Economic Impact

BOSTON– May 1, 2013 — As Gov. Deval Patrick and members of Congress continue to press the White House and federal regulators to postpone severe reductions to catch limits for New England fishermen, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday notified Congress that it was moving forward with the reductions as planned for Wednesday. 

NOAA announced Tuesday that it intended to file the catch limits for the 2013-2015 fishing seasons, imposing limits for Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod that are 78 percent and 61 percent lower that fiscal 2012, respectively.

Substantial reductions to catches of groundfish are also being made for Gulf of Maine haddock, Georges Bank yellowtail flounder, American plaice, witch flounder and Cape Cod, Gulf of Maine and Southern New England yellowtail flounder. 

Regulators insist the new limits are “necessary to ensure stocks are not subject to overfishing,” but Massachusetts politicians and researchers have questioned the science used to draft the new limits, and fishermen warn it could cripple a $2 billion industry in Massachusetts.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

May 1, 2013 — Fishing season has officially started in New Bedford and across southern New England, but a new government mandate has local fishermen worried about their businesses.

A federal group called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) recently released a study that revealed the declining health of cod, flounder and other key New England fish. That study led to new laws that will restrict the amount of cod fishermen are permitted to catch in certain areas.

The mandate created a 77% reduction in allowed catch in the Gulf of Maine and a 61% cut on the catch limit in George's Bank. Many fishermen believe these changes will force them out of business.

"We're just about wiped out with no fish to catch," said local fisherman Carlos Rafael. "You look around, 50, 60 percent of what's left is going to disappear."

Rafael went on to say that, since catch limits began four years ago, his revenue has nearly dropped in half.

Read the full story and watch the video from WPRI

 

 

May 1, 2013 — After months of conflict between federal fisheries regulators and fishermen, new groundfishing catch limits take effect on May 1st.

The new limits include severe cuts to quotas.

Watch the WMTW News 8 report on Youtube 

 

 

May 1, 2013 — Sharp new cuts in fishing quotas mark the start today of the fourth year of fishing catch shares and sector management in the Northeast, NOAA's prescription for rebuilding fish stocks and streamlining the fishing industry.

Today is also known as "The Day of Reckoning," the unofficial name given by those on both sides of the issue. The implication is that the fishing industry is finally paying the price of failed management that has brought a collapse of some groundfish species and a sharp curtailment in fishing for the most popular species: cod, yellowtail flounder and haddock.

But the fishermen who now see their quotas of some fish cut by more than 70 percent, who see their livelihood evaporating before their eyes, who are losing homes to foreclosure, insist, without contradiction, that they have done everything NOAA Fisheries has asked them to do in the past three years, and years before that.

They set up sectors, the once-mystifying system of cooperatives in which boats team up to manage their quotas as they see fit.

They took the oftentimes meager quotas they were assigned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and made the best of them. As loudly predicted by Carlos Rafael, who owns dozens of boats, many boat owners quit the business because their quota couldn't make them any money and leasing quota from others wasn't worth the money.

But at least the government's stock assessment surveys were at first quite upbeat. Yellowtail flounder, haddock and especially cod were on the rebound, plentiful and multiplying.

Then came 2011, when suddenly stock assessments were showing the opposite. NOAA and the Commerce Department clamped down, tightened the quotas, and in anticipation of a collapse in 2012, declared an economic emergency.

Linda McCann manages sectors 6 and 7 in New Bedford, which three years ago had about two dozen boats each. Today the number of boats remains almost the same, but few of them are actually fishing.

"In sector 7, we have 10 boats fishing, only three of them in groundfish. The others are monkfish guys," she said.

"In sector 8, there are just four boats, in groundfish."

In meetings of the New England Fishery Management Council, owners and captains have pleaded their case, that quota costs, fuel costs, stagnant prices, and the cost of running sectors have made it impossible for many of them to make any money.

But Congress and the White House have done nothing to provide disaster relief for the fishery (and two others in the Gulf of Mexico and on the West Coast). The Senate tried, but the GOP-controlled House removed the money from the Hurricane Sandy relief bill early this year.

