April 16, 2012 – The New England Fishery Management COuncil (NEFMC) has made available the documents for its April 24-26 meeting.
April 16, 2012 – The New England Fishery Management COuncil (NEFMC) has made available the documents for its April 24-26 meeting.
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Apr. 16, 2012 — NOAA Fisheries Service announces that a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area – DMA) has been established in the vicinity east of Boston to protect an aggregation of 3 right whales sighted in this area on April 13, 2012. This DMA is in effect immediately through April 27, 2012. Mariners are requested to route around this area or transit through it at 10 knots or less.
East of Boston DMA — active through April 27, 2012
42 34N
41 55N
071 10W
070 16W
Mariners are requested to avoid or transit at 10 knots or less inside DMAs where persistent aggregations of right whales have been sighted.
View a map of the right whale dynamic management area.
BARNEGAT LIGHT, New Jersey — Apr. 16, 2012 — The new turtle deflector dredge, or TDD, totally reworks the layout of the traditional New Bedford scallop dredge to eliminate accidental capture of sea turtles – promising to finally resolve a years-long debate over how to best protect those threatened and endangered species.
Where the old-style dredges have a flat front with two plates to scoop up scallops, TDD designer Ronald Smolowitz and his team realigned the front end to an angle and eliminated gaps in the frame where turtles could get lodged, creating something like the cow catcher on an Old West steam locomotive.
“The industry had to do it. Solved our problem,” said James Gutowski of the Viking Village scallop boat fleet, which worked for years with Smolowitz to learn about turtles, particularly loggerheads, and how they interact with scallop gear.
“It does a great job of pushing the turtle up and out of harm’s way,” said Gib Brogan of Oceana, an environmental group that for years has pushed to reduce accidental turtle deaths and injuries from fishing gear. “This is a great example of the fishing industry stepping up and doing the right thing for the turtles and for themselves.”
Read the full article at the Asbury Park Press.
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — April 16, 2012 — Lawyers for New Bedford and for Gloucester have argued in an appeal brief, that the Federal government doesn't deserve the court's deference because it hasn't earned it.
Instead, the brief says, the Commerce Department and NOAA have circumvented the intent of Congress, twisted the plain meaning of words, failed to live up to the law's expectations, and in general hammered through a management scheme through any means at its disposal.
"Defendants argue in their opposition briefs that New Bedford cannot rely on the plain language of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the government's guidance, or even the dictionary in interpreting the law," said the city.
"Defendants essentially contend that citizens can rely only on what the government says next."
The lawsuit contends that the plan was put into place unlawfully, in violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Magnuson-Stevens Act. That act was amended in 2007 to better protect fishermen and fishing communities against the ill effects of a quota-based management plan.
The ultimate safeguard was the requirement of a referendum and two-thirds approval among the members of the industry.
The suit contends that NOAA knew a referendum on this system would fail, so it devised a scheme to get around the law. That involved, for one thing, renaming individual quota permits and calling them catch shares, and declaring that the referendum rule doesn't apply to them.
The lawsuit lost in U.S. District Court last year as Judge Rya Zobel applied the narrow legal principle that in such an administrative case she can only examine what is on the record, taking no new testimony, and assuming the good faith and competence of the government.
The appeal contends that the government, by its actions, forfeited the presumption that it acted within the law.
Read the full article at the New Bedford Standard-Times.
April 13, 2012 – Commissioner for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, Maria Damanaki, has contibuted to an event organised by Oceana that discusses fisheries management as an ecosystem-based approach.
The event 'The implementation of the ecosystem-based approach – A revolution for fisheries management and A challenge for the Common Fisheries Policy', hosted by Guido Milana, Member of the European Parliament, was organised by Oceana.
The objective of the seminar is to exchange views on the changes in fisheries management that are necessary for truly implementing the ecosystem-based approach.
