Opinion

October 1, 2013 —  The Mariners’ Wives could not have made a better selection for this year’s honor than Gloucester’s own Angela Sanfilippo, who was indeed named as one of the two 2013 winners during Sunday’s New Bedford Waterfront Festival.

Each year, the New Bedford-based Offshore Mariners’ Wives Association presents perhaps New England’s most prestigious award honoring those who have contributed to the fishing industry across the state and the region.

And the list of past winners is exclusive, including the likes of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, now-retired Congressman Barney Frank, and yes; our own late Richard Gaines.

In presenting the award, Verna Kendall of the Mariners’ Wives organization aptly called Sanfilippo “a tireless crusader” — and she has been just that, working incessantly not only for a more fair regulation of fisheries, helping to better develop insurance coverage for fishermen, and fighting to preserve fishermen’s rights to harvest the seafood riches of Stellwagen Bank.

All of that is on top of her roles as head of the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association, a director with Gloucester’s Community Fishing Preservation Fund, and a driving force behind Cape Ann Fresh Catch, which is sponsored by the Fishermen’s Wives’ group and promotes the use of alternative seafood species to better sustain the fishery as a whole.

Read the full opinion piece at the Gloucester Daily Times 

October 1, 2013 — It’s obvious if you spend any time around the docks or shop regularly at a decent fish market that there have been dramatic changes in the domestic commercial fishing industry in the country and in the Northeast over the last ten years.

At the national level

The following chart on tilapia imports from 2003 (from the USDA) says most of what needs to be said. For reference I have also included our average annual per capita consumption of seafood. In the last decade the US population has in-creased by approximately 8%, per capita seafood consumption has decreased by 8%, and our seafood imports have increased 70%. We are currently importing over 90% of the seafood we consume.

But on the plus side the inflation corrected value of US seafood landings after a protracted decline starting in the late 70s has been increasing fairly steadily since 2002.

Closer to home

The inflation adjusted value of New England seafood landings in 2011 (the latest year for which commercial data were available) was the second highest since 1950. While good news to some fishermen, over half of that value was due to extraordinarily high production in just two fisheries.

In 2002, Northeast (from New Jersey to Maine) sea scallop landings were worth $143 million in inflation adjusted dollars. In 2011 they were worth $495 million. Lobster landings in the Northeast were worth $293 million in 2002 and $423 million in 2011. Minus these two fisheries, New England landings are about as low as they have ever been and are about to go lower. Without sea scallops, Mid-Atlantic landings are at their lowest point since 1950 (for more on this see http://www.aifrb.org/2013/07/fisheries-management-more-than-meets-the-eye/ ).

What happened?

A New England Fisheries Management Council press release issued on June 7, 2001stated “year 2000 calculations show that estimated biomass levels for 11 important groundfish stocks, collectively, have increased almost 2-1/2 times since 1994.” The release went on about this good news, rightfully giving credit for it to the fishermen for their sacrifices and their demands for better science.

Referring to that release in the FishNet piece Of blood and turnips (at http://www.fishingnj.org ), I wrote in 2002 “unfortunately this state of affairs…. has been anything but that (good news) to the ‘conservationists’…. they were successful in having language included in the Sustainable Fisheries Act that removed much needed flexibility from a fisheries management system that was struggling to maintain the economic viability of the fishing industry at the same time that it was struggling to rebuild and maintain the sustainability of the fish stocks it was managing. Based on the fruits of their successful – and exceedingly well-funded – lobbying efforts, a group of these same not-for-profits have now brought suit in Federal court to needlessly accelerate the groundfish rebuilding process by forcing unreasonable adherence to these rigid provisions of the Act.”

Read the full opinion piece by Nils Stolpe at FishNet USA

September 25, 2013 — Changes in government policy concerning seafood aren’t always welcomed in Alaska, but a change noted by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Monday is good news indeed for Alaska’s fishing industry.

The General Services Administration has refused, upon review of their policies, to allow non-governmental organizations that “certify” sustainable fishing practices to dictate the sources of fish the federal government purchases, according to a release from Murkowski’s office.

The fact is, third party “certifiers” of sustainable practices are not the same as governmental agencies, and they may have their own agendas. In the case of the Marine Stewardship Council, a London-based group, Alaska salmon was no longer judged by them for sustainability after October of 2012 because eight major Alaska processors dropped financial support of the MSC in favor of what the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation, Inc. then called “a broader marketing message.”

A new set of GSA “Health and Sustainability Guidelines” just posted online this week seems to clear the way for fish harvested under Alaska’s sustainable methods to be purchased for whatever uses the government might put them to regardless of outside certifications.

The National Park Service already reversed its stance on barring Alaska’s wild salmon from sale under pressure from Murkowski, who last week introduced legislation aimed at stopping government agencies from ignoring existing rules and taking the certification advice of non-governmental organizations.

Read the full opinion piece at the Penninsula Clarion 

Septmeber 26, 2013 — The obstacles confronting fishermen should serve as a powerful reminder of the true scope of this avoidable and correctable economic collapse. We also now see landlords losing out on rent, businesses that rely in fishermen in danger of sinking, waterfront property owners who want to sell, but can’t, and even fishermen who are sadly willing to give up and sell their vessels, but can’t get a nibble from any potential buyers.

