Opinion

March 30, 2013 — Recent developments in marine science and fisheries management demonstrate that greater access to previously closed areas is possible without negatively affecting conservation.

The New England Fishery Management Council, after years of exhaustive deliberation and scientific analysis, is finalizing recommendations to modify closed areas off New England to better conform to updated science and current management goals. Several prominent environmental groups and advocates are defending the status quo.

One of the highest profile defenses of the current system appeared in the New York Times, ("Keep the Fishing Ban in New England" Jan. 30) by Dr. Callum Roberts, a tropical ecosystem expert at the University of York. Dr. Roberts claimed that maintaining the current areas is essential to continuing the recovery of species like scallops and haddock. But recent developments in marine science and fisheries management demonstrate that greater access to these areas is possible without negatively affecting conservation.

When the closed areas were designed, fisheries managers used "effort controls," specifying where, when and how fishermen could fish. As part of that system, areas of Georges Bank were closed to make the fleet less efficient, not because they were environmentally important. Today, managers determine catch directly with allocations.

Outside of their original purpose, the closings have provided insights into new management strategies and fishing techniques. We saw that scallops are able to mature and grow to larger sizes. We learned that this provided for a healthier resource with larger harvests and more spawning.

To capitalize on these benefits, scallopers partnered with NOAA and the NEFMC to create a system of "Rotational Area Management." This restricts where and when scallop vessels can fish, directing vessels to areas where fully grown scallops are located and keeping them away from areas with undersized scallops. In 2004, the fishery increased the "ring size" on fishing gear to 4 inches, so that only larger scallops are caught, while smaller scallops and fish bycatch are excluded. This current system is the result of extensive collaboration between the government, scallop fishermen and independent fisheries scientists. Cooperative research conducted by NMFS, the Fisheries Survival Fund, Coonamessett Farm, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary, and the School for Marine Science and Technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, remains a model of collaborative, conservation-minded fisheries management.

Operating closures on a rotational basis, rather than maintaining permanent closed areas, has proved to yield a healthy scallop population. In 2005, Dr. Deborah Hart, head of sea scallop research at NOAA's Northeast Fisheries Science Center, wrote that "there is no clear evidence indicating that the closures have enhanced recruitment or landings in the areas remaining open to fishing," and that any gains that do occur are offset by the loss of access to the closed areas. However, rotational closures, which provide the same benefits of increased yield and abundance, "are much more likely to improve scallop yield than permanent closed areas."

Maintaining the current closed areas for a long period of time creates little value for the environment. Much of the seabed on Georges Bank comprises sand and gravel, and the bottom in these areas is naturally dynamic. High-energy tides frequently sweep the ocean floor, and habitats are constantly changing. These forces often reach the equivalent of 70 mph winds on land, and occur frequently enough to cause the seafloor to become unstable on a bi-weekly basis.

Trawling in these areas has few long-term effects. A 2004 University of Connecticut study found that sand and gravel habitats recover in less than a year. A 2006 study from SMAST determined the effects of trawling in these areas to be similar to the forces they experience under natural conditions.

Growing evidence also suggests that the current boundaries exclude important rocky habitat and are not optimal. Unlike the sand and gravel bottoms, these areas are more stable and likely to support permanent habitats and shelter groundfish. The NEFMC has proposed modifying the closed areas to better reflect this newly available information in its upcoming Omnibus Habitat Amendment.

The NEFMC Habitat Plan Development Team, in a 2011 analysis of the Georges Bank seafloor, found "for mobile bottom-tending gears, which comprise nearly 99 percernt of all adverse effects in our region, allowing fishing in almost any portion of the area closures on Georges Bank is estimated to substantially decrease total adverse effects from fishing."

Maintaining the status quo in the closed areas may be more detrimental to Georges Bank. With large sections of the ocean off-limits, fishing effort has concentrated on open areas that have been regularly fished since the establishment of the area closures in 1994. Because many of these areas do not have as many scallops and groundfish as parts of the closed areas, boats need to trawl for a longer period of time. Modifying the closed area would ultimately benefit the economic and environmental health of the fishery.

Ron Smolowitz is a marine engineer and retired NOAA Corps officer, and has been conducting fisheries research and fishing gear development for almost 40 years.

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

March 29, 2013 — Fisheries should be managed so that they are profitable, otherwise fishermen won’t go out to fish. And fishing for maximum sustainable yield, which is a main criterion of the EU’s revised Common Fisheries Policy, is not the best way to achieve this objective.

