Economic Impact

For fishermen foundering due to the cost and pressure of rules, regulations and the feeble economy, there is help available from a borrowing source that — oddly, in today's environment — is seeking comers.

The Cape Ann Commercial Fishermen's Loan Fund, established in 1975 with $250,000 in federal grants, provides money for fishing businesses that have exhausted traditional loan avenues. Propped by an additional $140,000 in the 1990s, said loan administrator Nina Jarvis, the fund probably topped out at about $750,000, boosted by interest payments and investment management, handled by Cape Ann Savings Bank.

The last surviving fishing fund created by the federal government in the wake of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act, the loans have helped 50-60 businesses over the years, said Jarvis, without a single default.

It loaned $100,000 last month alone, and there is still money available for repairs, upgrades, equipment and such, said Jarvis, who also works as bookkeeper at the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction. The interest rate is 7 percent.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The two-day visit to Gloucester by 11 visiting economic development specialists in early May, part of an emergency assignment to the major fishing ports of New England by then-Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, will produce nothing of immediate value, Mayor Carolyn Kirk said Thursday.

Kirk gave the assessment after a briefing by Joshua Barnes, the team leader from Commerce's Economic Development Administration who also delivered a 35-page draft assessment of Gloucester's history, economy, culture and potential.

"We've going to have a year's worth of meetings so that we'll be on the receiving end of federal aid," Kirk said.

She said the draft would be corrected for factual errors and circulated to the participants in the meetings before it is returned to the Department of Commerce to be converted into a finished product.

Kirk said, however, that one realization to come from the meetings and dialogue with the experts — part of the Commerce Department's Economic Development Administration — is that Gloucester is not well organized or structured to match the requirements of the federal government.

In federal jargon, as expressed in the draft report. what is out of kilter is the "city of Gloucester economic development delivery system."

 

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times

 

 

 

 

 

The unofficial 2011 scallop fishing derby begins at midnight Sunday with almost the entire scallop fleet from New Bedford and beyond preparing to steam out to sea to get a piece of the action.

Two rich fishing areas on Georges Bank, normally off-limits to scallopers, will be open officially on Aug. 1. When the clock ticks to midnight, hundreds of boats will be hovering on the area borders, poised to swoop in and scoop up their allotted 18,000 pounds of the lucrative catch.

Deirdre Boelke, a scallop plan coordinator with the New England Fishery Management Council, said the difficulties facing the scallop fleet with the yellowtail by-catch issue are well known by regulators.

While fishermen have until January to take advantage of the one trip that regulators grant each vessel inside a closed area, it is fear of an early closure that prompts this particular gold rush. Along with their target species, fishermen inevitably bring up the bottom-dwelling yellowtail flounder in their scallop dredges. Amid concerns over the health of that stock, fishery regulators have decreed that once the fleet harvests 313,000 pounds of yellowtail by-catch, these areas will close again.

"That's why a decision was made to compensate boats that may not been able to get their 18,000 pounds if the areas close," she said.
According to the formulas that regulate commercial fishing, any boat shut out of Area 1 will receive an additional 4.2 days of fishing in open scallop areas. Area 2 boats will receive an additional 5.7 days, she said.

To help the fleet stay out of areas with high concentrations of yellowtail, researchers from the School of Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth are partnering with fishermen to conduct a by-catch avoidance program.

"It's great that we have 201 boats signed up to participate," SMAST's Cate O'Keefe said. "The program uses data collected by fishermen on the location and amount of yellowtail catch. Then we send a summary of the information back to the fleet each day to provide a real-time update of by-catch hot spots." When the fishermen see concentrations of yellowtail they can move to another spot, she said.

SMAST introduced the plan last year when the fleet was able to access the Nantucket Lightship closed area. It was highly successful. "We had 122 boats participate, and the fleet harvested their full allocation of scallops while only catching about 32 percent of the yellowtail flounder they were allowed," O'Keefe said.

 

Read the complete story from The South Coast Today

 

 

 

 

 

Located on the Connecticut River, more than 80 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, Turners Falls, Massachusetts is an unlikely setting to rear a seagoing fish. But that is precisely what Josh Goldman, co-founder and CEO of Australis Aquaculture, is doing, using some of the most sustainable aquaculture techniques in existence today.

