Opinion

July 22, 2013 — Regardless of whatever financial aid package emerges from these appropriation talks — geared toward the next federal fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1 and runs through the following September — it is other provisions within the same bill that set the stage for several positive steps forward.

It’s too early to tell whether all or any of the long-overdue economic disaster aid for the Northeast and other groundfisheries, forced by NOAA’s own actions into a state of recognized “economic disaster,” holds up through the fiscal 2014 federal budget process.

And while the $150 million in disaster aid approved through a key U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee and the full committee itself is justified, it’s also easy to see other senators and leaders in the Republican-controlled House picking apart that dollar figure, especially in these times of spending “sequestration.”

But regardless of whatever financial aid package emerges from these appropriation talks — geared toward the next federal fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1 and runs through the following September — it is other provisions within the same bill that set the stage for several positive steps forward.

And while a provision aimed at shutting down NOAA’s 200-job Northeast Regional headquarters in Gloucester (see news story, Page 1) should throw up a number of very different economic red flags here, requirements for NOAA to charter fishing boats to carry out fish stock assessments, mandates for the agency to cover the cost of all on-board monitors under its own poorly-managed and wasteful program, and an order to steer a percentage of seafood import tariff revenues toward community-based efforts to modernize fishing fleets are precisely the steps that should be forthcoming from Congress — and, in fact, should have been tied to NOAA’s budget contingencies long ago. So we can only hope they get the broad-based support on both the House and Senate floors that they deserve.

None of these ideas, of course, are new.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

July 18, 2013 — A plan to open some long-closed fishing areas off the Northeast coast seems like a useless move that was intended as a gesture rather than a viable means to help New England fishermen to make a living.

The proposal, unveiled last week by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would allow certain fishermen back into fishing grounds where they’ve long been banned, but it is only making it to light now that environmentalists have been somewhat appeased. Two environmental groups – the Conservation Law Foundation and Earthjustice – sued in May, arguing that regulators were trying to skip a legally required analysis of the effects of the proposed change under the NOAA proposal.

Since that time, NOAA has worked to compromise with the groups, but in doing so has put such measures in place that most fishermen will not be able to access the new areas, and if they are able, they may not want to incur the expense.

That expense will be the cost to hire an independent, on-board catch observer on every trip to monitor and prevent fishing gear entanglements with whales and porpoises and other protected marine mammals. Observers cost roughly $500 to $800 per day, according to an Associated Press article published earlier this week.

Read the full opinion piece at the Journal Tribune

July 17, 2013 — The rules that govern our nation’s fisheries are being retooled, so it’s reassuring that Congress isn’t traveling in uncharted seas.

More than 80 percent of Alaska’s fish landings hail come from federally managed waters, and the Magnuson-(Ted) Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act is the primary law ruling U.S. fisheries. The Act is undergoing reauthorization for the first time in seven years.

First enacted in 1976, the MSA “Americanized” the fisheries by booting out foreign fleets to beyond 200 miles from our shores. It created the nation’s eight fishery management councils, and its laws dictate everything from fishing and bycatch quotas, to catch shares, observer coverage, habitat protection and more.

The MSA legislation is now in the lap of the Senate Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard subcommittee, chaired by Alaska Senator Mark Begich.

“It’s the big deal; it really does dictate for generations to come the parameters for managing the fishing industry of this country,” Begich said from his DC office.

The sessions are not designed as debates, but to “put things on the table,” he said. “Both the positive and the negative; what’s working and what’s not. So at the end of the day, we can look at it in a broad perspective and determine where and if we need to make modifications.”

The main issues he’s heard from Alaskans so far include the lack of mention of subsistence needs in the Act, and the “need for balance” among commercial, sport and subsistence users. Topping them all, is the need to have fishery decisions driven by good science.

“We hear over and over again to make sure decisions continue to be driven by science and not just some political decision, or who has the majority on a board or a commission,”  he said.

Begich is working with Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), the ranking Republican on the Oceans Committee, to schedule listening sessions across the country.

“We want to make sure we continue to develop fish policy that is not only good for Alaska, but good for our nation,” he added.
Senator Begich expects the MSA to be reauthorized early next year. Send MSA comments to: msacomments@begich.senate.gov.

