Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Archives - Page 32 of 35

Western Pacific Council Director Says MPAs Must Be Targeted and Scientifically Supported

January 31, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Targeted and scientifically established Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in Pacific waters would have a better chance of attaining specific environmental goals according to Kitty Simonds, the Executive Director of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

Simonds comments explaining this position were published last week on Professor Ray Hilborn’s Cfood blog.

They were in response to three specific questions CFOOD posed to fishery scientists about the US government’s use of MPAs.

The questions were:

What is the utility of setting MPA targets?
Do MPAs need to be No Take Zones (NTZs)?
What is the utility and wisdom of creating large ocean MPAs?

Following are Simond’s complete responses to each question.

1: The utility of targets — specifically 30%, but also the creation of appropriate targets for MPAs:

In the Western Pacific, 53% of the collective EEZ or 26% of the total US EEZ has been made through Presidential authority intono take MPAs, as blue legacies for Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama. The issue of targets for us in the Western Pacific has thus become moot. These areas were established with little scientific evidence, and with promises of jobs and tourist dollars, all of which have failed to materialize.

Further, most of the vulnerable habitats in the Western Pacific have been protected for a long time by smaller MPAs that were part of the management of coral reef and associated ecosystems by State, Federal and Territorial Governments. Thus the target percentage becomesmeaningless, unless expressed as percent of a given habitat type, and the objectives of the closure.

2: The need for MPAs to be “No Take Zones” (NTZs):

Current MPA theory indicates that NTZs will typically accumulate biomass but from a fisheries management standpoint there should be a payoff from spillover and recruitment enhancement. Unfortunately, recent research using a number of different techniques shows that the Main Hawaiian Islands are isolated in terms of resource management and will not receivesubstantial subsidy from the large MPA in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. The MHI must stand alone in management of marine resources.

This nicely illustrates the need for a much more intensive process to implement MPAs, with clearly defined goals, realistic expectations of benefits, review schedules and mechanisms to modify the MPA. Most of the large MPAs in the Western Pacific are isolated by distance and remote from most of the population. Only foreign fishing vessels, government vessels, or expensive well-equipped ocean going private vessels have the ability to reach these areas, so increased tourist traffic is highly unlikely.

3: The utility and overall wisdom of large ocean MPAs:

Largeopen ocean MPAs have been tried in the Western Pacific, when two large high seas pockets were closed, by the Western & Central Pacific Fisheries Commission but fishing mortality for tunas did not fall as the effort did not decline but moved into neighboring EEZs. Further, highly migratory species by virtue of their life history will move through large ocean MPAs and thus become vulnerable to fishing.

Moreover, with climate change, the static nature of MPAs, large and small, may be called into question if they have no mechanism to be modified or relocated if species distributions change. Establishing an MPA is often seen as the target gain, with no real consideration apart from vaguely defined benefits, nor with the dynamic aspects of ecosystems in mind.

This story originally appear on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council Sends Letters to Obama on Impacts of Marine National Monuments

December 19, 2016 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

HONOLULU — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council is hopeful that when President Obama arrives in Honolulu tomorrow, he will acknowledge the $100 million commercial fishing industry in Hawai‘i and the impacts on that fishery by his expansions of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument (MNM) in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) and the Pacific Remote Islands MNM, which includes nearby Johnston Atoll. The value of the Hawaii longline fishery is excess of $300 million when factoring in retail markets and support industries and their employees.

The National Marine Fisheries Service’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center has reported that the expanded Papahanuamokueakea MNM may account for a potential loss of about 2.5 million pounds per year of tuna and other pelagic species worth on average $8 million, more than $9 million in fishery support businesses (e.g., fuel, gear, ice, etc.), $4.2 million in household income and $0.5 million in tax revenue and affect more than 100 jobs. The impact will be much greater on fishermen who historically utilized the US waters around the NWHI as their primary fishing grounds as well as smaller boats that are restricted in their range. Given these economic impacts, the Council believes that prohibiting commercial fishing in this area should be phased in.