In its Massachusetts location, Goldman’s company annually raises about 1.2 million barramundi, an Australian fish that spawns in saltwater, lives much of its life in freshwater, and is uniquely suited to fish farming. But it’s the way that Australis raises its fish that has won it acclaim — growing the barramundi in low-density concentrations in indoor fish pens, continually recycling the water and collecting virtually all of the fishes’ waste for fertilizer, and producing a moderately priced, white-fleshed fish sold in many U.S. grocery chains and higher-end restaurants.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Goldman discusses the technology behind his aquaculture operations in the U.S. and Vietnam and the challenges that global aquaculture must meet in the coming decades if it hopes to sustainably produce the majority of the world’s seafood. “Market-based initiatives can have a tremendous positive impact,” says Goldman, “and the combination of the right species and the right farming methodology will allow aquaculture to really be a very ecologically efficient part of the global food system.”

Read the interview from Yale.

 

 

 

 

 

Scallops account for New Bedford's status as the largest U.S. commercial fishing port in terms of value at $249 million in 2009, according to the latest federal fishery statistics. And scallops, unlike lobster, have proven remarkably recession proof with prices rising steadily through the downturn even as the amount caught held relatively steady. The wholesale price for a pound of the U.S. sea mollusk is $11.20, 41% higher than in November 2007.

U.S. fishermen say the weak dollar makes the famously meaty scallops that thrive in the northern Atlantic more affordable.

Belgium, France, and other countries are buying more. Fresh -scallop exports to Canada alone jumped 110% in the first four months of this year compared to the same period last year and rose 22% to France, according to federal trade statistics.

At the same time, the U.S. scallop supply is limited by federal conservation rules to an annual catch of roughly 50 million pounds. Areas where they can be caught are rotated to allow beds of young scallops to grow.

Read the complete story from The Wall Street Journal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mayor Carolyn Kirk has asked the U.S. Commerce Department, which had a team in Gloucester last month, to recapitalize the $1 million Fishermen's Loan Fund along with a suite of other investments to help the municipal "economy in transition."

The requests were contained in a letter she wrote to Joshua Barnes, a program analyst, who led the team from the Commece Department's Economic Development Administration to Gloucester and other major New England fishing ports in early May to assess the impact of fisheries policies and recommend counter measures.

Barnes promised to submit draft plans within two months, which, for Gloucester, would be July 4.

Meanwhile, Congressmen John Tierney and Barney Frank Thursday released a copy of a letter they sent to U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who chairs the Senate committee that will hold the confirmation of John Bryson to succeed Gary Locke as commerce secretary.

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food and Water Watch press release:

New Bedford, MA — June 16, 2011 —  Food & Water Watch launched a campaign calling on Congress to stop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from further expanding a widely unpopular fisheries management program known as catch shares — a program that has resulted in job loss for thousands of fishermen across the United States. The national consumer advocacy group also released a report revealing that the number of catch share programs, which grant once-public access to fish to private interests, have increased by 150 percent (from 6 to 15) in the United States in less than a decade, while NOAA plans to expand the programs by an additional 33 percent in the next 5 years.

“Fish are a public resource. Unfortunately, private investment groups and even some public interest groups have shamelessly and publicly compared access to fish to the stock market and are treating it like an investment that can be bought and sold for personal profit,” said Wenonah Hauter, Food & Water Watch Executive Director. “They’re aiming to model the fishing business after big agribusiness on land, with giant commercial operations controlling the market.”

A means to essentially privatize fishing, catch shares divide up the fish in any given region and grant access to certain companies and individuals — giving fishing privileges to fewer, often larger corporate interests while pushing out smaller-scale, more traditional fishermen.

As a result, catch shares consolidate the fishing industry. According to the report, in 2010, about five months after a catch shares program began in New England, 55 of the initial 500 boats in the fishery controlled 61 percent of the revenue.

The amount of fish given to a fisherman through a catch share program, also known as quota, is often leased out for profit rather than fished by the quota owner. Last year in New England, for example, 253 of the 500 boats remained docked, unable to fish because they were not granted enough quota and could not afford to purchase more.

The New England catch share program prompted the cities of Gloucester and New Bedford, Mass., along with local fishermen and advocates, to file a suit challenging its legality. Additional lawsuits are ongoing in the Gulf of Mexico and, most recently, the Pacific Coast.

