Saving Seafood

Legislators act to save right whales

June 14, 2018 — A $5 million annual grant program is proposed for fishermen, shippers and conservationists to collaborate to protect North Atlantic right whales but the state’s lobstermen are still considering it.

“We’ve read it,” Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Beth Casoni said of the SAVE Right Whales Act of 2018, filed in Congress June 7. “We have not had a chance to discuss it as an organization.” At a regularly scheduled monthly meeting Wednesday, the association’s elected delegates are expected to discuss and possibly determine whether to support the measure, Casoni said.

The filing of the SAVE Act comes a week after a report of the second right whale carcass this year, both off Virginia, based on preliminary analyses, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The decomposed carcass was reported May 31 on Metompkin Island, Virginia. After a review of the photos, the carcass was tentatively identified as a North Atlantic right whale, and bone samples will be submitted for genetic verification.

The SAVE Act itself, which stands for Scientific Assistance for Very Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales, was introduced by U.S. Reps. Seth Moulton and William Keating, both Democrats from Massachusetts, and House members from Arizona and California, and by U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, with co-sponsors from New York, New Jersey, Florida and Delaware.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Massachusetts: Rep. Keating Looking to ‘Speed Up’ Ending of NOAA Fishing Ban

February 12, 2018 — U.S. Representative William Keating recently met with new NOAA Regional Administrator Michael Pentony, and the congressman said he’s optimistic that the Sector IX groundfishing ban could soon come to an end.

“It was a great meeting,” Keating said. “There’s no learning curve with him in terms of what the issues are, and that’s an important thing.”

Keating met with Pentony on Tuesday night, just a few weeks after he was appointed the new regional administrator following the retirement of John Bullard.

“I requested, as soon as he was appointed, the opportunity to sit down with him,” Keating said. “He was great. He came to (Washington) D.C., sat down, and we talked for over an hour. We talked about general issues, but I also wanted to focus on what was going on in New Bedford in particular.”

The biggest issue, of course, is the groundfishing ban NOAA placed on Sector IX back in November. The ban is directly related to convicted “Codfather” Carlos Rafael, who owns 22 of the boats in Sector IX and whose illegal overfishing scheme has kept the sector from putting forth an operations plan acceptable to NOAA. Bullard said before his retirement that the ban cannot be lifted until the sector can accurately determine how much and what stocks Rafael overfished, and how the sector plans to go about making up for that number of lost fish.

Congressman Keating said his office has been in weekly contact with NOAA since the criminal proceedings against Rafael began last spring, because he said he knew then there would be repercussions that would reverberate through New Bedford and beyond.

Read the full story at WBSM

Massachusetts: Rep. Keating optimistic after meeting with NOAA on groundfishing ban

February 9, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — William Keating left a meeting with NOAA’s new regional administrator feeling optimistic regarding the agency’s stance on Sector IX.

The U.S. House member representing New Bedford met Tuesday night with Michael Pentony, who replaced John Bullard at NOAA and began his new role two weeks ago. Keating wanted to discuss the groundfishing ban that’s holding about 80 New Bedford fishermen off the water.

“What can I do to get people back fishing as quickly as possible?” Keating said. “That is creating my strong feelings of urgency around resolving the operations plan. That has to be done to go forward. NOAA is very clear about that.”

Neither NOAA nor Pentony would comment on the groundfishing ban placed on Sector IX.

However, Pentony also left the introduction with Keating with a feeling of optimism.

″(It was) very positive,” Pentony said. “I’m looking forward to continuing to work with the Congressman and his staff.”

Keating said his office remains in contact with NOAA on a weekly basis. The dialogue first began last spring.

The urgency, from Keating’s perspective results from the belief that the groundfishing ban established last November affects more than New Bedford.

As the most valuable fishing port in the country 17 years running, any splash in New Bedford ripples throughout Massachusetts, Keating said.

“It’s not only for our city, not only for our region, but for Massachusetts as a whole,” Keating said. “Having this cohesive industry situated the way that it is and the growth that can come from that … that is important in terms of the economic side that should be factored in.”

Because of its widespread effect on the state, Keating said he’s working with U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey on urging an immediate solution.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Cape Cod Times: A landmark fisheries plan

January 15, 2018 — For seafood lovers, there’s nothing better than a lightly battered scallop, freshly harvested from the North Atlantic, and dipped in simmering butter. And now that federal regulators have agreed to open an area east of Nantucket, closed since the 1990s, fishermen could catch as much as $218 million worth of scallops this year, and $313 million over three years. Expect those fried scallop plates to cost less this summer.

The reopening of the sea bed is just one of the many beneficial outcomes of a new fisheries management plan that was nearly 15 years in the making. The landmark set of regulations opens a large swath of the region’s waters to fishing while maintaining other closures to protect vulnerable species. The plan uses science and the latest technology to decide which ocean areas are important for the critical life stages of fish and shellfish species and how to protect them.

Two decades ago, habitat closures were decided based on drawing a line around areas where fish were congregating. Now, with a model that compares the sea bed with the impact of fishing, regulators can make decisions that will help restore and protect fish stocks. The new plan also sets aside research areas to investigate the link between habitat and fish productivity.

