Saving Seafood

East Coast Fishing Groups Unite in Opposition to Atlantic Monument

June 2, 2016 — The following was released by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities:

UPDATE: A previous version of this release mistakenly omitted a statement by the American Bluefin Tuna Association. Additionally, since the original release, the American Scallop Association has endorsed the ASMFC resolution. The release has been updated to reflect these changes.

WASHINGTON (NCFC) — The most valuable fishing port in the U.S. – New Bedford, Mass. – and eight major fishing groups from Florida to Massachusetts are backing an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) resolution opposing current proposals for a monument off the coast of New England. The fisheries most likely to be affected by a National Monument designation inside the continental shelf, including the valuable red crab, swordfish, tuna, and offshore lobster fisheries, have all come out in support of the ASMFC resolution.

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), Chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, is in New Bedford today, where he will hear from regional stakeholders about the negative effects a monument would have on commercial fisheries.

Multiple environmental groups have been pushing the Obama Administration to use executive authority under the Antiquities Act to designate an offshore monument in the Atlantic. Earlier this month, the ASMFC unanimously approved a resolution urging the Administration to forgo a monument designation and instead allow the current management process protecting ocean ecosystems to continue. If the President decides to create a monument, the ASMFC resolution asks that it be seaward of the continental shelf, only prohibit bottom tending fishing, and that any plan be available for public review before it is implemented.

In a letter to the White House, the American Bluefin Tuna Association (ABTA) expressed concern that a monument designation would eliminate all forms of fishing in the protected areas. “Given that our fishing gear has no negative impact on deep sea coral, a proposed prohibition on the fishing methods we employ would be arbitrary, completely unnecessary and would result in significant negative economic consequences,” ABTA wrote.

A monument declaration may have devastating economic impacts on New Bedford as well. The mayor of New Bedford, Jon Mitchell, has come out strongly against a monument and praised the ASMFC resolution in a statement, saying he “applauds the ASMFC for asking the White House not to establish a marine monument off the coast of New England.”

East Coast fishing groups that may also be severely impacted by a monument designation, including many members of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC), are lending their strong support to the ASMFC resolution. One fishery that could suffer if it is prohibited from fishing in a monument area is the red crab fishery, valued at over $15 million.

“Rarely in the history of New England commercial fishing have we seen the entire industry and its regulatory bodies unite behind a single cause,” said the New England Red Crab Harvester’s Association in a statement. “Yet with its recent unanimous vote on the marine monument designation, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission joined industry leaders in sending a clear message to the Obama administration: the current monument process poses a serious threat to effective ocean management, and would have disastrous environmental and economic impacts.”

The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), which represents members of the Atlantic sea scallop fishery, supported the ASMFC resolution in a letter to the White House. FSF argued that a monument designation would contradict the President’s own Executive Order 13563, which states in part that regulations should be based on the best available science, involve public participation, and include coordination across agencies.

“Public areas and public resources should be managed in an open and transparent manner, not an imperial stroke of the pen,” FSF wrote.

Other groups that have publicly supported the ASMFC plan are the Garden State Seafood Association, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, Southeastern Fisheries Association, North Carolina Fisheries Association, and American Scallop Association. All of these groups are members of NCFC, which provides a unified voice for fishing groups and businesses. Similarly, the Blue Water Fishermen’s Association, which is not an NCFC member, wrote to the White House opposing an Atlantic Monument.

NOAA Announces Gulf Red Snapper Harvest to Open June 1

April 29, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries has announced the recreational season for the harvest of red snapper in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico will open at 12:01 a.m. June 1, 2016. The bag and possession limit is two fish per person at a 16-inch minimum total length.

Last year, NOAA Fisheries, through the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council), made the decision to split the recreational red snapper quota into two distinct components – private anglers and charter vessels and headboats (for-hire). Each component has its own quota allocations based upon NOAA’s recreational red snapper harvest estimates. Private anglers will have a 9-day federal season running through June 9th closing at 11:59 p.m., and charter vessels / headboats will have a 46-day federal season, closing July 16th at 11:59 p.m.

The “Louisiana-only” season

The season for the recreational harvest of red snapper in Louisiana state waters is currently open, will remain open during the federal season, and will continue to be open after the federal season closes. LDWF monitors real-time red snapper harvest during 2016 through the LA Creel program.

Recreational Offshore Landing Permit

The Department reminds anglers that a Recreational Offshore Landing Permit is required in order to posses certain species, including red snapper. Anglers may obtain or new the permit, free of charge at https://rolp.wlf.la.gov.

The permit is required for any angler possessing tuna, billfish, swordfish, amberjacks, groupers, snappers, hinds, wahoo, cobia and dolphin, except for anglers under 16 years of age or anglers fishing on a paid-for-hire trip where the captain holds a permit.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire

CALIFORNIA: Marin group’s bill to phase out gill nets moves forward in Legislature

April 28, 2016 — A West Marin environmental group is sponsoring legislation to end the use of drift gill nets off the state’s coast, saying they inadvertently scoop up and kill other species, including federally-endangered leatherback sea turtles.

Marin’s Turtle Island Restoration Network has sponsored Senate Bill 1114, which would phase out the use of gill nets in favor of another method that better targets what the gill nets seek: swordfish. The change would prevent turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks and pinnipeds from being taken, the group says. The bill was approved by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Water earlier this month, the first stop during its journey in the Legislature. An appropriations committee is expected to take it up next month before more votes.

“Despite the fact that Pacific leatherback sea turtles are the largest sea turtles on the planet, they are no match for the driftnet fishery,” said Peter Fugazzotto, Turtle Island’s program manager. “This deadly fishery has been operating at too high of a cost to marine wildlife.”