Read the full opinion piece at the Homer Tribune

 

JULY 16, 2103 — The Lower East Side was once better known for pushcarts and knishes. These days it reigns supreme for trendy restaurants and bars. Why shouldn't the much maligned Lower East Side classic, herring, join the ranks of the newly hip?

Waiting for a table at a pricey sushi joint is so last century. These days the cool kids are noshing on . . . wait for it . . . herring.

Yes, herring.

The ubiquitous bottom-feeder was once the exclusive delicacy of Eastern European grandparents and Scandinavian friends. These days, it has achieved cult status.

The Lower East Side was once better known for pushcarts and knishes. These days it reigns supreme for trendy restaurants and bars. Why shouldn't the much maligned Lower East Side classic, herring, join the ranks of the newly hip?

Last month, select eateries, including Michelin-star rated Aquavit and Lower East Side staple Russ & Daughters, celebrated "Hollandse Nieuwe Haring," a summer event heralding the arrival of fresh herring from the Netherlands.

Aaron Yidel Schwartz, my uncle and owner of Schwartz's Appetizing stores, regularly travels to Holland, Iceland and Norway to find herring vendors. While classic herring is pretty much a year-round favorite, he says summer brings requests from the Hamptons for wasabi-coated, honey-mustard-dipped or honey-dipped herring. It would seem that there's a hierarchy of culinary favorites, even when it comes to the humble herring.

Rachel Weingarten, a native Brooklyn-based writer, tweets as @rachelcw.

Read the full opinion piece at AM New York

 

 

July 12, 2013 — The real help — the aid that fishermen and other ravaged waterfront owners need — will likely not come from NOAA at all. It should come from federal court, where state Attorney General Martha Coakley has filed a well-grounded lawsuit citing specific NOAA wrongdoing in ignoring provisions of its own Magnuson-Stevens Act while also failing to use legitimate science advancements to assess fish stocks.

The announcement by NOAA Northeast Administrator John Bullard that the agency is looking to open up portions of long-closed groundfishing areas primarily off Cape Cod and Nantucket area may seem like a viable gesture in the wake of the job- and industry-killing Gulf of Maine cod limit cuts and the tight clamps on other stocks that took effect May 1.

But, as today’s Page 1 story notes, the changes will offer little or nothing to the small independent groundfishing boats that make up the vast majority of Gloucester’s embattled fishing fleet. And even more aggravating, limited openings such as this — especially considering NOAA’s anticipated mandate that all trips into such areas, all two-or-three day ventures from Gloucester, will require the fishermen to pick up the cost of mandated on-board federal monitors at roughly $600 per day.

That, needless to say, is hardly the way to address the needs of a fishery that has been in a government-recognized “economic disaster’ now for nearly a year, with not a dime of aid being funneled this way to address it. And if Bullard really wanted to provide at least some cooperative help to Gloucester’s and New England’s groundfishermen, he or Department of Commerce officials could have and would have taken other emergency steps long before now.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

July 11, 2013 — Our condolences go out to Grindle’s family members and his Osprey colleagues. And, clearly, the Coast Guard faced a hard choice early Sunday morning.

But, painful as it seems, it was also the right call.

It’s been more than four years now since the Gloucester-ported fishing vessel Patriot went down, sadly taking Capt. Matteo Russo and his father-and-law and sole crew member, John Orlando, with it.

And it’s been four years since officials with the U.S. Coast Guard, under intense and understandable verbal and political fire from Gloucester and the New England fishing community for its admittedly delayed response to the capsizing, carried out a series of protocol and other changes to re-affirm its search-and-rescue priorities when there is a report of a boat having gone down or facing some other offshore emergency.

So it’s also understandable that some might question the Guard’s response in the wee hours of this past Sunday morning, when the crew of the Gloucester-based herring trawler Osprey reported a crew colleague was in the midst of a severe asthma attack reported 65 miles off the Cape Cod community of Chatham, and — rather than send a rescue helicopter and other aid — the Coast Guard instead spoke with the crew, which was administering CPR measures, and instead advised the Osprey to head for the nearest port.

Michael Grindle, the 40-year-old crew member who lived in Maine and had a place in Gloucester for the last two months while he was working on the 107-foot Osprey, lost his battle at sea that morning. And as that became apparent, the Osprey headed for his home port of Gloucester rather than go to a nearer port off Cape Cod, leading to a 12-hour trip.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

July 4, 2013 — As we fish the sea of history today for stories of our revolutionary origins, we can catch a glimpse of what lured the Pilgrims to first drop their anchor off Provincetown before landing at Plymouth Rock.

