Saving Seafood

International & Trade

Dead fish drifting in Indonesia after oil leak

Thousands of dead fish and clumps of oil have been found drifting near Indonesia’s coastline more than two months after an underwater well began leaking in the Timor Sea, officials and fishermen said.

An estimated 400 barrels a day of oil has been leaking from a fissure that erupted on Aug. 21 at a rig about 150 miles (250 kilometers) off the Australian coast. PTTEP Australasia, a branch of Thai-owned PTT Exploration and Production Co. Ltd., has failed repeatedly to stop the leak but says it is still trying.

The head of the World Wildlife Fund Australia, Gilly Llewellyn, said Friday that the early impact of the spill is beginning to become clear.

"This is shaping up to be one of the largest (spills) in Australian history," Llewellyn said in an interview. "It is one of the most diverse marine habitats in the world. The impact could be over weeks, months, years."

Read the complete story at The Boston Globe.

Midcoast Fishermen’s Association press release laments NMFS Herring final rule

National Marine Fisheries Service ( NMFS ) published a final rule in the Federal Register today that outlines requirements for herring trawl ships accessing a closed area set aside for threatened groundfish populations. The area is southeast of Cape Cod and is closed to groundfish fishing because it is the spawning ground and refuge for juvenile fish such as cod and haddock. Herring trawl ships, which are up to 160 feet long and about to hold more than 1 million pounds of fish, pursue herring but are still allowed to fish in groundfish closed areas.

"Industrial herring trawl ships should not be allowed in any groundfish nursery areas under any circumstances," says Gary Libby, groundfisherman from Midcoast Fishermen’s Association (MFA) in Port Clyde, Maine. "New England’s historic cod and haddock fishermen have sacrificed too long to let industrial trawlers from away ravage these sanctuaries. They are destroying our future."

"The loopholes in this rule are so big you could sail a midwater trawl ship through them," said Earthjustice attorney Roger Fleming, who is handling a related lawsuit for the MFA.

Read the complete story Media Newswire.

EU Court of Justice rule against Italy for continued use of driftnets

ENVIRONMENTAL groups, Oceana and MarViva welcomed yesterday’s judgment by the EU Court of Justice which found Italy in breach of EU law for continuing to use driftnets, a fishing gear banned since 2002. Driftnets are a serious threat to the conservation of endangered species in the Mediterranean.

This case was finally taken to the Court in August 2008, after years of lengthy legal proceedings started by the European Commission against Italy, for, inter alia: insufficient and weak controls on land and too few controls at sea.

According to Xavier Pastor, Executive Director of Oceana Europe: “The judgment is an important milestone in the elimination of driftnets from the Mediterranean. At last we may be moving towards the end of this illegal fishing gear, seven years after the EU banned their use. Let’s hope that this ruling finally shifts the direction the Italian Government has taken over the past years and now they will move towards their removal from the fleet.”

Read the complete story at Fish News EU.

Activists say fish deal hostage to WTO deadlock

Proposals to rescue collapsing fish stocks by restricting fisheries subsidies are under threat because of the lack of progress in global trade talks, environmental campaigners said on October 29.

The talks on fisheries subsidies are part of the World Trade Organisation’s Doha round to reform global commerce rules, which is showing few signs of movement despite an intensive work programme agreed by negotiators for the final months of 2009.

"We’re very concerned," said Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist at Oceana, a U.S.-based group that campaigns to protect the world’s oceans.

"We’re in a sense hostage to the broader negotiation," he told Reuters while in Geneva to lobby trade negotiators whose talks this week have been focused on fisheries subsidies.

Read the complete story at Reuters.

Army Corps of Engineers dredging killed sea turtles in Savannah

A harbor dredging operation carried out despite concerns from wildlife officials killed at least six loggerhead sea turtles in September – two in Savannah and four in Brunswick.

A possible seventh turtle was killed in Savannah, but recovered remains have not yet been confirmed as being a sea turtle.

The Army Corps of Engineers dredged the entrances to both the Savannah and Brunswick harbors for a total of 15 days using most of $6.8 million in federal stimulus funds meted out for the project. For both operations, the corps employed hopper dredges, whose suction arms vacuum up silt and send it through giant rotating blades.

Read the complete story at Savannah Now.