Ms Damanaki welcomed the initiative and wished to contribute to the discussion on this topical issue with some thoughts:
"The Commission's main policy objectives are to provide for the conservation on fish stocks with a view to ensuring their long-term sustainability and for the fishing sector dependent on these stocks. Within this objective it is also necessary to keep fisheries impacts within sustainable bounds, by including all knowledge we have about the interactions between fisheries and marine ecosystems. Decisions taken in fisheries should also be consistent with and supportive of actions taken under the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Habitats Directive…
"To do this, fisheries management should firstly reduce the overall level of fishing pressure to sustainable levels, and in particular to allow fish stocks to rebuild to maximum sustainable yield levels as according to the "Johannesburg" commitment. This will be done by means of continued implementation of long term plans and a sustained effort to eliminate discards. This will reduce mortality of fish,
April 16, 2012 – The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) has made available the discussion documents for the April 18 meeting of the groundfish committee.
April, 2012 – It’s been a terrible time for fishermen, but in recent years, those who have survived have had reason for optimism. Austerity — in the form of various restrictions on fishing — have allowed some damaged fish populations to be fully rehabilitated, including dogfish, Gulf of Maine pollock, and the haddock and scallops on Georges Bank, the vast fishing shoals southeast of Cape Cod to which the biggest Maine vessels still venture.
The federal regulators — the fisheries service of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — is legally required to end overfishing of all stocks in the country by 2014, and by the middle of last year it reported it had done so for twenty-one of New England’s thirty-six monitored stocks. Gulf of Maine cod, NOAA fisheries determined in 2008, was rapidly rebuilding.
Which is why NOAA’s new assessment of the cod fishery caused such shock and dismay when it was first surfaced just before Thanksgiving. Since 2008, fisheries scientists reported, the Gulf of Maine cod population has not expanded as expected, and is now only about a fifth the size it needs to be to be considered rebuilt. To restore the stock by 2014 would require fishermen’s catch quotas to be slashed by as much as 90 percent, making it difficult or impossible to fish for other bottom-dwelling fish like pollock, haddock, and flounder that swim among the cod. After a period of cautious optimism, shell-shocked fishermen from Cape Cod to East Quoddy Head saw an artillery shell falling on one of their last remaining positions.
“Having such a big divergence from the previous assessment is a big surprise and leaves many, many questions,” says Jim Odlin, owner of a small Portland-based fleet of trawlers and a member of the New England Fishery Management Council, which makes many of the decisions about how to implement NOAA recommendations. “If we accept the new assessment, how do we move forward and still maintain some segments of the industry?”
That’s the question fishermen and fisheries regulators have been grappling with ever since, and the stakes are high for Maine fishermen. While big offshore boats like Odlin’s can travel farther afield for redfish, Georges Bank groundfish, and other species, smaller vessels have fewer options. “Day boats in southern Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are by far the most economically dependent on Gulf of Maine cod, in some cases accounting for up to 90 percent of the catch,” says Peter Shelley, senior counsel of the Conservation Law Foundation, the organization whose 1991 law suit forced the federal government to take measures to stop overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks. “They have no other options, whereas the big trip boats have lots of options.”
“The remaining groundfishermen are having a hard enough time making ends meet,” says former Maine marine resources commissioner Robin Alden, executive director of the Stonington-based Penobscot East Resource Center. “This could be a very serious blow.”
Read the full article at DownEast magazine.
April 13, 2012 – Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson reportedly plans to eliminate the fishing rights of South Africa’s “Big Five” fishing firms when they come up for review in 2013.
She shared her news in secret, but it leaked to Feike Chief Executive Shaheen Moolla, a former adviser to previous ministers, Independent Online reports.
The “white” fishing companies that controlled the industry and that benefitted from generous quotas must cede these rights to community fishers, Joemat-Pettersson reportedly affirmed. She said the Industrial Development Corporation would be approached to buy fishing vessels so small players can enter the industry.
Moolla said he had received input from staff present at the meeting and that taking away fishing licences would mean a form of “nationalisation” of the industry.”
