State and Local

RICHMOND, Va., — June 4, 2013 — Virginia is shedding its late 19th century system of taxing oysters by the bushel for a user fee that will spare watermen mounds of paperwork and return the revenue generated by the fee back to the Chesapeake Bay to replenish public oyster stocks.

The new system, which begins July 1, will require a yearly fee and replace the monthly reports and paperwork that have been an annoyance to watermen and others in the business. The user fees apply to commercial oyster operations, not oyster “growers” who cultivate the hardshells for their own eating enjoyment or simply for the health of the bay.

The new fees range from $50 a year for people who harvest by hand on public oyster grounds to thousands of dollars annually for oyster shucking and packing houses.

The old system generated about $30,000 to $35,000 in taxes annually while the new user fee approach will raise approximately $300,000, said John M.R. Bull, spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.

“That goes right into oyster replenishment,” he said. While the state provided $2 million in the current budget for oyster replenishment, the amount of public support varies from year to year.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

 

 

 

June 4, 2013 — New Jersey menhaden fishermen already face a big cut in catches this year, but the state Senate on Monday adopted legislation that would at least prevent boats from other states from poaching the Garden State's quota.

The Senate, at a special meeting just to consider the legislation sponsored by Sen. Jeff Van Drew, D-Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic, approved it by a vote of 28-0. The Assembly passed it May 20 in a 72-0-5 vote.

"The over-fishing of our coastal waters by out-of-state fishermen hurts our economy, our fishermen and cuts into our quota. We have to make sure that New Jersey's menhaden supply is available to our local fishermen and not wiped out by those from other states," Van Drew said.

The bill now goes to Gov. Chris Christie, who is expected to sign it as the state Department of Environmental Protection has been closely involved with the initiative.

"We worked closely with the DEP and we hope he will sign it," said Scot C. Mackey, of the Cape May-based Garden State Seafood Association.

Mackey said New Jersey fishermen already faced stiff harvest cuts of menhaden, also known as bunker, which is mainly caught locally to be sold as bait. The oily and bony fish is not a high-value fishery such as scallops or flounder.

It was only a $3 million fishery in New Jersey in 2012, but Mackey said its value may go beyond dockside revenues, because it's an important bait to both commercial and recreational fishing operations.

Up until this year, New Jersey fishermen could go out and catch as much menhaden as they wanted.

That changed in December, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, a compact of East Coast states that regulates migratory fish, decided to give each state a quota.

Read the full story at The Press of Atlantic City 

 

 

TRENTON, N.J., — June 4, 2013 — The following was released by the New Jersey Senate Majority Office:

Acting to protect New Jersey fishermen, the Senate yesterday approved and sent to Governor Christie legislation sponsored by Senator Van Drew that will strengthen licensing requirements for fishing menhaden — a popular baitfish that is used to catch striped bass and other fish locally, but also has been fished off New Jersey’s coast by out-of-state boats for commercial use.

The Senate convened yesterday to take action on the single bill (S-2726) in order to protect local fishermen and ensure that menhaden – the fishing of which is subject to new regional limits – is available to New Jersey’s commercial and recreational fishermen. The session was held in order to address what is a crucial issue for New Jersey.

“The overfishing of our coastal waters by out-of-state fishermen hurts our economy, our fishermen and cuts into our quota,” said Senator Van Drew (D-Cape May/Atlantic/Cumberland). “We have to make sure that New Jersey’s menhaden supply is available to our local fishermen and not wiped out by those from other states. This legislation is about protecting what is the lifeblood for commercial fishermen and a beloved sport for recreational fishermen in the Garden State.”

Last December, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to reduce the allowable catch along the Eastern seaboard. The bill is intended to ensure that menhaden caught by out-of-state fishermen – who fish just outside of the state’s jurisdiction in federal waters, three miles off the New Jersey coastline – and offloaded, or landed, in the state are not taken from New Jersey’s menhaden quota.

Read the full press release at the New York Oberserver

 

 

June 3, 2013 — South Carolina is one of 15 states that have failed to protect the near-shore ocean because they haven’t established marine protected areas that don’t allow fishing.

That’s the conclusion of a recent report by the Marine Conservation Institute. There’s just one little problem with it: sand.

