Saving Seafood

Sen. Tarr: $100 Million State Tax Credit Plan for Designated Ports Launched by Lawmakers

April 30, 2018 — The following was released by the Office Massachusetts of Senator Bruce Tarr:   

State lawmakers have filed a $100 million tax credit legislative plan designed to stimulate economic growth and private investments in ten Designated Port Areas (DPAs) which support important commercial marine-based industries.  A bipartisan group of legislators representing coastal communities including Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester), Representative Nick Collins (D- Boston), Representative Ann-Margaret Ferrante (D- Gloucester) and Senator Mark C. Montigny (D- New Bedford) initially sponsored the bill.

They say waterfront properties and uses in DPAs must comply with strict state Coastal Zone Management use restrictions, which can limit access to capital and stall or stop revitalization and growth.  In 1978 these port areas were specifically designated for industrial uses such as marine terminals, commercial fishing facilities, boat repair and construction, marine research and transportation of goods which cannot be located inland due to their water-dependent needs.

“Commercial fishing and marine industries are among the oldest in our state, and they continue to plan an important role in our economy. We need to make sure the facilities they depend on remain available and in working condition,” said bill author Senator Tarr.  “This bill will empower the Secretary of Housing and Economic Development to use targeted state tax credits, of up to $100 million dollars each year, to support working harbors, working families, and business facilities –all of which are indispensable.”

“There is no chance for our maritime industries to survive without state assistance for shore side infrastructure. Boats need places to dock to unload harvests and cargos. Undoubtedly, the Commonwealth has a vested and real interest in maintaining and modernizing these properties in the wake of rising sea levels and wear and tear over time. This much needed economic relief will hopefully encourage investment and development in Gloucester and the Commonwealth’s designated port areas,” Representative Ferrante said.

“Boston is emblematic of the rich history of maritime industries and waterfront activity in Massachusetts,” said Representative Nick Collins. “This legislation will serve as an economic catalyst to the diverse industries that occupy DPA land in Boston and coastal communities across the Commonwealth, creating and sustaining good-paying jobs.”

The bill, an act Establishing the Massachusetts Maritime Commercial Development Tax Credit, will spur investments in capital projects in DPAs through saleable tax credits and mitigate some constraints which have hampered the ability of municipal officials and commercial property owners to both promote and protect environmentally sound port development initiatives.   The tax credit could spur an important lifeline to capital that might otherwise not be available.

“As the nation’s top fishing port and center of the emerging offshore wind industry, New Bedford-Fairhaven’s waterfront is ripe with job-creating development opportunities,” said longtime port development leader and current Assistant Majority Leader Montigny.  “This legislation provides a significant incentive to help ensure further economic development in historic ports like New Bedford comes to fruition.”

According to a 2015 UMass Dartmouth report, the Massachusetts maritime economy stimulates $17.3 billion in economic output which supports 136,000 jobs including $6.8 billion in wages across six core sectors; living resources, marine construction, offshore minerals, ship and boat building and repair, coastal tourism and recreation, and marine transportation and technology.

Results of a survey of marine-related industry leaders showed the two most critical policy areas that would help shore up the industry were reducing costs through tax assistance initiatives and protecting our ocean resources.

Consistent with the state’s recent efforts to address climate related issues such as flooding, erosion, and sea level rise, the bill will increase access to capital for development projects including those which incorporate coastal resilience measures.

“Fishermen depend upon a variety of on-shore facilities to supply and maintain their boats, and to process what they catch.  Local fishermen need local infrastructure that’s high in quality and dependability,” said J.J. Bartlett, President of Fishing Partnership Support Services, which promotes the health, safety and economic security of commercial fishermen and their family members.

Bartlett said the legislation “represents a break-through in the struggle to preserve and modernize the infrastructure in every working port.  It’s a big deal — big for the harvesters of seafood in Massachusetts, who number roughly 7,000, and big for the 100,000 or so workers on land who work with and support the fishing fleet, such as in seafood processing, handling and sales. This bill is critically important to the future of the state’s multi-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry.”

“I am excited about the economic development potential for our Designated Port Areas to get a much needed tax credit for new developments. This is an important opportunity to build up our working waterfront and keep America’s oldest fishing port going, providing jobs and the world’s best Gloucester Fresh seafood to market.  I am thankful for the hard work of not only our team, but the hard work and leadership of Senator Tarr, Representative Ferrante, and friends from Massachusetts Fishing Partnership and colleagues from Boston and New Bedford,” said Sefatia Romeo Theken, Mayor of Gloucester.