So said Professor Sidney Holt when giving one of the Buckland Foundation’s annual lectures in March. “The value of the catch has to be more than the cost of catching it. Setting TACs (total allowable catches) is the worst possible way to manage a fishery.

“You don’t just use the brakes when driving a car. You have to manage the input not the output, which depends on recruitment [to the fishery].” The recruitment number can be the most variable, Holt said. “It can change by a factor of 100 year to year.”

Regarded as one of the founders of fishery science, Holt was speaking on the theme, “Why, or why not, maximum sustainable yield (MSY)? Contemporary thoughts on the rational management of fisheries” at Fishmongers’ Hall in London.

Although MSY forms a major constituent of the revisions now being sought for the CFP, the concept had first been introduced by the U.S. government at a conference in 1949 as a management objective for stopping Japanese fishing vessels coming into its waters to catch salmon.

There were no territorial waters in those days, Holt said, but added that the U.S. government sought to claim that it was fully utilizing the resources within what became its 200-mile limit or exclusive economic zone.

Maximizing yields using surplus production models is an unscientific method of managing fish populations, according to Holt. “You can’t use it to take account of selectivity. You’re catching too many fish when they’re young. This is the issue.

“You’ve got to look at the relationship between growth and death. How much more [death] is caused by fishing than nature?”

Ian Boyd, who preceded Holt as Buckland Professor for 2012/13, and spoke after him, agreed that there is little justification for the maximization of yield approach.

“If MSY is to be used then make it a limit not a target,” said Boyd.

Boyd went on to say that in his view fishing for MSY also ignores fundamental aspects of the ecosystem such as the need to leave enough fish in the sea for other parts of the food chain including mammals and seabirds. To do this means reducing the proportion of the fish stocks that is harvested.

Both speakers agreed that fishing in European waters should be reduced. Less fishing effort would mean more profit for those left in the fishery, and it would also provide a better balance between the components of the food chain that are harvested by fishermen, mammals and birds.

Read the full opinion piece at SeafoodSource.com

 

April 1, 2013 — In the words of Chairman Hastings, “many of the current challenges may not be due to the [Magnuson-Stevens] Act itself, but rather with its implementation.”

In September 2013 the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which regulates America’s fisheries, will be up for reauthorization for the first time since it was previously amended in 2006. The process that led to the most recent reauthorization took a contentious and laborious seven years of debate in Congress and led to dramatic changes in the law. Perhaps the most ambitious amendment was the addition of a requirement for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, to set annual catch limits—caps on how much fishermen can catch of each of the fish stocks that NOAA manages.

Earlier this month the House Committee on Natural Resources formally kicked off the Magnuson reauthorization festivities with a hearing that, according to Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA), was “intended to highlight issues that could provide the basis for future hearings.” A hearing about future hearings: government efficiency at its finest.

Most remarkable about this particular bit of political theater was that peeling back the veneer of partisanship that rules House proceedings these days revealed an almost unanimous agreement that, again in the words of Rep. Hastings, “many of the current challenges may not be due to the Act itself, but rather with its implementation.”

This realization tracks well with a Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, report issued earlier this month. The NRDC found that since the Magnuson-Stevens Act was amended in 1996 to require overfished stocks to be rebuilt within 10 years, nearly two-thirds of all once-overfished stocks have met their target numbers. As a result, revenues from U.S. commercial fishing have increased by 54 percent since 1996 when adjusted for inflation, with fishermen receiving more than half a billion dollars in additional revenue annually.

While this accomplishment is remarkable, it doesn’t extend to all fisheries or all regions of the country. The rising tide of improved fishery management in the United States has not lifted all boats. New England, for example, is still home to 11 overfished stocks—more than twice as many as any other region, according to NOAA’s 2011 Status of Stocks report to Congress. And each region of the country has at least one stock of fish on the overfished list.

So if you’re a charter-boat captain trying to get red snapper for your customers in the Gulf of Mexico—where the recreational season lasted just 40 days in 2012—or if you’re a groundfisherman in New England facing 77 percent cuts to your quota of Gulf of Maine cod, NRDC’s big-picture statistics don’t do a whole lot for your bottom line.

While virtually everyone who spoke at this month’s House hearing agreed that the Magnuson-Stevens Act should remain in place and that the lingering difficulties were due to implementation and not the legislation itself, the question of how to resolve these problems raised a far more contentious debate.