On Dec. 1, 2016, the Council sent its fifth letter to Obama about its concerns with the NWHI MNM expansion and a sixth letter about the impacts of the three other marine national monuments that have been proclaimed in the US Pacific Islands. The Rose Atoll, Pacific Remote Islands and Marianas Trench MNMs impact the fisheries of not only Hawai‘i but also American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) as well as local and US mainland seafood consumers. The Obama administration has not responded to any of the Council’s previous four letters, which were sent over the past nine months.

Presidential proclamations through the Antiquities Act have banned commercial fishing in 61 percent of US waters around the Hawaiian Islands and have placed 51 percent of US waters around the US Pacific Islands under MNM designation. The Antiquities Act requires that monuments be proclaimed for the smallest size needed for conservation of resources of scientific and cultural interest. Obama has invoked future climate change impacts on biodiversity as one of the primary reasons for the presidential action in his proclamations expanding the NWHI and Pacific Remote Islands MNMs.

Climate change impacts occur over much larger areas than contained in any marine monument. The Council believes climate change impacts will not be mitigated by prohibiting the commercial catch of a well-managed and enforced US fishery in discrete areas of US waters. Furthermore, the Council has repeatedly questioned the use of the Antiquities Act for marine conservation of tuna, billfish and other highly migratory species, which move well beyond the monument boundaries.

“The Antiquities Act process circumvents the National Environmental Policy Act and the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, both of which require environmental, social and economic analysis and public input,” notes Council Executive Director Kitty M. Simonds.

Prior to the expansion of the NWHI monument, which spans an area four times the size of Texas, about 10 percent of the fishing effort of the Hawai‘i longline fleet were in these monument waters. Another 10 percent were in the US waters around nearby Johnston Atoll, which Obama closed to fishing when he expanded the Pacific Remote Islands MNM in 2014.

“The push for the monuments was driven not by popular demand but by a Washington, DC-based environmental organization, the Pew Environment Group, which has had the ear of successive presidents,” explains Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. “A Pew funded study estimated that the Marianas Trench MNM would result in $10 million per year in direct spending, $5million per year in tax and the creation of 400 jobs. Needless to say, neither Guam nor the CNMI has seen any economic benefits from the monument. After seven years a monument management plan has not been completed by NOAA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Now there is talk about overlaying the monument status with a National Marine Sanctuary designation.”

While the local governments have received no economic benefit from the monuments, NOAA and the US Fish and Wildlife Service have been receiving $3 million per year for “monument management,” notes the Council’s letter about the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll MNMs. At the same time, the US Coast Guard and NOAA Office of Law Enforcement have not received additional funds or assets to increase patrols of the monument waters..

The Council was established by Congress in 1976 and has authority over fisheries seaward of state/territory waters in the US Pacific Islands pursuant to the Magnuson-Stevens Act. For more information and to download the letters, go to www.wpcouncil.org, email info@wpcouncil.org or phone (808) 522-8220.

Letter to Obama on Papahanaumokuakea

Letter to Obama on Rose Atoll, Marianas Trench and Pacific Remote Islands MNM

See the full release at WESPAC

Little input on fishing in expanded monument area

December 15, 2016 — LIHUE, Hawaii — The first round of several meetings addressing options for management of the newly expanded Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument came to Kauai Tuesday night.

Joshua DeMello, fisheries analyst with the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, explained the process to a scant audience at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School.

“We’re also looking at options for Native Hawaiian subsistence fishing,” DeMello said.

Read the full story at the Garden Island

Council Wants Money For Fishers Hurt By Monument Expansion

November 14, 2016 — The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council is wasting no time seeking financial compensation for those in the fishing industry who may claim they have been harmed by President Barack Obama’s expansion of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument in late August.

