Management & Regulation

Octber 30, 2012 — Almost every large marine fish and mammal in the waters off New England depends on menhaden (bunker, pogies) for food. But in 32 of the past 54 years (through 2008), menhaden were overfished, and they are now at their lowest level on record, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

This fall, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering new fishing rules to ensure long-term protection of menhaden. The agency is accepting public comment until November 16.

Anglers, marine conservationists and anyone else who cares about menhaden and the health of the ocean ecosystem should contact the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

Read the full story in Boating Local

Analysis: Boating Local, a news source for fishermen around the New England area, has unfortunately, in this post, relied on information from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF). Instead of offering a balanced portrayal of the fishery, CBF, along with other environmental groups – most notably Pew Environment — has repeatedly made exaggerated claims about the frailty of the menhaden population.

The article, “Action Urged to Protect Menhaden”, offers an explanation of the current status of the menhaden population and encourages readers to get involved in the management process. But it also misrepresents several key facts about the menhaden fishery.

The article states that, “In 32 of the past 54 years (through 2008), menhaden were overfished, and they are now at their lowest level on record.” What the article does not tell the reader is that 30 of those 32 instances occurred between 1954-1993. In the most recent 15 years for which we have data, overfishing occurred just twice, most recently in 2008 by less than 1%. For menhaden, recent data is more important than historical statistics from two decades ago as they are a comparatively short-lived species.

Current biomass levels are similar to those seen in the late 1960s, when biomass was lower. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw several years of especially strong recruitment, followed by years of high biomass.

The article also ignores the distinct difference between a stock that is experiencing overfishing, and one that is overfished. Overfishing is a legal determination meaning that the number of fish caught in a given year exceeds a mortality rate set by regulators.

On the other hand, a stock that is overfished is not producing enough eggs to sustain itself. According to NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office: “Based on the current reference point to evaluate stock condition, Atlantic menhaden are not considered overfished.”

Since the Boating Local website describes itself as “THE SOURCE FOR NEW ENGLAND BOATERS,” its readers are probably most concerned about menhaden in New England waters.  In the fall of 2011, Dr. James Sulikowski, of the University of New England, conducted an aerial survey of the waters off New England and Long Island, New York, to provide partial documentation of the menhaden in the northern range, an area for which there is little data available. The survey results were analyzed by Dr. Doug Butterworth, a world-renowned stock assessment scientist from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and Dr. Alexia Morgan, who has consulted with organizations such as the New England Aquarium, the Blue Ocean Institute, and the Pew Environment Group. The results of the North Atlantic aerial survey were compared with contemporaneous aerial observations made by spotter pilots in the southern portion of the menhaden fishery’s range.  Based on these comparisons, Drs. Butterworth and Morgan found that menhaden stock biomass may be twice as high as measured in the currently-used 2010 assessment, which found that overfishing is occurring but that menhaden are not overfished.

“Action Urged to Protect Menhaden” reflects the interests of environmental groups which provided Boating Local with this information, and misleads readers on the current health of menhaden.

Read previous articles on how Pew and CBF have been misleading readers on menhaden

 

 

 

October 19, 2012 — A 15-state commission will decide in December  whether to sharply reduce fishing harvests of Atlantic menhaden. The fish, considered vital to the health of the Chesapeake Bay, is the focus of public hearings this month from North Carolina to Maine. Last night, members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission heard from Virginians in danger of losing their jobs at the only menhaden processing plant left on the East Coast. 

Omega Protein’s Reedville factory processes millions of pounds of menhaden into fish oil supplements and other products. When the commission said menhaden was being over-fished, powerful environmentalists like Pew Charitable Trusts came out against the Houston-based company. Chris Moore, a scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation says the fish stock is at historic lows affecting striped bass and osprey that normally feed on them.

“Menhaden are no longer fulfilling their ecological role and the only way to fix that is to increase the population in the Chesapeake Bay and along the entire Atlantic Coast.”

Many at the hearing don’t believe the science and even the commission admits some of its data is flawed. Phillip Haynie’s family has worked menhaden boats for five generations.