They came for the seafood.

Searching for a new home, the Pilgrims first heard of Cape Cod looking at a map drawn by Bartholomew Gosnold, who was struck by the abundance of cod along the coast of what is now New England. His failed attempt to sail to China in 1602 is how this peninsula got its name changed from Pallavisino to Cape Cod.

Now, if you really want to dive deep into a great summer read, I suggest you get a copy of one of my favorite books, Mark Kurlansky's "Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World."

Kurlansky reports that while Gosnold literally put Cape Cod on the map, it was a map made by Capt. John Smith in 1616 marking the fishing hot spots in New England that convinced the Pilgrims to ask for a land grant to "where there was this Cape Cod."

Kurlansky quotes William Bradford, the man who would become the leader of Plymouth Colony and the governor of Massachusetts: "The major part inclined to go to Plymouth, chiefly for the hope of present profit to be made by the fish that was found in that country."

The "merchant adventurers" who financed the Pilgrim's voyage "expected to make a profit on this plantation. They expected to get their money back through the fisheries," Peter Arenstam, manager of the Maritime Artisans Department at the Plimouth Plantation told me.

Of course, the Pilgrims were horrible fishermen who almost starved to death if not for the indigenous Wampanoag who helped them survive until the settlers learned how to fish.

"It took them a long time to catch on but they were eventually successful. It's not a stretch to say cod is our founding fish. It's what made money for many New England settlers and provided a livelihood for thousands of families," Arenstam said.

That's why, he added, there's a solid-pine "sacred" cod hanging in the Statehouse today.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

July 2, 2013 — The spin-doctors are trying to mitigate the obvious move to thwart the conservation process. They promise to watch this situation carefully but watching won’t do any good. We know that DNR gave away an additional 5M pounds with this bycatch fiasco. No one believes the catch reports so we won’t know when the basic TAC is caught. Then, we won’t know when the bycatch allowance is exceeded. I’m not sure how we watch what we can’t see. 

After decades of mis-management, hundreds of stakeholders descended on the special ASMFC menhaden meeting last December to witness ASMFC finally doing something to save “the most important fish in the sea” from certain destruction at the hands of Coast-wide commercial reduction and bait fishermen. Based on reported historic landings (a huge joke in itself), MD ended up with an annual total allowable catch (TAC) of 5,158,675 pounds of menhaden – just 1.37% of the Coast-wide TAC. Some were disappointed that the cuts weren’t more than 20% of the Coast-wide historical numbers but everyone agreed it was a step in the right direction. Like sheep being led to slaughter, they didn’t see it coming when the loophole crowd got started with amendments.

MD made the motion for a 6,000 pound per trip bycatch allowance to apply after the specified TAC was met and the rest of the ASMFC jumped on it like wolves devouring a hamstrung fawn. For MD, that meant that the 90+ pound-netters with striped bass permits could LEGALLY catch the menhaden TAC again every 9.1 days. Shouldn’t someone at ASMFC have caught this?

MD DNR has declared their commercial striped bass fishery to be unsustainable based on fraudulent catch under-reporting. If we don’t know how many targeted fish come out of the pound-nets when each fish is supposed to have a tag that is tracked and reported, then how can we even imagine that we know how much bycatch of un-targeted, untagged species like menhaden are caught? We can’t. So the entire notion of a managed cut in menhaden catch is flawed from the start and, in MD, even if the pound-netters stayed within the TAC and bycatch limits, the legal catch of menhaden could bring the reduction down to just 10%.

It gets worse and I bet you didn’t see that coming either – I know I didn’t. At the May ASMFC meeting (I was on vacation and missed this one), the bycatch limit after the TAC is met was raised for 2013 to 12,000 pounds per trip. Now, it could take only 4.6 days to catch the TAC again. MD seconded the motion.

More bad news. I just obtained the Commercial Striped Bass Sustainability Certification Report describing MD’s poor monitoring of bycatch in poundnets. Needless to say, the Certification Team confirmed that DNR’s monitoring of and accountability for bycatch doesn’t pass muster. This was the choke point for the certification process and DNR claims they aren’t going to spend the money needed to correct these deficiencies so the certification process is dead for now and bycatch quotas, like TACs, will be impossible to enforce.

