Saving Seafood

State and Local

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishermen, fleet owners hope Trump helps their industry

November 6, 2024 — New Bedford fishermen fly many flags. There is the American flag; the skull and crossbones flag. There are flags expressing resistance to offshore wind development. And there are many — many — flags for former President Donald Trump.

But one flag is rarely hoisted on the New Bedford waterfront.

“I have yet to see a Harris-Walz flag on a fishing vessel,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the industry’s Sustainable Scalloping Fund.

The South Coast already has the densest concentration of Trump supporters in an otherwise deep blue state. But if a pollster were to survey a specific two-mile stretch of paved riverbank — the Port of New Bedford — they would find an especially vivid shade of red. Among New Bedford fishermen and fleet owners interviewed by The Light, there are three types of voters: those who strongly favor Trump; those who are skeptical but reluctantly favor Trump; and those who didn’t want to share their opinion.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

VIRGINIA: VA’s Second Blue Catfish Grant Awarded to Hampton Seafood Company

November 6, 2024 — Virginia is continuing its fight against invasive blue catfish by boosting the fishery and making it easier to put blue cat into markets and restaurants.

The state has awarded a second $247,000 grant in an effort to control the Chesapeake Bay’s blue catfish population.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin recently announced that L. D. Amory Company Inc. (Amory Seafood) of Hampton, Virginia, has been awarded the grant through the governor’s Blue Catfish Processing, Flash Freezing, and Infrastructure Grant Program.

“This reimbursable grant will support the implementation of a modern quick freezer and essential packing equipment that will allow Amory Seafood to increase processing capacity in its Hampton facility,” the governor’s office said.

“Once the expansion and modernization project is complete, Amory Seafood will purchase more blue catfish from local watermen, which supports economic growth and helps to remove the invasive species from Virginia waters,” it stated.

“I congratulate Amory Seafood on this expansion, as this project helps to increase processing capacity of the invasive blue catfish, provide additional market opportunities for Virginia watermen, and boost the Commonwealth’s seafood industry’s economic impact which was over $1.1 billion in 2019,” said Governor Youngkin.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Conagra to settle MSC labeling class action lawsuit, continues fight against short-weighting suit

November 6, 2024 — U.S. food supplier Conagra has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit which alleged the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification label on its Mrs. Paul’s and Van de Kamp’s frozen seafood products is deceptive.

In a status hearing in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois on 5 November, the two parties – Conagra and plaintiffs John Bohen and Abdallah Nasser – “report they have settled but need more time to finalize settlement,” a court document said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US bills would implement new protections for migratory birds

November 6, 2024 — Two pieces of legislation introduced by U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-California) and U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pennsylvania) would strengthen conservation efforts around migratory birds and help protect them from commercial fishing operations.

“Bucks and Montgomery Counties are home to hundreds of diverse species of birds and ecosystems,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “Many of these migratory birds are facing threats of extinction, and we must engage in initiatives to enhance standards for the conservation of these vital species. I am proud to join this bipartisan legislation to protect vulnerable species and improve habitat conditions.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Ocean Harvesters, Omega call for increase of wind facility buffers

November 6, 2024 — Ocean Harvesters and Omega Protein are calling on the federal government to increase the buffer for wind energy facilities from 6 miles to 15 miles, stating their operations are incompatible with wind turbine arrays and  critical adjustments are needed to protect the menhaden fishing industry.

The Reedville companies made those statements as part of their public comment to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which was soliciting feedback on possible commercial wind energy development in areas off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina.

Read the full article at News On The Neck

NEW JERSEY: Philadelphia seafood market setting up shop in South Jersey

November 6, 2024 — A fresh seafood market is on its way to the borough.

Fishtown Seafood Co., “a new school fish shop,’’ is set to open in Haddonfield sometime this winter. The company states on its website that its third location will be in Haddonfield at 114 Kings Highway East.

This will be the first New Jersey location for Fishtown Seafood Co., which has two locations in Philadelphia, one along Pine Street and one along Belgrade Street in the Fishtown neighborhood of the city.

Read the full article at Aol

Court open to upholding US fishing monitor rule even without ‘Chevron’ doctrine

November 5, 2024 — A U.S. appeals court on Monday appeared open to upholding a federal rule requiring commercial fishermen to fund a program to monitor for overfishing of herring off New England’s coast even after the U.S. Supreme Court in that same case issued a landmark ruling curbing agencies’ regulatory power.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, during oral arguments, weighed the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June decision to scrap a 40-year-old legal doctrine that had required courts to defer to agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous laws they administer.

The 6-3 conservative majority U.S. Supreme Court nixed the doctrine, known as “Chevron deference,” after taking up an appeal by several commercial fishing companies of the D.C. Circuit panel’s 2-1 ruling in August 2022 that had relied on the doctrine to uphold the fishing rule.

The justices sent the case back to the D.C. Circuit to reassess the rule’s validity post-Chevron using their own judgment and for further arguments by the fishing companies, led by New Jersey-based Loper Bright Enterprises.

Read the full article at Reuters

Menhaden Boats vs. Offshore Wind Industry: Omega Pushes for Ocean Buffer Zone

November 5, 2024 — They are two of the most controversial industries in the Chesapeake Bay region: commercial menhaden fishing and offshore wind development. A potential fight for space in the Atlantic Ocean may be brewing between the two.

Ocean Harvesters owns and operates nine large vessels for purse seine fishing, which run a nylon net through the water to scoop up menhaden, a small feeder fish. They also use spotter planes to follow the schools of menhaden up and down the mid-Atlantic coast. The menhaden are harvested exclusively for Omega Protein, a Canadian-owned seafood company running out of Reedville, Virginia. Omega processes the menhaden for fish oil, supplements, and animal feed.

As the federal government continues to expand the offshore wind industry off the mid-Atlantic coast, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has proposed a second offshore wind energy sale in the Central Atlantic Ocean region—in many of the places Ocean Harvesters operates. BOEM asked for public feedback on a 13,476,805-acre possible commercial wind energy site off the coast of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It’s all part of the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

US offshore wind developers look to higher prices amid election uncertainty

November 5, 2024 — Offshore wind energy developers already invested heavily in U.S. Atlantic waters are looking for new power purchase agreements with Northeast states, a quest complicated by uncertainty over the presidential election, the wind industry group Oceantic says in a new report.

“This slowdown comes at a critical time: states have reorganized their project portfolios after rising costs scrambled industry economics and are pushing hard for new offtake agreements,” Oceantic says in its recently published 2024 third quarter report. But the group says “the federal government has hit its stride in permitting advancements and has begun releasing Inflation Reduction Act funding. The market is primed for impressive growth.”

With support from the Biden administration, Northeast state governments and a determined permitting drive by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, BOEM has issued permits in various stages for 10 projects, according to the Oceantic report.

The group’s optimistic outlook came out just before a lackluster BOEM lease auction in the deepwater Gulf of Maine that drew $21.9 million in bids for four out of nine tracts offered. The prospects for developing arrays of floating wind turbines in the Northeast U.S. still depend on future development of suitable ports, infrastructure and technology.

Read the full article at WorkBoat

Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola will be absent from House floor to prepare fish for winter storage

November 5, 2024 — Rep. Mary Peltola (D-Alaska) will not be in attendance for House votes this week, so she can prepare fish for her family.

“This week, Representative Peltola will be in the state putting up fish with family to fill freezers for the winter. Mary’s family—as well as her late husband’s family—relies in part on her for subsistence duties,” her office said in a statement.

“Representative Peltola will submit publicly available statements to the Congressional record reflecting how she would have voted if present,” the statement added.

Read the full article at The Hill