Saving Seafood

Saving Seafood Adds Civil Comments to Our Posts

August 10, 2017 (Saving Seafood) — WASHINGTON — Many news sites’ comment sections have devolved into miserable places for conversation on the internet. Online insults and internet trolling has become endemic, and even the target of an ongoing storyline on South Park.  Because we don’t have the staff to monitor comments, until now, Saving Seafood has not included comment sections in our posts. But in our current regulatory and political climate, the fishing community should have a public place to discuss the issues we confront, and one that is relatively safe from trolls and bots.

So beginning today, we are adding commenting on Saving Seafood posts, using a service called Civil Comments.  The system is unique and one we think will create a lively and engaging community that we hope you’ll join. With Civil Comments, you’ll be asked to rate the civility of several other comments from the site — and then your own comment — before you’re allowed to submit it. This kind of crowdsourced moderation is a unique way to try to ensure higher quality comments without the heavy hands of moderators deleting offending posts. Once you start commenting, and rating others’ posts, the machine-learning algorithms will get to know our commenters, and its ability to weed out trolls and spam will gradually improve. The system is programmed to quickly detect attempts to game the system by voting disingenuously on others’ posts.

Here are some questions and answers about the new system, from the Civil Comments FAQ page:

Why do I have to rate other people’s posts?
Internet comments can be a place for spirited, meaningful debate about all kinds of topics. All too often, though, they turn into a festering garbage fire of harassment, abuse, and spam. Computer algorithms aren’t yet good enough to accurately determe meaning from free text, but human beings are great at it! To help keep your community civil and respectful (and free of annoying spam), we ask that commenters pitch in by helping with moderation. Over time, with proven civility and trust, this rating system becomes opt-in, as a reward for qualified commenters.

How do you keep people from gaming the system? Won’t users just vote down posts they disagree with? What if the majority votes down minority opinions, even if they’re civil?
We were worried about this, too! It’s why we put tons of thought, care, and effort into designing the backend algorithms that analyze the reviews, to prevent bias. Having a “civil” comments section doesn’t mean a groupthink echo chamber. Each comment is reviewed by multiple people, and we pool and analyze those reviews to check for patterns of abuse. We also use that data to help decide who sees which comments for review, and we anonymize veteran commenters to prevent bias against specific users. So far, it’s been working well! One great finding has been how rare the attempts at cheating/gaming the system actually are. We’ve found that the overwhelming majority of people actually vote in good faith, so +1 for humanity. With Civil Comments®, people are attacking ideas, instead of each other.

What do you mean by “good” comments vs. “civil” comments?
For each comment, we first ask the reviewer, “is this a good comment?” Here, “good” means whatever you, personally, think is “good.” Does the comment contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way? Maybe it’s funny or insightful, or you just agree with it. If you have no opinion on a comment’s quality, you can choose the middle option of “Sorta” or “Somewhat”. If you really think the comment is bad—off-topic, poorly-reasoned, or you just don’t agree with it—you can choose the “No” option. Answers to this first question don’t affect whether or not a comment is published, but they do contribute to the way comments are ranked when sorted by “Highest Rated” (along with “likes” received).

The second question our system asks is, “Is it civil?” A civil comment can still be angry and passionate, but cannot include threats, personal attacks, name-calling, racial slurs, doxxing/de-anonymizing (revealing personal information about another commenter, including their real name, home address, phone number, etc.) and obvious spam.

Think about what would be considered “rude” in real life; it’s a good guideline for what we mean by “uncivil.”

Isn’t this censorship? What about free speech?
The first amendment guarantees that no one can be thrown in jail for what they say. We’re strong believers in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but our stance can be summarized by the old adage, “my right to extend my fist ends where your face begins.” Spam, personal attacks, harassment, abuse, and even death threats are so common in comment sections that many sites are just turning comments off entirely, which effectively silences everyone. Sites that do keep comment sections open need to be constantly vigilant, with staff policing the rampant bad behavior and deleting spam. Since comment sections clearly do need moderation, we think it’s far more fair for your comment to be judged by several of your peers—the people with whom you share the community—than by a single moderator, who is separated from the community and typically employed by the site.

Why don’t sites just hire moderators?
Most publications just don’t have the time and/or resources to hire moderators to monitor the comments 24/7. A few very large sites have full-time staffs dedicated to this, but some spend over $1 million per year on moderation, and still must limit the number of comments they publish, due to staffing constraints. With traditional moderation, each comment is only be seen by one person, where it receives one pass/fail grade. With Civil Comments, each comment is judged by several people. Our patent-pending Behavior Engine then analyzes those judgments and attempts to account and correct for bias and people trying to cheat the system.

