Saving Seafood

Environmentalists push for Atlantic Marine Monument

August 30, 2016 — President Obama made history last week when he more than quadrupled the size of a protected marine area off the coast of Hawaii, safeguarding fragile coral reefs and thousands of species that depend on the Pacific Ocean habitat.

Now conservationists hope the administration will protect the Atlantic Ocean’s deep-sea treasures.

Conservationists have called on the president to use his executive power to designate 6,180 square miles encompassing eight canyons and four seamounts as the New England Coral and Seamounts National Monument.

If the president heeds their advice, fishing groups warn the move would shut down portions of a productive $15 million lobster and crab fishery along the edges of the offshore canyons—and unnecessarily outlaw fishing within the zone’s borders for tuna and other open-ocean species that pass through the water column but don’t dwell on the seabed.

“What’s at issue is the lack of transparency in establishing a national monument,” said Robert Beal, executive director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which is in charge of managing near-shore fishery resources for 15 coastal states. “If these large boxes are drawn and large areas of the ocean are deemed off-limits, than there is going to be a lot of fishing opportunities displaced or stopped altogether.”

Typically, state and interstate fishing councils are part of the public debate on determining fishery closures and habitat protection zones. That’s how the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council moved to ban bottom trawling in 2015 along more than 35,000 square miles of seafloor from Long Island to North Carolina, just south of the proposed national monument area.

But with the Antiquities Act—a law presidents since Theodore Roosevelt have used to protect iconic landscapes such as Mount Olympus in Washington, the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and Muir Woods in California—Obama could decide to fully protect the region without input from the fishing industry.

Past presidents have mostly used the authority to preserve land from development. The first president to use the power offshore was George W. Bush, who established the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in 2006.

“It’s frustrating because that power is meant to close off the smallest amount of area as possible that needs protecting, and that’s not the case here,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a fishing industry advocacy group.

He said the proposed national monument boundaries outlined by Connecticut’s congressional delegation and led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., bans fishing far away from the most sensitive coral habitat and could unnecessarily hinder fishing industries that don’t target bottom-dwelling species. Vanasse’s group, along with the fisheries commission, is asking that if the regions are declared a national monument, fishing be allowed up to depths of 3,000 feet.

“If they really just want to protect the seamounts and the canyons, why would you want to stop fishing over them?” Vanasse said. “You don’t tell planes to stop flying over Yosemite.”

Read the full story at Take Part

Should the New England Aquarium be in the advocacy business?

July 30, 2015 — Hillgarth, now 62, has taken that zeal to spread awareness and compel change to a new level since becoming president and CEO of the aquarium in Boston, a city she had never visited before interviewing for the post.

Among her goals: more closely linking what the aquarium’s 1.3 million annual visitors experience and their interest in protecting the environment. Surveys there have shown that about 40 percent of visitors leave saying they want to do something to help the oceans; she aims to double that.

“We don’t have much time to wake the public to the issues,” she says. “There comes a point when things are so important in the environment that you can’t sit back and say nothing.”

But Hillgarth’s mix of scientific analysis and environmental concern has spurred some to question whether she may be pushing one of the region’s premier cultural institutions — which has more visitors than all but five other aquariums in North America — too far into an advocacy role.

They have raised concerns, for example, about the aquarium’s support of controversial legislation that would ban the sale of shark fins and its efforts to persuade the Obama administration to declare a marine monument in portions of the Gulf of Maine. The proposal has angered the region’s fishermen because it would ban fishing in those areas permanently. A monument is a federally designated protected area similar to a national park.

“I think it’s appropriate for the New England Aquarium to advocate for a greater appreciation and understanding of our oceans, but I think it’s inappropriate for a museum and cultural institution to use its resources for the advocacy of highly charged, controversial political positions,” says Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry. “I think Dr. Hillgarth should lead the aquarium in a way that it doesn’t become a pawn of the more extreme wing of the environmental movement.”

Vanasse and others have decried a potential presidential decision on a marine monument. They say it would circumvent a well-accepted legal process, one required by Congress, which applies to all other proposed fishing closures.