“What’s really in danger here tonight is not the fish but a community and a way of life, the people are in danger.”

 

Read the full story at NPR affiliate WVTF

 

 

CHATHAM, Mass. — October 22, 2012 — Fishermen have long complained that a resurgent dogfish population was keeping them from catching more cod and other commercially valuable species and hampering efforts to bring those depleted stocks back to healthy levels. Still, fishermen from this port are used to catching and selling what is at hand, and these small coastal sharks prove themselves valuable, despite their low value, because they are relatively easy to catch and plentiful.

On Friday, the National Marine Fisheries Service made it more profitable for local fishermen to target dogfish by proposing a relatively simple change to fishing regulations that they estimate might bring in an average of $24,000 more per vessel in revenue.

"It's been a long time coming," said Eric Brazer, manager of the Georges Bank Fixed Gear Sector, a group of around 40 fishermen who collectively manage their portion of the annual fish quota. In December the sector asked the fisheries service to exempt its dogfish fishery from much stricter regulations governing depleted groundfish stocks such as cod, haddock and flounder.

Under groundfish regulations, fishermen targeting dogfish were sometimes required to carry federal fishery observers. While the fisheries service has been covering their cost, estimated at $1,000 per day, the agency is not sure it will have the money to do that in the future. Groundfish such as cod can pay as much as $4 per pound, but with dogfish at 19 cents per pound and the daily catch limited to 3,000 pounds, dogfish boats make less than $600 a trip, and all that money and more would have gone toward paying the observer.

Also, under groundfish regulations the fisheries service assumes that all vessels not carrying observers are catching at least as much in nontargeted species as those with observers onboard. That calculation also included vessels that were targeting groundfish species and had much higher bycatch of unwanted species. What that meant to dogfish fishermen was much higher amounts of fish such as cod and pollock were subtracted from their quota than they were actually catching.

 

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — October 19, 2012 — Recreational fishermen and the Pew Environment Group have weighed in against a potential decision to allow commercial boats to harvest from two fishing areas that have long been closed to commercial operations.

The recreational sector made its views known at a meeting of the Recreational Advisory Panel to NOAA’s regional fishery management council in Peabody on Oct. 3; the Pew Environment Group advised against opening parts of the inshore and offshore closed areas during the September meeting of New England Fishery Management Council in Plymouth.

The impetus for the council to take the tentative, but controversial step of scheduling a likely decision for November is the paucity of fish in the Northeast groundfish complex, as determined by NOAA assessments dating back to a shocking downturn in the graph tracking the recovery of inshore cod last year, and a nearly across-the-board flattening of the recovery lines on important offshore commercial stocks reported earlier this year.

Worries about the survival of the commercial fleet and its mix of many small and a few large boats convinced the council to separate the initiative for a possible opening of the closed areas from a habitat-related amendment which has been inching closer but remains beyond the immediate horizon.

The area in the Western Gulf of Maine Closed Area is about 5 miles wide and 60 miles long on the outer side of a block that runs from the tip of Cape Cod to Portland.

The offshore closed areas in Georges are much larger, and their opening would provide resource relief to fishermen, lobstermen and scallopers; indeed, Congressman Barney Frank has sardonically chastised NOAA for keeping closed areas where scallops were essentially dying of old age.

Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood coalition, advised the council that fishermen, lobstermen and scallopers were close to agreement on peaceful coexistence in the closed areas that might be opened after more than a decade. NOAA regional administrator John Bullard is among those who also supports the liberalization.

“This (opening new grounds for commercial fishing) is what we should do when the fishery was healthy, not in a crisis,” Maine fishing captain Tim Tower said during the meting of the recreational advisory panel. “What they should be thinking about is closing more areas and limiting recreational access in more areas.”

Tower and a number of other recreational captains argued that the reopening of the mortality closures within the larger confines of the three major closed areas in the Northwest Atlantic would benefit big boats but provide little or no help to the day boats.

Pew Environment Group’s Peter Baker made much the same point in an email. He attributed the movement to the trawlers or draggers because “it seems to be the draggers from Associated Fisheries of Maine and their sometime allies at the Northeast Seafood Coalition that have argued most strenuously to open closed areas to fishing.”

