Management & Regulation

PROVIDENCE, RI (March 5, 2009) – Fishing grounds in all oceans have depleted stocks, sending fishermen to ever more remote places in search of ever more exotic species, such as Patagonian toothfish, in the extreme South Atlantic. If it’s any consolation, New Englanders can boast that the collapse of commercial fishing happened here first.

About 25 years ago, stocks of groundfish on Georges Bank swooned and fishermen started hauling in empty nets. The cod catch dropped from over 50,000 metric tons in mid-1980s to 3,000 in 2005. It was pretty clear what happened: The stock got fished out. Fishermen, with powerful new vessels and techniques using sonar and new habitat-damaging bottom-trawling gear, didn’t give the fish a place to hide.

Read The Providence Journal story in full

 

SAVANNAH, GA (March 5, 2009) – After three decades as a charter fishing guide, Steve Amick says he’s never seen red snapper as large or plentiful as he did last year off Georgia’s Atlantic coast. Soon, catching them could be illegal.

Scientists for the federal government say the bountiful catch reported from Florida to North Carolina is a shallow illusion. The red snapper population, they say, is dwindling and needs a break from decades of overfishing.

A federal agency — the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council — voted 7-6 Thursday in favor of a six-month ban on red snapper fishing off the southern Atlantic seaboard, despite cries from fisherman that the fish are plentiful and their business will sink under any ban.

Read the Associated Press story in full

 

MARCH 11 UPDATE:  U.S. Inspector General: ‘Trust’ gap hurts, but science good

PRIOR COVERAGE:

PORTLAND, ME (March 4, 2009) – Fish-population estimates that are driving severe fishing restrictions in New England waters are based on the best available science, despite persistent criticism of those findings, according to a new federal report.  [SAVING SEAFOOD NOTE:  Senator Snowe responds by saying the fisheries service is failing to work with the industry and that its science, even if it is the best available, isn’t good enough.]

However, the report also says that federal officials need to work better with the fishing industry to erase doubts and expand research.

The U.S. Commerce Department’s Office of the Inspector General presented that assessment late last week to the U.S. senators from Maine and Massachusetts. Last summer, the senators called for a federal review of groundfish science, citing a growing distrust in the National Marine Fisheries Service among fishermen.

Read the Portland Press Herald story in full

View the Inspector General’s report in full [PDF]

 

NEW BEDFORD, MA (March 4, 2009) – An investigation into the scientific practices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center found that the Woods Hole-based center uses the best available science but must take steps to improve how it communicates that science to the groundfishing industry, according to the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Commerce.

NOAA Fisheries Service has until March 28 to submit an action plan to Inspector General Todd J. Zinser, detailing how the agency, which falls under the Commerce Department, will improve transparency with fishermen based on recommendations outlined in a 42-page report on the investigation.

Read the Standard-Times story in full

Vew the official Inspector General report

For additional coverage, read the Portland Press Herald

 

 

BANGOR, ME (February 27, 2009) – Maine groundfishermen and the environmental group Earthjustice are asking a federal court to banish herring trawlers from certain areas of the Gulf of Maine.  They’ve filed a lawsuit that claims midwater trawlers are damaging stocks of cod, haddock and other groundfish.

The Midcoast Fisherman’s Association says herring trawlers are seriously harming groundfish populations. "The problem here is that when the herring midwater trawlers fish in these protected areas, they’re not just catching herring, they’re also catching groundfish, including spawning groundfish and sometimes juvenile groundfish, and that’s counterproductive to trying to rebuild our depleted groundfish stocks," saus Roger Fleming, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is representing the Midcoast Fishermen’s Association in the lawsuit.

Fleming says his clients also take issue with the fact that they are not permitted to fish in these same protected areas. "So, it’s also a matter of fairness, when groundfishermen are prevented from dragging in these areas to protect groundfish, then we shouldn’t allow herring midwater trawlers that catch groundfish to fish in these areas."

Read the Maine Public Broadcasting Network story in full

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (February 27, 2009) – In response to Judge Harrington’s extension of the suspension of Framework 42’s 2:1 Days at Sea counting provisions until April 10th the Northeast Region National Marine Fisheries Service office sent a letter to permit holders.  It outlines the regulations currently in effect as a result of the February 17, 2009, and February 23, 2009 rulings.

Read the official Fisheries Service letter in full [PDF]

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (February 23, 2009) – [O]ur own not too warm and fuzzy fisheries service has ruled the scene with a 1970s-style Politburo iron grip on the fishing industry. But more than power, it is the manifest destiny attitude of its vision that transcends the pages of the paper.

"We know best," it seems to say. "Never trust what a fisherman says." "Any fishing anywhere will damage the stocks." "The fishery is still being overfished."

The Kurkul Circle, it seems, has totally drunk the Kool-Aid. The NMFS staff doesn’t get the fact that the public has turned against them on this story — not just the fishing public, but the fair-minded, reading-the-paper public. Even a 15-1 vote by the Fishery Management Council in September against tightening the strangling regulations of Framework 42 was waved away by the Service, because the one negative vote was the one cast by The Commissar — Kurkul.

Visit the Gloucester Daily Times and read the opinion in full

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (February 21, 2009) – It’s not often, thankfully, our federal government makes a declaration of war. Yet we now have a case of a rogue police agency within our own government issuing what amounts to a declaration of war that can effectively wipe out one of our own industries and a way of life right here in our own community.

So it is imperative for our local and state leaders as well as our congressional representatives to stand united to fight the out-and-out assault by the National Marine Fisheries Service on the fishing industry.

The assault is National Marine Fisheries’ "notice of violation" sent last week to the Gloucester Seafood Auction. It was sent, in NMFS’ typically heavy-handed fashion, without any "discovery" evidence, without any prior notice or hearing, and without any immediate route to challenge outside its own jurisdiction. And if you think terming it a declaration of war is too harsh, consider how it is being carried out, and what it means.

Read the Gloucester Times Story in full

 

GLOUCESTER, MA (February 21, 2009) – From both houses of Congress and both political parties, condemnation continues to rain down on the scheme the embattled National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed to regulate the New England fishery for the year beginning May 1.

Facing widespread opposition is a planned "interim rule" that would bar all but hook fishing along the southern coast and charge permits twice for each day fished along the eastern coast of New England.

An alliance of U.S. senators voted not to allow NMFS to regulate the fishery "out of existence." A lonely voice in support of NMFS was that of the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Ocean Conservancy.

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full

GLOUCESTER, MA (February 19, 2009) – The National Marine Fisheries Service has renewed a longstanding and bitter legal campaign against the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction.

By letter dated last Friday, NMFS informed the Ciulla family that founded and owns the auction — an essential shoreside service for the commercial fishing fleet and the linchpin of the Gloucester’s marine industrial economy — it was being fined $335,200 and its license suspended for 120 days for a variety of alleged violations of the fishery regulation act.

An earlier case that the Ciullas won in an administrative trial remains unsettled.

Read the Gloucester Daily Times story in full