Opinion

November 3, 2013 — The SBA loan approval is a positive step, but, like the limited grant program that may allocated up to $10 million in Saltonstall-Kennedy Act funds for innovated fishery improvement projects, is just another tiny step toward confronting a giant economic problem.

The approval by the federal Small Business Administration of a low-interest loan program for fishermen and fishing-related business is, as noted in Saturday’s Times story, good news for fishing families and waterfront businesses in communities such as Gloucester and others along the Massachusetts coast into New Hampshire.

After all, if this program helps one fishing boat owner or one other struggling waterfront business to stay afloat — it will be a good investment.

But Massachusetts congressional leaders and Gov. Deval Patrick had better be aware that the SBA program may indeed not help more than a handful of fishermen when easily hundreds are in dire need of federal and state assistance. That’s because the conditions mapped out by the SBA may block the vast majority of fishermen from even qualifying for the financing.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

November 4, 2013 — A couple of dozen boat owners don't matter a hill of beans to the federal government. But these men pursued the American dream, worked hard, played by the rules, and in the end were left with worse than nothing.

That's just wrong.

Imagine, for a moment, that you would like to retire and draw your pension from the fund into which you've been paying for years, maybe decades.

Then imagine that your pension fund turns around and tells you that you may collect the monthly check for $500 or so, but at the same time you have to cough up a half million dollars to cover your share of the pension fund's unfunded obligations to its 600 or so beneficiaries.

Does that sound reasonable? I didn't think so.

But this isn't far-fetched. For a handful of New Bedford groundfishermen, it is real life.

Everyone knows by now that the federal government has clamped down on fishing for all the reasons I don't need to get into here.

So that has stopped almost all the groundfish boats from fishing. That, in turn, has nearly cut off the supply of funds being paid into the New Bedford Fishermen's Pension Fund, which collects 2.2 percent off the top of the catch of every boat, before expenses.

That, plus the recession of 2008 that drained $4 million from the assets of the fund, leaves the fund underwater with only 80 percent of the assets it needs to meet its obligations.

And as you might expect, there's nobody to bail it out. Too small. No Wall Street safety net. No bonuses for the managers who preside over the mess. No sympathy from the green eyeshade crowd that sees the cold, hard numbers.

I sat last Friday in a corner of the ballroom at the Fishermen's Club on Orchard Street in the South End with the pension funds actuary, its trustees, a couple of lawyers, and about eight angry and desperate boat owners/operators who are trapped in this dilemma, and who insisted that a reporter stay in the room so you could learn about the fix they are in.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

October 31, 2013 — The following opinion piece was written by Peter Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF):

It is always interesting but rarely informative to read the often whining editorial opinions that emanate from the nation’s richest fishing port, New Bedford. The recent column, “Don’t take NOAA for an answer” (New Bedford Standard Times, October 28, 2013), is no exception.

Why former Congressman Frank—the reigning political champion for the chronic overfishing that led to the loss of so many groundfishing jobs and fish product in the region—would find anything to “gloat” about from a report that supports fishery management actions in New England that he routinely opposed and that fundamentally blesses a fishery law that he voted against is beyond my ken.

The report, “Evaluating the Effectiveness of Fish Stock Rebuilding Plans in the United States,” was prepared for the National Research Council by an eminent international panel of fisheries experts. It is a good read and an important document. But you have to actually read it, not just grab talking points that suit pre-existing opinions or biases. The report actually reaches none of the conclusions claimed for it by the Standard Times column.

Read the full opinion piece by Peter Shelly at TalkingFish

October 28, 2013 –Using the hammer of quota cutbacks on fishermen is popular with the well-fed eco-lobbying groups such as the Pew or the Conservation Law Foundation. In fact, when fisheries managers pound fishermen on the head, the eco-lobbyists complain that the hammer wasn't big enough.

And yet, the policy of cut, cut, cut hasn't worked, and everyone knows it.

Barney Frank was in town last week and he was gloating, admittedly gloating, over a National Research Council report that basically told fishing regulators that they've been doing it all wrong.

Well, not ALL wrong, but wrong enough that the former congressman feels vindicated in his criticism of how the National Oceanic and Atmoshperic Administration fisheries does its business.

"Gloating is one of the few pleasures that get better with old age," Frank told a meeting of the fledgling Center for Sustainable Fisheries, a new pro-fishing lobbying group organized by former New Bedford Mayor Scott Lang. "I don't have to take a pill before, during or after."

OK, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

What we have here is a golden opportunity. This report about how NOAA manages fish has been percolating for what, three or four years? Former NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco ordered up this study to deflect the hailstorm of criticism she endured following the catch shares and sector management scheme started strangling the Northeast groundfishery.

It was an escape hatch, a holding maneuver, to keep critics at bay while the eco-lobbyists within and without NOAA commenced dismantling the fishing industry.

Now, Lubchenco is long gone and it is left to her successors to figure out what, if anything, to do about this.

Amazingly, the report, done under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, was timed, perhaps accidentally, with the pending reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which governs commercial fishing.

Here's where the opportunity lies. Magnuson calls for a strict 10-year rebuilding plan for every fish stock in the ocean. It's like the fishing version of the No Child Left Behind Act. Even the proponents knew it was impossible, but the optics were good, as the saying goes.

Just as there was no way to get 100 percent of our children to be proficient in English, Science and Math by 2014, there was also no way NOAA could rebuild every species in the fisheries on a strict schedule. Even trying to do that was bound to cause unnecessary pain and dislocation.

We can see it's even worse than that, with the Gloucester fishery almost extinct with people's homes lost and lives in ruins.