Despite all of your safeguards, I saw some spam/harassment/abuse in the comments!
Oh, no! Our system works really well so far, but it’s still new and improving. Sometimes uncivil things will slip through the cracks—that’s why the we have a flag button! If you see anything that qualifies as abuse, harassment, or spam, you can flag it to notify publication staff. Keep in mind that flagging without valid reason will have a negative impact on a user’s trust rating, though, and their flags will cease to “count.” So, please only flag if the comment is truly problematic!

Trump Administration Decision Signals Possible Shift In Fishing Regulations

August 1, 2017 — When it comes to regulatory issues, the fishing industry often finds itself facing off against environmentalists. And some recent moves by the Trump administration seem to be leaning more in the direction of siding with fishermen.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the regulatory body that sets the rules for the fishing industry, is meeting this week, and one of the topics of conversation is a recent decision regarding fishing in New Jersey.

The ASMFC said the population of summer flounder – also known as fluke –has been declining since 2010 and is at serious risk. So the commission reduced limits on how much could be caught. New Jersey came up with alternative plan which the state asserted would protect the fish, while still allowing more fishing. But the fisheries commission rejected the New Jersey plan, saying too many fish would be caught, and that it would be bad for the population.

Ordinarily, the federal government listens to the commission’s recommendations. But last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce rejected its recommendation, allowing New Jersey to go ahead with its plan. The ASMFC says this is the first time since passage of the Atlantic Coastal Fisheries Cooperative Management Act in 1993 and the Atlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act in 1984 that the secretary of commerce rejected a noncompliance recommendation by the commission.

“I do think it’s healthy for the administration to not simply rubber stamp everything that is done by these commissions, but rather have an actual role in it,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of an industry group called Saving Seafood. “And I do think that elections matter,” he said.

Vanasse said this is an example of Trump administration listening to the fishing industry.

“I think there’s definitely been a shift in how the commercial fishing industry, how their issues are being addressed by this administration,” he said. “And I think, frankly, it’s a mistake to think it’s some kind of right-wing, Trump administration, erroneous action. I think it’s actually, overall, positive.”

Vanasse said another example of that positive impact is the federal review that’s happening now of national monuments, including Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which is about 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. The Obama administration designated it an offshore monument near the end of his presidency, closing it off to a lot of fishermen.

Vanasse said the Trump administration’s review of that monument designation is an example of something that’s being handled responsibly by people who have careers in this area — not just political appointees.

Read and listen to the full story at WGBH

Americans Need to Know U.S. Fisheries are Sustainable: Former Senior NOAA Official

July 24, 2017 — Earlier this month, Saving Seafood unveiled our campaign to tell the public that American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™. A recent paper by Mark Helvey, former NOAA Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries for the Pacific Region, confirms that purchasing U.S.-caught seafood is one of the most sustainable choices consumers can make, and notes that, “Most Americans remain unaware of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed, in compliance with multiple state and federal laws.”

According to the paper, the standards under which U.S. fishermen operate “conform to or exceed internationally accepted guidelines for sustainable fisheries adopted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.”

The first recommendation made in the peer-reviewed paper is to “increase awareness…of the high environmental standards by which U.S. federal marine fisheries – and many state fisheries – are managed.”

The paper makes the case that, “Sea Grant Extension Programs in U.S. coastal states and territories have conducted education and out-reach, with NOAA Fishwatch and a number of nongovernmental organizations also helping to bridge this gap. However, further efforts to address this lack of understanding are needed.”

This is precisely the goal of our American Seafood is Sustainable Seafood™ campaign.

Mr. Helvey provided the following summary of his paper to Saving Seafood:

  • The United States is recognized for its robust seafood appetite and strong commitment to environmental conservation. However, efforts to close or restrict its own domestic fisheries in pursuit of environmental protection are often not considered within the context of seafood consumption.
  • Restricting U.S. fisheries comes at the cost of displaced negative environmental impacts associated with the fishing activities of less-regulated, foreign fisheries.
  • The authors provide six solutions for addressing this issue beginning with the need for U.S. consumers becoming more aware of the exceedingly high environmental standards by which U.S. marine fisheries are managed relative to many foreign ones.
  • While efforts by NOAA’s Sea Grant Extension Program, FishWatch, and a number of nongovernmental organizations are bridging the information gap, the authors stress that more is required for increasing awareness that U.S fisheries are sustainable fisheries.

The paper, “Can the United States have its fish and eat it too?,” was published in the January 2017 volume of Marine Policy and is co-authored by Caroline Pomeroy, Naresh C. Pradhan, Dale Squires, and Stephen Stohs.

Read the full paper at ScienceDirect

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell Voices Coalition Concern Over Marine Monuments at House Hearing

WASHINGTON – March 15, 2017 – The following was released by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities:

Today, New Bedford, Mass. Mayor Jon Mitchell delivered written testimony to the House Natural Resources Committee on behalf of Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities. His testimony expressed serious concerns about the impacts of marine monuments, designated using executive authority under the Antiquities Act, on fishermen and coastal communities.