“We think these are groundbreaking regulations,” said John Bullard, NOAA’s outgoing regional administrator, who issued the regulations as one of his last acts on the job. “It puts the focus on the quality of the habitat protected — not the quantity, or how many square miles were protected.”

Cape fishermen are pleased with at least two elements of the plan. They cheered the closing of a large part of the Great South Channel that runs between the Cape and Georges Bank because it is essential habitat for spawning cod and other fish species. State and federal surveys have found that the region’s cod population has plummeted by about 80 percent over the past decade. Closing this area will now help ensure the continued survival of species like Atlantic cod, haddock, and flounder for years to come.

Read the full opinion piece at the Cape Cod Times

 

Massachusetts: Fed’s offshore oil plan raises local concerns

January 12, 2018 — The possibility of having an offshore oil rig a handful of miles from Cape beaches is drawing concern from elected officials and preservation groups.

The Trump administration at the turn of the new year released its draft proposal that would enable energy companies to lease large swaths of ocean and drill for oil and gas in federal waters off both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico.

Federal waters typically begin three miles from shore.

“Reckless does not begin to describe the Trump Administration’s decision to expand offshore oil and gas drilling coast-to-coast. This unprecedented move ignores concerns expressed by military leaders and the deep and widespread bipartisan opposition voiced by municipal and state representatives,” Rep. William Keating (D-Ninth Congressional District) said in a Jan. 5 statement.

“Allowing this drilling threatens the safety of our waterfront communities, the health of our oceans, and the future of our climate – not to mention the havoc it could wreak on the local economies of coastal communities, like those across New England, who count on fresh fish and clean beaches for their seafood and tourism industries,” he added.

The five-year plan is detailed in a document titled “2019-2024 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Draft Proposed Program, and is online at boem.gov.

The proposal, a few hundred pages long and broken into geographic territories, shows Massachusetts in the northern Atlantic section. The draft proposes two leases in the north Atlantic.

Read the full story at the Wellfleet Wicked Local

 

Massachusetts congressional delegation urges Gov. Charlie Baker to reject Trump administration’s offshore drilling plan

January 11, 2018 — Massachusetts congressional lawmakers called on Gov. Charlie Baker Wednesday to formally oppose the Trump administration’s plan to expand oil and gas drilling off the East Coast.

All 11 members of the state’s delegation penned a letter to Baker urging him to join other states’ governors in officially rejecting the Interior Department’s newly unveiled five-year drilling plan, which seeks to open federal waters off the California coast and areas from Florida to Maine for oil and gas exploration purposes.

The lawmakers, who have been critical of efforts to expand offshore drilling, contended that opening areas off the East Coast for such purposes “would pose a serious threat to our oceans and the economic viability of the Commonwealth’s coastal communities, tourism and shore-side businesses that rely on healthy marine resources.”

Pointing to maritime industries’ impact on Massachusetts’ economy, the delegation noted that the commercial fishing supported 83,000 jobs in the state and generated $1.9 billion income, as well as $7.3 billion in sales in 2015.

Marine-related tourism, meanwhile, generates tens of billion of dollars in economic value each yeah and supports more than 100,000 jobs in Massachusetts, they wrote.

“The economic effects of our ocean community are extensive, providing a source of income and jobs for commercial and recreational fishermen, vessel manufacturers, restaurants and other businesses throughout Massachusetts, all of which would be threatened by allowing offshore drilling and the risk of an oil spill off our coast,” the letter stated.

Read the full story at MassLive

 

Ed Markey: Plan will spur ‘huge fight’ over offshore energy drilling

January 9, 2018 — BOSTON — The state’s environment, tourism and fishing industry could be threatened by President Donald Trump’s plan to open up more coastal areas to offshore drilling, according to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who said the proposal puts “nearly every single mile of coastline in the United States in the crosshairs of an oil spill.”

“Nothing is sacred,” Markey told reporters from the Kennedy Federal Building. “All of the United States is going to be open for the oil industry to be able to drill. That is something that the American people will want to have resolved on the floor of the House and Senate, and that is something that I am going to guarantee him that he will see. This is going to be a huge fight across our country.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday announced a proposal that would make more than 90 percent of the national outer continental shelf available for oil and gas exploration. Currently, 94 percent of federal offshore acreage is off-limits, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

The 380-page draft plan includes a note that Gov. Charlie Baker does not “support inclusion of areas adjacent to Massachusetts,” and Attorney General Maura Healey “strongly opposes opening up any of the Atlantic or any other new areas to oil and gas leasing.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates there are 89.9 billion barrels of oil and 327.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that have yet to be discovered on the outer continental shelf, including 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 38.2 cubic feet in the Atlantic portion of the shelf.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, Atlantic oil and natural gas development could deliver $51 billion in new government revenue, nearly 280,000 jobs and 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day for domestic energy production by 2035.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

‘Groundbreaking’ fish protection plan in place in Northeast

January 5, 2018 — The following is excerpted from an article by Doug Fraser of the Cape Cod Times:

After 14 years of research, negotiations, hearings and two additional years of review, New England has a plan that uses science and the latest technology to decide which areas are important for the critical life stages of fish and shellfish species and how to protect them.