There was general consensus that NOAA simply hasn’t been spending enough money on stock assessments to do the job that is required. In normal times, such an obvious point of agreement would lead to a clear solution. But in today’s poisonous partisan atmosphere, the debate over this point became predictably divisive. Most Republicans trumpeted government inefficiency, suggesting that NOAA is misusing its funds, while most Democrats felt that more money is necessary to get the job done right.

Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy at the Center for American Progress.

Read the full opinion piece from the Center for American Progress

March 28, 2013 — Marine protected areas aren’t going to be nearly enough to save our oceans, and fishing needs to be part of the solution.

I have a confession to make: I’m a marine scientist who thinks marine protected areas (MPAs) aren’t going to be nearly enough to save our oceans, and that fishing needs to be part of the solution too.

Here’s why: As a conservationist, I’ve seen how MPAs can protect habitat and allow fish populations to flourish, but I’ve also seen how effective fisheries management can balance economic needs with those of a healthy ocean. Within the next generation the global population will reach 9 billion, and it’s our shared challenge to implement the next generation of ocean management techniques to allow us to restore and maintain our oceans against this ever-rising wall of pressure.

That means working together.

The Spillover Effect

When asked, many fishers don’t want MPAs, and it’s not always surprising. MPAs come in many forms, but almost invariably they impose rules on fishing, because fishing is often one of the most significant direct threats to marine resources. But fishing is one of the oldest activities known to humanity. What right does the biodiversity brigade have to come in pontificating about protection?

But surely something needs to be done — only 15% of the world’s assessed fish stocks are in the “safe” categories of under-exploited or moderately exploited. That leaves 85% over-fished, depleted or at full exploitation, right on the edge of decline. Even from the fishers’ perspective this is deeply troubling — despite increasing efforts and investments, many are catching fewer and fewer fish. If stocks were better managed they could be making more money and ensuring their long-term future.

Meanwhile, the results of protection can be dramatic — the best-managed marine reserves are tightly packed with vast schools of fish and with healthy ecosystem builders such as corals and kelps. A few studies have suggested that such closed areas can lead to significant benefits to fisheries, with both larvae and adult fish “spilling over” into adjacent areas and leading to increased fish catches over all.

Read the full story at The Nature Conservancy's Cool Green Science blog

March 26, 2013 — Anchovy, sardines and market squid, officially known as coastal pelagic species (CPS), are already well managed under both federal and state fishery management plans, which prescribe precautionary harvest limits.

Some people have the wrong impression regarding the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s upcoming decision – on April 9 – to adopt the Pacific Coast Fishery Ecosystem Plan(FEP).
 
It’s been implied that there is rampant overfishing of forage species – like sardines. The FEP will supposedly address this issue by reducing catch limits on these fish in order to maintain a food source for bigger species like salmon and albacore.
 
However, this simply isn’t true.
 
The Council authorized development of the FEP to “enhance the Council’s species-specific management programs with more ecosystem science, broader ecosystem considerations and management policies that coordinate Council management across its Fishery Management Plans (FMPs) and the California Current Ecosystem (CCE).”
 
The FEP’s first initiative proposes to protect unmanaged lower trophic level forage species such as Pacific sandlance and saury, which are currently not fished, by “prohibiting the development of new directed fisheries on forage species that are not currently managed by the Council, or the States, until the Council has had an adequate opportunity to assess the science relating to any proposed fishery and any potential impacts to our existing fisheries and communities.”
 
In contrast, anchovy, sardines and market squid, officially known as coastal pelagic species (CPS), are already well managed under both federal and state fishery management plans, which prescribe precautionary harvest limits.
 
Consider the visionary management of Pacific sardines, the poster fish for ecosystem-based management.  A risk-averse formula is in place that ensures when population numbers go down, the harvest also goes down. Conversely, when more sardines are available, more harvest is allowed, but the maximum cap is set far below the maximum sustainable harvest level.

In 2011, the U.S. West Coast sardine fisheries harvested only 5.11 percent of a very conservative stock estimate, leaving nearly 95 percent of the species for predators and ecosystem needs.
 
Does that sound like overfishing to you? Of course not, and scientists agree.

A 2012 study by a panel of 13 scientists from around the world – known as the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force – concluded that while overfishing of forage species is problematic on a global scale, the West Coast is not being overfished.
 
