Law

Joined by Monterey officials, California's wetfish producers are fighting a lawsuit that aims for greater protections for anchovies, sardines and squid, setting the stage for a major battle over one of the state's dominant fisheries.

So-called "wetfish," also known as forage fish, live near the bottom of the food chain but make up a substantial percentage of California's commercial catch, including 97 percent of all landings in Moss Landing and Monterey. In December, environmentalists filed suit to change how the federal government manages those fisheries.

"If they were to prevail, I think we'd lose our industry," said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, which asked a federal court on Tuesday for the right to intervene in the suit.

Read the complete story from The San Jose Mercury News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following was released by the California Wetfish Producers Association:

Monterey, Calif. — Feb 22, 2012 – The California Wetfish Producers Association, a non-profit association promoting sustainable marine resources and fishing communities, announced today that it is working with a diverse group – including the City of Monterey and the Ventura Port District – to challenge a federal lawsuit by Oceana that would decimate California’s historic wetfish industry.
 
The group filed to intervene as defendants in the ongoing case by Earthjustice, representing Oceana, against the Secretary of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service.
 
Oceana wants deep and unnecessary cutbacks in sardine fishing, as well as substantial harvest reductions in other “forage fish” fisheries, including herring, anchovies and squid – which are also already managed strictly and sustainably.
 
“Fishing for coastal pelagic species in California is under attack. Oceana has based this lawsuit on pseudo-scientific studies loaded with faulty calculations and conclusions, all to force federal regulators to massively curtail fishing limits, if not ban fishing outright,” said Diane. Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association.
 
“That’s why a diverse group representing cities and ports, as well as fishing families, including fishermen and seafood processors, has come together to help block this extremist lawsuit,” Pleschner-Steele continued. “In this tough economy, we can’t afford to destroy this historic fishing industry and the local economies in which it operates, especially when the action is not based on the best available science.”
 
Oceana’s lawsuit claims that sardines and other so-called forage species are being massively overfished. Ironically, California’s coastal pelagic fisheries have one of the lowest harvest rates in the world.  Further, fishery management in California and, the California Current Ecosystem is recognized as one of only a few areas worldwide deemed “sustainable” by internationally recognized scientists, according to a 2009 Science magazine article, Rebuilding Global Fisheries, and other recent studies.
 
“Oceana’s lawsuit is baseless; California already has the most precautionary fishery management system in the world. If successful, this lawsuit would restrict our state’s fishermen unnecessarily, and unfairly, because virtually all the forage species listed are actively managed or monitored by the federal government as well as the state,” said Steve Scheiblauer, Monterey’s harbormaster.
 
The state and federal government established guidelines more than a decade ago for coastal pelagic species harvested in California and on the west coast, maintaining at least 75 percent of the fish in the ocean, far below the science standard set for other fisheries.
 
The sardine protection rate is even higher at close to 90 percent. In addition, California implemented a network of marine reserves in state waters through the Marine Life Protection Act.  Many reserves were established explicitly to protect forage for other marine life, including important bird rookery and haul out areas around Año Nuevo and the Farallon Islands, as well as the Channel Islands in Southern California. In addition, more than 30 percent of traditional squid harvest grounds are now closed in reserve.
 
“Oceana failed to get a bill passed in California’s state legislature last year, so now they are trying the federal courts to get their agenda implemented,” Scheiblauer said. “Legislators on both sides of the political aisle saw through the ill-crafted bill, AB 1299, and it died because legislators knew it would have unnecessarily decimated local coastal economies like Monterey.”  
 

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The prospect of paying fishermen higher prices has processors protesting the new rockfish program.

Five companies with processing operations in Kodiak that took nearly every delivery under the expired Gulf of Alaska rockfish pilot program sued National Marine Fisheries Service Jan. 24 in the U.S. Western District of Washington to overturn the new program set to take effect this May.

Trident Seafoods, Ocean Beauty, Westward Seafoods, North Pacific Seafoods and International Seafoods of Alaska said in their complaint that competition from the other three Kodiak processors under the revised program will drive up prices paid to fishermen and cut into their profits.

Read the complete story from The Alaska Journal.

 

 

 

 

 

Seafood Solutions, a California corporation, was sentenced in federal court to pay $1 million in fines and community service payments for its role in the false labeling of frozen fish fillets, the U.S. Department of Justice reported.

The corporation was fined $700,000 and ordered to make a community service donation of $300,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, as well as ordered to forfeit all remaining inventory of falsely labeled fish, among other stipulations of the ruling.

The mislabeled fish at issue in the Seafood Solutions case was Pangasius hypophthalmus, a species in the catfish family that was misleadingly labeled as “Paradise Grouper” and “Falcon Baie Grouper.”

Read the complete story from Consumer Reports.

 

 

 

 

 

 

SEATTLE (AP) — Conservationists and Native American tribes are suing over the Navy's expanded use of sonar in training exercises off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts, saying the noise can harass and kill whales and other marine life.

The environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups filed the lawsuit Thursday against the National Marine Fisheries Service, saying it was wrong to approve the Navy's plan for the expanded training.

They said the regulators should have considered the effects repeated sonar use can have on those species over many years and also required certain restrictions on where the Navy could conduct sonar and other loud activities to protect orcas, humpbacks and other whales, as well as seals, sea lions and dolphins.

Instead, the Navy is required to look around and see if sea mammals are present before they conduct the training.

Read the complete Associated Press article on TimesUnion.com

 

 

 

 

 

An Alaska fishing captain who led a crew on the program that spawned the cable TV show “Deadliest Catch’’ will serve five years in prison for a fatal crash.

The Peninsula Clarion reports 60-year-old Clarence “Ole’’ Helgevold Jr., of Soldotna, was sentenced Wednesday.

He was originally charged with manslaughter in January 2011 when his car crashed with a snowmobile driven by George Larion, who was thrown from the snowmobile and died.

Under terms of an agreement, Helgevold pleaded guilty to reduced charges in May. He will serve 4 ½ years for criminally negligent homicide and six months for driving under the influence.

Read the article in The Boston Globe

 

 

 

 

 

The special federal judicial master whose initial probe into law enforcement excesses led to a Cabinet-level apology and reparations last spring to eight badly harmed fishing industry businesses has taken on a "much wider pool of cases."

The master, retired U.S. Magistrate Charles B. Swartwood III, had 66 complaints under investigation, as of Dec. 6, the date of a letter updating Commerce Secretary John Bryson. And of the 66 complaints, Swartwood wrote that he and his staff had produced "provisional" reports or "findings of facts" in 45 investigations.

But under an approach somewhat less formal than used in the initial investigation during 2010 and 2011, Swartwood, with Bryson's approval, sent his provisional findings to NOAA for written response, and as of the Dec. 6 letter, he had received 21 responses, expecting the rest "sometime this month (December)."

Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.

 

 

 

 

 

Oceana, the largest international advocacy group working solely to protect the world’s oceans, filed a complaint today about the United States government’s decision in October of 2010 to allow eight New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries to harm 14 times more (from 42 to 610) threatened loggerhead sea turtles. Specifically, Oceana is disputing the U.S. government’s decision to allow these fisheries to injure and kill more loggerhead sea turtles without adequately assessing the aggregate impacts of the fisheries on this species. The fisheries harm leatherback, Kemp’s ridley, and green sea turtles as well, and those species also would benefit from proper assessments of the fisheries’ impacts.

“The U.S. needs to ensure that fisheries kill fewer sea turtles, not more,” said Beth Lowell, campaign director at Oceana. “These decisions should not be made without considering all of the impacts affecting these sea turtle populations.”

Oceana’s complaint addresses biological opinions for eight federal fisheries, including those for monkfish and for summer flounder, scup and black sea bass, which are responsible for the highest levels of sea turtle bycatch in the region. Biological opinions are part of the consultation and review process when a federal agency authorizes commercial activities that are expected to harm or kill a species protected by the Endangered Species Act.

Although these decisions came on the same day and were even announced in the same press release, the analysis for each fishery did not adequately account for the increased number of sea turtles harmed by the other seven fisheries.

Read the complete story from Oceana

 

 

 

 

 

Federal criminal charges against Maine fishermen accused of illegally harvesting scallops off New Jersey are the latest in a series of prosecutions — a sharp departure from the government’s usual practice of seeking civil penalties for captains who violate fishing rules.

The cases reflect a drive by the Justice Department to prosecute more environmental crimes — an objective outlined last summer by Ignacia S. Moreno, the assistant attorney general for the department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, and Paul J. Fishman, U.S. attorney for New Jersey.

The prosecutions also show the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s law enforcement program still has teeth.

Since 2009 the agency has been battered by fishermen’s complaints that it overreached and extracted excessive penalties in enforcement cases — a revolt that started in Gloucester, Mass., when the NOAA sought to shut down a key seafood auction for violations.

Read the complete story from The Asbury Park Press

 

 

 

 

 

Herring, the small oily fish that's Maine lobstermen's top choice of bait, is sparking big battles on a couple fronts. One of the skirmishes played out in federal court Wednesday where environmentalists argued that federal agencies had not done enough to protect New England's herring population, one of the most important food sources for other fish.

Roger Fleming is a Maine-based lawyer with Earthjustice, which is challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service and the New England Fishery Management Council, saying they neglected to add adequate protections for the species in a recent amendment to law.

"The catch limits are too high for Atlantic herring and they've done nothing to protect river herring," says Fleming, who is representing several parties including a charter boat captain and the Ocean River Institute.

Fleming says pollution and dams have led to the depletion of four species of river herring, including alewife and shad. The other problem comes when river herring swim out to sea.

Read the complete story from Maine Public Broadcasting