At its meeting last month — shortly after being advised by counsel of restrictions on lobbying legislatures or the president for funds — the council decided to send a letter to Obama highlighting the expansion’s impacts on Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities and requesting that the Department of Commerce mitigate those impacts through “direct compensation to fishing sectors.”

The council’s letter will also include a request that the ban on commercial fishing in the expansion area — which includes the waters between 50 and 200 nautical miles off the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands — be phased in. The letter will also ask for “other programs that would directly benefit those impacted from the monument expansion.”

Compensation for fisheries closures in federal waters is not unprecedented. In 2005, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reimbursed the Hawaii Longline Association $2.2 million for legal expenses tied to the group’s lawsuit opposing a temporary closure of the swordfish fishery. Also, as part of the same $5 million federal grant that funded the reimbursement, lobster and bottomfish fishers displaced by the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands (NWHI) Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve established by President Bill Clinton also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct compensation and funds for fisheries research.

With regard to the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, after it was first established by President George W. Bush in 2006, then-Sen. Daniel Inouye inserted an earmark in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2007 that provided more than $6 million to NMFS for a “capacity reduction program.” That program allowed vessel owners with permits to fish for lobster or bottomfish in the NWHI to be paid the economic value of their permits if they chose to stop fishing well ahead of the date all commercial fishing was to end in the monument, June 15, 2011.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

HAWAII: Suisan evaluates its sourcing policies

November 1, 2016 — A September Associated Press report regarding labor conditions of foreign workers on Honolulu fishing boats has prompted many in the industry to review or reasses their own sourcing practices.

On the Big Island, Suisan undertook an evaluation of its policies.

The retailer purchases all of its seafood from local fishermen and does not buy from longline boats, but wanted to “reassure the public that these are our fishermen here, and you don’t have to worry about that issue,” said vice president and general manager Kyle Kawano.

The Associated Press report last month found abuses of basic labor practices by some longline boats in Hawaii’s commercial fishing fleet. A federal loophole allows foreign crews to work on the vessels but they are not legally allowed to enter the country and cannot leave the boats.

Since then a new crew contract was developed by the Hawaii Longline Association that will be required of all boats who want to sell at the Honolulu fish auction. That contract is not federally enforceable by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, the industry will still be self-regulating.

Suisan president Glenn Hashimoto said that one of the boats Suisan works with employs two foreign workers who are relatives of the captain’s wife. He said they each have contracts like their American counterparts.

“They’ve been verified,” Kawano said.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 80 percent of Hawaii’s commercial fish landings are from longline boats. Troll fishing comprises just over 10 percent.

Handline and seamount boat fishing account for 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

An undated fisheries overview by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, which manages fish stocks, notes that handline-caught tuna plays a “significant role in the local tuna supply, particularly on the Big Island.”

Suisan sources 72 percent of its fish from day boats, which typically spend one to two days at sea, while 28 percent comes from seamount boats, which spend about a week at sea.

Read the full story at West Hawaii Today

Processing Company: US Must Support American Samoa Tuna Industry

October 19, 2016 — PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — Tri Marine International chief operations officer Joe Hamby has brought up with the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council several issues concerning the tuna industry in American Samoa, pointing to the industry as the backbone of the territory’s economy and support must happen that “can be measured in economic terms.”

A letter discussing the issues by Hamby, who is also the acting chief executive officer of Tri Marine-owned Samoa Tuna Processors cannery, was distributed to members of the Council during it’s 168th meeting in Honolulu last week.

Tri Marine announced last week that canning operations at STP would be suspended indefinitely effective Dec. 11.

In his Oct. 14 letter to the Council, Hamby recalled that the local tuna industry consists of two large scale canneries, a number of purse seiners, longliners and alias. He noted purse seiners are mostly US flagged, while the longliners are foreign flagged, except for the locally based US flagged fleet.

“I understand that there are no alias currently targeting tuna,” he said. “The alias therefore represent potential participants in the American Samoa tuna industry.”