McCann explained that the idle boats haven't been sold largely because of a pension system requirement. If the pension account for the boat is short of its obligations, owners must make up the difference when the boat is sold. The amounts range from $250,000 to $600,000, McCann said.

Some are paying off in quarterly payments while collecting less than generous pensions themselves, McCann said.

Another problem cropped up this year: the weather. A fierce winter kept the fishing fleet in port during January and February. These were boats, McCann said, whose owners had mortgaged their houses to lease or buy quota. But they couldn't fish and the last few days leading to today, they made a last-ditch effort to fish for some of that quota.

But leaving so much quota in the sea will start many boats off in the red this year, she said.

The fishing boats aren't the only ones suffering. With fewer boats fishing, support businesses are enduring tough times.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

 

April 29, 2013 — Frustrated by the response of federal fishing regulators, top Bay State politicians on Monday decried new catch-limits on fishermen set to take effect in two days that they said could cripple the fishing industry in Massachusetts, while Gov. Deval Patrick has sought to intervene with the White House to protect the livelihoods of fishermen.

In an attempt to guard against overfishing and allow populations of haddock, cod and yellowtail flounder to replenish, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is set to implement new restrictions on May 1 reducing the amounts of fish that boats from around New England can catch by as much as 78 percent.

Fishermen, scientists and elected officials have questioned the science used to set the catch-limits, and have called for a less drastic one-year reduction in fishing limits by 40 percent. Additional funding for research into the groundfish stocks off the Atlantic Coast of New England is also being sought, officials said.

Patrick has written multiple letters to Congressional leaders and the U.S. Commerce Department seeking assistance, and last Thursday spoke with Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett about his request for an interim measure to postpone deep reductions to fishing limits.

So far, attempts to secure disaster relief or forestall the catch-limit reductions before Wednesday have been unsuccessful, but leaders said they would not give up. NOAA on Monday insisted the limits were necessary.

“The fishermen do not want to take all the fish out of the ocean. That’s not sustainable for them over the long haul. It’s not going to be a business they can then hand to their children and their grandchildren. Everyone’s looking for sustainability. The fishermen want good science and something that doesn’t wipe out their entire industry between now and when the stocks are replenished,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on Monday.

Warning of a “catastrophic perfect storm of circumstances” that could cripple the fishing industry in Massachusetts, fishermen from Gloucester to New Bedford gathered at the Fish Pier in South Boston on Monday to urge the Obama administration to overrule NOAA and postpone the reduction in catch-limits for 2013.

A dozen public officials, including Warren and interim U.S. Sen. Mo Cowan, rallied on the pier under blue skies. They also called on Congress to approve disaster relief funding for fishermen impacted by the new rules.

Read the full story at the Salem Gazette 

BOSTON — April 29, 2013 — New England fishermen and their political allies have rallied at a Boston fish pier to make an urgent call for relief from devastating cuts in fish catch limits.

As of May 1, fishermen who chase bottom-dwelling groundfish face cuts that fishermen say will destroy the industry. But regulators say the weak condition of key stocks mandate the cuts.

The worst of the reductions is a year-to-year cut of 77 percent in cod in the Gulf of Maine.

At the rally, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren called for disaster relief, arguing Washington should be as quick to respond to a disaster for fishermen as it is to respond to disasters that strike farmers.

Read the full story by the Associated Press at The Boston Globe    

April 28, 2013 — Competition for elvers is fierce, and so far the season has already produced a flurry of new developments, from the largest illegal-possession case on record and an unusual strain in relations between the state and the Passamaquoddy Tribe over licensing. Even the licensed fishermen have weighed in, with 50 last month forming the first Maine advocacy association for the fishery.

At just after midnight early Thursday from a bridge over the Presumpscot River in Falmouth, the shoreline seemed to be strung with the soft, cold light of fireflies or the flickering flames of candles, magical in the half-dark, lit by a full moon.

But those lights were actually evidence of men at work. Each marked a spot where an elver fisherman was dip-netting for the baby eels that constitute one of the most valuable — and violated — fisheries going right now: elvers.

Ticketed violations are down compared with the same period last year — a fact that might seem surprising, given the fascination with the fishery and battles over licensing. From March 1 to April 19, 2012, 158 summonses were handed out by Maine Marine Patrol officers. During the same period this year, that number dropped to 103.

