NSC Archives - Saving Seafood

Statement from the Northeast Seafood Coalition on FY 2020 Appropriations and At-Sea Monitoring Funding

January 3, 2020 — The following was released by the Northeast Seafood Coalition:

Calendar year 2020 has begun with some positive news for commercial groundfish fishermen.

Thanks to the hard work of Senator Shaheen and fellow members of Congress, full funding has once again been secured through the FY 2020 federal appropriations legislation to cover at-sea monitoring (ASM) expenses for commercial groundfish fishermen!

Even better, for the first time, this legislation includes specific directives for NOAA Fisheries to improve the quality and utility of ASM and other fishery dependent data for the purpose of improving groundfish stock abundance estimates, along with the necessary funding to support implementation of these directives.

It has become clear that the future of the groundfish fishery depends on improving the apparent limitations of current stock assessments given their disconnect with the observations of fishermen on the water. It is likewise clear that until an understanding of true stock abundance is achieved, the groundfish fishery will not be sustainable under the financial burden of ASM expenses.

Consequently, securing this funding and these Congressional directives has been among the top priorities of the Northeast Seafood Coalition (NSC), and so we are profoundly grateful to Senator Shaheen for her effective leadership and enduring commitment to our fishery.

Our work is not over. Senator Shaheen’s appropriations legislation also directs NOAA to submit to her Committee a ‘spend plan’ for these funds. It is critical that NOAA Fisheries strictly adheres to the intent and directives of Congress and does not seek to misuse these funds to pursue their own objectives. NSC will be watching this closely.

Finally, it is critical that NOAA Fisheries and the New England Fishery Management Council understand that there is absolutely nothing in Senator Shaheen’s appropriations legislation suggesting that it was intended to support any specific measures to revise the monitoring program as are being contemplated within ongoing development of Amendment 23. NSC will be vigorous in objecting to any misrepresentations of Congressional intent in this regard.

For additional information contact Jackie Odell, Executive Director, Northeast Seafood Coalition, Cell (978) 836-7999, jackie@northeastseafoodcoalition.org

After census debacle, White House to knock out senior Commerce official

July 18, 2019 — The White House is pushing a top aide to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross out of the Trump administration, the first round of house-cleaning after the 2020 census debacle and clashes over tech policy.

In recent months, Commerce policy director Earl Comstock has angered Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, White House lawyers, members of the National Security Council and officials at the National Economic Council, according to five current and former administration officials. The irritation extends to the highest staff level of the White House, several officials stressed, citing both Comstock’s handling of the 2020 U.S. census’s citizenship question and the internal debate over spectrum policy as key areas of disagreement.

One former administration official said he could not think of anyone who “had pissed off as many senior White House officials” as Comstock, who critics allege often tried to exceed his own authority as a top Commerce policy staffer. Comstock also clashed with officials across federal agencies, according to one administration official.

While officials said the process of forcing out Comstock through a firing or resignation is underway, the date of his actual departure remains unclear. He was at the agency until the end of the day on Wednesday.

Read the full story at Politico

Millions of Salmon in Norway Killed by Algae Bloom

May 24, 2019 — About eight million farmed salmon have suffocated in northern Norway over the past week as a result of persistent algae bloom, an industry body estimated on Thursday, a blight that some experts suggest has been aggravated by climate change.

Norway is a dominant producer of farmed salmon, and the economic impact of the bloom is significant.

A statement from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries estimated the amount of salmon lost at 11,600 metric tons, worth about 720 million kroner, or more than $82 million. An industry group, the Norwegian Seafood Council, suggested the total could be much higher.

“Preliminary numbers point to eight million dead fish — corresponding to 40,000 metric tons of salmon that won’t reach markets,” Dag Sorli, a spokesman for the council, said in an email on Thursday. He put the value of the losses at 2.2 billion kroner.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Norwegian Seafood Council rep: Industry must “raise voice” about plant-based imitation seafood products

April 8, 2019 — There is a growing appetite among younger consumers, particularly millennials, for food and seafood that has an authentic story to tell, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC), which has been working directly with American consumers in recent years – through various focus groups – to understand what drives and deters modern seafood purchasing.

With the primary aim of helping Norwegian fisheries and the country’s aquaculture industry to develop new markets, NSC has been keeping a pulse on the consumption trends dominating in the United States, and has found that when it comes to seafood and other proteins, a good origin story can go a long way.

“Origin matters for the end-consumers,” Egil Ove Sundheim, the U.S. director of NSC, explained to SeafoodSource.

This seems especially so for millennials, the generation responsible for overhauling the ways in which food and mealtimes are experienced, and the demographic set to acquire the majority of purchasing power within the next decade, Sundheim said.