“I’m a big fan of the aquarium, but I think they’ve picked the wrong battle on this,” says Mayor Jon Mitchell of New Bedford, one of the nation’s top-grossing fishing ports.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

GLOUCESTER TIMES: Obama should hold firm on Cashes Ledge decision

July 12, 2016 — The Obama administration must hold firm to its decision earlier this year to reject so-called monument status for the vast swath of ocean around Cashes Ledge despite last-minute arm twisting from powerful environmental lobbying groups.

Earlier this spring, the administration passed on a proposal that he decree a large portion of the Gulf of Maine, including Cashes Ledge, a permanent “maritime national monument.” The edict, made through the federal Antiquities Act, would have come with little or no input from the citizenry at large or groups whose livelihoods are tied to the ocean, like the Northeast fishing industry.

Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, serves as a habitat for sharks, dolphins and sea turtles as well as migrating right whales. The area — more than 520 square miles is already off limits to fishing. There are no efforts on the part of the industry to change that.

“We’re not all nut cases here,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times

AP: Conservationists keep pressing for Atlantic Ocean monuments

July 11, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the Associated Press. In it, representatives of the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) call for President Obama to use executive authority under the Antiquities Act to designate multiple national marine monuments off the coast of New England.

Last month, eight members of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) and the valuable fishing port of New Bedford, Mass., united in opposition to proposed Atlantic monuments. The groups agreed that fishing areas and resources should continue to be managed in the open and transparent manner stipulated by the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA).

Previously, many of the environmental groups calling for Atlantic monuments expressed support for fisheries management under the MSA. In December, Pew called the MSA “the bedrock of one of the world’s best fishery management systems.” In April, the CLF wrote that the MSA is “the primary reason why the United States can say that it has the most sustainable fisheries in the world.” In February, the Environmental Defense Fund said that the MSA “has made the United States a global model for sustainable fisheries management.”

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Environmental conservationists aren’t giving up on trying to persuade the White House to designate an area in the Gulf of Maine as a national monument.

In the final months of President Barack Obama’s term, they’re hoping he’ll protect an underwater mountain and offshore ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine known as Cashes Ledge. They also want him to protect a chain of undersea formations about 150 miles off the coast of Massachusetts known as the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality said in March, and reiterated last week, that while the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts area is under consideration, Cashes Ledge currently is not. There are no marine national monuments in the Atlantic Ocean.

Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, said environmental groups seemed to be “in denial and shock” after the White House first said it wasn’t considering Cashes Ledge in March.

“I think they overplayed their hand. They arrogantly seemed to think that they could dictate to the White House,” he said on Wednesday.

Vanasse said fishing interests are now taking the White House at its word that Cashes Ledge is off the table. The industry is already struggling with quota cuts and climate change.

Commercial fishing groups oppose creating any marine monument in the Atlantic under the American Antiquities Act because the decision is left entirely to the president, Vanasse said. There are existing procedures to protect areas where the public participates in the process under the top law regulating fishing in U.S. oceans, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, he added.

“We’re not the fringe nutcases here,” Vanasse said. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

How do you get a $450,000 camera off the bottom of the sea?

May 26, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the Boston Globe:

Shortly after dawn last Friday, the R/V Hugh R. Sharp was towing a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Then suddenly, the research vessel shuddered.

Within seconds, the line went slack, and the team of scientists and volunteers realized the $450,000 camera system was lost, somewhere off the Virginia coast.

Officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said they believe the cable connecting to the camera system, known as HabCam, snagged on the remains of the Bow Mariner, a well-known wreck in the area.

The scientists lost contact with the HabCam as a college student was piloting it. HabCam, which is about 10 feet long and weighs 3,700 pounds, was at a depth of about 240 feet, some 90 miles southeast of Delaware Bay.

The Sharp has only several weeks available in the spring to survey scallops, which last year had a catch valued at nearly $425 million, more than three-quarters of which went to fishermen in New Bedford.

Those representing fishermen said they’re deeply concerned about the prospects for this year’s survey.

“This will create uncertainty in the scallop assessment, meaning there’s a greater chance that we’ll catch too few scallops, which will be a short-term loss, or too many, which will be a long-term loss,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, a trade group that represents scallopers throughout the Northeast.

