Conservation & Environment

Though most people have probably never heard of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, as the law is now called, this piece of legislation forms the linchpin in managing our nation's fisheries. It marked a major turning point in how we oversee marine resources, ensuring that we have seafood on our plates for years to come. It's also a policy that all Americans who love to fish and eat local seafood should applaud.

Passage of Magnuson-Stevens marked a historic recognition that our ocean fish are a valuable national resource, which, with prudent stewardship, will help feed and employ millions of Americans. The law set in place a fishery management system still used today, but unfortunately also helped expand the U.S. fishing fleet to unsustainable levels, resulting in overfishing, or taking species faster than they can reproduce.

Subsequent congressional efforts to strengthen the law, in 1996 and 2006, helped refocus fishery management efforts to end overfishing and promote more sustainable practices. This has included the development of strong, science-based catch limits to aid in rebuilding depleted populations.

Today, the United States has in place one of the most advanced marine resource management programs in the world. We also are on track to have in place catch limits designed to end overfishing on the vast majority of major commercial and recreational fisheries in U.S. waters by the end of the year.

Read the complete story from the Bellingham Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association has received substantial support from various environmental groups, including $2.6 million from the Pew Environment Group since 1999 and $538,000 from The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation last year to support the implementation of sectors.  CEO John Pappalardo said such groups don't set the Hook's agenda, they agree with it.

The Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen's Association represents fisherman who use hooks or stationary nets and was an early backer of the cooperatives, called sectors, which are the foundation of current New England fishery management. The Hook helped Russo and other fishermen create one of the first sectors in 2004.

Others in the fishing industry consider the sector system a disaster that's ruining fishing businesses. But the Hook defends the change as the best way to keep fishermen solvent while species rebound. Environmental groups who agree have given it praise and money. To some fishermen, that's like allying with anti-fishing enemies.

"The hook fishermen don't mean anything to me personally, and I have nothing personally against them, except that they're all sell-outs," said Dick Grachek, who owns a boat that fishes out of Point Judith, R.I.

A lawsuit led by New England's two biggest fishing ports, Gloucester and New Bedford, seeks to overturn the new rules, and also takes on the sector the Hook helped create, charging it received "preferential treatment" with catch allotments.

Steve Ouellette, an attorney for the ports, says the hook association has outsized influence because of the environmentalists' money and the fact their chief executive, John Pappalardo, chairs a regional body that devises fishery rules, the New England Fishery Management Council.

Ouellette considers the Hook is an anti-industry environmental group in disguise, mainly representing fishermen who barely fish or rarely even practice the more benign hook fishing that attracts environmentalists.

Critics say the allotments were unfairly decided. There's resentment because the sector the Hook helped create got to keep a higher cod allocation given before the other sectors were created.

"They got cod that they couldn't possibly catch, and then they sold (most) of that allocation," said Brian Rothschild, a fisheries scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth.

Pappalardo said suddenly changing the allocation would have set a disruptive precedent, causing uncertainty for fishermen who rely on knowing how much they'll be able to catch.

Eric Brazer, manager of Russo's sector, said the group has landed 51 percent of its catch with hooks this year. More are now using stationary nets mainly because their hooks are often stripped clean by an overpopulation of dogfish or skate before they can catch cod. If they can't catch the cod allocation, trading it to sectors that can use it makes sense, he said.

Read the complete story from The Boston Globe.

 

 

 

 

 

Sea turtles continue to wash ashore along the Gulf, forcing the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to scramble and figure out what is causing the spike.

"It's crazy that I go out there nearly every day and find them. It makes me mad that NOAA is now trying to blame the shrimp fishermen for killing them in their nets when the shrimp season isn't even open yet and hardly any boats are out there."

Shrimp fishermen feel the same way. They are required to use turtle excluders, devices that allow turtles to escape drowning in shrimp nets. Every year some turtles are killed by fishing boats inadvertently, but shrimpers say to blame them for the recent jump in turtle deaths is hard to believe.  

"It's about as ridiculous as anything else I heard during this whole oil spill," said Louisiana Shrimp Association President Clint Guidry. "This time of year shrimp fishermen are fixing their boats and getting ready for the main season that begins in May. I guess they've run out of excuses after saying everything is being killed by dead zones and algae, so now they need to blame us."

Read the complete story from OpEdNews.

 

 

 

 

 

Pew Environment's office on Cape Cod put out the following April Fool's Day release.

Have you heard the one about the new bluefin tuna quota proposal? We wish this was some sort of April Fools' joke. But, it's the real deal.  

On March 14, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) issued a proposed rule that would punish commercial and recreational bluefin tuna fishermen who use sustainable fishing methods, like hand-thrown harpoons and rod and reels, by lowering their quota to account for the wasteful fishing practices of surface longline fishermen.