The three-mile state jurisdiction off South Carolina is a largely flat, sandy bottom where fish don’t congregate.

“We don’t have the same type of coral reef, kelp forest or even rocky bottom habitats that are found in near shore areas in other places such as Hawaii, Florida or California. The (organisms) that occupy our waters tend to come and go seasonally,” said Mel Bell, S.C. Department of Natural Resources fisheries office director. “What limited hard bottom areas we might have can come and go as well as sands move around. There’s really nothing to make into a Marine Protected Area.”

Institute scientists defended the report, saying that even sand habitats are important to maintaining biodiversity, or a healthy variety of animals and plants.

“All habitats can improve when we don’t kill things … ideally we should be protecting representative ecosystems of every kind: sandy, rocky, muddy and across all depths,” said Lance Morgan, institute president.

No-take or no-fishing protected areas are a more cost-effective strategy than species by species management, the report said. The report compared MPAs to seed banks on land.

Bell said the report makes “a misleading assumption about the proper use of and benefits from MPAs, as well as a mischaracterization of the significant efforts most coastal states, including South Carolina, have taken over the years to implement effective stewardship of our natural marine resources.”

Read the full story at the Charleston Post and Courier

 

May 31, 2013 — U.S. Congressman Stephen Lynch joined Broadside Friday to discuss an array of issues, including new fishing regulations and the Boston Marathon bombing investigation.

Mass. Attorney General Maratha Coakley filed a suit against the federal government this week to block rules that she called a "death sentence" for New England's fleet. The filing comes four weeks after major new cuts in catch limits for bottom-dwelling groundfish went into effect May 1.

Lynch, who was at the event with Coakley and the fishermen, says the science behind the regulations is "shaky".

"We've tried to work out a balanced approach here, but we've gotten no where. I think it's been ideology that's really been driving this," he says.

Read the full story and watch the video at NECN 

 

EASTON, Md.,– June 1, 2013 — Proposed menhaden regulations by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources were approved by the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission during the commission's recent spring meeting.

DNR was required by ASMFC to propose regulations on menhaden after the commission established a 5.12 million-pound quota for Maryland of menhaden catchable and a bycatch allowance after the quota is met.

The bycatch allowance was set at 6,000 pounds per bycatch landing licensee and 12,000 per vessel with two licensees on it.

Only those with licensed pound net sites will be able to work with the 6,000 and 12,000 pound bycatch, Lynn Fegley, deputy director of fisheries services for DNR, said.

Also, Fegley said if someone doesn't have a bycatch landing license, they might be working with a "much smaller" bycatch allowance.

The regulations came when the ASMFC menhaden board choose to reduce the coast-wide menhaden harvest by 20 percent based on what scientists told the commission after looking at a stock assessment from 2009 through 2011 and telling the board that menhaden were being over-fished, Fegley said.

But, Fegley said what scientists told the menhaden board was "unusual."

What the scientists told the board … was that we know for sure fishing is too high, but we don't know how much, so in the stock assessment before that … it was just barely over that threshold," Fegley said.

Read the full story at The Star Democrat    

 

June 1, 2013 — Mayor Carolyn Kirk Friday applauded state Attorney General Martha Coakley’s federal lawsuit aimed at invalidating extreme cuts in catch limits on the stocks of cod, haddock and yellowtail that have supported the Gloucester fishing industry for centuries.

But the federal official responsible for the decision — made over the unanimous objection of a broad-based regional council that advises him on policy — reiterated that the “poor condition” of the stocks afforded him no choice.

Coakley’s suit disputed the scientific basis of that claim.

”We know,” said John Bullard, the regional administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, “that the quota cuts this year for groundfish fishermen for several key stocks, including cod, are severe.” Those cuts amount to a 78 percent reduction in Gulf of Maine cod and more than 60 percent for cod landed offshore in Georges Bank, in addition to cuts of more than 50 percent on many other high value stocks.

“However, given the poor condition of these stocks and the phased approach we took to reducing fishing effort to help ease the economic impacts on fishermen in 2012,” Bullard said in a prepared statement, “the cuts are necessary.”

