slow Fish.

Challenges in supplying sustainable fish with a known origin story are also not new to  TwoXSea co-founder Innokenty Belov. Belov – who first got into the sustainable seafood business with his San Francisco, California-based restaurant “Fish. Restaurant” – has witnessed firsthand how supply chains can be muddied and difficult to navigate.

“We would have local fishermen bringing us seafood, and we would be able to tell the story of those men and women and what they did every day to bring that bounty into our kitchen,” Belov said of the early days of the restaurant. “There was not nearly enough fish being caught in our local area, being caught in the way we wanted it to be caught.”

That meant going to wholesalers. Belov recounted one wholesaler that provided him with yellowfin tuna for fish tacos, which was reportedly from a boat out of the Marshall Islands.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US foodservice giants urged to buy local seafood

September 5, 2018 — A group of U.S. non-governmental organizations have begun a nationwide campaign urging the nation’s three largest foodservice management companies to buy more local and community-based products, including seafood.

The Community Coalition for Real Meals, which includes the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA), Friends of the Earth, and Real Food Challenge, say that Aramark, Compass Group, and Sodexo need to reorient their business models away from “a system of exclusive relationships with ‘Big Food’ corporations toward greater investments in real food that support producers, communities, and the environment,” according to one of the organization’s statements.

The coalition of farmers, fishers, farmworkers, and others kicked off the campaign with a march against Aramark at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington, on 2 September. In the next few months, the Coalition will be holding a series of coordinated actions across the country to urge Aramark, Compass Group, and Sodexo to meet their “real food” targets within five years.

“The reality we’re facing is that the globalized seafood market leads to massive consolidation, where the average seafood travels thousands of miles from point of harvest to point-of-consumption, and is fraught with labor and environmental destruction,” said Julianna Fischer, a NAMA community organizer. ”We envision a different reality – where ecologically responsible, community-based food producers are able to feed their communities first, are paid a fair price, and those working across the food chain are afforded lives with dignity.”

Aramark, Compass Group, and Sodexo, which together manage over half of the country’s cafeterias at universities, hospitals, and other institutions, purchase billions of dollars worth of food from “multinational corporations that pay workers and producers unlivable wages,” the coalition said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Sentencing Approaches for New England’s Carlos Rafael

July 23, 2017 — One of the biggest fishing magnates in the country could be sentenced to prison this coming week, and the forfeiture of his boats could be a big hit for the Massachusetts port where he amassed a small empire.

Between his scalloping and groundfishing boats, Carlos Rafael – nicknamed “the Codfather” — came to be the largest single owner of fishing vessels in New England, and possibly in the country.

But in 2015, undercover IRS agents posed as Russian criminals and convinced him they wanted to buy his entire fleet. Rafael unpacked an elaborate criminal enterprise to the agents — one he said he’d been carrying out for three decades.

Court records show that Rafael valued his business at $175 million. He told the undercover agents the value came from the way he cheated the government quota system. Rafael’s men would haul in a more valuable fish — like cod — and report it as a cheaper species with a much greater quota. Now Rafael is facing prison time for counts including tax evasion and bulk cash smuggling — all of which he admitted to.

But people in New Bedford want to know: What will become of the 13 fishing boats — and all the permits attached to them — that were tied to Rafael’s crimes? Will they be auctioned off on the open market, held by an entity such as the city of New Bedford or perhaps removed from circulation?

Read the full story at NPR

At U.N., Brett Tolley Touts Small-Scale Fisheries

June 14, 2017 — Fisheries activist Brett Tolley of Chatham has told many people about the plight of small-scale fishermen like his father, who left the industry because he couldn’t compete with big corporate interests. Last week, he told that story to world leaders in a special forum at the United Nations in New York.

A proud member of a fourth-generation fishing family, Tolley works as a community organizer and policy advocate for the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, which lobbies for healthy fisheries and fishing communities. Last week, at the invitation of the Slow Food International Network, Tolley testified as part of a panel at the U.N. Ocean Conference.

In contrast with fast food, Slow Food represents traditional and regional cuisine from local plants, livestock and seafood.

“It’s good, clean and fair food for all,” Tolley said. The movement was born around the same time as the agricultural crisis in the 1980s, acknowledging that high-volume, low-cost industrial farms were destroying small family farms and the communities they supported.

“The industrial food system is not working,” Tolley said. Mega-farms not only cause social problems, but they don’t actually achieve the goal of providing healthier food for the masses, he added. Intense industrial farming can also leave tracts of land unusable because of pesticides and other environmental threats. With small-scale farmers, “they inherently care about the health of the land,” Tolley said. The parallels between agriculture and commercial fishing are clear, with small-scale day boat fishermen battling against large corporations to stay profitable.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Chronicle

MASSACHUSETTS: Did catch shares enable the Codfather’s fishing fraud?

May 1, 2017 — Carlos Rafael’s guilty plea late last month of falsifying fish quotas, conspiracy and tax evasion has prompted renewed criticism of one of the most contentious parts of the New England groundfish fishery’s management system: catch shares.

Rafael, who dubbed himself “The Codfather,” owned one of the largest commercial fishing fleets in the United States, and for some community fishermen in New England, his case represents consolidation run amok. Consolidating fishing permits, they say, also centralizes power, making fraud more likely.

But for environmentalists who support catch shares as a way to reduce overfishing, consolidation isn’t inevitable. They say Rafael’s case highlights the need for better monitoring and fraud protections to prevent the sort of cheating that can plague any fishery management system.

Catch share schemes, in which fishermen are allocated rights to catch a certain amount of fish, operate on the principle that privatizing a resource and giving people a greater stake in its health will lead them to conserve it.

