Each week on WBSM in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood joins host Phil Paleologos to discuss issues related to the fisheries with news-making guests.
Richie Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City and Boston Seafood Display Auctions, shares his thoughts on recently passed legislation — co-authored by Senator Olympia Snowe and Congressman Barney Frank — that may significantly enhance the prospects for yellowtail fishing and scallop harvesting.
PORTLAND, Maine — Regulators on Friday voted to shut down New England's shrimp season early for the second consecutive season because fishermen surpassed the target set by biologists.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided at an emergency meeting to close the fishery Feb. 28, about 6½ weeks earlier than scheduled. Even with the early closing, the amount of shrimp pulled from the North Atlantic will exceed the 8.8 million pound limit set by scientists.
Because of the decision, hundreds of fishermen will have to tie up their boats earlier than expected and fish processing plants on the mainland will run out of shrimp.
Longtime shrimp fishermen say there are too many fishermen going after the shrimp. That includes groundfishermen whose days at sea have been cut, as well as lobster fishermen.
Read the complete story by The AP at The South Coast Today.
Matt Ruby is a commercial fisherman from Little River. For 15 years he has supported his family through the snapper grouper fishery. Concerned with the new fishing limits, Ruby and other fishermen have been meeting in order to help preserve their occupations. A member of the South Atlantic Fishermen’s Association, Ruby is different in that he expresses a different opinion than many of his fellows by supporting catch shares. Vehemently protested by the majority of local fishermen with the slogan “Hell No Catch Shares”, the management program based on catch shares is a relatively simple concept: each year, the number of fish to be caught is determined by the National Marine Fisheries Service and regional council. Once the number is determined fishermen may purchase a catch share, entitling them to a percentage of the fish. Ruby feels that it may be worth considering, at least for commercial fishermen.
“At this point, we do not need to take any fishery management option off the table, including catch shares, to ensure a future for the commercial snapper grouper fishery,” stated Ruby. He agrees with his peers on many points, especially that fishermen should have substantial input in the design of management systems.
“I was glad to see in the paper last week that fishermen are organizing to change some of the fishing rules that are killing our livelihoods. However I’m concerned about the untrue information being spread about catch shares,” said Ruby, contending with the association’s stance.
“Catch shares fishermen can restrict outside corporations and non-profits from holding quota and make sure that someone doesn’t buy up quota and not use it,” he said. A major concern was that environmental groups or large corporations would purchase the catch shares so that no one could fish.
Read the complete story from The North Myrtle Beach Times.
On 16 February, CBS News devoted some four minutes to an investigative piece into the scandal that should have rocked NOAA and the Obama administration last fall. Our government is driving the fishing industry into oblivion with "unduly complicated" regulations and with federal agents who are "overzealous" and prone to "abusive conduct."
The piece opened with Bill Lee, a fisherman from Rockport, MA, who has been forced out of business by the fines levied by NOAA. Mr. Lee is articulate and the photogenic background of Motif No. 1 is emblematic of New England. CBS got the sound bite but they are constrained by time. A more in depth coverage of Mr. Lee's ordeal is given in Richard Gaines' article in the Gloucester Times.
Mr. Keteyian next spoke to Richard Burgess, another fisherman. Mr. Burgess told of being fined $27,000 for a paperwork error and being told that if he contested the fine, it could go up to $125,000 or more. You can view Mr. Burgess' testimony to Congress on that incident and others at the link. Mr. Burgess said on camera to CBS, "[We are] hardworking people and we've been treated as common criminals." Ouch!
Read the complete story from American Thinker.
"We are shrimping because we are out of fish (quota)," Gloucester Capt. Ricky Beal said last month. Beal said he had turned back to catching shrimp this year for the first time since 1997, and the shrimp harvest had helped and others through the winter.
"I don't have any choice (but to go shrimping). I'm just about out of codfish (quota)," added Paul Theriault, the Rockport owner and the captain of the 42-foot Terminator.
Regulators are considering putting an early end to the New England shrimp season because fishermen are catching too many of them.
An early closure would be ironic for a number of Gloucester-based fishermen, who turned to shrimping this winter when they faced tight constrictions on their groundfishing permits.
The harvest has been strong because of a healthy shrimp population, more fishing pressure and stable markets that have resulted in strong prices, said Glen Libby, a shrimp fisherman who works out of Port Clyde, Maine, and serves as president of the Midcoast Fishermen's Cooperative, which processes and sells shrimp under the Port Clyde Fresh Catch label.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.
The New England Fishery Management Council has raised a red flag over indications that market dynamics in the virtual commodification of the groundfishery is yielding a concentration of catch shares' ownership in a small number of hands.
After hearing a staff report that 41 percent of the allocation of Georges Bank winter flounder is now controlled by three entities, the council voted to ask the National Marine Fisheries Service to publish a "control date" beyond which the acquisition of permits "may be treated differently than permits acquired before the control date," according to written summary by the council of its meeting last month in Portsmouth, N.H.
Whether and how NMFS might decide to limit concentration of ownership of the groundfishery was put off pending the completion of a staff "white paper on fleet diversity and accumulation limits."
The catch share regimen, known as Amendment 16, was approved and launched last May 1 without any rules to control concentrations of ownership.