The local tuna industry also includes service providers like ship handlers, maintenance and repair companies, stevedores, net repair yards, a shipyard, transportation, agents, hotels, restaurants, etc.

“The tuna industry is the backbone of the American Samoa economy,” he declared and said the tuna canneries depend on the US market as tuna products from American Samoa are exempt from duty in the US.

“Without this duty exemption, the canneries are not competitive with lower cost sources of canned tuna. Free trade agreements, like TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), are a serious threat to the American Samoa tuna industry,” Hamby said.

Read the full story at the Pacific Islands Report

WPRFMC to Amend Pacific Fishing Regs to Accommodate Hawaii’s Expanded MPA; No Changes Made to Bigeye

October 18th, 2016 — Seafood News — Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council (WestPac) will propose changes to fishery regulations to accommodate an expanded marine monument designation and also made no changes to the 2017 Pacific longline bigeye tuna catch.

WestPac agreed to produce a draft of amendments and regulations to the Hawai’i and Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plans (FEPs) to accommodate provisions of the August 26th Presidential Proclamation that expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

The Obama Administrations designation expanded the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to encompass the entire 200-mile US EZZ around the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.

An MPA designation means commercial fishing is banned in protected waters, though regulations can allow for non-commercial fishing, like subsistence practices.

“The impacts to the Hawaii fishing and seafood industries and indigenous communities as a result of monument expansion are considerable,” said Council Chair Edwin Ebisui Jr. “The Council will write to the President about these and request the Department of Commerce to mitigate them.”

The Council will solicit public input on the draft FEP amendment and draft regulation options through statewide meetings to be held prior to the Council’s next meeting in March 2017.

The Council will also ask the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to analyze various impacts of the monument expansion, which closed commercial fishing in approximately 61 percent of the US EEZ around the Hawai’i Archipelago. Among these is the change in longline effort around the main Hawaiian Islands in relation to changes in troll caught yellowfin tuna.

Meanwhile, WestPact recommended no changes for the 2017 longline commercial bigeye tuna catch.

This means the longline limits for the bigeye tuna catch will remain at 2,000 metric tons for the US Participating Territory.

Additionally, the Council also authorized the Territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Marina Islands (CNMI) to allocate up to 1,000 mt of their limit to US fishermen through specified fishing agreements as authorized under Amendment 7 of the Pelagic Fishery Ecosystem Plan for the Western Pacific Region.

WestPac says the transfer amendment provides the Territories with funding for fisheries development projects in their respective Marine Conservation Plans.
“The transfers also help to stabilize Hawai’i’s local fresh tuna market,”said Council Executive Director Kitty M. Simonds.

The amendment was actually invoked this month to extend the bigeye tuna season for the US sector in the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

“It was a lot of work for the agency, but leaving 250 metric tons of bigeye in the water with 30 boats unable to fish was a significant hardship on 20 percent of the Hawaii fleet,” said Hawaii Longline Association President Sean Martin in our story about the quota transfer.

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

Hawaii’s Longline Fishermen Pushing To Catch More Tuna

October 18th, 2016 — Hawaii’s longline fishermen will be able to go after similar amounts of bigeye tuna next year under a policy passed last week by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

But some have their sights set on doubling or even tripling their annual catch limits through new quota-sharing agreements with Pacific Island territories that don’t currently fish commercially for ahi.

Before that can happen though, the fishermen will need to demonstrate that the species is no longer subject to overfishing and convince federal officials that the pending arrangements with Guam, American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands do not violate international agreements to conserve fish stocks.

“We are right at the level of overfishing,” said Jarad Makaiau, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We are right on the razor thin line.”

Wespac manages 1.5 million square miles of ocean in the Central and Western Pacific Ocean and advises the National Marine Fisheries Service on catch limits, endangered species mitigation and stock assessments.