Indeed they noted that the Pacific Coast is, “ahead of other parts of the world in how it manages some forage fish.” The region has “stricter monitoring and more conservative limits that could serve as a buffer against future crashes.”
 
Knowledgeable people know that this is no accident. Fishing families have historically worked with regulators to protect our wetfish fisheries.
 
In fact, more than a decade ago, the Pacific Fishery Management Council adopted a management strategy for CPS harvested in California and on the West Coast, maintaining at least 75 percent of the fish in the ocean to ensure a resilient core biomass. The sardine protection rate is even higher.
 
California also implemented a network of no-take marine reserves throughout our state’s waters. Reserves established at specific bird rookery and marine mammal haul-out sites – for example near the Farallon Islands,  Año Nuevo, and Southern California’s Channel Islands – were enacted to protect forage fish. More than 30 percent of traditional squid harvest grounds are now closed in reserve.
 
Hopefully these facts will prevail and dispel the hype. California has been recognized by internationally respected scientists as having one of the lowest fishery harvest rates in the world. It’s one of only a few areas deemed ‘sustainable’.  (Rebuilding Global Fisheries, Science 2009).

D.B. Pleschner is Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, a nonprofit designed to promote sustainable wetfish resources.

 

 

March 21, 2013 — Adler argues that conservatives should favor an approach based on property rights. The best example of this? Fisheries. For years, government regulators tried in vain to tackle the problem of over-fishing. More recently, however, “catch shares” have caught on.

When it comes to the environment, Republicans these days tend to have a pretty good idea what they’re against — just about everything the Obama administration is doing. But it’s not quite as clear what they’re actually for.

Jonathan Adler wants to change all that. The law professor at Case Western University has just published a big new essay, titled “Conservative Principles for Environmental Reform,” that tries to lay out a positive vision for how the right should approach various green issues.

In the essay, Adler critiques many of the traditional regulatory approaches to issues like endangered species. Clumsy regulations often have unintended consequences. But historically, he notes, conservatives have failed to come up with an alternative. There’s either “moderate me-too-ism,” which involves embracing regulations on a lesser scale. Or there’s “reflexive opposition” — the current GOP stance — which often means ignoring actual environmental problems.

Read the full opinion piece at the Washington Post

 

 

[FishNet USA] March 22, 2013 — An awful lot has been written – and said – recently about New England groundfish but no one appears to have tied it all up into a neat and coherent package. Not being directly involved in the fishery or its management, and being at least twelve hundred miles removed from it, I’m going to try to do that from the position of semi-objectivity that separation allows.

It took me a while to decide how to most accurately describe the situation that has been visited upon the New England fishing communities that are and since colonial times have been dependent on the groundfish fisheries. I finally settled on “debacle” because it means about the same thing as “fiasco” but with a heap more gravitas. And I can only think of what’s going on, and what has been allowed to go on, in that fishery as a fiasco on steroids.

First off, no analysis would be complete without recognition of the role that now departed NOAA head Jane Lubchenco and her minions played in worsening an already dismal situation. Her self-congratulatory going away present to us all was a listing of the notable triumphs in her almost four year reign in which several fisheries “successes” were detailed yet the New England groundfish fishery got nary a mention. She was on the record numerous times stating that one of her goals was to reduce the size of the New England groundfish fleet. So far it appears as if she’s succeeding spectacularly. From her and her anti-fishing ENGO colleagues’ perspective that would seem to be a major success, but probably one that not even they would be willing to brag about.

Given this, what were the chances that her agency would have initiated any actions resulting in more fish for the fishermen, keeping more boats fishing and more fishermen employed? That surely didn’t and doesn’t fit into her master plan (see my 2009 Fishnet Chronic underfishing – the real New England groundfish crisis )

As demonstrated in her going away missive, faulty information seemed to be a mainstay of her tenure at NOAA. Below are excerpts from testimony she presented to a U.S. Senate Committee in Boston on October 3, 2011 on the New England groundfish fishery. Bear in mind that she was speaking then of a fishery that at this point appears as if it will be virtually shut down less than two years later. Among her almost six thousand words were these gems:

– We are making gains across the country as individual fisheries have recovered, which will increase as we finally bring an end to overfishing.

– We are seeing benefits from the transition to sector management as catches do not exceed the annual catch limits, and fishing becomes more efficient and flexible, all of which contribute to the common goal of ecological and economic sustainability of groundfish stocks.