"The massive loss of jobs within the fishing industry is directly correlated to the catch share program,” said Tina Jackson, President of the American Alliance for Fishermen and their Communities and a commercial fisherman and lobsterman herself. “It is vitally necessary for Congress to put forth legislation to halt any further programs of this nature and save the hundreds of thousands of jobs in the U.S. that will be lost if NOAA's national catch share policy is allowed to be implemented."

Proponents of catch shares have argued that they help combat overfishing. According to the report, however, catch share programs have shown little evidence that they increase fish stocks. In Norway, cod stocks dropped to their lowest level ever in 2006 after years of catch shares management.

Last April, amidst national concern over wasteful government spending, Congress voted to defund catch shares for fiscal year 2011.

“We hope that Congress will continue in this sensible direction and defund catch shares permanently,” Hauter said. “The last thing our government should be doing during the recession is spending taxpayer dollars on a program that puts thousands out of work.”

Report Executive Summary

When people think of fishing, they probably imagine an independent sea captain and his crew braving the elements in a small vessel to bring a fresh catch to shore and to our plates. But the current focus of U.S. policy for managing our fisher- ies, called catch shares, is destroying the way of life of our nation’s fishermen and coastal communities. This time-honored trade is being replaced by a privatized system that often leaves the future of our nation’s fish, one of our most precious natural resources, in the hands of a small number of larger operations, whose primary goal is often immediate profit rather than sus- tainable use and long-term conservation.
The United States lost most of its family farms to the large industrialized agriculture model. Catch shares create similar condi- tions on our seas by transferring the wealth of our fish populations from the public trust into private hands, by allocating a percentage quota of the total amount of fish that can be caught in a year and allowing these quota to be leased, bought and sold. When catch shares are given to fishermen, those who receive the largest initial distribution of shares — or have the most capital to buy and lease shares — often gain control over the entire fishery. Smaller-scale traditional fishermen are pushed out of the fishery while larger companies, which often use fishing practices that stress ocean ecosystems, take over.

Proponents of catch shares claim they are the best solution to profitably, safely and sustainably manage our fisheries. In this report, Food & Water Watch examines these claims and finds them all wanting.

Catch shares cause economic devastation.

Catch shares only increase profits for some fishermen by cutting hundreds of others out of the fishery entirely. Widespread job loss and reduced wages drag coastal communities that are already struggling in this economy into dire economic situations. Meanwhile, a privileged few are able to profit from exclusive access to a public resource.

Catch shares fail to sustain the health of our fisheries.

Catch shares are only a way to distribute fish among fishermen and have no built-in sustainability measures — overfishing is controlled separately by setting limits on the total number of fish that can be caught. In fact, catch shares inherently contain incentives to use more damaging gear, discard unwanted fish and dismiss adaptive ecosystem-based fishing strategies.

Catch shares fail to achieve legal standards for fishery management.

The federal law governing our nation’s fisheries, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management Act, specifies that fishery man- agement must support the long-term economic health of fishing communities, but catch shares are responsible around the world for destroying the economic health of coastal ports. Further, an international court found that catch shares violated human rights by creating a privileged class of fishermen in a privatized industry.

Catch shares aren’t fair.

Our nation and our oceans deserve better than a system that results in an unfair giveaway of public resources to private entities. Fishermen, rather than being cut out of the fishery, should be a key part of the management process. Smart fishery management can be fair and equitable, maintain public control of the resource, minimize damage to the environment, and promote a better life for our nation’s fishermen and coastal and fishing communities, and a better product for consumers.

Read the report.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just over one year ago, New England’s groundfish fishery underwent what some describe as the most sweeping change since the enactment of the federal Magnuson-Stevens Act of 1976, the primary law governing management of the country’s marine fisheries. Last May, an amendment to the law transitioned the Northeast fishery away from the longstanding days-at-sea system, under which fishermen were allotted a certain number of days to fish in federal waters. In an attempt to revamp their approach toward rebuilding depleted fish stocks, federal regulators authorized fishermen to organize into sectors, voluntary groups that are allocated a share of the annual catch limit to divvy up among members as they see fit.

Early reports indicate that fishermen are earning more money under the sector or “catch share” system despite catching lower volumes of fish, though regulators are hesitant to credit the sector model alone. Supporters say the system offers an economically and environmentally viable alternative to the days-at-sea model, but some argue that sectors have led to a greater concentration of catch share ownership among a few larger players. Terms more commonly used to describe trading in the global oil market are popping up, with critics citing the “commoditization” of the fishery and labeling large owners of catch share as “speculators.” Meanwhile, congressional action threatens future funding for catch share programs and a lawsuit makes its way through the Boston courts.