FishSA chairman Tim Redell, whose group represents commercial fishing companies, acknowledged that the Big Five – Oceana, I&J, Sea Harvest, FoodCorp and Viking – probably controlled about 60 per cent of the sector and their share was growing considerably.
Redell, who is a director of Viking, said it was pointless to bring in additional vessels into the deep-sea fishing industry given that there were too many vessels already.
He added that the long-term licences granted in 2005 for hake deep-sea trawl quotas were valid until 2020.
The 2013 allocation round – which lasts eight years – was for the total allowance catch in species located closer to the coast, such as tuna and West Coast rock lobster, which involved 3,000 companies.
Moolla noted that the big companies were all black-empowered and have at least 30 per cent black ownership.
April 13, 2012 – The Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission is proposing to create Addendum II to the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery Management Plan, which would create new, more conservative reference points for management of this important forage fish. This is the Public Information Document (PID) phase, which is the start of the process. The ASMFC will use the information generated here to create the Draft Addendum sometime this summer.
A sample letter is available for your convenience that you may use to send your comments to ASMFC.
Subject line: PID Menhaden Management
I believe that restoring the menhaden resource to historic levels of abundance must be the primary management objective of the Amendment. Fisheries that can operate without depleting the overall abundance of the menhaden resource or fishing on immature fish, and which avoid concentrating effort in relatively small, ecologically important areas such as the Chesapeake Bay, must be governed by adequate monitoring and enforcement measures. Fisheries which cannot meet such basic criteria should be prohibited.
Menhaden management is at a critical juncture – overfishing is occurring, even under the old reference points, and must be addressed immediately. Menhaden abundance is at the lowest level in the 50-plus year time series, which, in my view, is a serious management problem.
I believe management measures must be put in place to reach the current fishing mortality threshold and end overfishing in 2013, and that management measures must be in place to meet the current fishing mortality target no later than 3 years later, in 2016, with a 75 percent probability of success.
Putting in place these basic fishery management measures, which are common to virtually all managed stocks, will, at the very least halt, the decline in menhaden abundance and increase spawning stock biomass.
I support putting in place the full suite of commercial management measures, with the exception of limited entry, but question the need for recreational management measures, which comprises less than 1 percent of the harvest.
I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to comment on proposed menhaden management measures.
Analysis: The petition says that "overfishing [of menhaden] is occurring, even under the old reference points, and must be addressed immediately."
According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission's (ASMFC) 2010 stock assessment, overfishing did occur in 2008, the last year covered in the assessment. However, this was the only year in the last ten years that overfishing had occurred. And while the stock had experienced overfishing (meaning that the number of fish caught exceeded the level set by the ASMFC), the stock was not overfished (meaning that the population is still producing enough eggs to replace itself).
The petition also does not account for the fact that environmental factors, rather than fishing, are the biggest determinant of the size of the menhaden population. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Chesapeake Bay Office stating on its website, “menhaden recruitment appears to be independent of fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass, indicating environmental factors may be the defining factor in the production of good year classes.”
April 13, 2012 – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has announced an effort to expand a commercial trawler working in tandem with the new government research vessel Bigelow to help determine if the trawl catch jibes with the industry's.
Alan Risenhoover, NOAA's acting assistant administrator for fisheries, described various initiatives for cross-checking and improving stock assessments during a national teleconference to announce the interim or transitional total allowable catch of Gulf of Maine cod for the 2012 fishing cycle beginning May 1.
"We are designing experiments for commercial trawlers and it may involve parallel towing," he said.
Industry has been suspicious of government trawl surveys since "Trawlgate," the discovery early in the previous decade that the trawling by the Albatross was being done with poor technique and misuse of the technology, leading to excessively dire findings.
Risenhoover said that, in addition to cooperative research experiments to improve assessments, the government will attempt to decide whether cod is two distinct stocks, Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, or one super stock whose population moves between the two.
Another focus will be replacing the 100 percent mortality assumption made about discards by the recreational and commercial sectors, and integrating a more accurate estimate of recreational landings.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.