– Decades of overfishing, failing fish stocks and punishing regulations interacted to threaten the region’s most iconic industry. That system was not working for fishermen. It was driving them out of business and the stocks were not rebuilding to a point where they could sustain a profitable industry.

– The adoption of this new management system and the lower catch limits happened early in my tenure as Administrator. Indeed, sustaining the groundfish fishery and the economic health of the industry has been of paramount importance to me since my first day in office.

-Our goals are clear: to be a partner in the success of fishermen, to sustain fishing jobs, to create a profitable and healthy future for fishing communities, and to maintain marine fisheries.

– How are we doing after one year with new catch limits and with the expanded sector management program? We see both signs of progress and continued room for improvement.

Stocks are being rebuilt and therefore catch limits are up. Due to the rebuilding progress already underway, in the 2011 fishing year, catch levels have gone up for 12 of the 20 groundfish stocks, which is another indication the Magnuson-Stevens Act and associated management measures are working to improve the status of the stocks and the economics of the fishery.

But the full blame for the deplorable situation that now exists in New England’s fishing communities can’t be laid entirely at her feet, though she unnecessarily exacerbated it. The blame belongs to the engineered interplay of just about everything that’s wrong with the way our federal fisheries are managed. Take the above statements. Assuming that they accurately represented the “best available science” at the time, an understandable assumption considering that they were delivered to a Senate Committee by an Undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, the people who ran the businesses that caught, processed, bought and sold those fish, and the people who ran the businesses that allowed them to do that, made plans based on what Ms. Lubchenco said – and what she didn’t say. She definitely didn’t say or intimate that the groundfish fishery would be closed down in a year and a half. She didn’t say or intimate that it might be closed down in a year and a half. She didn’t even say or intimate that it could be closed down in a year and a half. With businesses depending in whole or in part on the New England groundfish fishery, a lot of people planned accordingly.

"This lack of adequate progress was not due to any failure on the part of the New England Fishery Management Council to take necessary action to meet the requirements of the Magnuson-Stevens Act, nor was it due to any failure on the part of fishery participants to act in compliance with applicable regulatory measures. Rather, the lack of adequate progress is due to a new and significantly revised understanding of the condition of the stock since the 2008 assessment was completed." Sam Rauch, NOAA/NMFS Acting Assistant Administrator for Fisheries, in a January 26, 2012 letter to the New England Fisheries Management Council.

A year and a half later… oops! NOAA/NMFS now has “better” information, and your plans are all out the window. So are your customers, your income and a large part of your life.

The NOAA/NMFS response has been that, in spite of the fact that the fishery, the businesses that depend on it and the traditional character of New England’s fishing communities are to be the victims of scientific shortcomings and bureaucratic ineptitude, nothing can be done about the pending closure of the fishery – or the reductions in harvest that will close most of the fishermen out of the fishery – because it is what the federal law demands.

Ignoring the argument that NOAA/NMFS is interpreting the provisions of the Magnuson Act in far too restrictive a manner, how did this unacceptable situation develop, or more exactly, how was it made to develop? Like so many other fisheries issues, there isn’t one simple answer but rather a complex of overlapping legislative and bureaucratic factors that seem to have been designed to destroy our traditional domestic fisheries in general and the traditional New England groundfish fishery in particular.

How did we get here?

Have no doubts about where the blame for this unnecessary debacle lies. In 2006 a mostly clueless and misled U.S. Congress ignored the advice of large segments of the domestic recreational and commercial fishing industries and passed, and President Bush subsequently signed into law, the so-called Sustainable Fisheries Act. This package of amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act (MSFCMA) was designed by a handful of mega-foundation supported ENGOs (and a few “fishing” associations that appeared to have been co-opted with those foundation $millions) to remove the flexibility from the Act that was such an important part of the federal fisheries management process it established in 1976.

What was the purpose of this flexibility? At the time, Members of Congress realized that the fisheries scientists didn’t have all of the answers, that fishermen had acquired a wealth of so-called anecdotal information about marine fish and the ocean environment that could and should supplement what the scientists understood, and that a truly effective fisheries management process would require input from both scientists and fishermen. What was considered one of the most significant portions of the Act, the role in management given to fishermen, was designed expressly to avoid situations such as the one that is now threatening New England’s fishing communities.