“Cheers” star Danson wants WTO to save fisheries

Actor Ted Danson called Thursday for tough limits on subsidies that are promoting overfishing around the globe.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the actor said the World Trade Organization needed to address the problem of boats fishing on the high seas longer and farther away from port thanks to billions of dollars in annual government handouts.

The subsidies are a major reason why 80 percent of the world’s fisheries are threatened, and why the industry is bringing in smaller catches despite the bigger fleets, Danson said.

"You are subsidizing the boats to do exactly the wrong thing," Danson said at the WTO’s Geneva headquarters. "One of the fastest ways to deal with this problem, is to take boats off the water. If you cut subsidies, you are going to cut their ability to do the wrong thing."

Read the complete story at WTOP.

NOAA Notes Potential Opportunities to Join Sectors for 2010

The following message and letter was transmitted by NOAA advising fishers that there may still be opportunities to join sectors.

If you are interested in shifting from the common pool and joining a sector, there may still be opportunities.  Contact sector organizers to see if any are willing to re-open their rosters. Act quickly, so the sector organizer can submit a revised roster to NOAA Fisheries Service before the November 20th deadline.

Changes to rosters may prompt additional environmental assessment analyses.  If the changes to the rosters are significant (e.g., expanding the sector’s geographic range or gear types), the analyses will take some time, and the regulatory authorization for the added vessels may not be ready by the May 1 start of the fishing year. Roster changes received after November 20 can not be adopted and processed before May 1.

The regulatory processes for authorizing vessels that are already on a sector roster to start the season on May 1 will not be affected by this opportunity to reopen the rosters.

Read the complete Sector Roster notice.

OPINION: Rallying fishermen need legislative support, not just political rhetoric

The fact that some local and state political officials will not be lending their in-person support to this morning’s Gloucester rally in support of New England’s and the East Coast’s fishermen may, in some ways, seem disappointing.

After all, one of the key points the fishermen and their allies at today’s demonstration is that the catch shares program — and the general commitment by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, through policy and enforcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, to drive even more fishermen and their boats out of the business — takes a significant economic toll on communities these pols are sworn to serve.

But even if Mayor Carolyn Kirk and local state lawmakers are wary of endorsing this grass-roots effort, the most important thing is certainly not for them to speak, but to hear the fishermen’s call. And that goes double for federal lawmakers, notably local Congressman John Tierney, Sen. John Kerry and interim U.S. Sen. Paul Kirk, who must now take up the demonstrators’ bullhorn and push legislatively for at least a delay in converting to a catch-share regulatory format, and a demand that NMFS rectify its admitted errors before even a single fishermen’s 2010 catch is wrongly cut back through the agency’s data gathering and processing incompetence.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

Dr. Lubchenco to lead Next Generation Strategic Plan National Stakeholder Forum

NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco would like your help on December 2nd to help her chart NOAA’s future. Dr. Lubchenco will lead NOAA’s Next Generation Strategic Plan National Stakeholder Forum at the George Washington Marvin Center, Washington, D.C.

The public forum will be hosted by NOAA’s Office of Program Planning & Integration and George Washington University’s Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration.

In recent months, NOAA has gathered input into NOAA’s Next Generation Strategic Plan (NGSP) through extensive consultations across the country and the NGSP online survey. Through this process, stakeholders helped form NOAA’s long-term strategy. NOAA now seeks suggestions on specific actions the agency needs to take over the next three to five years that will help to achieve this strategy. Attendees will include representation from the Department of Commerce and NOAA senior leadership as well as a variety of peak level stakeholders, such as Congressional officials, private industry leaders, non-governmental organizations, and others.

Read the complete story at Sat News.

More information and registration.

Fishing rules lawsuit in works

A nonprofit corporation formed by Rhode Island fishermen is working with a major Boston law firm on a legal and constitutional challenge to the recently voted federal groundfish management plan that would transform the commonly held resources of the sea into privately held fishermen’s catch shares.

Catch shares have become a bitterly divisive issue nationally, pushed hard by the Obama administration and many major environmental organizations, but resisted by many fishermen and at least one consumer group.

Tina Jackson, a Point Judith, R.I., fisherman and the president of the newly created American Alliance of Fishermen and their Communities, yesterday identified the firm formulating the Amendment 16 challenge as Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.

Read the complete story The Gloucester Daily Times.