Baker echoed the testimony of Conservation Law Foundation senior counsel Peter Shelley, who said that bypassing the National Environmental Policy Act — which requires a full environmental impact statement — and possibly allowing catch share fishing sectors to apply for authority to fish closed areas was asking for legal trouble.

Shelley assured the council CLF would sue to prevent reopening the closed areas by sector request.

“This … end (run) around the public process … will lead to challenges to sector operations plans that may lead to fishermen tied to the dock come May 1st,” Baker said.

“Many of the closures in place today are a mix of areas closed to reduce fishing mortality, which are artifacts of the old effort control system, and habitat closures,” said The Northeast Seafood Coalition said in a prepared statement. “When the Northeast groundfish fishery transitioned to hard total allowable catches, it was understood the measures that continued to exist under the old mortality controls would be removed.”

But the coalition, the region’s largest industry organization said, “Very little has been done to remove the artifacts of the old system,” noting that the fishery is “now in its third year of an allocated system.”

 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

 

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — October 15, 2012 — A small but important fish for the Chesapeake Bay is the focus of a public meeting in Virginia.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to hear from the public about the future of Atlantic menhaden during a meeting tonight at 6 p.m. at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission's office at 2600 Washington Ave. The meeting is on the 4th floor.

The oily fish supports one of the biggest commercial fisheries in the U.S. because of menhaden's use in a number of products, including heart-healthy supplements.

But a debate has been raging about that fishery based in Reedville and conducted by Omega Protein. Recreational fishermen, birders and environmentalists fear that menhaden's numbers have dipped to their lowest level in years.

 

Read the full story from the AP at the Virginian-Pilot

 

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) October 12, 2012 — On Wednesday, October 10, the Gloucester Daily Times reported ("NOAA regional chief, EDF back catch quota caps") that "NOAA’s regional administrator, joined by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Pew Environment Group, the North Atlantic Marine Alliance and Food & Water Watch, is supporting a belated effort by the federal government to limit the accumulation of catch shares and thus provide safeguards to smaller independent boats in the Northeast groundfishery…"

Quoting from the Northeast Seafood Coalition Groundfish Amendment 18 Scoping Comments, the Times reported “NSC (the coalition) 'believes that legitimate goals concerning diversity, excessive shares and consolidation should and will be most effectively addressed by the individual sectors rather than through a council regulatory process,' the coalition said in its written submission to NOAA."

The Northeast Seafood Coalition has released the following statement expanding and clarifying their long-held position on this issue:

GLOUCESTER, Mass — October 12, 2012 — The groundfish fishery is currently faced with an overwhelming number of challenges, including massive reductions in annual catch limits (ACLs) for numerous core stocks in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank and the obligation to reduce interactions with protected species. The management responses to these challenges threaten to destroy many fishing businesses and force far greater changes in the demographics, diversity and consolidation of our fishery than anything the sector management system ever can or will. Consequently, the financial viability and future of this fishery is in serious jeopardy as never before.

NSC believes any and all groundfish management measures must be highly sensitive to the potential for unintended consequences to all segments of this fragile fishery. NSC’s efforts have consistently focused on the need to prevent excessive shares of groundfish resources and the need to preserve fleet diversity.

Accumulation Caps

While the issue of excessive shares is a valid concern within a Limited Access Privilege program (“LAPP”) or a non-LAPP management system, NMFS has made a definitive legal determination that the sectors are not LAPPs as defined in the Magnuson-Stevens Act (“MSA”) and that sector allocations are not permanent. NSC is concerned the consideration of accumulation limits and other concepts being discussed in the context of Amendment 18 may be driven by the desire by some to “backfill” Amendment 16 sector management to qualify as a LAPP under the MSA. With these points in mind, NSC has adopted the following position:

“A LAPP should not be developed unless and until fishermen themselves develop and propose a LAPP through the petition process set forth in section 303A(c)(6)(B) of the Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA), (rather than being developed from the “top-down” though a Council-initiated process), and that all elements of the Amendment 16 sector system including the allocation formula are on the table for reconsideration in that process. If Amendment 18 develops into an effort to retrofit the current Amendment 16 allocations and the sector system to qualify as a LAPP, then NSC must oppose it.”

