Saving Seafood

Secretary of Commerce Declares Fisheries Disasters in Three Areas Due to Hurricanes Irma and Maria

February 13, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on Friday declared catastrophic fishery disasters in Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico due to impacts from Hurricanes Irma and Maria in August and September of 2017. The governors of those areas requested the declarations after the hurricanes made landfall last year.

Under the Interjurisdictional Fisheries Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the governors asked the Secretary of Commerce to determine whether a commercial fishery failure occurred due to a fishery resource disaster, in these cases caused by destructive hurricanes.

“The Department of Commerce and NOAA support the rebuilding efforts of communities across the Gulf which were devastated by hurricanes in the past year,” Ross said in a statement. “This declaration provides a path forward to helping fishermen and businesses recover and grow.”

Through these fishery disaster declarations, participants in the fisheries are now eligible for Small Business Administration disaster loans. Additionally, because these fisheries are in areas declared a presidential disaster, public fishery infrastructure-related losses are eligible for Federal Emergency Management Agency Public Assistance. Economic Development Administration grants and Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery funds are another potential source of assistance for fisheries pending allocations and grantee Action Plans.

Similar fishery failure declarations in the Southeast region were made in the past, following Hurricane Isaac in 2012, Louisiana; Hurricanes Gustav and Ike in 2008, Gulf of Mexico; Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Gulf of Mexico; and more.

“These determinations provide the basis for Congress to appropriate disaster relief funding under the MSA and IFA,” Ross wrote in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott. “Should Congress appropriate disaster relief funding, NMFS will work with your state to develop a spend plan to assist with the recovery of Florida’ s fishing industry and fishing communities.” Similar letters were sent to U.S. Virgin Islands Governor Kenneth E. Mapp and Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello Nevares.

The governors’ letters detailed expected fisheries-related losses due to the hurricanes. Gov. Scott said Florida’s recreational fishing had an impact of $7.6 billion and the dockside value of commercial fisheries is estimated at $244 million.

Gov. Mapp noted the value of recreational fisheries to the U.S. Virgin Islands has not been calculated but a signification portion of the 3 million tourists who visit annually participate in sport fishing activities. The Virgin Islands’ commercial fishery is composed of artisanal fishermen using small nets and commercial fishermen who use traditional gears such as spears, hooks and lines and traps. They landed more than 772,555 pounds of fish in 2016, sold primarily in open-air markets. The estimated value, including direct economic effects, is more than $5 million annually, the governor said in his letter.

“Although assessments have not been completed due to the substantial damage to our infrastructure and a resultant inability to move around Puerto Rico, it is expected that economic and social impacts will be significant. A conservative valuation of our fisheries economy indicates direct economic effects of $29 million dockside value from commercial fishing,” Gov. Nevares said in his letter to NOAA. Puerto Rico also had more than 600,000 recreational angler trips in 2016.

All the governors noted significant losses of infrastructure such as docks, fish houses and transportation and facilities, in addition to fishermen losing their vessels and gear.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

SEAMAP Releases 5-Year Management Plan

April 19, 2017 — The following was released by the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program:

The Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) has released its 2016-2020 Management Plan. Prepared by the South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean components of SEAMAP, the Management Plan serves as a reference for official SEAMAP policies and procedures through 2020. The Plan also includes detailed information on SEAMAP activities and highlights how SEAMAP data meet critical needs for recent stock assessments and management decisions. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the Plan details how SEAMAP’s core surveys have been impacted by level/declining funding. It identifies how expansions in funding could be used to refine existing assessments and advance the movement towards ecosystem-based management; ultimately, leading to more comprehensive fisheries management in the Southeast region.

SEAMAP is a cooperative state/federal/university program for the collection, management, and dissemination of fishery-independent data and information in the Southeastern U.S. and Caribbean. Representatives from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) jointly plan and conduct surveys of economically and ecologically important fish and shellfish species and the critical habitats that support them. Since 1982, SEAMAP has sponsored long-term standardized surveys that have become the backbone of fisheries and habitat management in the Southeast and Caribbean. SEAMAP currently provides the only region-wide mechanism for monitoring long-term status and trends of populations and habitats within the region.

As a cooperative effort, SEAMAP monitors the distribution and abundance of fish and other marine resources from North Carolina through Texas and into the Caribbean. SEAMAP is intended to maximize the capability of fishery-independent and associated survey activities to satisfy data and information needs of living marine resource management and research organizations in the region. The primary means of performing that task is to optimize coordination and deployment of regional surveys and provide access to the collected data through documents and online databases. Additional roles of SEAMAP are to document long- and short-term needs for fishery-independent data to meet critical management and research needs, and to establish compatible and consistent databases for ecosystem and predictive modeling applications. SEAMAP promotes coordination among data collection, processing, management, and analysis activities emphasizing those specifically concerned with living marine resource management and habitat protection, and provides a forum for coordination of other fishery-related activities.

The 2016-2020 SEAMAP Management Plan is available online at: http://bit.ly/2pw1qXM. For more information about SEAMAP, particularly the South Atlantic component, please visit www.SEAMAP.org or contact Shanna Madsen, SEAMAP-SA Coordinator, at smadsen@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.      

Councils: Fisheries Should be Managed Under Magnuson-Stevens Even if Monuments are Designated

May 31, 2016 — The Council Coordination Committee (CCC), which consists of representatives from each of the eight U.S. regional fishery management councils, met last week in St. Thomas, U.S.V.I., to discuss issues relevant to all regional councils.The following is excerpted from a statement released by the CCC:

The CCC notes the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act in managing fishery resources of the United States as well as the marine ecosystems of the United States Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the CCC recognizes that there have been a number of proposals regarding the designation of new, or the expansion of existing, Marine National Monuments within the U.S. EEZ.

The CCC reiterates its support for the public, transparent, science-based process and management required by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

The CCC recommends that if any designations are made in the marine environment under authorities such as the Antiquities Act of 1906 that fisheries management in the U.S. EEZ waters continue to be developed, analyzed and implemented through the public process of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

Read the full statement here

How we are all contributing to the destruction of coral reefs: Sunscreen

October 20, 2015 — The sunscreen that snorkelers, beachgoers and children romping in the waves lather on for protection is killing coral and reefs around the globe. And a new study finds that a single drop in a small area is all it takes for the chemicals in the lotion to mount an attack.

The study, released Tuesday, was conducted in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hawaii several years after a chance encounter between a group of researchers on one of the Caribbean beaches, Trunk Bay, and a vendor waiting for the day’s invasion of tourists. Just wait to see what they’d leave behind, he told the scientists – “a long oil slick.” His comment sparked the idea for the research.

Not only did the study determine that a tiny amount of sunscreen is all it takes to begin damaging the delicate corals — the equivalent of a drop of water in a half-dozen Olympic-sized swimming pools — it documented three different ways that the ingredient oxybenzone breaks the coral down, robbing it of life-giving nutrients and turning it ghostly white.

Yet beach crowds aren’t the only people who add to the demise of the coral reefs found just off shore. Athletes who slather sunscreen on before a run, mothers who coat their children before outdoor play and people trying to catch some rays in the park all come home and wash it off.

Cities such as Ocean City, Md., and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., have built sewer outfalls that jettison tainted wastewater away from public beaches, sending personal care products with a cocktail of chemicals into the ocean. On top of that, sewer overflows during heavy rains spew millions of tons of waste mixed with stormwater into rivers and streams. Like sunscreen lotions, products like birth-control pills contain chemicals that are endocrine disruptors and alter the way organisms grow. Those are among the main suspects in an investigation into why male fish such as bass are developing female organs.

Read the full story from The Washington Post