The state’s ten Designated Port Areas are located in:

Gloucester Inner Harbor

Salem Harbor

Lynn

Mystic River

Chelsea Creek

East Boston

South Boston

Weymouth Fore River

New Bedford-Fairhaven

Mount Hope Bay

 

Word of Gloucester Seafood Processing reopening catches city leaders by surprise

April 3, 2018 — The comments last week by the founder of the Mazzetta Company that the seafood processor will resume processing fresh fish at its largely dormant Gloucester Seafood Processing plant caught many by surprise — including city officials.

Tom Mazzetta, the chief executive officer of the Illinois-based seafood conglomerate that bears his family’s name, told a respected fishing website that the Gloucester Seafood Processing plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park will resume operations before the year is out.

“We’ll be processing the finest fish in New England before the end of the year,” Mazzetta was quoted as saying in the Undercurrentnews.com piece.

On Monday morning, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said the city has not heard a peep from anyone at the Mazzetta Company about re-firing daily operations at Gloucester Seafood Processing which the company unexpectedly — and without explanation — shuttered in December 2016, a little more than a year after it first opened.

“We haven’t heard a word, not from anyone in Illinois or from anyone associated with the plant here,” Romeo Theken said during an event Monday with NOAA Regional Administrator Mike Pentony at the city’s alewife fishway in West Gloucester.

According to the online story posted late last week, Mazzetta declined to expand on the company’s plans beyond his simple statement.

He wouldn’t say if Gloucester Seafood Processing also would be processing lobsters, as it did when it first opened in 2015, or what the size and composition of the new work force will be following the re-opening.

He didn’t reveal whether the property at 21-29 Great Republic Drive, which was listed online for sale last December (with an asking price of $17 million) will be coming off the market. He also refused to shed any light on why Gloucester Seafood Processing was closed in the first place.

Mazzetta did not respond Monday to phone calls from the Gloucester Daily Times seeking clarification and amplification on his comments to the website.

Mazzetta, with the assistance of city and state tax sweeteners, bought the former Good Harbor Fillet property in the industrial park for about $5 million in 2014 from High Liner Foods.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Gloucester Times: Government must listen on ocean drilling

March 1, 2018 — Opponents of drilling for oil and gas in the offshore waters of New England are legion, and they have plenty to say.

If only they could find a way to get their government to listen.

What was touted earlier this year as a public hearing on the proposal by the Bureau Ocean Energy Management was anything but Tuesday. The event, which had been postponed and seen its location shift a handful of times, could be better described as an infomercial. There were business expo-style booths aplenty at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston, and even a promotional video touting the plan.

But if you wanted to let government leaders know in person how you felt about drilling into the seabed, you were out of luck — the bureau was accepting written comments only. It’s a common tactic used by officials to stifle public debate. By accepting written comments, you can pretend you’ve listened to the people without having to actually face them in an open, public and often messy forum.

And folks in these parts are demanding to be heard on the Trump administration’s plan to open 90 percent of the nation’s offshore waters to oil and gas exploration. When it was announced a few months ago, the proposal garnered immediate praise from the giant energy conglomerates who seem to have the president’s ear on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to so-called “clean coal.” Every other interest, meanwhile, came out against the plan. Republicans and Democrats — including Gov. Charlie Baker and Attorney General Maura Healey — are united in bipartisan opposition. The commercial fishing industry and the environmental lobby, which have been bitterly at odds over the last 30 years, are standing side-by-side.

“Opening up our coast to offshore drilling would be terrible for Massachusetts,” Emily Norton of the Massachusetts Sierra Club said Tuesday. “We will be fighting this with everything we’ve got, in the courts, on the streets and at the ballot box.”

Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken, who cut her political teeth opposing drilling as a member of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association (she is still the group’s vice president), noted a single leak from an oil well in an offshore fishing area “could devastate us all.”

She’s right. It would be the end of New England commercial fishing, which is less an “industry” like the oil and gas behemoths and more a loose confederation of small businesses ranging from shoreside bait and ice providers to marine repair yards to the boats themselves, the oceangoing equivalent of a mom-and-pop store. Together, however, they comprise a $7 billion-a-year piece of the economy.”

And that’s not taking into account Massachusetts’ recreational fishing and tourism businesses, which rely on clean water and pristine beaches to attract visitors.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Massachusetts: Bay State fishing advocates oppose offshore drilling

February 26, 2018 — Frustrated by the Trump administration’s plans to potentially open areas off the Massachusetts coast to oil drilling, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey convened groups with sometimes divergent interests to collectively oppose the plan on Monday.