Decades later, when a handful of mega-foundations led by the Pew Charitable Trusts decided that they were going to save the world’s – or at least the United States’ – oceans from the threats of fishing (and apparently decided to ignore, and convince the public and the pols to also ignore, any other impacts), the fishermen and their “subjective” input had to be removed from the process because collectively they were the only people who had a fairly accurate idea of what was going on in the waters they fished. Of course this would leave the scientists with their inadequate science in charge, and conveniently there was a concurrent drying up of government research money, making a bunch of marine scientists who were so predisposed that much easier for the ENGOs to buy.

The Sustainable Fisheries Act in 2006 was the culmination of this campaign. It established hard and fast requirements for fisheries management that relied on science, statistics and computer models – and on scientists, statisticians and computer modelers – that were in no ways equal to the task. It also made the precautionary principle (see NOAA Inaction in the Gulf of Mexico) the bedrock of the fishery management process and at the same time established “rebuilding schedules” for fish stocks to reach a level where they weren’t overfished of definite duration regardless of the impacts of those schedules on the fishermen and on the businesses that depended on them.

So, as a result of an extended campaign by these multi-billion dollar foundations and the ENGOs and fishing groups in their thrall, we now have a management system which is based entirely on what the science and the statistics, as imprecise as they are, dictate, where a wealth of fishermen’s hard earned on-the-water knowledge has been made completely irrelevant to the process, and where the supposed welfare of the fish counts for infinitely more than the welfare of the fishermen.

Needless to say we still have nowhere near the knowledge necessary for a rational decision making process.

In New England if the groundfish fleet were given another year or two of continued harvesting at levels low enough to allow for stock rebuilding – if that is even possible (this question will be explored in depth in the next FishNet) – the critical questions regarding the science underlying the assumed well-being of the groundfish stocks could be answered, the affected businesses could make whatever adjustments were possible, and the looming crisis could be either avoided or its impacts could be significantly lessened. That’s the upside.

The downside? The time it took a few fish stocks to reach an arbitrarily determined population level would be extended by a year or two.

This is in fact what the New England Council recommended be done in requesting that a soon to expire Emergency Action declared by the Secretary of Commerce be extended for another year. On the advice of NOAA General Council Lois Schiffer, John Bullard, the NMFS Northeast Regional Administrator, refused, claiming that the Magnuson Act as amended in 2006 precluded doing that.  

Because of this, because of overly rigid Magnuson requirements that are opposed by a large number of fishermen and other businessmen dependent on them and a growing number of Congressmen, Congresswomen and Senators from coastal states, and because of the lobbying ability and the PR expenditures of a handful of “charitable” foundations and the ENGOs they control, the New England groundfish fishery is teetering on the edge of disaster.

In summation, the fishing industry was fishing as it was told to fish by the New England Fishery Management Council and NOAA/NMFS. This was based on the “best scientific information” available at the time and according to that information the stocks were well on their way to recovery. All of the businesses dependent on the fishery planned accordingly.

Subsequently NOAA/NMFS decided that what was at the time the best scientific information wasn’t the best any longer because there was better information available and that, according to that better information, fishing effort had to be reduced to such an extent that large parts of the groundfish industry would be put out of business. The Council sought to lessen the damage by extending “emergency” mitigation measures for a year. NOAA/NMFS, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the ENGOs, refused. Based on extensive analyses – easily “the best available” – the Council is also seeking to reopen areas which had been previously closed to fishing. This would also lessen the impacts somewhat. The ENGOs are mounting an all-out PR campaign to prevent this. Predictably, the ENGOs who are always willing to use the best available science when it advances their anti-fishing agenda, are more than willing to bypass it when it doesn’t, falling back on lobbying and misleading PR.*

The people in Washington knew what they were doing back in 1976 when the Magnuson Act became law. It’s unfortunate but understandable that back then they had no idea that so-called environmentalists with the backing of multi-billion dollar foundations would be more of a threat to domestic fishermen than the foreign fishing fleets ever were.

 

 

*In the latest display of their antipathy towards fishermen and fishing – which is unconvincingly camouflaged as concern for the long-term health of the fisheries and the oceans – the anti-fishing claque has also taken head-on the New England Fisheries Management Council’s proposal to open areas that it had closed to fishermen. Their opening would aid the beleaguered New England fishing industry. Rigorous analyses of these closures have demonstrated that they are no longer serving any “conservation” benefit, if the ever were, but a major public relations effort led by the Pew Trusts is ongoing in spite of this. (For more on this latest initiative in the campaign of these “caring” ENGOs to destroy the traditional groundfish fishery see the Saving Seafood (savingseafood.org) analyses Pew Environment targets John Bullard in online petition drive against NEFMC proposed changes to closed areas and Pew Environment Group Misleads Public on Habitat Closed Area Changes. 