“In five, seven, 10 years, [millennials] will be the most important purchasers of food, as they start to build families,” he said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Record first-quarter revenues for Norway’s seafood exporters, but volume plummets

April 4, 2019 — Norway exported 640,000 metric tons (MT) of fisheries and aquaculture products worth a record NOK 25.6 billion (USD 3 billion, EUR 2.7 billion) in the first quarter of this year. While the volume represented a decline of 18 percent, the value was 7 percent or NOK 1.8 billion (USD 210.6 million, EUR 187.3 million), higher than in the corresponding period of 2018.

The Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC) highlighted that the volume drop would be just 2 percent if the pelagic category is excluded from the statistics.

“The volume decline in the pelagic category is due to lack of capelin this year, in addition to delays in the reporting of blue whiting from direct landings abroad,” Paul Aandahl, analyst with the NSC, said.

Fellow NSC analyst Ingrid Pettersen confirmed that the value of seafood exports in the first quarter reached a record high, and this was mainly driven by increased prices for some of the country’s most important species.

“There are good, stable market conditions, increased demand in our key markets, and a weak Norwegian kroner against both the U.S. dollar and the euro sets a record price for seafood exports,” she said.

The Scandinavian country exported 247,000 MT of salmon with a value of NOK 16.7 billion (USD 2 billion, EUR 1.7 billion) in Q1 2019, with the volume and value up 1 percent and 7 percent respectively year-on-year. The average price for fresh whole salmon through the quarter was NOK 68.78 (USD 8.05, EUR 7.16) per kilogram, up from NOK 67.45 (USD 7.89, EUR 7.02).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New England Council to Take up Issue of New Bedford Sectors IX and VII on Wednesday

April 17, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The New England Fisheries Management Council will take up the issue of the operations plans submitted by sector IX and sector VII, which represent the majority of groundfish vessels in New Bedford.

Many of these vessels, which were formerly members of Sector IX, have been prohibited from fishing until Sector IX came up with an acceptable mechanism to account for the illegal fishing and overages done by vessels belonging to Carlos Rafael that were in the sector.

The sector was strongly criticized by NMFS for failure to have an adequate plan to account for overharvests, to do proper record keeping, and to then take necessary steps to payback fish that was illegally harvested.

Instead of coming to an agreement, on the last day for filing sector membership, the vessels in Sector IX decamped en masse to Sector VII, which otherwise would have been shut down.

Sector VII vessels that have come from Sector IX still won’t be able to fish until a plan to pay back illegal harvests has been approved, but the vessels hope that by moving to an operating sector they may be able to lease their quotas.

Sector VII has written the council to say that for many years they have shared a sector manager with sector VIII, another sector in New Bedford. They said that with reduced catches, it was no longer viable for them to operate as a stand alone sector.

Sector manager Linda McCann wrote that they have one vessel groundfishing, and six vessels fishing for monkfish, and this is too small an amount of activity to sustain a separate sector.

She says the plan to merge with sector 8 was developed months ago, and communicated to NMFS.

She says “We didn’t realize we needed to justify to the fishing world why these internal decisions were made, or how we handle our internal business affairs. However, we feel compelled to do so in sight of recent politics, attacks and mischaracterizations of facts. Let us be clear, the decisions made to merge sector 7 membership into sector 8 has nothing to do with the sector 9 situation of the Carlos Rafael situation. “

Another letter, from the Northeast Seafood Coalition urges the council to set clear goals.

“As many Council members are painfully aware, the 28 offenses to which Mr. Rafael pled guilty and is now incarcerated for have created enormous turmoil throughout the fishery and the region. Part of the turmoil concerns the broader fishery management implications of starting a new fishing year with such a significant portion of the fishery’s sub-ACL not being made available to the fishery.

NSC recommends that the Council provide the Agency with their primary objectives and request the Agency use their administrative authority to consult with the respective sector boards to achieve the stated objectives.

NSC recommends the following objectives:

ACE overages be identified and paid back to the system. The timing and result of the resolution shall be consistent with a result that would have been possible had the 2018 NEF Sector 9 roster been the same as 2017.
Conditional upon resolution of the NEF Sector IX overages, ensure the groundfish sector system has access to the ACE associated with permits that are enrolled in NEF Sector VII.
Work with the NEF Sector VII to ensure the conditions they’ve listed in their March 26, 2018 letter are met and upheld.”

This story was originally published by Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

Study finds tuna fishermen who fish along ocean fronts can significantly boost revenue

February 21, 2018 — CORVALLIS, Ore. – Savvy Northwest anglers have long known that when patches of warm Pacific Ocean water drift closer to shore each summer, it’s time to chase after the feisty and tasty albacore tuna.