But in New England, catch shares led to fewer fishermen controlling more of the resource, according to Niaz Dorry, the coordinating director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, a community fishing group. Catch shares boot out smaller fishermen and block new fishermen from the fishery as a wealthy minority amass quota and drive up the price.

“What they really do is create a system that allows a few entities — who are not necessarily people who actually fish — to control almost the entire system,” Dorry told SeafoodSource.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Fish group seeks community organizer

December 30, 2016 — Gloucester-based Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance is looking to add an experienced community organizer to help bolster its goals of changing the current food system to build healthy fisheries and fishing communities.

The new organizer, according to NAMA Coordinating Director Niaz Dorry, will be a point person to sustain and expand the organization’s decade-long efforts at “achieving food justice and seafood market transformation.”

“What we’re really looking for is a person who can really help us do a better job of connecting all the dots,” Dorry said. “We had a community organizer that was working for us for a couple years who has gone off to do other things, so we saw this as an opportunity to evaluate what our needs are at this moment and tweak the position for what is happening now.”

The person will also work to expand NAMA’s reach into the public market by maximizing the buying power of a coalition of consumers — including health care and educational organizations — within the fishing communities.

Dorry said the position probably will be based in Gloucester, though NAMA is open to other arrangements for the right candidate. The organization has set Jan. 15 as the deadline for receiving cover letters and resumes, though that could change depending on the response.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center to host Seafood Throwdown

August 29, 2016 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, in collaboration with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Mass in Motion New Bedford/New Bedford Farmer’s Market, is pleased to present a Seafood Throwdown on AHA Night, Thursday, September 8th. The free event will take place beginning at 5:00 pm in Custom House Square located in downtown New Bedford.

Chefs Henry Bousquet (Culinary Arts Instructor at NB Voc-Tech) and Chris Cronin (Executive Chef at Farm & Coast Market, Padanaram) will compete to create a winning dish using a surprise locally caught seafood ingredient (usually an abundant, underappreciated, and underutilized species of seafood) and local produce. Judging their creations will be Heather Atwood, author of In Cod We Trust, Maria Lawton, author of Azorean Cooking: From My Family’s Table to Yours, and Andy Tomolonis, author of Organic Hobby Farming: A Practical Guide to Earth-Friendly Farming in Any Space.

Seafood Throwdowns are a collaboration between the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance and fishing communities. They provide a unique opportunity to learn more about our local seafood, local fishing fleet and fisheries related issues affecting our ocean, fishing economies and coastal food systems. Chefs Bousquet and Cronin will educate and entertain you with their skills as they demonstrate how to work with whole, fresh, and very local seafood. The chefs can bring three of their favorite ingredients and once they discover the secret seafood they will be using, they are given $25 and 15 minutes to shop the Custom House Square Farmers’ Market for ingredients. After their shopping spree, they have one hour to cook and present their entry for the judge’s consideration.

Following the Throwdown, the public is invited to the Fishing Heritage Center (38 Bethel Street) to view the exhibit From Boat to Table and meet the judges (Atwood, Lawton, and Tomolonis) who will sign copies of their books from 7:30-8:30.

NEFMC Declares Amendment 18 Flawed Then Votes It In

November 4, 2015 — PLYMOUTH, Mass. —“The core message, across the board, is—we don’t want this fishery owned and controlled by a small group of people.”

That was the consensus, as expressed by Brett Tolley, of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, delivered to the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) during their latest deliberations on Amendment 18 to the groundfish management plan.

Tolley continued, “That’s no good for communities or the fish or the seafood system. And right now, at the end of this process, we’re debating whether seven or five entities should control this fishery….So there’s something fundamentally flawed with this public process.”

In late September, NEFMC was considering measures that would impose limits on the amount of fishery permits and/or Potential Sector Contribution (PSC) that individuals or groups may hold, as well as other measures that might promote fleet diversity or enhance sector management.

But fishermen and others at the meeting said Amendment 18 failed to achieve the goals outlined by NEFMC.

“It feels like we’re making things up on the fly,” said NEFMC member John Pappalardo. “The document here doesn’t answer a lot of questions that have come up today. I’m still toying with the idea of making a motion to scuttle this whole thing and send it back for further development….There’s a sense that folks just want to get this over with, but I’m not sure that’s the best course of action right now.”

Ed Barrett, a commercial fisherman from Marshfield, Mass., said he predicted, during the development of Amendment 16, that sector management would never work.

“We’re here in Amendment 18, pretty far down the road in a process that’s included years of scoping and committee meetings, and we have an amendment that’s not going to fix a thing,” Barrett said. “Right now, all we’re arguing over is the minutiae of a bad business model. This has been a waste of taxpayer money. It has failed me as a business owner, it’s failed my family’s business, it’s failed my fishing community. We need to stop this amendment right here. We need to go forward with something that will fix the problems that are killing the industry right now.”

“Give us the names of the five or seven guys who are going to own this fishery,” said Sandwich, Mass., fisherman William Chaprales. “We’re going too fast. Slow down. Let’s shelve this.”

Chaprales referred to the report produced by consulting firm Compass Lexecon (CL), which was charged in 2013 by NEFMC to determine if excessive market share currently exists in the groundfishery and to recommend potential constraints that could prevent excessive shares in the future. CL concluded there was no evidence of excessive market share and recommended accumulation limits in the 15.5 to 25 percent range on stock-specific potential sector contributions, and said lesser controls could reduce efficiency unnecessarily. PSC is an individual fisherman’s historical share of landings of groundfish species.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s Voice