August 12 , 2022 — A federal court ruling this week has thrown into doubt the future of a valuable commercial salmon fishery in Southeast Alaska.
Judge blasts ‘mitigation’ that would imperil both orca and salmon
August 11, 2022 — A federal judge has rejected the National Marine Fisheries Service’s “mitigation” for allowing continued “maximum” commercial harvests of the endangered Chinook salmon the imperiled Southern Resident killer whales need to survive — among the mitigations, that the agency will figure out better mitigations before the orcas go extinct.
U.S. District Judge Richard Jones accepted a magistrate judge’s recommendation for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by Wild Fish Conservancy in 2020. The recommendation revealed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries agency violated the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act by authorizing commercial salmon harvest at levels that are pushing protected wild Chinook salmon and Puget Sound orcas to extinction.
The Washington-based nonprofit challenged the authorization of the Southeast Alaska Chinook troll fishery, which the agency approved based on vague plans to fund production of 20 million young salmon annually to increase prey for the orcas by 4 to 5%. But the agency had no plans for where to get the young fish, who would release them and where, the age of the fish at release, the juvenile-to-adult return ratio, how many fish would be needed for future broods and whether all of this would be enough to sustain the orca in the long term.
Starkist appeals decision on price-fixing suit to US Supreme Court
August 10, 2022 — Starkist has followed through on its pledge to appeal a decision made in the class-action civil lawsuit filed against it for its role in fixing the prices of canned tuna sold in the United States between 2011 and 2013.
On Monday, 8 August, 2022, Starkist filed a petition at the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to strike down a decision made by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, California, U.S.A., which ruled in a 9-2 decision in April 2022 to uphold the class certification completed in 2019 by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California Judge Janis L. Sammartino.
Fishery interests urge judge to rule in lobster lawsuit
August 8, 2022 — Parties in a lobster industry lawsuit filed against federal regulators are urging a judge to make a decision in the case because its outcome affects a parallel case that the parties have to act on.
The federal judge considering this decision was the same who ruled last month that new regulations to protect endangered right whales do not go far enough, and violate both the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act. In that case, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg asked the parties to propose remedies.
The lobster association’s case takes aim at newly enacted and proposed federal regulations to protect the whales, which the association says are invalid because they are based on flawed assumptions and calculations.
The National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal defendants – as well as intervenors the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Maine Lobstering Union and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association – all filed briefs this week asking Boasberg not to stay a decision on a lawsuit brought by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. The parties need to know the court’s opinion so they can develop proposed remedies that Boasberg ordered in the parallel lawsuit brought by conservation groups.
Feds target U.S. companies caught in lucrative shark fin trade
August 3, 2022 — It’s one of the seafood industry’s most gruesome hunts.
Every year, the fins of as many as 73 million sharks are sliced from the backs of the majestic sea predators, their bleeding bodies sometimes dumped back into the ocean where they are left to suffocate or die of blood loss.
But while the barbaric practice is driven by China, where shark fin soup is a symbol of status for the rich and powerful, America’s seafood industry isn’t immune from the trade.
A spate of recent criminal indictments highlights how U.S. companies, taking advantage of a patchwork of federal and state laws, are supplying a market for fins that activists say is as reprehensible as the now-illegal trade in elephant ivory once was.
A complaint quietly filed last month in Miami federal court accused an exporter based in the Florida Keys, Elite Sky International, of falsely labeling some 5,666 pounds of China-bound shark fins as live Florida spiny lobsters. Another company, south Florida-based Aifa Seafood, is also under criminal investigation for similar violations, according to two people on the condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing probe. The company is managed by a Chinese-American woman who in 2016 pleaded guilty to shipping more than a half-ton of live Florida lobsters to her native China without a license.
The heightened scrutiny from law enforcement comes as Congress debates a federal ban on shark fins – making it illegal to import or export even foreign-caught fins. Every year, American wildlife inspectors seize thousands of shark fins while in transit to Asia for failing to declare the shipments.
An attorney for Elite wouldn’t comment nor did two representatives of Aifa when reached by phone.
Overfishing has led to a 71 percent decline in shark species since the 1970s. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a Switzerland-based group that tracks wildlife populations, estimates that over a third of the world’s 500-plus shark species are threatened with extinction.
Contrary to industry complaints about excessive regulations, the U.S. is hardly a model of sustainable shark management, said Webber. She pointed to a recent finding by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that less than 23% of the 66 shark stocks in U.S. waters are safe from overfishing. The status of more than half of shark stocks isn’t even known.
The situation in Europe is even worse: a new report from Greenpeace, called “Hooked on Sharks,” revealed what it said is evidence of the deliberate targeting of juvenile blue sharks by fishing fleets from Spain and Portugal. The report found that the U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest shark exporter behind Spain, China and Portugal, with exports of 3.2 million kilograms of meat – but not fins – worth over $11 million in 2020.