Unlike harpooners and rod and reel fishermen who target single fish, longliners use gear that stretches for 30 miles on average with hundreds of baited hooks. These longlines indiscriminately catch and kill bluefin tuna, blue and white marlin, sea turtles and seabirds. The proposed rule penalizes fishermen using selective gear, so that surface longline fishermen can indefinitely continue their wasteful ways.

Not only would this proposal unfairly reduce the number of bluefin tuna that commercial and recreational fishermen could selectively catch, it fails to provide any incentive to limit the number of bluefin tuna incidentally killed by indiscriminate surface longlines.

NMFS should not finalize this proposed rule, but rather it should discourage the use of destructive surface longlines in areas with high concentrations of bluefin tuna, such as their spawning grounds in the Gulf of Mexico. In the Gulf alone, an area where directed fishing for western Atlantic bluefin tuna is prohibited, surface longliners catch an average of 103 metric tons of bluefin every year. Most of those tuna are thrown overboard, dead or dying. NMFS should promote more selective fishing methods instead of rewarding wasteful fishing practices.

NMFS has extended the comment period on this proposed rule from April 14, 2011, to April 28, 2011. There have been a few public hearings already. NMFS will host others within the next few weeks, including one tomorrow in Gloucester, followed by Portland, Maine, and Fairhaven, Mass. (dates still to be announced).

The United States has the largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the world, containing 3.4 million square miles of ocean and 90,000 miles of coastline. Throughout this vast underwater realm, fish play an essential role in the interconnected web of life on which we depend. In fact, they are one of America's most valuable natural resources, adding billions to the U.S. economy and supporting millions of jobs through fishing and recreation.

Unfortunately, overfishing — taking fish from our oceans faster than they can reproduce — has plagued U.S. oceans for decades and continues today. This squanders valuable fish populations and weakens ocean ecosystems, making them more vulnerable to problems like pollution, natural disturbances and climate change.

The good news is that we have a strong law in place in the United States governing how fish are managed in federal waters, and serious efforts are underway to end overfishing and rebuild depleted populations. The Pew Environment Group supports these goals through our work at the federal and regional levels of government, where decisions are made about these invaluable marine resources.

Fishermen, conservationists and scientists have actively debated how best to manage our ocean fish populations for decades. But with so much at stake, it's critical that as many Americans as possible be actively engaged in this discussion. The "Overfishing 101" blog series aims to do just that by providing a new outlet, in which we hope to open up the discussion to the larger public, cut through the rhetoric and encourage more people to participate in marine fish conservation. 

Read the complete story from The Huffington Post.

 

 

 

 

 

Officials of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA) will host the second meeting of the Fisheries Working Group on Offshore Renewable Energy on Monday, April 4, from 3 to 5 p.m. in New Bedford to discuss the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Request for Interest (RFI) for Commercial Leasing for Wind Power on the Outer Continental Shelf Offshore Massachusetts. The RFI, issued on December 29, 2010, is the first step in the multi-year federal leasing process for offshore wind energy development in approximately 3,000 square miles of federal waters off the Massachusetts coast. The purpose of the working group is to enable the fishing industry to inform the federal leasing process about commercial fishing interests in the RFI area.

At the request of the Patrick-Murray Administration, members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, and Massachusetts fishermen, BOEMRE extended the RFI public comment period until April 18. This additional time will enable the Fisheries Working Group to develop recommendations addressing issues relating to the relationship between commercial fishing and offshore wind power development. The Fisheries Working Group will continue to inform the federal government as the leasing process proceeds.

When: Monday, April 4, 2011 from 3-5pm

Where: New Bedford Harbor Development Commission, Wharfinger Building, 52 Fisherman's Wharf, New Bedford

 

 

 

 

 

 

NASSAU, Bahamas, March 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Syndicated cartoonist Jim Toomey, whose Sherman's Lagoon comic strip appears in more than 250 newspapers in over 30 countries, will be in The Bahamas this week to push for increased shark protections. The artist will speak at several public forums and will visit with schoolchildren in Long Island and Nassau.

"The Bahamas has something wonderful in its waters, something very few countries have," said Toomey. "Because the government banned longline fishing, the shark populations off the Bahamian coast are still relatively healthy and the marine ecosystem is more intact here than almost any other place in the world."

Toomey's cartoon features a great white shark that lives off of a fictional island in the Palauan archipelago. In the real world, the Pacific island nation of Palau established a sanctuary for these animals in 2009.

More than 40 different kinds of sharks can be found in Bahamian waters, including the whale shark, the great hammerhead and even great whites. Toomey is joining efforts spearheaded by the Pew Environment Group and The Bahamas National Trust to establish specific protections for the species; none currently exist.

