Saving Seafood

Supreme Court says bearded seal still threatened, despite legal battle

January 23, 2018 — While the federal government was shut down on Monday, the federal courts were still making decisions.

The U.S Supreme Court decided to keep the bearded seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — rejecting an oil and gas industry challenge to the animal’s protection status.

The marine mammal was listed in 2012, due to melting sea ice. But the Alaska Oil and Gas Association or AOGA and the American Petroleum Institute thought the listing was premature.

Joshua Kindred, an environmental counselor at AOGA, said he was “disappointed” in the supreme court’s decision.

He said the National Marine Fisheries Service didn’t provide enough evidence to warrant a listing.

“They didn’t ever really show from a scientific point of view why the seasonal sea ice was so critical to their long-term health of the species,” he said.

Kindred said there also wasn’t sufficient guidance for a plan moving forward. He said excessive critical habitat designations can slow oil and gas development.

The Center for Biological Diversity has fought to keep the bearded seal’s protection status.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

 

Feds won’t respond to petition over payment of fish monitors

August 21, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government has waived its right to respond to a fishermen’s group’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court about a court battle over the cost of fishing monitors.

The monitors are workers who collect data used to help develop government fishing regulations, and the government shifted the cost of paying for monitors to fishermen last year. A group of fisherman, led by David Goethel of New Hampshire, then sued the government over the change and lost in a federal district court and later in the federal appeals court in Boston.

Goethel filed a petition with the Supreme Court seeking a review of the case last month.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fisherman, lawyers mull new monitoring suit

May 19,  2017 — They lost in U.S. District Court in New Hampshire last summer and failed to have that decision overturned in federal appeals court in Boston this spring.

Still, New Hampshire groundfisherman David Goethel and his legal team may not be done in their legal challenge of the federal government’s ability to shift the costs of at-sea monitoring to groundfishermen.

“We’re still assessing all of our legal options at this point,” said Julie Smith, one of the lawyers from Washington D.C.-based Cause of Action Institute that has represented Goethel and Northeast Fishing Sector 13 in the initial federal lawsuit and appeal.

Smith declined to be more specific, but clearly the options are limited:

Goethel and his lawyers could swing for the fences and petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case, hoping it would overturn the April decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals upholding the judgment in the original lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Concord, New Hampshire.

Petitioning the highest court in the land with a writ of certiorari — which would compel the lower court to deliver its record for review — is not exactly a high-percentage play.

The Supreme Court, according to the website of the federal court system, accepts only 100 to 150 of the more than 7,000 cases it is asked to review each year.

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times