What the National Research Council is saying is that an entirely new approach is needed, one that takes into account, among other things, better science including the environmental factors that sometimes have more to do with the fish than fishermen do.

It has to be flexible, not rigid.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Read Saving Seafood's previous coverage of the National Research Council study

Read the full study from the National Research Council 

 

 

October 24, 2013 — It’s a little hard to figure how a 16-day “shutdown” would push back the distribution of Saltonstall-Kennedy Act dollars to fishermen and local businesses by more than a month from the original target date, as NOAA officials are now saying.

Indeed, it would seem more appropriate if NOAA leaders, recognizing the dire straits fishermen and fishing communities are facing, opted to redouble and accelerate their efforts to go through the applications and parcel out the grants, rather than pushing the projected disbursement dates from late December to the end of January or early February, as noted in Wednesday’s Page 1 story.

Yet that’s the new timeframe outlined by NOAA, which has, through its catch share policies, questionable science methodology and tight new landing limits, gone a long way toward triggering the current fishing crisis in the first place.

There is good news regarding the pending Saltonstall-Kennedy grants, rooted in a 1954 congressional act that should have steered some 30 percent of all seafood tariff dollars into a fund for promoting and aiding the industry. NOAA spokeswoman Monica Allen indicated that the overall aid package — initially pegged at between $5 and $10 million — has been set at roughly $11 million under the NOAA budget for fiscal 2013, which just began federally on Oct. 1.

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times 

 

October 23, 2013 — The following letter to the editor was sent by Monty Diehl, Director of Fishing Operations at Omega Protein, in response to a previous letter titled "Stop menhaden fishing in Virginia waters" that was published in the Gazette-Journal on October 9, 2013.

The Gazette-Journal inadvertently misinformed its readers recently by publishing a letter from retired Norfolk dentist, Dr. John Lapetina Sr. ("Stop menhaden fishing in Virginia waters," Oct. 10 Readers Write), which wasn’t based on scientific fact and fell short of historical accuracy. Although Dr. Lapetina is a past Fisheries Management chair of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, his personal recollections and unfounded conclusions run counter to history and fact.

His claims of herring’s alleged eradication and a causal link to the menhaden fishery disregard historical and scientific accuracy. Atlantic herring barely even enter the Bay’s waters. They spawn in the Atlantic (not the Bay), and are far from "wiped out." As for an alleged link between herring populations and menhaden, the menhaden purse seine fishery has almost no bycatch and doesn’t target herring.

But these minor inaccuracies pale in comparison to Dr. Lapetina’s more outlandish claims:

—He incorrectly alleges that in 1990 one billion menhaden were caught in the Bay. In fact, that number accounts for all menhaden harvested that year from Canada all the way to North Carolina.

—The company he accuses of single-handedly catching "a billion" of the Bay’s menhaden, Standard Products, didn’t exist at this time.

—NOAA and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission have both consistently concluded that menhaden recruitment is independent of fishing pressure, indicating environmental conditions are the defining factor for menhaden biomass.

Read the full letter to the editor at the Gazette-Journal 

October 22, 2013 — Until true and deserved federal aid packages arrive, they have every right to ask a question seafood lovers loathe: Where’s the beef?

The state Senate’s approval of a $50,000 appropriation that should help fund a state Division of Marine Fisheries aid plan is no doubt appreciated by those still caught in the throes of Gloucester’s and other fishing communities’ federally-recognized economic disaster.

And given that the new grant, if properly paired with a $75,000 port-recovery, should funnel direct aid to fishing boats and other waterfront businesses, it should be seen as a model for other aid to come.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

October 18, 2013 — The following letter was released by the Northeast Seafood Coalition:

I’m writing in response to the Gloucester Daily Times’ Oct. 15 editorial “Time to put brakes on bogus ocean ‘habitat’ measure.”

For over the past five years, the Northeast Seafood Coalition has actively participated in the New England Fishery Management Council process surrounding the Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2 (commonly referred to as the Habitat Omnibus Amendment) to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan.

On behalf of our fishing members, we have and continue to engage in every step of this process to help ensure this management action is successful in achieving its intended purpose while not creating adverse and largely unnecessary impacts on an already fragile groundfish fleet.

The initial direction of the Habitat Amendment was to develop focused habitat areas and protect habitat on a finer scale than the broad closures commercial groundfish fishermen face today.

The closures currently in place are the result of a 15-year-old management approach, which essentially closed fishing grounds where the most fish were caught in order to achieve the necessary reductions in what is referred to as fishing mortality.

Read the Northeast Seafood Coalition's full letter at the Gloucester Daily Times 

October 15, 2013 — The Habitat Omnibus Amendment, already a confounding six years in the works, has a nice ring to it.

After all, who wouldn’t welcome new protections for our ocean habitat? Perhaps even fishermen might support a package like this, given that it’s aimed — at least in theory — in the long-term, sustainable harvesting of seafood, right?

Wrong.

The truth is, this amendment, as it now stands, is so flawed it’s not worth the considerable paper on which it’s written. And the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, the leading voice and organizational group for the commercial fishing industry in the Northeast, is right to jump in and raise what should be very basic questions to those pushing this painfully misguided attempt at “ocean zoning,” whether federal officials and the nonprofit giants like that term or not.

In a nutshell, the proposed habitat amendment will narrow down and designate specific areas of the ocean that will be open to commercial fishermen in the Northeast fishery, perhaps as early as the winter of 2015. And it is once again a measure that would inevitably shut far too many doors on a core American industry that is already in the grips of a recognized “economic disaster” — and one created by our own federal government at that.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times 

Editors note: The Northeast Seafood Coalition has submitted a letter to the editor in response to this piece. Read their response at the Gloucester Daily Times.