Read the complete story from PR Newswire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NAPLES — A year after proposing to list loggerhead sea turtles as endangered, federal reviewers say they need another six months to take a closer look at the data.

Loggerheads, the crawling darlings of Southwest Florida beaches, were named a threatened species more than 30 years ago. But that hasn’t stopped a barrage of threats from fishing gear that entangles them, coastal development and now global warming and sea level rise — encroaching on their nesting habitat.

In 2007, three environmental groups petitioned the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to change the designation for northwest Atlantic loggerheads, including those that nest in Southwest Florida, and North Pacific loggerheads.

After a study brought about by a 2009 settlement, the agencies proposed the endangered species listing and asked for public comment. They had until this month to make a final decision or ask for more time.

Read the complete story from Naples News.

 

 

 

 

 

Eric Schwaab, the administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, stood before a crowd of fisheries experts on Monday at the Boston Seafood Show. Schwaab had made many forays to New England—home of some of the squeakiest wheels in our nation’s fishing industry—since taking over the job about a year ago. But this time was different. He came bearing a remarkable message: We are witnessing the end of overfishing in U.S. waters.

The end of overfishing should be shouted from rooftops from New England to the Carolinas to the Gulf Coast to Alaska to the Pacific Island territories and back to NMFS’s Silver Spring, Maryland headquarters. This is the biggest national news story our fisheries have seen in years.

So where are the headlines? A few stories trickled onto the pages of local New England newspapers. But even the Boston Globe didn’t spare so much as a column inch. Prophetically, Schwaab alluded to the likelihood of radio silence during the second half of his remarks, in which he suggested the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration should “do a better job of getting out the word on the progress made.”

Fisheries doomsayers have certainly been more successful at garnering attention. Dr. Boris Worm, a scientist at Dallhousie University in Canada, published a study in November 2006 that splashed across major media outlets worldwide. His study, “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services,” contained a message far more digestible than its title: Continuing the world’s current rate of fishing would lead to the “global collapse” of fish populations by 2048.

Now that’s a headline.

As panic ensued about the possibility of empty seafood menus, Dr. Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington penned “Faith-Based Fisheries.” It was a sharp rebuke of not just Worm, but the entire scientific publishing community, which he accused of accepting “articles on fisheries not for their scientific merit, but for their publicity value.”

This all sounds esoteric on the surface. In the elevated discourse of academia, however, Hilborn’s words should have sparked nothing short of a Biggie-versus-Tupac-level throwdown.

Yet instead of Worm or Hilborn upping the ante with the academic journal iteration of “Hit ‘Em Up”—Tupac’s vitriolic rap widely credited with escalating the east coast/west coast hip-hop conflagration—a funny thing happened. The two scientists decided they had more in common than in opposition, so they sat down to work on a collaborative assessment of world fisheries.

Science published the result of their efforts, “Rebuilding Global Fisheries,” in July 2009. It is a comprehensive assessment of 10 large ocean ecosystems with the most comprehensive catch data. The findings showed that fishing in half of the areas they studied was either already sustainable or showing significant progress toward sustainability and that “combined fisheries and conservation objectives can be achieved by merging diverse management actions, including catch restrictions, gear modification, and closed areas.”

Not coincidentally, all of these practices are in place in the United States today to varying degrees.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at American Progress. His work focuses on driving progressive solutions to the multitude of problems facing the world’s oceans. Prior to joining American Progress, Mike spent five years staffing the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard—initially serving a one-year appointment as a Dean John Knauss Marine Policy Fellow before joining the committee full-time as a professional staff member in 2007. In that capacity Mike worked primarily for Subcommittee Ranking Member Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), as well as the Ranking Members of the full committee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). He oversaw enactment of multiple key pieces of ocean legislation, including the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, the Integrated Coastal and Ocean Observing Act, the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, and the Shark Conservation Act. A native Cape Codder, Mike received a master’s degree in marine affairs from the University of Rhode Island in 2005 and also holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Georgetown University.

Read the complete article from the Center for American Progress.

 

 

 

 

 

In informal remarks during a private meeting with a seafood marketing group on the first day of the International Boston Seafood Show, Eric Schwaab, administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service, was applauded not only for his optimistic assessment of the long struggle to end overfishing, but for his commitment to marry government resources with U.S. industry efforts at increasing the domestic share of the global seafood market, according to multiple audience sources.

Schwaab spoke to about 70 members of the National Seafood Marketing Coalition on Sunday, during the first day of the three-day seafood show, considered an apex event on the global fisheries calendar.

Expressed in multiple variations, the theme of the show, according to Seafood.com, an industry news site, was supplier and seller efforts to measure and demonstrate seafood sustainability in a global market in which 84 percent of U.S. consumption is imported, half of it farmed.

Read the complete story from the Gloucester Times.