Mayor Mitchell had planned to testify in person before the Subcommittee on Water, Power, and Oceans as a representative of the NCFC, but was unable to attend the hearing in Washington due to snow and severe weather conditions in the Northeast.

In his testimony, Mayor Mitchell questioned both the “poorly conceived terms of particular monument designations,” as well as “more fundamental concerns with the process itself.” Mayor Mitchell also delivered a letter to the committee signed by eleven NCFC member organizations further detailing their concerns with the monument process and how fishing communities across the country are affected by monument designations.

The letter was signed by the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, the California Wetfish Producers Association, the Fisheries Survival Fund, the Garden State Seafood Association, the Hawaii Longline Association, the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, the North Carolina Fisheries Association, the Southeastern Fisheries Association, the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, and the Western Fishboat Owners Association.

In addition, three NCFC member organizations, the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, the Hawaii Longline Association, and the North Carolina Fisheries Association submitted individual letters outlining in further detail their opposition to marine monuments.

Mayor Mitchell was also critical of the monument designation process, by which a president can close off any federal lands or waters on a permanent basis using executive authority under the Antiquities Act. He instead praised the Fishery Management Council process created by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which he said affords greater opportunities for input from stakeholders, scientists, and the public.

“The monument designation process has evolved effectively into a parallel, much less robust fishery management apparatus that has been conducted entirely independent of the tried and true Fishery Management Council process,” Mayor Mitchell said. “It lacks sufficient amounts of all the ingredients that good policy-making requires: Scientific rigor, direct industry input, transparency, and a deliberate pace that allows adequate time and space for review.”

Mayor Mitchell used his testimony to call attention to issues affecting fishing communities across the country, including New England fishermen harmed by the recently designated Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, and Hawaii fishermen harmed by the expansion of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. He also expressed the concerns of fishermen in Mid-Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Pacific waters in dealing with the monument process.

Mayor Mitchell concluded by calling on Congress to integrate the executive branch’s monument authority with the established processes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, ensuring that the long-term interests of all stakeholders are accounted for.

“This Congress has an important opportunity to restore the centrality of Magnuson’s Fishery Management Councils to their rightful place as the critical arbiters of fisheries management matters,” Mayor Mitchell said. “Doing so would give fishing communities much more confidence in the way our nation approaches fisheries management. And it could give the marine monument designation process the credibility and acceptance that it regrettably lacks today.”

The mayor spoke at the hearing on behalf of the NCFC. The city of New Bedford, as Mayor Mitchell stated in his testimony, was instrumental in the founding of the Coalition, providing an initial seed grant for its creation.

Read Mayor Mitchell’s full testimony here

Read the NCFC letter here

Read the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association letter here

Read the Hawaii Longline Association letter here

Read the North Carolina Fisheries Association letter here

Will Trump Be Able To Undo Papahanaumokuakea?

November 28, 2016 — In the months leading up to the Nov. 8 election, President Barack Obama signed a series of proclamations to dramatically increase the amount of land and water that is federally protected from commercial fishing, mining, drilling and development.

On Aug. 24, he established a nearly 90,000-acre national monument in the Katahdin Woods of Maine. 

Two days later, Obama expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands by 283 million acres, making it the world’s largest protected area at the time.

And on Sept. 15, he created the first national monument in the Atlantic Ocean, protecting more than 3 million acres of marine ecosystems, seamounts and underwater canyons southeast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Obama has used a century-old law called the Antiquities Act to federally protect more land — 550 million acres and counting — than any other president. He’s established 24 new national monuments in at least 14 states since taking office eight years ago, with the bulk of the acreage in Papahanaumokuakea and the Pacific Remote Islands.

But with Republican Donald Trump’s surprise upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton, attention is turning to what Trump plans to do when he takes office in January and whether he will seek to undo or at least modify the national monuments that Obama created.

Advocates for commercial fishing interests on the East Coast have started nudging policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make. But West Coast and Hawaii industry groups are still gathering information and developing plans.

Saving Seafood, a nonprofit that represents commercial fishing interests, has already started pushing policymakers to consider what changes the next administration could make to the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. 

Saving Seafood Executive Director Robert Vanasse told the Associated Press earlier this month that he thinks it would be “rational” to allow some sustainable fishing in the monuments.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Fishing industry seeks reversal of Atlantic Marine Monument

November 21, 2016 — The Gloucester Fishing Commission isn’t ready yet to employ a full-court press on President-elect Donald Trump to reverse the Obama administration’s creation of a Marine National Monument in the canyons and seamounts off the coast of southern New England.

