Economic Impact

Despite a 10 percent decline in annual revenue, the fishermen at New Bedford’s port once again took in more money than those at any other in the U.S. last year, according to statistics released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The value of landings of fish and shellfish at the port of New Bedford was $241.3 million in 2008, down from $268.9 million the previous year, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service said in its annual report on the nation’s fishing industry.

It was the ninth year in a row that New Bedford’s fishermen had the most lucrative combined catch in the country. As usual, sea scallops were primarily responsible for the high value of the port’s landings, and the decline in revenue at the port last year was mostly due to a drop in scallop prices.

Read the complete story at Providence Business News.

New Bedford, Massachusetts, remained the nation’s top port in terms of value of the catch for the ninth year in a row, primarily due to sea scallops, with a total value of landings of $241.3 million in 2008. Commercial landings at Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska were 612.7 million pounds of fish and shellfish  in 2008, mostly pollock, making it the country’s top port for the amount of fish landed in terms of weight for the 20^th consecutive year.

Commercial fishermen unloaded 612.7 million pounds of fish and shellfish at the port of Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska, in 2008, mostly pollock, making it the country’s top port for the amount of fish landed for the 20th consecutive year, NOAA’s Fisheries Service announced today.

 

The port of New Bedford, Mass., claimed the top spot for value of landings for the ninth year in a row, primarily due to sea scallops, bringing in $241.3 million in 2008. The port’s total landings were down 3.6 million pounds and the value declined by $27.6 million from 2007 primarily due to a significant drop in the price of scallops.

 

Nationwide, the total domestic commercial landings for 2008 were 8.3 billion pounds, valued at $4.4 billion. Although landings were down from last year’s 9.3 billion pounds, the value was up from last year’s total value of $4.2 billion. The main reason for the landings drop was the drop in pollock landing and the reason for the increase in value was that the price of Pollock rose significantly from eight to 14 cents per pound.

 

Dutch Harbor-Unalaska ranked second in value of landings at $195 million which, despite the drop in overall quantity of landings, this year was valued $20.9 million more than 2007.

 

“The long-term success of the port of Dutch Harbor-Unalaska comes partly from the fact that many of the fish species landed there are managed under some of the nation’s most advanced catch share programs,” said Jim Balsiger, acting NOAA assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “Catch-share programs increase fishermen’s safety by eliminating the race to fish. They ensure sustainable fishing, reduce overcapacity in the industry and improve profitability of fisheries for coastal communities.”

 

The ports of Reedville, Va. and Empire-Venice, La., ranked second and third for quantity of landings in 2008 primarily due to menhaden. Some 354.2 million pounds of fish were landed in Reedville and 353.2 million pounds were landed in Empire-Venice.

 

The new report on the nation’s ports is part of Fisheries of the United States 2008, a detailed statistical report on the nation’s commercial and recreational fishing, landings, import, export, per capita fish consumption and consumer expenditures for fish products. The report will be available online and can be read at http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st1/index.html.

 

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources. Visit http://www.noaa.gov.

 

On the Web:

NOAA’s Fisheries Service: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov

                                           

Read this additional story from the Standard-Times.

Much of the fish population along Maine’s coast has disappeared. Efforts are now under way to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to the state’s fishermen.

Conservation groups and the state have launched separate programs to buy commercial fishing permits so that when fish stocks recover off the Maine coast, fishermen will be able catch them.

The three initiatives will bank federal fishing permits for use by Maine fishermen. The aim is to improve the health of the fish stocks and keep the centuries-old fishing tradition alive in the small ports that pepper the state’s long and rugged coastline.

Read the complete story at The South Coast Today.

Local commercial groundfishermen and vessel owners have fish prices on their minds, besides the upcoming fisheries management of Amendment 16.

Why have the boat prices, even on "money fish" such as cod, haddock and grey sole, generally been low this year?

Capt. Billy "Brownie" Brown knows he has been gillnetting the same "market" and "large" or "steaker" size (fish weighing between 4 and 10 pounds to fish weighing more than 10 pounds, respectively) cod species this year that he has for decades.

But "their prices are down," said Brown.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Conservation groups and state officials say initiatives to purchase commercial fishing rights and distribute them to local fishermen will help preserve Maine’s fishing communities.

Three nonprofits — the Island Institute, The Nature Conservancy and Penobscot East Resource Center — have created the state’s first "permit banks" in which they buy fishing permits and the fishing days or catch histories that come with them.

The groups are giving those fishing rights to Down East and midcoast fishermen for research on fish population, fishing gear and fishing practices.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Two months before the Environmental Defense Fund achieved a political policy triumph with the vote last week to transform the New England groundfishery from a commonly held resource into negotiable commodities, a bullish EDF executive was urging institutional investors to buy these catch shares.

EDF vice president David Festa’s projection was a 400 percent return on the investment, based on what he said was recent experiences with the imposition of catch shares in other fisheries.

A consultant to EDF spoke of returns of 10 or even 20 times investment.

"It’s not telecom money, but it’s real money," Festa advised a small but influential private audience of mutual and hedge fund managers and ENGO — or environmental non-government organization — officials at an April 28 panel on "Innovative Funding for Sustainable Fisheries and Oceans."

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

With Capt. Paul Cohan at the helm, the F/V Sasquatch steamed out of port just after dawn into a grey sea, whipped by invisible furies into a foamy froth, on something of a fool’s errand.

"Yup, that’s what it was," said Cohan, a fierce critic of the regulators and their schemes to conserve and revitalize the wild stocks of groundfish that brought European boats across the ocean in the 15th century, and created a fishery before there was America.

The foolish aspect of the errand Saturday was the collapsed price that awaited the Sasquatch and the 40 or so other boats in the fleet that, like Cohan’s, had just five days earlier been unshackled by the regulators.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

The winter flounder, a bottom-dweller with both eyes on the right side of its head, isn’t the most profitable New England fish but it’s suddenly become one of the most important- and fishermen say that’s all wrong.

To protect the dwindling winter flounder population, fishermen working waters from southern New England down to New Jersey will next month see their already scarce allotment of fishing days cut in half, costing them millions.

This tough new measure won’t just keep fishermen away from winter flounder.

New England groundfish (such as cod, haddock and flounder) swim in the same areas, so regulators protecting weak fish must also limit fishing on stronger species because they all get pulled up in the same net.

Read the complete story US News and World Report

The figures used by the nation’s administrator of fisheries to dramatize the reduced economic harm to the New England fishing industry from a revised Interim Rule were not wrong.  But as one industry group official put it, the approach "masks" the rule’s true impact.

Based on figures in the rule itself — a legal documentof 127 pages that was published in the Federal Register — National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco wascorrect when she announced that the regulatory scheme to be used starting May 1 for one year would ease — from 20 percent to 9.4 percent— the loss of revenue to the groundfishing industry of the six New England states, New York and New Jersey.

Read the complete story at the Gloucester Times.

Funds to help ease the transition to new management

The federal office that oversees fishing said yesterday that it would provide $16 million to help New England’s fishing industry transition to a new management system, two days after a round of fishing restrictions were announced.

The money will not go to individual fishermen affected by the new rules, which slice fishing revenue by $17.4 million, or 9 percent, but to a regional effort to develop a new way of fishing.

The new plan gives groups of fishermen a total amount of fish they can catch each year, but lets them figure out how much – and when – each can catch their allotted amount. There are already two such programs in New England, and 17 more proposed.

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.