The reduction is probably the result of a number of factors, said Jeff Nichols, a spokesman for the Maine Department of Marine Resources. Greater public and media interest, along with strict enforcement and now criminal penalties, have also likely left some poachers more wary of being noticed. And the elver season in some coastal areas has been slower to start this spring, he said.

The intense interest in the fishery this year is occurring simultaneously with the rising tide of federal attention. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which has management jurisdiction over most fisheries in waters shared by states, is gathering public comments in New England and along the East Coast on proposed changes to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American eel. A meeting is set for 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday at the Augusta Armory.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

April 29, 2013 — Overfishing, low stocks and rising water temperatures mean more regulation, with advisors keen to cutback on cod fishing.

The latest cuts could mean a loss of $15m or more to the $80m industry.

The centuries old tradition that helped form New England's economy is under threat, as well as the fish.

Watch the video from Al Jazeera on Youtube

 

 

April 27, 2013 — With fishermen in Gloucester and elsewhere in New England staring at extreme and nearly across-the-board federally mandated cuts in landings of groundfish, the Northeast Seafood Coalition, the region’s largest industry group, is leading a major rally for the industry Monday on the Boston Fish Pier beginning at 11 a.m.

The rally will feature U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Attorney General Martha Coakley and Congressman John Tierney among the speakers, all of whom are Democrats, but have failed, like their fellow partisans, to reach President Obama to change administration policy.

The industry has been dramatically reduced in size since 1996 when changes in the Magnuson-Stevens Act began to erect regulatory protection for many of the stocks in the Northeast groundfishery — notably cod, flounder and haddock. From more than 750 active boats, the industry has been cut to half that size with losses in shore-side businesses — ice, fuel, dry-docking, netting and processors for example.

But the cuts in catch limits projected but not legally posted in the Federal Register as of Friday to take effect next Wednesday — May 1, the first day of the 2013 fishing year — present the industry with an unprecedented limited access to its essential resource, and source of commerce and income.

John Bullard, the regional administrator for the fisheries for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has repeatedly said in writing and orally that he cannot legally grant the industry a reprieve from the cuts — and if he could, he added, he wouldn’t anyway because of his expressed belief that the stocks primarily Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod and yellowtail flounder have not been rebuilding to the theoretical maximum biomass quickly enough.

Cuts in landings that are expected to go into effect on Wednesday range from 77 percent for Gulf of Maine cod, to 19 percent for haddock in the western sector of Georges Bank. Most of the cuts are in the 40-50 percent level.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times 

 

 

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton  April 23, 2013 — BRUSSELS — Chris Lischewski, CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, announced this morning at the European Seafood Show that Bumble Bee Foods was launching a new product line of canned seafood called Wild Selections.  Initially the product line will contain MSC certified albacore and skipjack tuna.

Eventually the line will expand to include salmon, shrimp, clams and sardines.

All products will be MSC certified, and will also have both the MSC logo and the WWF Panda logo on the can.

Bumble Bee will donate 13 cents of every can sold to WWF to further Marine conservation.  The company has guaranteed that it will spend at least $ 1 million supporting WWF over the next three years.

According to Lischewski, the decision to develop the Wild Solutions product line is an example of the company’s public commitment to sustainability, and to demonstrate the ability to manage a line of fully certified products on a larger scale.

The WWF will participate with a panda logo on the top of every can.

The labeling for the new product line of certified products was worked out over the past year between Bumble Bee, Rupert Howes, CEO of the MSC, and WWF.  Bill Fox,  Vice Chair. Vice President & Managing Director for Fisheries, WWF-U.S represented WWF in the negotiations.

This step is recognizing that there are consumers who want to see a line of fully certified seafood products.  And according to Lischewski, it was important to acknowledge the MSC as part of this process.

Initially the line will have small volumes compared to Bumble Bee’s other US offerings, but the full label commitment and the partnership with WWF as well as the MSC is something that has a potential to grow over time.

Speaking at the European Tuna conference the day before, Chris Lischewski said he hoped one day to see all tuna certified by the MSC.  (see European Tuna Conference says Higher Tuna Prices here to Stay in our news today)

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