Now a new study confirms that tuna are more likely to be found in regions of the California Current System with certain oceanographic conditions – and that commercial fishermen who work those areas more frequently bring in up to three times the revenue of other tuna anglers.

Results of the study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation and led by Oregon State University, were published today in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

These oceanographic conditions are more complex than simply being warmer temperatures, said James Watson, an OSU marine ecologist and lead author on the study. Their technical name is Lagrangian Coherent Structures, though scientists often refer to them as “the skeletons of the sea.”

“Essentially they are physical ocean fronts where surface waters converge,” Watson said. “If you toss two tennis balls in the water and they converge quickly, it is considered a Lagrangian Coherent Structure, or LCS.”

“What we’ve found is that the stronger the convergence, the more likely it is to attract certain things, beginning with the aggregation of phytoplankton, which in turn attracts larger organisms like tuna – and, ultimately, tuna fishermen.”

The researchers sought to discover whether anglers were utilizing these LCSs and if so, whether it had an economic impact. They compiled data from a vessel monitoring system on the location of more than 1,000 fishing vessels every hour in the U.S. California Current Large Marine Ecosystem for a four-year period – a total of more than 340,000 trips. They then collected fisheries catch and price data.

Read the full story at KVAL

Seafood Council backs NOAA nominee

December 11, 2017 — The issue of who exactly will run NOAA for the Trump administration is gathering steam within the Beltway and without, with various special interest groups — fishing stakeholders, environmentalists, scientists, politicians et al — weighing in on the nomination of Barry Myers.

Myers, who most recently served as the chief executive officer of the private weather forecasting company AccuWeather, has been criticized in some quarters for lack of a scientific background and fears that he might begin dismantling the National Weather Service to give private weather forecasting companies an advantage.

There also has been concern that Myers would fall in line with other Trump appointees, such as EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, in downplaying the human role in climate change.

And what of fishing? Several stakeholders, such as the Northeast Seafood Coalition, have endorsed Myers’ candidacy, hoping that he will bring a new perspective to the ongoing battle between fishermen and NOAA Fisheries’ science team.

“In our region, NOAA science has struggled to accurately measure the abundance of fish stocks while fisheries management has been guided by management that has served the ‘weakest link’ in the complex,” NSC Executive Director Jackie Odell wrote in the coalition’s endorsement of Myers. “We believe Mr. Myers will bring a fresh and much-needed perspective and approach to strengthening the science underlying the management of our fishery, along with a commitment to achieving sustainability of not only these fish stocks, but also the fishing businesses that rely upon a well-managed fishery.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Norway’s Per Sandberg provides post-Brexit insight for the seafood sector

February 6, 2017 — Britain’s seafood industry will be radically transformed once it uncouples from the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), with much more emphasis placed on establishing management agreements and eradicating trade barriers, according to Per Sandberg, the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries.

Sandberg, who has now held the minister position for 30 months, was in London to discuss his country’s fisheries management with delegates at a new whitefish conference organized by the Norwegian Seafood Council (NSC). In his speech, he shared tales of his experiences working alongside the CFP from the perspective of being a non-E.U. member state.

“Being outside the CFP has naturally had an effect on how fisheries management has developed in Norway,” he said. “Although we have a good record of cooperation with the EU, being outside opens the door to more adaptive fisheries management. For instance, if we find that a measure is not having a desired effect, we can just change it without lengthy procedures. This makes our decision making process simpler and more transparent.”

Sandburg also addressed Brexit and how it will affect Norway.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Seafood coalition skeptical of proposed new rules

April 6, 2016 — The Northeast Seafood Coalition has submitted public comments for the proposed rules for the Northeast Fishery Management Plan that reiterate its lack of confidence in NOAA’s current system of scientific assessments for groundfish.

The comments from the Gloucester-based NSC, submitted to NOAA Fisheries before Tuesday’s deadline, question the reported status of the witch flounder stock and sets the fishing advocacy group in opposition to the proposed allowable biological catch limit of 460 metric tons or the 2016 fishing season.

“NSC expressed concern with the reported status of witch flounder during the public process,” the coalition said in its comments, which also reference the group’s “expressed concern that catch rates within the fishery are completely inconsistent with the reported stock status from the assessment.”

That concern with the methodology and accuracy of the stock assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is a familiar refrain throughout the NSC comments.

“NSC has been an active participant over the years in the scientific assessments for groundfish stocks,” it said in its comments. “Direct engagement in the process, however, has made NSC leadership grow more leery of groundfish assessments.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times