Fleet Diversity

NSC is also committed to the need to preserve fleet diversity and has invested deeply in achieving this objective. The NSC has played a pivotal role in the “Northeast Multispecies” (groundfish) fishery and its management as the sponsor of 12 of the 19 sectors now operating in the fishery including one serving as a ‘lease–only’ sector. Consistent with its longstanding support for family-owned businesses and a diverse fishery, NSC sponsored and designed the NEF sectors to be inclusive of the full diversity of fleet and community demographics that were representative of the entire groundfish fishery.  Each sector is rooted in a particular community, with communities defined by localities, fishing styles, and other commonalities that include vessel size, gear, target stocks and home ports throughout the full range of the fishery. The opportunity to join NEF sectors was open to all groundfish permit holders regardless of the size of their initial allocations or whether they were members of NSC.

NSC’s work during A16

NSC worked diligently during the Amendment 16 process to advocate for alternative baseline formulas other than pure catch history.

NSC was the only organization who took the initiative to commission an independent report to analyze the impacts of the different baseline formula options. 

Many of our fishermen are concerned that Amendment 18 could place additional layers of fishery input controls and constraints on sector operations, including their essential ability to trade or lease ACE. Such external controls might undermine the intended benefits of ‘output control’ management including the individual ability of each sector to pursue economic viability and preserve their unique demographic identities. As explained above, NSC went to great lengths to ensure that Northeast Fishery Sectors were provided with a critical level of local, small business control and the tools for sector self-determination as a deliberate alternative to imposing rigid external fishery input and sector operational controls.

NSC urges very careful consideration of these issues and general caution for any unintended, if well-intentioned, consequences of such controls. Sector management has been characterized as an opportunity for fishermen to have greater control over the manner in which they harvest and manage their ACE. The Council should maximize opportunities/flexibility for sector and fishermen in Amendment 18.  

Read the NSC's Groundfish Amendment 18 Scoping Comments from April 2012

 

 

GLOUCESTER, Mass. — October 10, 2012 — NOAA’s regional administrator, joined by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Pew Environment Group, the North Atlantic Marine Alliance and Food & Water Watch, is supporting a belated effort by the federal government to limit the accumulation of catch shares and thus provide safeguards to smaller independent boats in the Northeast groundfishery, now consolidating in response to catch restrictions that promise only to tighten in the foreseeable future.

Many fishermen share the view of John Bullard, NOAA’s new regional administrator, and the non-government organizations about the need for NOAA’s regional council — composed of industry appointees and state marine fishery officials — to take up the problem of excess quota accumulation and consolidation of the fleet next year.

The New England Fishery Management Council will set its priority list at its November meeting, which will also struggle with setting draconian catch limits for the groundfishing fleet beginning May 2013. But far from unanimous is the consensus backing the council’s writing accumulation controls and limits into an addendum to Amendment 16, the landmark and legally disputed framework for the groundfishery that includes voluntary fishing cooperatives using and trading in catch shares.

The Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the largest industry group in the region, has disputed the need for the government’s intervention in the free enterprise authorized by Amendment 16, which marked the first time NOAA —approving a fishery management plan completed by the council in 2009 and launched in May 2010 — essentially adopted the catch share management format.

One expressed concern about a future addendum to Amendment 16 (known as Amendment 18, but for now, a document in name only) by the coalition is government intervention that would unduly limit or prevent the free trading in catch shares between inshore and off shore boats and between boats of different gear types — an unfettered exchange that seemed intended by the council that wrote Amendment 16, and is the lifeblood of the fleet, according to coalition testimony last winter during a scoping session in Gloucester by a team representing the council.

“NSC (the coalition) believes that legitimate goals concerning diversity, excessive shares and consolidation should and will be most effectively addressed by the individual sectors rather than through a council regulatory process,” the coalition said in its written submission to NOAA. The coalition also said it worried that Amendment 18 might nudge the regimen across the border making it a bona fide limited-access program that, under the Magnuson-Stevens Act, would be subject to referendum approval by the working fishermen.