 

March 19, 2013 — The Gulf Fisheries Fairness Act will provide Alabama and the other Gulf states the legal authority to manage local fisheries, and our fishermen and tourism industry will gain a lifeline they so desperately need.

In recent years, coastal Alabama has faced a number of man-made assaults – one the result of a historic environmental disaster, the other the handiwork of overzealous government regulators.  While many of our coastal businesses are making a comeback from the tragic BP oil spill of 2010, the same cannot be said of much of our local fishing industry, which has had to battle both BP and Uncle Sam.

Those seeking to fish for one of the Gulf’s most popular fish, Red Snapper, are being subjected to increasingly stringent federal regulations that are unnecessarily threatening the local economy.  At the same time, empirical data and anecdotal evidence show the Red Snapper stock is as healthy as it has ever been.  Practically anyone who has dropped a hook in the Gulf over the last few years has found it easier than ever to catch Snapper.  Frankly, their number and size make them difficult to avoid and their abundance is actually crowding out other marine life at artificial reef habitats.  Yet federal bureaucrats continue to consider the Snapper overfished.

This week, Dr. Robert Shipp, three-time chair of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council, noted researcher and professor of Marine Sciences at the University of South Alabama, testified before the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee that the current management of reef species in the Gulf of Mexico is failing – both the fish and the fishermen.  Dr. Shipp voiced support for the concept of increasing the five Gulf states’ fishery management authority to place more control over reef fish in the hands of the states rather than the federal government.  This is a concept I have been studying for several months, and I believe the only solution to the problem is legislative action in Washington to return some power to the states.

Last week, I introduced the Gulf Fisheries Fairness Act to extend the state water boundaries of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas for the purposes of reef fish management, affording these states greater control over reef fisheries and effectively opening up more Gulf waters to fishing.  The Gulf Fisheries Fairness Act will provide Alabama and the other Gulf states the legal authority to manage local fisheries, and our fishermen and tourism industry will gain a lifeline they so desperately need.

 

Read the full opinion piece at the Alabama Political Reporter

 

 

March 15, 2013 — Maine lobster is special. People who live or vacation in Maine know that the signature crustaceans pulled from waters off the state’s coast are the tastiest in the world. With the recent certification by the London-based Marine Stewardship Council, the state can now claim that Maine’s lobster fishery also ranks among the world’s best in terms of sustainability, ecosystem protection and labeling.

The council’s certification, which comes after five years of rigorous review, provides new impetus to expand and intensify efforts to market Maine lobster globally. Amid fake fish scandals that make seafood lovers wonder if they’re really being served what they ordered, the mixture of great taste, reliable labeling and an environmentally responsible fishery should make Maine lobster an easy sell to seafood restaurants and consumers everywhere.

But first they have to know what sets Maine lobster apart from lesser ocean dwellers. Legislation proposed by Rep. Chuck Kruger, D-Thomaston, and supported by the Maine Department of Marine Resources after almost a year of meetings on the topic, provides a means to do a better job of touting the mouthwatering delights of Maine lobsters to the global marketplace.

Kruger’s bill, LD 486, would incrementally increase licensing surcharges in the state’s lobster industry so that by 2016 a reorganized Maine Lobster Promotion Council would have $3 million a year to spend on national and international lobster promotion efforts.

That’s almost 10 times the current budget of roughly $350,000, which fishermen, processors and marketers agree is inadequate for a business sector that produced a catch worth $339 million and reportedly contributed $1 billion to the state’s economy in 2012. But it’s also less than one-seventh of the $21.5 million that the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute budgeted for 2013.

Alaska’s budget for promoting its seafood includes $10.56 million from the state’s seafood producers and $7.8 million from state government, complemented by federal grants and other funding sources. The state’s seafood marketing program operates in 21 countries.

Maine can’t afford that kind of investment, but the state’s lobster fishermen and processors need more tools to compete with Alaskan salmon and other highly promoted seafood products for a fair share of the global marketplace.

 

Read the full opinion piece at Bangor Daily News