Saving Seafood

New Bedford Standard-Times: Cooperation pushes fishery advocacy to next level

June 6, 2016 — Last Thursday, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) joined Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) and Mayor Jon Mitchell in New Bedford, Mass., to discuss issues relevant to the local seafood and fishing industries. The National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC), which helped organize Rep. Bishop’s visit, hopes to continue working with the Natural Resources Committee and its staff to arrange bipartisan visits to all the seaports where NCFC members conduct their business.The following editorial about Rep. Bishop and Rep. Keating’s visit to New Bedford was published yesterday by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

Geography is both a blessing and a curse for commercial fishermen in the U.S. They have access to rich fishing grounds along thousands of miles of seacoast, but the distance between the fish they catch and the American consumer prevents a full understanding of the lives of fishing communities.

The visit to New Bedford’s waterfront Thursday by the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, was more than a step in the right direction, it’s proof of treading the right path. The committee is responsible for ocean issues, including the current reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

City support

The National Coalition for Fishing Communities was formed with city-directed grant money, and the Harbor Development Commission’s membership in the coalition emphatically states the city’s commitment and leadership. Their advocacy is often first to be heard, which means they’ll wait longest for remedy.

Advocacy

Saving Seafood’s years of advocacy in Washington on behalf of the Port of New Bedford and the East Coast has enabled the creation of the coalition. More than two dozen municipalities, businesses, and associations from around the country are represented: Alaska, Hawaii, West Coast, Gulf Coast and East coast. Members from Rhode Island, Long Island, New Jersey and around New England had their voices heard by the chairman on Thursday. An industry with such diversity had its voice heard on national issues and discovered new resources to address local issues more effectively.

The coalition’s website says: “We are committed to the tenets of National Standard Eight of the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” which is summed up in the balancing of the sustainability of both the ocean environment and the fishing community. For the record, The Standard-Times is similarly committed.

Good government

There seems little good to be done recounting the sins of either fishermen or government agents, but it is instructive when considering the case of an alternative for the monument designation proposed to protect corals in fishing grounds south of Cape Cod. Industry representatives cooperated at the White House Executive Office level, the Council on Environmental Quality, to produce an alternative that satisfies preservation and fishing goals alike.

In addition, the CEQ’s counsel can influence how frequently deference might be claimed by regulators, nudging court decisions more in line with the statutory balancing act of National Standard 8.

The chairman’s visit to New Bedford is a recognition that there remain injustices and inequities in the administration of Magnuson-Stevens; reaching out leads to better decisions.

Bipartisanship

Chairman Bishop’s congressional district in Utah borders on the Great Salt Lake, which sees millions of pounds of brine shrimp eggs landed each year. The industry can move more than a billion dollars through the economy annually, but its fortunes are fickle. The lake’s changing salinity affects shrimp reproduction, which can shut the season down if severe enough.

The chairman may have seen the workers in his district reflected in those at the display auction in New Bedford on Thursday, icing down Gulf of Maine flounder. Or at Northern Wind, where workers use machines to process vast amounts of scallops, the port’s signature harvest.

The only “politics” surrounding the chairman’s visit was of the traditional variety: How can we get the people’s business done? New Bedford’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Keating could readily see eye to eye on the issues of fishing communities as they toured the New Bedford waterfront together.

Managing ocean resources may never be easy, but cooperation is what gets the people’s business done, moving toward National Standard 8’s goal of a sustainable balance between humanity and the environment.

Read the editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Seafood Industry Airs Views During Congressman’s Visit to New Bedford Waterfront

Bishop 3

New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell (left) and Rep. Rob Bishop (right) discuss fishing issues in New Bedford on Thursday, June 2. (Photo: House Natural Resources Committee)

June 3, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A congressman from the Mountain West got a full dose of a New England coast Thursday, as seafood and fishing industry representatives aired their views on several contentious issues — including the ongoing marine monument debate — during a whirlwind tour of New Bedford’s waterfront.

U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, a Utah Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, visited the city to get a firsthand look at the highest-value commercial fishing port in the country. Numerous industry leaders from across the region took the opportunity to speak to the committee chairman, particularly about the push for monument status in the New England Canyons and Seamounts, about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Eric Reid, a general manager with Rhode Island frozen fish business Seafreeze, told Bishop during a noontime forum at the New Bedford Whaling Museum that economic impacts from monument status, which would restrict commercial fishing, could cost $500 million and “countless jobs.”

Reid unfurled a map of ocean waters on a Whaling Museum table and pointed out to Bishop where he felt commercial fishing businesses could, and could not, survive if a monument status was put in place. Reid suggested a line of demarcation in the Canyons and Seamounts area, where bottom-fishing would be allowed north of the line but not to the south.

“We can protect the industry, and we can protect the corals,” Reid said, urging that “pelagic” fishing, or fishing that occurs well above ocean floors, be allowed in both zones.