The oil industry’s use of controlled explosions to explore the seafloor kills and disrupts the ocean life, from plankton to the endangered right whale, said Scott Kraus, vice president and senior science adviser at the New England Aquarium. If the industry builds oil wells in the offshore fishing areas, that would put the area’s fishing industry at risk, said Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken at an event held at the aquarium.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Research shrimper: Trawls better every week

February 2, 2018 — There are days when Joe Jurek must feel the loneliness of the long-distance shrimper, a solitary figure in the Gulf of Maine as the only Massachusetts commercial fisherman allowed to harvest coveted northern shrimp from a fishery just entering its fifth year of closure.

Jurek, a Gloucester-based groundfisherman and the captain of the 42-foot FV Mystique Lady, has spent the past month executing weekly trawls for the sweet crustaceans that have disappeared from local fish markets while the fishery has been closed over dire concerns about the health of its shrimp stock.

Jurek is the Massachusetts representative in a two-state research set-aside program and is doing most of his fishing in the inshore vicinity of Cape Ann, Ipswich Bay and nearby Scantum Basin.

As with his counterpart in New Hampshire, Jurek is working with state and regional fishery regulators to collect samples and data that could help determine the future fate of the fishery.

Four weeks into his allotted 10-week fishing season that provides a total allowable catch of 13.3 metric tons for both vessels, Jurek offered a morsel of optimism, saying he has observed a slight increase in abundance from a year ago.

“It seems there are a little bit more this year, particularly around Massachusetts,” Jurek said Tuesday. “We’ve especially noticed more small shrimp.”

That could be good news for regulators, shrimpers, consumers — last year, Cape Ann northern shrimp lovers, led by Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken, literally lined the dock with their own buckets waiting for Jurek to land his haul —  and of course, the shrimp, also known as Pandalus borealis.

For the past five years, regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission — which regulates the fishery — and the respective marine resources departments of Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire have wrung their hands over the plight of the northern shrimp.

The stock, through that period, has exhibited all-time lows in biomass, spawning and recruitment, leading to the closures and the establishment of the research set-asides (RSA).

‘Getting better every week’

Last year, Jurek joined one fisherman from New Hampshire and eight trawlers from Maine in the program that provided a total allowable catch of 53 metric tons, with each vessel allowed to catch up to 1,200 pounds of shrimp per trip.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Massachusetts: A day at sea: Cod, skate, discards and an observer

January 29, 2018 — It’s cold, dark and slippery at 2 a.m. at the Gloucester pier, and as most people are in bed or just going home from a late night out, Capt. Al Cottone is trying to start his engine and prepare his fishing vessel, the Sabrina Maria, for a day out at sea.

The Sabrina Maria is a member of Gloucester’s day fishing fleet, now hovering around 12 boats of what used to be a much larger contingent. This morning Cottone is taking the 42-foot trawler out around Stellwagen Bank, about 15 miles southeast of Gloucester, to trawl for cod, haddock and other groundfish as he skims the coast.

It’s a calm Friday in week of days of snow and freezing rain. Cottone and other fishermen have few good weather days in winter to fish, so they take advantage of whatever clear and calm days they can.

“In the wintertime you sometimes go two-week stretches without going out with the weather,” Cottone said. “Small boats have limitations.” An icy deck, big waves, a false step or slip and Cottone would be in the water with no one to pull him back on deck. He cannot afford a first mate or deckhand, and usually fishes alone.

“The days you fish, you save your money,” said Cottone. No fish means no money. “The winters are usually tough. Once the weather breaks, usually in the spring, you work harder and you make up for it.”

The weather is not all Cottone has to deal with. He also has to deal with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). It controls what he and other fishermen can catch, how they must catch it, and how much they can bring back. It’s called the quota.

On this trip Cottone catches well over a thousand pounds of skate fish, but because of quota limitations is only allowed to bring in 500 pounds. The rest is thrown back overboard, mostly dead from being out of the water and in the frigid air for so long.

Cottone also has to deal with and pay for NOAA observers on his boat.

“Once federal at-sea observers became a reality, they added further insult to injury when they forced fishermen to pay for it,” Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said. “If they created the mandate for these observers, they should pay for them to go out with their own money instead of shifting the costs to those that are most vulnerable.”

Last week, NOAA announced groundfishermen such as Cottone can expect to have at-sea monitors aboard 15 percent of all trips boats in their sectors take in 2018. Still in the air is whether NOAA Fisheries will find money to reimburse the groundfishermen for any of their at-sea monitoring costs as the agency has in the past two seasons. In 2017, NOAA reimbursed groundfishermen for 60 percent of their at-sea monitoring expenses — estimated at about $710 per day per vessel — which was down significantly from the 85 percent reimbursement provided fishermen in 2016, the first year the industry was responsible for funding at-sea monitoring.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times