Supporting Bullard’s position were two staunch environmental stakeholders, the Conservation Law Foundation and the Pew Environment Group. Both have invested heavily in prodding the government to accelerate its efforts to end “overfishing” — a legal term defined as the removal of enough fish from a biomass to jeopardize its maximum sustainable yield, itself a theoretical standard.

Filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday and announced at a news conference at the Boston Fish Pier that afternoon, Coakley’s suit argues that Bullard’s decision slashing catch limits was arbitrary, capricious, not based on the best science available and ignored the requirement to balance the protection of the resources with the well being of the fishing communities, steps required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the law of the land for the harvesting of the sea.

Kirk said Coakley’s suit “zeroes in on the requirement under Magnuson to protect fishing communities like Gloucester while also protecting the fishery resource.”

“Focusing on our fishermen and the preservation of the port is exactly what is needed today as our city grapples with the impacts of the devastating cuts that were enacted May 1,” the mayor said in a Friday email to the Times.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times 

 

 

May 30, 2013 — Attorney General Martha Coakley on Thursday filed a federal lawsuit against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for alleged over-restriction of the state’s famous fishing industry.

“NOAA’s new regulations are essentially a death penalty on the fishing industry in Massachusetts as we know it,” Coakley said during a media briefing Thursday at the Boston Fish Pier.

The new regulations reduce the allowable catch for New England groundfish by 77 percent to allow the replenishment of certain species, like haddock, cod and yellowtail flounder. This year’s cod quotas are equivalent to about 6 percent of the landings of Georges Bank and Gulf of Maine cod in 1981, according to Reuters. Researchers at the University of New Hampshire estimate that cod stocks have declined by about 90 percent in the last 50 years due to overfishing and other changes to marine ecosystems.

Standing in front of a fishing boat Thursday, Gloucester fisherman Joe Orlando said his livelihood has been slashed before his eyes since the cap went into effect on May 1.

Read the full story at the Metro News Boston

 

March 31, 2013 — A tough-talking Attorney General Martha Coakley launched a legal assault against the feds yesterday, accusing them of trying to torpedo the centuries-old Bay State fishing industry, while a top environmental group insisted Coakley’s just trying to land cheap political points.

"She’s scaring people,” said Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation. “She’s making statements that have no foundation. It’s really sad that the AG would go off half-cocked on this issue. … Every politician likes to get their picture taken with fishermen on either side. Clearly this is political.”

Coakley’s office yesterday sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, alleging the agency’s tough new regulations are “a death penalty on the fishing industry of Massachusetts as we know it.”

Coakley’s suit touches off a state versus federal rights fight — something Massachusetts has initiated before, Coakley noted, referring to previous lawsuits about global warming and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

 

BOSTON — May 31, 2013— Representing the entire elected political leadership of Massachusetts, Attorney General Martha Coakley Thursday filed suit in U.S. District Court against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to block NOAA’s month-old commercial fishing restrictions, describing them as a “death penalty” for an industry which has been fishing legally and responsibly for years while successive waves of resource protection dragged the industry into an economic “disaster.”

Along with Rick Sullivan, Gov. Deval Patrick’s secretary of energy and economic affairs, state Sen. Bruce Tarr and state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, Coakley made it clear that, while the named defendants in the suit were three acting officials — the “acting” Secretary of Commerce, the “acting” under secretary of NOAA and the “acting assistant” administrator for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service — the impetus for the suit was a persistent cold shoulder given by the White House to the state’s political leadership, which has taken turns appealing for a balanced and legal policy of fisheries regulation.

In April, the governor made a futile appeal to Valerie Jarrett, a special assistant to President Obama, for disaster relief and an executive action to overrule the decision of NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard to institute draconian cutbacks in landings, including the 78 percent cut in cod limits.

Bullard has described the restrictions as the inevitable “day of reckoning.” But the New England Fishery Management Council, a policy advisory arm of NOAA with state and stakeholder members, voted 16-1 with only Bullard opposed for lesser cutbacks that still would reduce overfishing. Members of Congress and the largest industry group in the region, the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, also argued that the Magnuson Act allowed Bullard to ease the hardship during a one year “interim” action. Yet Bullard, who has the authority to do so, still imposed the dire cuts.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times