Yet Bullard, who heads NOAA’s Gloucester-based regional headquarters that regulates the industry from Maine to the Carolinas, said “NOAA’s position is that provision should be made to prevent excessive (ownership of catch) shares,” adding that was a consensus message to him during a series of listening sessions he held throughout the region before and after he took office last July.

“Consolidation was happening before catch shares went in, and it is the council that needs to tackle the problem,” he said. “It’s complicated, but it needs to be tackled in open debate, and not just left to market forces,” he added in a telephone interview Tuesday.

 

Read the full story in the Gloucester Times

 

 

CHATHAM, Mass. — October 5, 2012 – At the town's community center Thursday night, there was little animosity on display, as is often the case when fishermen square off in a room with an official from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency charged with overseeing the commercial fishery. Perhaps that was because of John Bullard, the newly minted fisheries service Northeast regional administrator, and his gentle manner as he listened to what Cape fishermen had to say about fisheries management.

"You're an even-tempered, soft-spoken man. You got that thing going on," mused Provincetown fisherman Beau Gribbon.

Bullard, who began his job Aug. 6, replacing former regional administrator Pat Kurkul, has been conducting listening sessions around New England and as far south as Maryland to get a sense of what issues are important to fishermen and others in the industry.

About 40 people showed up Thursday night to talk to Bullard about the impact of predators such as seals and dogfish; the drawbacks and merits of opening up areas that had been closed to fishing for nearly two decades; the needs of small-boat fishermen; the burdens imposed by regulations that were not supported by good science or were unnecessarily harsh; and the agency's ability to meet all its responsibilities on a pared-down budget.

Bullard told fishermen that his agency had taken to heart the criticisms it received about mistakes made in the Northeast, which included overhauls of its enforcement program, inaccurate scientific forecasts of cod and other fish populations that are likely to lead to big cuts in fishing quotas this year, and a feeling among fishermen that his office wasn't listening to them.

"There was a lot of criticism in these three areas, and there are three new people, a new regional administrator, me, a new science center head and a new enforcement person," Bullard said. "I think you can take that as message received."

That did not mean that his message to them was going to be sugar-coated.

"There's not a lot of fish or fishermen, and there's not a lot of easy decisions in the future," Bullard said.

"My job, working for taxpayers, is to keep these working waterfronts open and to keep the people working, but we're on a razor's edge right now," he said. Complicating the task are environmental changes, such as warming ocean temperatures, that are making the comeback of stocks like cod a lot harder.

Chatham fisherman Stu Tolley told Bullard that reopening closed fishing grounds would only lead to the demise of whatever fish stocks remained there, and that would be the end of fishing and fishermen.

But his big concern was controlling seals whose numbers have grown exponentially over the past decade. Tolley said seals were eating fish all over the fishing grounds, even beyond a hundred miles out. The same held true for small sharks known as dogfish, he said.

"The cod started returning in the early 2000s and by mid-2000s they were dog(fish) food," Tolley said. And the fish that grew to larger sizes were gobbled up by the seals. If nothing is done about these predators, Tolley said, there wouldn't be any fishing in Chatham within a few years.

Andy Baler, owner of the Nantucket Fish Company, said fishery managers needed to protect forage species such as herring that formed the basis of the marine food chain.

 

Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times

 

 

October 2, 2012 — The following was released by the Public Trust Project

The Potomac River Fisheries Commission (PRFC) has no record of the votes it has made regarding Atlantic menhaden, the controversial forage fish that has been called “the most important fish in the sea” because of its contribution to the diets of dozens of ecologically significant fish, mammals, and shorebirds.

PRFC Executive Secretary A.C. Carpenter confirmed to the Public Trust Project that he does not keep track of the votes he has cast on menhaden at meetings of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the multi-state agency that manages marine fish in state waters. He was unable to produce a record of his positions at the ASMFC, even for recent years.

The Potomac River Fisheries Commission is represented by equal numbers of delegates from Maryland and Virginia, which share jurisdiction of the Potomac River and its natural resources. Carpenter votes on behalf of the PRFC delegates when attending ASMFC regulatory meetings.