After working in the groundfishing business for more than 20 years, Maggie Raymond is well acquainted with the disadvantages of the days-at-sea management model. Too many boats racing to catch as much fish as quickly as possible led to a number of problems. Ever-increasing “trip limits” restricted the number of fish that could be landed per day, and area closures, some of which are still in place, put wide swaths of federal waters off limits for part or all of the season. Fish were wasted when fishermen who had reached their catch limits tossed the excess back overboard, helping neither the resource nor the fishermen, Raymond says.

Today, Raymond’s two 70- and 60-foot steel trawlers operate out of Boston under the auspices of the Sustainable Harvest Sector, Maine’s largest with 105 permits and 38 active vessels from Maine to Cape May, N.J. “Initially, it was a difficult transition,” she says. “There were a lot of new reporting requirements.” Sectors allow groundfishermen to pool catch rights and collectively ensure that their membership doesn’t exceed its allocation of about 20 managed stocks.

Not everyone has fared well under the sector system, however. About 10 boats in the Sustainable Harvest Sector tied up after receiving too little allocation to make fishing worthwhile, or struggling to cope with the changes. But in light of federal requirements to limit fish mortality — such as a 30% reduction for Gulf of Maine cod — and the roughly 400 active vessels out fishing, something had to give, Raymond says. “The reason why so many people are complaining that they don’t have enough allocation is we’re dividing it up between too many people.” Nonetheless, “It’s really unfortunate that a lot of people were hurt,” she says.

Libby of Port Clyde fished all of his allocation last year and also leased some, making out adequately even though his total volume dropped by a quarter. “I did pretty well,” he says. “A lot of the guys were down worse than me.” The Port Clyde Community Groundfish Sector includes mostly smaller boats that fish in the Gulf of Maine, and some fishermen haven’t received enough allocation to earn a living, Libby says. “They have to go out and ask their neighbor for a handful of fish so they can go out and work.”

Some criticize the sector management system for exacerbating contraction of the fishing fleet, a trend prevalent long before the system’s implementation. “There has been ongoing consolidation in this fishery for at least the last five years,” says Marjorie Mooney-Seus, spokeswoman for NOAA’s Northeast regional office. From 2007 to 2009, 20% of active vessels in the Northeast accounted for about 66% of groundfish revenues. In 2010, the same 20% of vessels accounted for even more, about 75% of groundfish revenues, according to the NOAA interim report. The number of vessels accounting for the top quarter of those dollars dropped by half, from 26 to 13, from 2007 to 2010.

Concern about consolidation led the New England Fishery Management Council earlier this year to ask the National Marine Fisheries Service to publish a “control date” beyond which the acquisition of permits might be handled differently. A report by council staff found that in Massachusetts, the top three permit holders controlled 41% of the allocation of Georges Bank winter flounder, 25% of another unnamed stock and 10% to 20% of 11 other stocks. A final decision has yet to be reached on the ramifications of the April 7 control date.

Read the complete story from Maine Biz.

 

 

 

 

 

A half-dozen harvesters have approval this year to take rockweed from Cobscook Bay, a 40-square-mile body of water considered a biological hotspot for its biodiversity and the epicenter of a long-simmering dispute over the commercial harvest of rockweed.

The controversy made national headlines in 2008.

While the issue no longer dominates the agenda of Washington County commissioners — complaints about unusual amounts of cut rockweed floating about have abated and many of the harvest boats have disappeared from the bay — the issue continues to fester. Many believe it is just a matter of time before it resurfaces as the demand for rockweed products keeps rising.

Read the complete story from The Portland Press Herald.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fraud and mislabeling are rife in the seafood trade and, depending on the species, consumers may unknowingly buy substituted fish between 25 and 70 percent of the time, according to a new report by the environmental group Oceana.

“We import about 84 percent of the seafood we eat. You go to a seafood restaurant and maybe two or three things on the menu are local,” said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana.

Meanwhile, skinless fish fillets are everywhere in the American market, where whole cleaned fish – or round fish as they are called in the trade – have nearly disappeared over the past generation.

That all makes fraud easier to pull off – and profitable for the mislabelers, Hirshfield said.

Read the complete story from Asbury Park Press.