Hawaii fishermen, scientists cooperate on sustainability research

October 13, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced Tuesday that it will be collaborating with fisherman in Hawaii to research the health and size of several native fish species’s populations.

The research will focus on seven species of Hawaii’s deep-water bottom-dwelling fish, which include six species of snapper and one species of grouper. These big red fish, particularly the Onaga and the Opakapaka, are commonly eaten across Hawaii, and the data from this study will inform sustainable fishing practices that, hopefully, will allow these fish to remain in the cultural diet for years to come.

“Our current stock assessment shows that [the Hawaii deep seven] are not over fished and they are not experiencing over fishing,” Benjamin Richard, a NOAA marine biologist who is leading the research, tells The Christian Science Monitor. “Part of our role is to collect the best scientific information so that we can help to ensure that that continues.”

All commercial fisheries are required to record how many fish they catch and sell. The data is used by the state, and agencies such as NOAA’s Pacific Islands Regional Office and the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council, to inform the annual catch limit. But this study aims to improve upon those methods.

Read the full story at The Christian Science Monitor

Western Pacific Council, NOAA to Establish Aquaculture Management Regs for Pacific Islands Region

September 27, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Right now, anyone can throw a cage into the open ocean within the Economic Enterprise Zone and begin an aquaculture operation, said Joshua DeMello, of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

But with “gray area rules” on things like permits, species and reporting requirements, large-scale companies are hesitant to take advantage of the open ocean just yet.

“No one is doing that,” DeMello said. “We’ve gotten calls in the past about folks that are interested, but a lot of them are waiting to see what type of management plan comes out.”

The beginning of that aquaculture management program for the Pacific Islands Region is in the works, under the eye of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Marine Fisheries Service and in conjunction with
Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.

The entities are preparing a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) analyzing the possible environmental impacts of the proposed management program and alternatives.

“The purpose of it is to develop a management program to support sustainable, economically sound aquaculture in the Pacific Island Region,” DeMello said.

The PEIS process looks at options for permit duration, whether cages should be metal or net pens, and allowable species.

“The push is to have something in place so if someone does come in and do (large-scale aquaculture), there would be rules set up to ensure the wild stocks and environment are protected, and the rights of other fishermen and ocean users are preserved,” DeMello said.

But ushering industrial aquaculture into the EEZ is anything but sustainable, poses a threat to the environment and could impact commercial fishing, according to a biologist.

“For example, that would pose a navigational hazard to commercial fishermen, and they are important,” said aquatic biologist Don Heacock. “Not everyone fishes for themselves today.”

In addition to interrupting commercial fishing, Heacock said the idea of large-scale aquaculture isn’t sustainable.

“We found that out with large-scale pineapple and sugar,” he said. “The EEZ was established to protect our resources and our fisheries and they’d be using up public trust resources to export products to other countries.”

The counterbalance to the industrial scale aquaculture operations is the ahupua’a land management system and its hundreds of fishponds, Heacock said, established by the Hawaiians more than 500 years ago.

“The ahupua’a system was (created) by a chief on Oahu because he had to — they were running out of food because the population had grown so big,” Heacock said. “They had to decide how to produce more food and do it sustainably, and that’s when the fishponds were built.”

Those fishponds were integrated with taro fields and other types of agriculture, Heacock explained, to work with the watersheds and produce food sustainably.

“Right now, they’re looking at large-scale corporate aquaculture facilities where they will be bringing in all the (starter) fish,” Heacock said. “Large-scale aquaculture is not sustainable and doesn’t contribute to food security.”
NOAA says aquaculture is a way to increase marine food production.

“It’s increased a lot in the past, I would say 20 years or so, to the point now where they say aquaculture production is above that of wild capture fisheries,” DeMello said. “That includes all types — land based and open ocean.”

The comment period for the public scoping process to help identify alternatives ends Oct. 31, but DeMello said it won’t be the last time the public has opportunity to comment on the PEIS.

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