Some in the fishing industry blame NOAA for allowing a college student to pilot the HabCam. They also raised questions about whether the incident occurred as a result of problems with another NOAA ship, the Henry B. Bigelow, which required unexpected maintenance this spring that delayed its survey of groundfish stocks more than ever before.

“I’m told that because of the Bigelow fiasco, [NOAA] transferred more experienced people from the scallop survey to the groundfish survey to try to make up for lost time,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry.

“Since the volunteer wasn’t as experienced, and since the captain was apparently driving directly into the path of a 600-foot sunken tanker, they didn’t react quickly enough,” he added.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Survey delay might hurt fish population research

May 12, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a story published today by the Boston Globe.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Even before mechanics found deeply pitted bearings near crankshafts in its generators, problems that could have led to catastrophic engine failure, the Henry B. Bigelow was running more than a month behind.

Now, the government research vessel is embarking on its annual spring voyage later than ever before, a delay that could have serious consequences for scientists’ ability to assess the health of some of the 52 fish stocks they survey, from the waters off North Carolina to the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Maine.

Fish migrate and change their feeding patterns as waters warm, which might make it difficult for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to compare this spring’s survey of fish populations with previous counts.

The prospect of skewed data could complicate efforts for policy makers to set proper quotas, potentially leading either to overfishing or unnecessarily strict catch limits.

“I worry that this will create statistical noise and more uncertainty,” said Gary Shepherd, a fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, where he and other scientists recommend quotas based on what the Bigelow catches, along with other data.

As the waters warm, some of the fish, such as herring, migrate out of the survey area and into the region’s rivers. Other species, such as squid, which are short-lived, might not survive in representative numbers through June, when the Bigelow is now scheduled to finish its survey.

“If the survey had started at its normal time, it would have found squid on the continental shelf,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry. “But now it won’t because the survey doesn’t sample Nantucket Sound.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Fishing Monitors To Accompany Fewer Trips

May 2, 2016 — After protesting for months about having to pay for the government observers who monitor their catch, the region’s fishermen are catching a break.

The National Marine Fisheries Service on Friday approved a measure that will ease the financial burden on fishermen by reducing the number of times observers must accompany them to sea.

They will now have to take monitors on only 14 percent of their fishing trips, down from nearly a quarter of all trips.

“With the experience and data from five years of monitoring, we have determined that the lower coverage levels in this rule will allow us to effectively estimate discards,” said Jennifer Goebel, a spokeswoman for the Fisheries Service in Gloucester.

The move comes after federal regulators last year decided to end the multimillion-dollar subsidy that paid for the observer program, passing the cost to the fishermen.

A federal report found the new costs could cause 59 percent of the boats in the region’s once-mighty groundfishing fleet to lose money. Many of the estimated 200 remaining fishing boats are already struggling amid reduced quotas of cod and other bottom-dwelling fish.

“The agency has used better statistical methods every year to create a more most efficient monitoring system,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, which represents the fishing industry. “This year’s regulations are a reflection of an effort to make the system as efficient as possible.”

“This should be something that’s applauded by both the environmental community and the fishing industry,” he added.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Here’s How the Number of Fish in the Ocean Could More Than Double by 2050

March 31, 2016 — Fish populations around the world have been decimated by overfishing — but new research suggests that this could soon change if the world got its act together.

Fishermen around the world could haul around 16 million more metric tons of fish than they do today and generate $53 billion more in profits while more than doubling the amount of fish left in the oceans by 2050 if they adopted sustainable fishing practices, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Those practices would involve a so-called “catch share” model of fisheries management. In catch share systems, regulators figure out the maximum number of fish that can be hauled from the sea without hurting future fish populations. The regulators then divvy up that amount of fish into shares that are distributed to individual fishermen. Each fisherman has a set amount of fish they are can catch in the year.

“If you can reform fisheries and eliminate their competitive nature, there’s enormous room for profits, catch, and abundance,” said Ray Hilborn, a professor of marine biology and fisheries science at the University of Washington who co-authored the study with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Read the full story at VICE News