Read the full story at the Marin Independent Journal

CALIFORNIA: South Bay lawmaker will introduce bill to phase out controversial drift gill nets

California (March 24, 2016) — Drift gill nets, fiercely contested fishing gear used to snag swordfish and thresher sharks in deep waters off Southern California, would be largely banned under legislation authored by a South Bay state lawmaker.

Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat whose district includes much of the Los Angeles County coastline, is drafting the final language of a bill that would halt state permits for drift gill nets and create a new state permitting system for alternative swordfish-catching gear that California fishery managers and researchers still are testing for commercial use.

Senate Bill 1114 would allow about 20 permitted fishers to continue using the nets but otherwise would grant new commercial swordfish-hunting permits only for deep-set buoy gear. Allen expects to release the bill’s final language Monday and introduce it to a Senate committee in April.

Read the full story at the Daily Breeze

Study: Program To Protect Fish Is Saving Fishermen’s Lives, Too

February 16, 2016 — A program used in many U.S. fisheries to protect the marine environment and maintain healthy fish populations may have an immensely important added benefit: preserving the lives of American fishermen.

That’s according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found that catch share programs (where fishermen are allotted a set quota of the catch) reduce some of the notoriously risky behavior fishermen are known for, such as fishing in stormy weather, delaying vessel maintenance, or heading out to sea in a boat laden with too much heavy fishing gear.

Traditional fishery-management programs open and close fishing seasons on specific days. By contrast, catch shares work on a quota system, under which fishermen have a longer window to harvest their predetermined share. That gives fishermen the luxury (and perhaps the life-saving option) of time.

The findings don’t surprise Scott Campbell Sr., who spent most of his 35-year career fishing the Bering Sea for king crab the way it used to be done: derby-style. Crab season would open, and regardless of weather, Campbell and his crew would be on the water, hoping to nab enough crab during the season’s brief window to keep his business afloat.

“If you can picture a four-day season for crab — and that’s the only four days you’re going to get — and a 50-knot storm blows in for 24 to 48 hours of that four days, well, a lot of boats didn’t stop fishing, because that was their only revenue stream for the whole year,” says Campbell. “It forced us to take unnecessary risks for financial survival.” (His son, Scott Campbell Jr., is a former star of Discovery Channel’sDeadliest Catch, about the hazards of the fishing industry.)

That kind of risk-taking has historically made fishing one of the nation’s most dangerous professions, with a fatality rate more than 30 times the U.S. average, according to the new report.

Today there are approximately two dozen state and federal catch share programs in the U.S. Most launched in the last decade. However, derby-style fishing still exists in many U.S. regions, including the Pacific and Atlantic swordfish fisheries, the Northeast’s monkfish and herring fisheries, and the West Coast dungeness crab fishery.

Plenty of studies have looked at the environmental benefits of catch share programs — such as the reduction of bycatch, the ability to maximize the value of the catch, and direct impacts on the way fisheries are managed. But what makes this paper innovative is that it’s looking at actual risk-taking data, says the study’s author, Lisa Pfeiffer, an economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Pfeiffer examined the impact a catch share management program had on fishing safety by looking at the particularly data-rich West Coast sablefish fishery.

Read the full story at National Public Radio

From croaker to clams: Commercial fishing in Ocean City

November 8, 2015 — Ocean City is home to a substantial commercial fishing fleet that works our surrounding waters to harvest marketable resources from clams to swordfish.

Visitors to the resort can see the commercial boats tied up at the West Ocean City harbor and some might wonder what they fish for and how. The following is a short description of a few of the commercial fishing operations that go on around Ocean City.

Local “trawlers” are typically large steel or wood hulled fishing boats that pull trawl nets across the bottom and catch a variety of fish such as flounder, striped bass, croaker, sharks, bluefish, squid, rays, horseshoe crabs and anything else they might scoop up in their net. Also known as “draggers,” these boats can sometimes be seen working the waters just a mile or two from the beach.

Another type of trawler sometimes seen by fishermen 30-40 miles offshore are those that drag nets for scallops which are clam-like critters that lay on top of the sea floor. As soon as the scallops are brought up on deck they’re taken to a little shucking shed on the stern or side of the boat, where they’re opened and the edible meat removed.

Clams are caught both offshore and in the bay. The big, chowder-type clams are taken in the ocean by huge steel-hulled boats that pull a large metal dredge across the bottom. Water is pumped down from the boat to the front of the dredge and used to blast away the mud and sand the clams are buried in, and then the dredge scoops them up.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

 

NORTH CAROLINA: Motion filed to overturn new regulations on longline fishing

September 14, 2015 (Saving Seafood) — Several fishing companies operating in the pelagic longline fishery have filed a motion in the Eastern District of North Carolina to overturn recent federal regulations aimed at reducing bycatch of Atlantic bluefin tuna.

The motion describes the regulations, part of Amendment 7 to the Highly Migratory Species (HMS) Fishery Management Plan, as posing “a distinct threat to the American fishing industry and coastal communities, while depriving American consumers of healthy fish stocks.” According to the filing, the government’s method of controlling bluefin bycatch–creating an individual bluefin quota for the pelagic longline fleet–will result in additional expenses, the inability to catch full allocations of other, abundant species like swordfish, and the possibility of reallocating of tuna quotas to foreign fleets if U.S. quotas are not met.

The motion concludes that, because NOAA failed “to properly consider the negative impact of the final Amendment 7 measures,” as well as those measures being in violation of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, Amendment 7 should be rejected as “arbitrary and capricious” by the court.

Read the full motion here