John Bullard, the regional director of NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, informed New England Fishery Management Council Chairman John Quinn in a letter Wednesday that his agency had approved most of their fish habitat protection plan.

“It was a massive undertaking and your staff, especially Michelle Bachman, should be proud of their groundbreaking work that went into supporting this amendment,” Bullard wrote in the letter. The council staff, along with researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service, state fisheries agencies, and universities, especially the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, put together models that incorporated photographic and other surveys of the ocean bottom with known areas of fish concentration and other research on spawning and other life stages, that helped the council evaluate what should be protected and how.

“The fact that it dragged on so long, people miss how groundbreaking this really is,” said Tom Nies, the New England council’s executive director. Two decades ago, habitat closures were decided based on drawing a line around areas where fish were congregating, Nies said. Now, with a model that compares the sea bed with the impact of fishing, they can make decisions he feels will have greater significance to restoring and protecting fish stocks. Plus, the habitat plan also set aside research areas to investigate the link between habitat and fish productivity, a piece of the puzzle that has seen relatively little conclusive research.

“If you compare where we are with this amendment in terms of how they were developed and analyzed versus the original habitat areas in 2002 and 2003, we are light years ahead of where we were then,” Nies said.

Scallopers from both the big boat and small boat fleets, which are often at odds, traveled to Washington in October to lobby [U.S. Rep. William] Keating and other congressmen on getting NMFS to finish its review of the habitat plan and open the area up to scalloping before that population died off. Their message was that allowing them into scallop-rich, nonessential fish habitat meant they spent far less time towing their heavy dredges through areas fish do use.

“From our perspective, it’s really heartening that they heard our concerns,” said Seth Rolbein, director of the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, speaking for the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

David Frulla, an attorney and lobbyist representing limited access scallop vessels, and Fisheries Survival Fund attorney Andrew Minkiewicz agreed the council and NOAA made the right decision in closing the Great South Channel and opening the scallop grounds in what is known as Closed Area I. But they felt that there was just as much evidence to open up a portion of a second closed area on Georges Bank over 100 miles east of the Cape that had historically produced as much as 50 million pounds of harvested scallops. Bullard said more information would be needed for his agency to do that right now.

“There are only so many highly productive scallop beds, and this is one of them,” Minkiewicz said. Frulla admitted that the bottom there is more complex and may be harder to determine its value to fish, but Minkiewicz said adding another prime scallop area keeps scallopers away from the bottom where fish do congregate.

Assistant Regional Administrator Michael Pentony told Quinn in an email that his agency expected to publish the final rule containing the regulations to implement the plan this spring.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Massachusetts: The final blow for Cape Wind

December 4, 2017 — The proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm is no longer.

After more than 16 years, tens of millions of dollars spent and seemingly endless, at times deafening, debate, the announcement Friday that Cape Wind is officially dead came quietly by email.

“Cape Wind has confirmed to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has ceased development of its proposed offshore wind farm project in Nantucket Sound and has filed to terminate its offshore wind development lease that was issued in 2010,” according to a statement sent to the Times by Cape Wind vice president Dennis Duffy.

The project first proposed in 2001 and reviewed by dozens of local, state and federal agencies succumbed not under the weight of pressure from opponents or failure to clear any particular regulatory hurdle but rather from a combination of time and financial constraints that tightened and loosened over many years before constricting for good when utilities killed the contracts to buy power from the project’s 130 wind turbines in early January 2015.

Even after losing customers for its power, however, Cape Wind Associates LLC continued to shell out $88,278 to pay for a lease secured in 2010 covering 46 square miles of federal waters in the middle of the sound. That amount was a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $100 million the company had already spent on the project but whether it was what finally tipped the scales is unclear.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Fossil fuel search would target migratory path of right whales

November 14, 2017 — Conservationists will gather today in Washington, D.C., to stop a bill they say will “fast-track” air gun surveys for oil and gas off the U.S. coasts that could harm whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.

“This is a pro-oil and gas industry wishlist,” said CT Harry, a marine conservation campaign officer for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which is one of the nine lead conservation groups heading the lobbying effort.

More than 50 marine mammal advocates and ocean conservationists are expected to visit Capitol Hill, on the 45th anniversary of the passage of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The act, enacted in 1972, established a moratorium on the taking of marine mammals in U.S. waters, where “take” means hunt, harass, capture or kill, or attempt to do so, and the act set a national policy to prevent depletion of marine mammal populations. Exceptions to the moratorium can be made through permits for lawful activities that might incidentally result in a “take.”

Conservationists say that House bill 4239, known as the Secure American Energy Act, contains provisions to weaken the MMPA permitting for “incidental” events, where the weakened measures could harm marine mammals all along the East Coast, particularly the North Atlantic right whales. The House Committee on Natural Resources passed the bill last week, and the House could vote on it in the next few weeks.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times