When it comes to menhaden, Maryland and Virginia do not get along. Carpenter is put in the position of standing between two warring powers whose perspective on “the most important fish in the sea” could not be more different.

Virginia is home to Omega Protein, an industrial harvesting company that catches a quarter to half a billion pounds of Atlantic menhaden annually, grinding them into oils and fishmeal for sale, largely to markets in Asia and Europe.

Maryland, on the other hand, banned the industrial menhaden fishery from its state waters in 1931, and has been a tireless advocate of menhaden conservation ever since.

Elected officials in Virginia have accepted campaign finance contributions from Omega Protein many years running, while officials at the highest levels of Maryland government have taken a public stance against the company’s massive harvest: Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has been a vocal advocate for responsible and timely management of menhaden. Attorney General Douglas Gansler has said that he is considering taking Omega Protein to court if the ASMFC does not cut back the allowable harvest of menhaden.

Because Maryland and Virginia are diametrically opposed on menhaden, the two states should cancel each other out on menhaden management when it comes to the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. Carpenter’s vote should be “null.”

But despite equal representation, a review of Carpenter’s comments and motions, recorded in ASMFC meeting minutes, suggests that he often comes down on one side — that of Virginia and the industrial menhaden fishery that exists on Virginia shores.

 

Read the full story at the Public Trust Project

Analysis: In “No Records Kept: The Potomac River Fisheries Commission’s Mysterious History on Menhaden,” Public Trust Project Director Alison Fairbrother attacks the Potomac River Fisheries Commission (PRFC) for allegedly failing to keep a record of its votes at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), and alleges that the PRFC improperly sides with Virginia at ASMFC meetings. The PRFC represents the interests of the Potomac River region on the ASMFC, and is composed equally of delegates from Maryland and Virginia. These criticisms misrepresent the rules and obligations that govern PRFC voting, and misrepresent the role of the PRFC’s vote within the Commission.

According to the article, the PRFC’s Executive Secretary, A.C. Carpenter, “was unable to produce a record of his positions at the ASMFC, even for recent years.” However, the article fails to mention that keeping a record of votes is not required at the ASMFC. Many ASMFC actions are done by consensus, with no tally of the votes kept. The article is critical of Mr. Carpenter for this, despite his adherence to the policies of the ASMFC and the PRFC.
 
The article expresses the opinion that, because Maryland and Virginia comprise equal parts of the PRFC, when there is a conflict in policy between the two, the PRFC should abstain from voting. It states, “Because Maryland and Virginia are diametrically opposed on menhaden, the two states should cancel each other out on menhaden management when it comes to the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. [PRFC Executive Secretary A.C.] Carpenter’s vote should be null.”

However, the Public Trust Project’s opinion on how PRFC should operate misrepresents PRFC policy and guidance on how the Executive Secretary should vote during ASMFC sessions. According to the PRFC guidelines – which were cited in the article by the Public Trust Project –the Executive Secretary (who represents the PRFC at the ASMFC) is required to vote for the PRFC’s position on an issue, only if one has been established. If not, the Executive Secretary is instructed to formulate his or her vote by consulting other members of the PRFC, by trying to be as consistent with Maryland and Virginia’s positions as possible, and by relying on his or her best judgment and the best available science.

A commissioner quoted in the Public Trust Project article expressly stated that he does not always vote in keeping with the science, but rather often votes with his “gut.” A vote by the Executive Secretary that is in keeping with the science rather than the gut reaction of a commissioner would be in line with PRFC policy.

The article also makes reference to menhaden as being referred to as "the most important fish in the sea." This qualitative judgement is derived from the book The Most Important Fish in the Sea, by Rutgers English professor H. Bruce Franklin. There is no scientific evidence supporting the idea that any one species of fish is "most important," and promulgating and represents only the authors' opinion rather than any scientific consensus.

Nothing alleged by the Public Trust Project in this article is inconsistent with either the standard practices of the ASMFC or the voting guidelines of the PRFC. The article implies wrongdoing where none is occurring.