There must be plenty of menhaden after all – DNR estimated that the TAC would be caught and closed the fishery effective June 29 when bycatch limits went into effect not just for striped bass fishermen but for other pound-net fishermen who only get 1,500 pounds per day. Since this additional 1,500 pounds wasn’t part of the ASMFC motion, I assume this is all on MD and that makes perfect sense since we don’t have a clue how many pound nets are actually in service. It will only take these guys 32 days to catch the TAC as bycatch on their own. So many ways to beat the system and so few fish.

Read the full opinion piece at Tidal Fish 

 

June 1, 2013 — Given the countless criticisms we have heard of NOAA's current method of assessing fish stocks, this [newly introduced bill] gives states the opportunity to manage this industry in a manner that is more beneficial to their individual needs.

This bill will also grant states exclusive fishery management rights over reef fisheries, including red snapper, for up to 200 miles off their coastlines.

Given the countless criticisms we have heard of NOAA's current method of assessing fish stocks, this gives states the opportunity to manage this industry in a manner that is more beneficial to their individual needs.

This authority remains in place until the governor of each respective states claims, in writing, that he or she is confident that NOAA's stock assessments are accurate and based on sound science.

Those Louisianans involved in the red snapper industry know that the stocks are ample to support a full fishing season, which should last from the beginning of June through the end of September.

Everyone from recreational anglers to charter boat captains believes that the federal government is wrong in its claims that the fish stocks are simply not plentiful enough to support a full season.

States along the Gulf Coast and the south Atlantic take pride in their waters and their rich fishing culture. They are natural stewards of these waters and are already successful at managing fisheries under their control. It makes sense that we should allow these states to manage fisheries that are such an integral part of their economies.

U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, represents parts of Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes.

Read the full opinion piece at the Thibodaux Daily Comet 

 

 

June 26, 2013 — Whether it was about the multi-billion dollar foundations behind the environmental activist organizations that have become so adept at making life miserable for fishermen, or a federal fisheries enforcement establishment that was allowed to enrich itself with tens of millions of dollars coerced from the fishing industry, Richard was covering it, covering it thoroughly and covering it well.

(FishNet USA) — It was back in June of 2008 that I first became aware of Richard Gaines’ work in the Gloucester Times in a three part series exploring the interplay between fishermen, feds, ENGOs and the mega-foundations that funded them in a controversial move to close Stellwagen Bank to fishing (see here for the first installment). A letter about the series I wrote to Times Editor Ray Lamont started “kudos to Richard Gaines for reporting what is going on behind the smoke and mirrors obscuring the struggle to maintain the historical fisheries that have thrived on Stellwagan Bank for generations. He couldn’t be more on-target when writing ‘Pew is associated with public information campaigns against fishing and fish consumption.’”

This started a friendship between Richard and me that, I was amazed to discover, had lasted for less than five years. I know it enriched my life. I can only hope it enriched my writing as well.

Returning from a business trip on Sunday, June 9, Nancy Gaines found her husband Richard dead of an apparent heart attack at their home just outside of Gloucester.

Richard was a journalist’s journalist. Unlike the average “reporter” covering fisheries/ocean issues today, he gave press releases – and the contacts they provide – the minimal initial credence that they generally deserve. He was always looking for the story behind the press release and with a combination of integrity, skill and tenacity he usually found it. In five years he developed a surprisingly sophisticated understanding of what has become a cumbersomely complex federal fisheries management process – and of the political machinations behind it. Whether it was about the multi-billion dollar foundations behind the environmental activist organizations that have become so adept at making life miserable for fishermen, or a federal fisheries enforcement establishment that was allowed to enrich itself with tens of millions of dollars coerced from the fishing industry, Richard was covering it, covering it thoroughly and covering it well.

It’s going to be harder on all of us because he’s no longer there to do it.

Richard was memorialized fittingly by Ray Lamont in "Community, industry mourn loss of a champion," North Carolina Congressman Walter Jones honored him with a statement to the U.S. House of Representatives available in the Congressional Record, and I can’t add much to what they and dozens of other folks have written in the last week other than offering his wife Nancy, his family and coworkers my deepest sympathy. And I’d suggest that after reading this you spend a few minutes watching an interview of Richard done by Good Morning Gloucester. If you weren’t lucky enough to know him this will tell you much of what you should know about him and his work.