Webber said rather than safeguard a small shark fishing industry, the U.S. should blaze the trail to protect the slow-growing, long-living fish.
“We can’t ask other countries to clean up their act if we’re not doing it well ourselves,” said Webber.
American Aquafarms withdraws lawsuit against Maine Department of Marine Resources
July 26, 2022 — American Aquafarms, the company with plans to build a salmon farm in Gouldsboro, Maine, U.S.A., has withdrawn a lawsuit it initiated against the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR).
In April 2022, American Aquafarms’ planned aquaculture project was dealt a major setback after the Maine DMR decided it would no longer process the company’s lease applications. The DMR denied the application, citing a lack of an approved egg source for its salmon.
Judge says NMFS right whale plan still not enough
July 11, 2022 — The latest rules to reduce right whale deaths from lobster and crab gear still don’t go far enough in reducing potential mortality, according to a federal judge who has called for a new hearing to decide on remedies.
In an opinion issued Friday in Washington, D.C., U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ruled in favor of a key complaint from environmental groups who want the National Marine Fisheries Service to do more to reduce whale entanglements with vertical lines used in East Coast trap fisheries.
Now an extremely endangered species – with a population that plunged from around 481 animals in 2011 to an estimated 345 – the north Atlantic right whale is at risk from ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement. The gear issue has been subject to litigation in Boasberg’s court since 2018.
A new complaint brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation and Defenders of Wildlife alleged that NMFS’ own projections show that the right whale population would still lose animals to gear entanglement at a rate that would continue the path to extinction.
The plaintiff environmental groups, who have long pushed for more dramatic action from the government, praised Boasberg’s latest opinion.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association – named as a defendant along with the Department of Commerce and NMFS – called the ruling “a mixed bag” and took heart in Boasberg’s intention to seek remedies short of shutting the fishery.
The lobstermen’s association also noted the judge’s acknowledgement that NMFS could find “that projected take [of endangered whales] is in fact lower than originally estimated.”
Weak protection for vanishing whales violates law, judge says
July 11, 2022 — The federal government hasn’t done enough to protect a rare species of whale from lethal entanglement in lobster fishing gear, and new rules are needed to protect the species from extinction, a judge has ruled.
The government has violated both the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act by failing to protect the North Atlantic right whale, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled on Friday. The whales number less than 340 in the world and have been declining rapidly in population in recent years.
The ruling came after a group of environmental organizations sued the federal government with a complaint that it wasn’t doing enough to save whales from lobster gear. Boasberg’s ruling validates that claim, said Kristen Monsell, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued.
The Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the largest fishing trade group on the East Coast, said in a statement that it was still reviewing the ruling. The association also pointed to a section of Boasberg’s ruling that said the National Marine Fisheries Service “may find that other measures exist to reduce lethal take, or that projected take is in fact lower than originally estimated.” That renders the ruling “a mixed bag,” the association said.
The whales were once numerous, but they were decimated during the commercial whaling era. Some scientists have said warming ocean temperatures are causing them to stray from protected areas in search of food, and that has left them more vulnerable to collisions and entanglement.
Federal court rules fisheries officials didn’t do enough to protect right whales from lobster gear
July 8, 2022 — A federal court on Friday ruled in favor of environmental groups that had filed a lawsuit against the government and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association claiming federal fisheries officials had failed to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from potentially fatal entanglements in lobster fishing gear, records show.
A judge ruled that NOAA Fisheries had violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act and Endangered Species Act when it issued a May 2021 biological opinion and a September 2021 final rule because officials had not done enough to reduce the lobster fishery’s threat to right whales, the plaintiffs in the suit said in a statement.
The lawsuit was filed in 2018 by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Conservation Law Foundation, and Defenders of Wildlife.
Judge throws out Trump-era rollbacks on endangered species
July 6, 2022 — A federal judge on Tuesday threw out a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, a year after the Biden administration said it was moving to strengthen such species protections.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Northern California eliminated the Trump-era rules even as two wildlife agencies under President Joe Biden are reviewing or rescinding the regulations. The decision restores a range of protections under the Endangered Species Act — including some that date to the 1970s — while the reviews are completed. Environmental groups hailed the decision, which they said sped up needed protections and critical habitat designations for threatened species, including salmon in the Pacific Northwest.
Tigar’s ruling “spoke for species desperately in need of comprehensive federal protections without compromise,” said Kristen Boyles, an attorney for the environmental group Earthjustice. “Threatened and endangered species do not have the luxury of waiting under rules that do not protect them.”
The court ruling comes as two federal agencies — the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service — review five Endangered Species Act regulations finalized by President Donald Trump’s administration, including critical habitat designations and rules requiring federal agencies to consult with the wildlife or fisheries services before taking actions that could affect threatened or endangered species.
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