Everett Sawyer sadly noted that any federal or state aid to fishermen and related businesses might not even reach him, given the layoffs of crew members across the industry. But his plight, and the extended impact on many other residents and businesses across the city cries out for government aid. And that need is now — for aid and/or the lifting of NOAA’s arbitrary limits, not “low-interest loans” for which fishermen are likely not eligible, and which they cannot repay.

Are our lawmakers truly listening?

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times 

September 25, 2013 — I was offended by the recent “We don’t farm like this” video produced by World Wide Fund. MSC and WWF owe fishermen an explanation of what they were thinking and an apology to Alaskans and others around the nation who legitimately make their living by providing healthy, sustainable seafood.

As chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Oceans and Fisheries, I have the chance to brag about Alaska’s fisheries.

Alaska produces more than half nation’s wild fish. Fishing is important to our economy, culture and lifestyle. While our fisheries are managed by complex rules with high standards, this is why Alaska is known for quality seafood and sustainable stocks.

That’s why I was offended by the recent “We don’t farm like this” video produced by World Wide Fund for Nature Canada (WWF) in support of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC). The short animated video grossly misrepresents the harvesting methods of longline, purse seine, and trawl fisheries and smears them as unsustainable.

That’s shocking, since WWF generally had a good reputation of working with fishermen on issues. And especially offensive since MSC has certified longline, seine and trawl fisheries in Alaska as sustainable, and takes industry money to label them as such.

MSC says they were aware of the WWF initiative which according to one, “seem(ed) like a good idea initially.” Now they’re rapidly backpedaling, and they should.

Read the full opinion piece at the Juneau Empire

September 24, 2013 — Our congressional delegation continues to push for loans to help the struggling groundfishermen and for grants to help those for whom loans will be too little too late. But the best hope for the struggling sector may be found in this: "People are going to have to change."

That's what John Bullard, regional administrator for the Northeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service, told the editorial board last week

He was talking about challenges to the groundfish industry, and it's becoming clearer all the time that he's right. Here's a partial list of the "people" who are going to have to change: 1. Groundfishermen, who are not going to win the battle about "better science." The reason we can't count more fish is because they aren't there to be counted, according to William A. Karp, the Science and Research director for the Northeast Fisheries Science Center out of Woods Hole, who joined Bullard in our offices last week.

Six or more consecutive years of poor reproduction — the result of fishing pressure, predation by robust populations of gray seal and dogfish, and changing ocean temperatures and acidity, among any number of other known and unknown variables — have left the cod fishery less resilient, even if the fishery were closed completely.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard Times 

September 23, 2013 — Good science and good data can restore the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab population and help the watermen who depend on it.

It's been five years since the Chesapeake Bay blue crab fishery was declared a disaster, and despite progress using science-based guidelines for protecting female crabs, the iconic Chesapeake crustacean is still not out of the woods. The Baltimore Sun's call for management change ("Blue outlook for blue crabs," Sept. 18) hits the mark; the bay's blue crab needs better management based on baywide total catch limits, allocations among the states and licensed fishermen and much greater accountability for all blue crab harvesting.

The idea of fishing allocations for the Chesapeake Bay blue crabs isn't new; University of Maryland economist Doug Lipton and fishery biologist Tom Miller made a compelling case for quota-based management after the 2008 blue crab population crash. Messrs. Lipton and Miller stated in a Washington Post commentary and subsequent Bay Journal article that science-based annual population surveys must continue and be used as the basis for setting a cap on the number of crabs that can be harvested each year. They recommended that the harvest cap be divided among jurisdictions and licensed crabbers and that complete and timely harvest reporting be required to monitor the catch and ensure that harvest caps are not exceeded.

Read the full opinion piece at The Baltimore Sun 

September 24, 2013 — The Long Island fishing industry and our elected representatives long have complained about federal quotas on local fluke catches. Now they're ratcheting up the pressure to change those limits.

The federal legislation that led to using quotas to rebuild stocks of overfished species expires later this year and requires reauthorization. That presents another opportunity to change the way we manage our fisheries in general — and fluke, or summer flounder, in particular.

The current system, which puts New York's fishing industry at a severe disadvantage compared with its counterparts from other states, is based on flawed and incomplete data from the 1980s that resulted in underreporting the number of fish caught by state anglers. The quotas reflected those lowball numbers. New York's commercial fleet, for example, is allowed 7.6 percent of the total Atlantic coast fluke catch, compared with 15.7 percent for Rhode Island, 16.7 for New Jersey, 21.3 for Virginia and 27.4 for North Carolina. Recreational limits are not much better — 17.6 percent for New York, 39 percent for New Jersey.

Read the full opinion piece at Newsday 

September 24, 2013 — While federal lawmakers join the push for offering Small Business Administrations loans to fishermen, it’s encouraging to hear U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also concede that any such package would be merely be a positive first step toward the type of relief fishermen need.

And it was nice to hear Warren renew her push for the $150 million in out-and-out emergency disaster funding through the Senate Appropriations bill that could not only provide fishermen and waterfront businesses the help they need, but show that the Department of Commerce and Congress might indeed be responsible enough to apply some money to help address the “economic disaster” that Commerce declared a year ago this month.

The idea of steering up to $150 million toward Northeast groundfishermen, including the bulk of Gloucester’s embattled fleet, is, of course, hardly new at this point. Congressman John Tierney, or instance, got behind a similar proposal in the House last winter, only to have that potential funding understandably take a priority back seat to emergency aid for communities ravaged by Superstorm Sandy.

Read the full opinion piece in the Gloucester Daily Times