Read the complete story from The Gloucester Times.
Well over 100 fishermen from the local community met at Billy the Kid’s to discuss the amendment proposals by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council regarding Wahoo, Mahi Mahi (Dolphin fish) and Cobia. The historic event brought together representatives from commercial, charter and recreational fishing to fight against what could deal a death blow to fisheries from North Carolina through Florida. They also discussed creating a unanimous counterproposal and coming together to oppose catch share programs.
The proposal is being fought by fishing communities throughout the Southeast.
“We’re trying to get organized, to get everyone together and decide what we are going to approach them with. Some things we can’t change but right now we are trying to find a way to keep fishing,” said Captain Keith Logan, who has been a major party in orchestrating the local meetings and a vocal opponent of catch share programs and the proposals by the council, especially the new ones.
“We have come to three main points. Number one is that fisheries managers have failed to weigh the social economic impacts that certain closures will have on our area. Number two is that the data used to calculate closures or ACLs are extremely flawed. The third is that our South Atlantic Fishermen stand firmly against any form of catch shares,” said Cameron Sebastian, another local fisherman who has been instrumental in fighting the new proposals. Logan stated that the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council had even admitted to having flawed data on which they based potential limits and closures.
Catch shares are being implemented through the National Marine Fisheries Service. The goal is to reduce the number of working watermen in the United States by more than 60 percent. A catch share is an exclusive guarantee that whoever holds the catch share has the exclusive right to harvest a certain percentage of the total allowable catch of a particular species of marine life.
It does not grant the right to catch a certain number of fish each year. How many fish can be caught is a number that National Marine Fisheries Service already determines. Catch shares can be bought, they can be sold, and they can be leased or traded.
Catch shares policy, the men believe, is about taking the right to fish away from the masses, from those individuals who want to become fishermen for a lifetime or for a day, and giving that right to harvest fish to a select few and are designed to privatize the ocean.
“The Pew Charitable trust fund has $53 million in a trust right now. If we go to catch shares, who is going to buy them? They will. Then who is going to be fishing? Nobody. We’re all little guys in this room and we’re all going to be sitting at the docks,” said Logan.
“It hasn’t worked in Australia, New Zealand or in the Gulf of Mexico. They’re doing it in the New England states and it isn’t working there. The fluke fishery guys are sitting at the docks. In the Gulf, they had 523 in charter commercial boats and only 221 are going out,” said Logan.
“We need to educate the non-fishing public. They think we’re just out here slaughtering fish and that isn’t what this is about. We’re trying to make a living and we’re trying to keep fishing,” Logan continued, citing the Alaskan crab fisheries that left 200 boats to dwindle down to approximately 15.
Read the complete story in the North Myrtle Beach Times
Each week on WBSM in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood joins host Phil Paleologos to discuss issues related to the fisheries with news-making guests.
Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) discusses his authoring of the Fishing Impact Statement Honesty (FISH) Act — and his determination to have proper congressional oversight of the NOAA. In the second half of the show (beginning at 11:28), Dr. Brian Rothschild — Dean Emeritus of the UMass School for Marine Science and Technology — comments on the US-Canada negotiation result, raising catch limits to scientifically appropriate levels, compensating fishermen harmed by the catch share program, and continuing federal financing for SMAST.
The higher yellowtail limits are set to go into effect with the new fishing year's start in May, but fishermen have pushed for immediate relief. The change could go into effect earlier if regulators can find a way to do it, said Patricia Kurkul, the Northeast regional administrator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"Given the lateness (in the fishing year) of this legislation, there's a lot of complexity," she said. "We're trying to figure out how quickly we can do this."
Fishermen have also argued for a higher yellowtail catch limit, saying it was needlessly low, and threatened their businesses. Under federal rules, if fishermen exceed their limit on one species, they must stop fishing on all stocks.
A higher yellowtail limits frees up fishermen to chase other species that swim in the same area, such as winter flounder and haddock, with less worry they'll inadvertently catch too much yellowtail and exceed their catch limit.
Each year as part of the United States-Canada Transboundary Resource Sharing Understanding, the U.S. and Canada divide the fish that swim in a 45,000-square-mile section of U.S.-Canadian waters. Yellowtail flounder is the only species that was immediately affected by the new law because it was the only one that's entirely contained in this area.
Read the complete story by The AP at Bloomberg.
Feb 2, 2011 – A bill by Virginia State Sen. Ralph Northam to move management over to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission was sunk recently in the Senate Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee by a 14-1 margin.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says overfishing is not occurring, while proponents of tighter restrictions on commercial harvests point out menhaden populations are at historic lows and declare their belief that menhaden populations near the bay are particularly depleted.
The Chesapeake Bay Program notes on its website that scientists are developing a multi-species virtual population analysis tool for the Atlantic menhaden stock, which will document how fishing and predation simultaneously affect the coastal Atlantic menhaden stock.
Applying sound science to this issue can't happen soon enough.
Read the complete story from The Free Lance-Star.
OTHER PERSPECTIVES:
Virginia Legislators Withdraw Bills that Would Hurt Menhaden Industry
ATLANTIC MENHADEN: Facts and Unsubstantiated Claims