It’s not that the commission members think it’s a bad idea. They just think it’s too early to start beating that particular drum.

“There’s already a lot of talk and the group letters will be coming along like before,” said commission Chairman Mark Ring. “But I don’t think we should be doing a letter now. It’s too premature.”

“Let’s wait until he gets into office,” said Angela Sanfilippo.

Other fishing stakeholders around the country have said they hope to appeal to Trump’s oft-stated intent to reverse any of the Obama administration’s policies and decisions he deems to be executive overreach.

“It’s a new day,” said fishing industry advocate Robert Vanasse of the Saving Seafood website. “I would anticipate there would be a desire to address monuments. Whether it’s the radical step of revoking the designation, or modifying it to allow non-destructive, sustainable fishing to take place, which we think is rational, I don’t know.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

‘Sad day’ for the fishing industry following marine monument designation

September 16, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Backers of the Northeast U.S. fishing industry reacted with anger, chagrin and legal arguments Thursday to President Barack Obama’s declaration of a marine national monument south of Cape Cod, saying the ocean preservation effort circumvented public process and will significantly damage a key economic engine — and way of life — in the region.

“It’s all anybody’s talking about, that’s for sure,” said Jon Williams, president of Atlantic Red Crab Co. on Herman Melville Boulevard. “The general feeling is (that) it’s a sad day for the New England fishing industry.”

Obama’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument — in two areas also known as New England Canyons and Seamounts — permanently bars those areas from an array of commercial and industrial uses, including commercial fishing. The areas total 4,913 square miles, are more than 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod and are the first such monument in the Atlantic Ocean. The designation follows at least a year of concerns and opposition from advocates of the commercial fishing industry, who feared yet another financial hit from government regulations that already include catch limits and quotas broadly questioned by fishermen.

“Millions of dollars of lost revenue are at stake” in the monument decision, states a letter from the Washington, D.C. office of international law firm Kelley Drye & Warren.

The firm sent the letter Sept. 14 to Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, on behalf of the Southern Georges Bank Coalition. The coalition of fishing representatives includes Williams, J. Grant Moore of Broadbill Fishing in Westport, and at least 10 other members from Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York.

The letter said those entities “are directly affected by the monument description, as it includes their fishing grounds,” and called Obama’s use of the Antiquities Act to declare the marine monument, “an illegal and illegitimate use of presidential authority.”

“I think there’s widespread and pretty much universal disappointment, anger, frustration and feelings of betrayal in the commercial fishing industry,” said Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Washington, D.C.-based Saving Seafood.

“There is widespread and deep feeling that our fisheries should be managed under the public process of the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” Vanasse added.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Obama’s Atlantic Monument Hurts Lobster, Red Crab, and Other Fisheries

September 15, 2016 — President Obama will designate a national monument Thursday covering thousands of square miles in the Atlantic Ocean, pleasing environmental groups but flying in the face of opposition from state officials and fishing organizations.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument will cover 4,913 square miles off the coast of New England — an area nearly the size of the state of Connecticut — the White House announced Thursday. It will include “three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon, and four underwater mountains known as ‘seamounts’ that are biodiversity hotspots and home to many rare and endangered species,” it said.

Robert Vanasse, executive director of fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood, slammed the declaration, saying White House officials never seriously took the concerns of locals into account.

“It’s just really obvious that the fix was in from the start,” Vanasse told BuzzFeed News. “I believe the sound waves hit their eardrums but I don’t believe they were actually listening.”

Though the exact parameters of the monument were not available late Wednesday, Vanasse said the designation could potentially cost the offshore lobster community $10 million a year. He also said red crab, squid, and other fishing industries could take significant hits by a monument designation.

According to the White House, fishing within the monument will be phased out; red crab and lobster fisheries will have seven years before having to leave, and other commercial fishers will have a 60-day transition period.

Vanasse praised the gradual change — because it’ll give the industry time to fight the designation.

“The fact that they have some time is going to be a good thing because we can fight this and we’ll be fighting it with a different administration,” he said. “I imagine that we will see a legal challenge.”

Read the full story at BuzzFeed News

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

Regulators fail to decide on 2017 Atlantic menhaden harvest cap

August 4, 2016 — A new 2017 coastal catch limit for Atlantic menhaden proved a slippery target Wednesday as regional managers failed over and over to agree on a number.

In vote after vote by the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board meeting this week in Alexandria, representatives from Maine to Florida knocked down motions to raise the cap by as little as 1 percent to as much as 20 percent.

In the end, they could only agree to try again at their next meeting in October. The board is part of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

“They just kicked the can down the road,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood Inc., a D.C.-based outreach and advocacy group that coordinates the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition and supports raising the catch limit.

Read the full story at the Daily Press