Bishop called the map an “extremely good” start to alternative proposals for which he could advocate as the issue unfolds in coming months, during the final stretch of President Barack Obama’s administration.

Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization Saving Seafood, said Bishop’s visit hopefully was the first of many lawmaker visits facilitated by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC). Saving Seafood launched the coalition last fall, with members that span the country and include New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.

“We want to bring these members of Congress who have jurisdiction over the fishing industry, to visit the ports that their laws regulate,” Vanasse said. “This is the kind of communication effort that the National Coalition is about.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford-Standard Times

NOAA fisheries center won’t relocate to New Bedford

May 31, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — NOAA won’t be relocating its Northeast Fisheries Science Center from Woods Hole to New Bedford or anywhere off Cape Cod, the agency decided this week.

After 50 years in its location, the Science Center is bursting at the seams, and NOAA is seriously considering rebuilding it at another location.

Mayor Jon Mitchell and about 50 other community leaders wrote to NOAA earlier this year, stating that moving the researchers closer to the fishing fleet that relies on their work would go a long way toward repairing the damaged relationship that the fishermen have with their regulators.

Drew Minkiewicz, attorney for The Fisheries Survival Fund, a nonprofit scallop industry group, said, “They should have looked harder. It doesn’t seem like they thought about it too much.” He said that the city offers “synergies with places like SMAST (The UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology).

Bob Vanasse of the industry group Saving Seafood said, “I do think the mayor was correct in moving the science center to a major seaport with the most economic value. It would have been a good move. It would have been good to have scientists in close proximity to the fishermen who rely on them.”

“I’m not surprised, though. I thought it was a long shot,” he said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

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

Feds expected to weigh remapping of regional fishing areas

April 29, 2016 — Federal consideration of a remapping of off-limits fishing areas is expected to cross a hurdle in the next couple of months, according to a fishing advocacy group.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of the group Saving Seafood, said the National Marine Fisheries Service will likely begin a process of formally considering the plan in May or June. He said the plan was advanced last year by the New England Fisheries Management Council.

The move would increase from about 40,000 to 42,000 the amount of square miles in the Georges Bank area that would be off-limits to fishing gear boats use on the seafloor, according to Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney who represents clients in the Atlantic scallop fleet.

Vanasse and Minkiewicz told the News Service the adjustments stemmed from 10 years of deliberations and more than 100 meetings where compromise was reached between different fisheries and other groups.

In addition to scallop boats, Georges Bank is fished by the groundfishing fleet, which uses trawlers to catch cod, flounder and other species.

The plan would also do away with restrictions on large areas that cycle between being open to trawling and closed, known as mortality closures, according to Vanasse.

Read the full story in the Cape Ann Beacon

Massachusetts State Legislators Write to NOAA on SMAST Funding

April 14, 2016 –Members of the Massachusetts state legislature have written to Dr. William Karp, the head of Science and Research at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), in response to a recent rejection of a scallop research set-aside proposal from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST).

In their letter, the legislators asked Dr. Karp to renew the funding, which they contend has been critical in producing accurate, independent estimates of the scallop resource.  They state that past SMAST studies “have stood the test of time,” and have “positively helped the [New England Fishery Management] Council in its regulatory functions under Magnuson [Stevens Act].”

They conclude that “cutting out the independent approach provided by the University of Massachusetts is not only scientifically questionable, but undercuts the ability of the Federal government to make sound assessments, formulate plans and explain those actions in the very complicated areas of fisheries management.”

Read the letter here

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

New nationwide coalition seeking to unify commercial fishing interests

November 16, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group with strong New Bedford ties is creating a national coalition of commercial fishing interests to boost outreach and communication for the industry, which supporters claim often can be overmatched by unified environmental groups that promote competing interests.

“America’s fishing communities and seafood industry have been maligned by special interest groups working in collusion, who have slandered hard-working Americans with outrageous claims and misrepresentations,” Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Saving Seafood, said in a Monday news release. “We’re aiming to bring the entire supply chain of fishermen, shoreside businesses, processors, markets and restaurants together to join this effort to move the national conversation in a positive direction.”

The Saving Seafood release said the nonprofit, formed in 2009, is conducting a membership drive for its new National Coalition of Fishing Communities (NCFC). Vanasse said the coalition, so far, has about 60 members across the country, including New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.

The NCFC will formally launch in Washington in January, during the next U.S. Conference of Mayors event. Vanasse said New Bedford Mayor Mitchell will be chairman of the coalition’s mayors’ group, reaching out to municipal leaders in Seattle, Honolulu, Atlantic City and other cities with strong commercial fishing ties. Coalition members already include commercial fishing associations from Hawaii, Oregon, North Carolina, New Jersey and more.

“I believe there needs to be a stronger voice for fishing communities in the halls of Congress,” Mitchell said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard -Times