Saving Seafood

MISSISSIPPI: Senator Wicker takes on NOAA in Sun Herald Op-Ed

July 6, 2022 — U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-MS, took aim at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in a July 3 op-ed for the Sun Herald.

In the op-ed, Wicker called out NOAA for proposed changes to the catch limit framework used for the Gulf of Mexico red snapper industry.

“Fishing for red snapper is a popular pastime on the Gulf Coast, one that brings together fishermen, boat makers, bait suppliers and restaurant owners,” writes Wicker. “This prosperous industry centers on three months of open fishing during the summer. To my dismay, regulators in Washington are now proposing a rule that could cut Mississippi’s season down to two weeks without any sound science.”

He writes that this is just another disappointing “raw deal” that NOAA has tried to give the state of Mississippi.

“Mississippi will not be alone in bearing the cost of NOAA’s poor methods. Anglers in Alabama stand to lose weeks if not months of their fishing season,” writes Wicker. “No state is ultimately safe from federal rules that disregard the best data. With the proposed rule now listed in the Federal Register, I would encourage all stakeholders to provide public comment on why NOAA got this wrong.”

NOAA’s public comment period ends on July 28, and the rule would take affect Jan. 1, 2023, if passed.

The proposed changes do not affect commercial ACLs, which would increase in 2023.

Read the full story at WDAM

The information age is starting to transform fishing worldwide

May 19, 2022 — People in the world’s developed nations live in a post-industrial era, working mainly in service or knowledge industries. Manufacturers increasingly rely on sensors, robots, artificial intelligence and machine learning to replace human labor or make it more efficient. Farmers can monitor crop health via satellite and apply pesticides and fertilizers with drones.

Commercial fishing, one of the oldest industries in the world, is a stark exception. Industrial fishing, with factory ships and deep-sea trawlers that land thousands of tons of fish at a time, are still the dominant hunting mode in much of the world.

This approach has led to overfishing, stock depletions, habitat destruction, the senseless killing of unwanted by-catch and wastage of as much as 30 percent to 40 percent of landed fish. Industrial fishing has devastated artisanal pre-industrial fleets in Asia, Africa and the the Pacific.

Read the full story at Greenbiz.com

 

John Quinn Calls for More Flexibility for Councils Under Magnuson-Stevens Act

August 2, 2017 — WASHINGTON — The chairman of the New England Fishery Management Council is appealing to the U.S. Senate to allow for more flexibility under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The act serves as the governing standard for fisheries across the country.

Dr. John Quinn says annual catch limits (ACLs) and accountability measures (AMs) like at-sea monitors, while maintaining the integrity of fish stocks, can be of great harm to small fishing companies. “Councils need to be able to consider a wide variety of management tools without burdensome requirements,” said Quinn. “ACLs and AMs may not be the best tools for managing all fisheries.”

Quinn says he’d like to see regional fisheries granted to power to authorize alternative control mechanism or utilize ecosystem-based fishery managament tactics.

Read the full storm at WBSM

NOAA Proposes Increase in Allowable Harvest of Gulf Red Grouper

July 29, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is seeking comments on changes to the red grouper allowable harvest in the Gulf of Mexico.

Proposed Changes:

Increase the Gulf of Mexico red grouper annual catch limit and quota (annual catch target) for the commercial sector from 6.03 and 5.72 million pounds gutted weight, to 8.19 and 7.78 million pounds gutted weight, respectively.
Increase the Gulf of Mexico red grouper annual catch limit and annual catch target for the recreational sector from 1.9 and 1.73 million pounds gutted weight, to 2.58 and 2.37 million pounds gutted weight, respectively.

Need for Action:

This increase in allowable harvest is anticipated to allow the recreational fishing season the opportunity to remain open yearlong instead of closing late in the season. In addition, the increase in quota will provide the commercial fisherman an increase in their Individual Fishing Quota allocation.

Read the full story at The Fishing Wire

NOAA Seeks Comment on Atlantic Bluefish

April 8, 2016 — The following was released by the National Marine Fisheries Service:

NOAA Fisheries seeks comments on the proposed 2016-2018 annual catch limits for Atlantic bluefish for both recreational and commercial fisheries. The proposed limits are based on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s recommendations.

The total limits for the commercial and recreational fisheries combined would be 10 percent lower than the 2015 limit (from 18.19 million lbs to 16.46 million pounds).

Read the full release at The Fishing Wire

West Coast Catch Share Program Failure Keeps Vessel Off Fishing Grounds for 2016 Season

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [SeafoodNews] By Susan Chambers – March 21, 2016 — Criticism that the West Coast catch shares program is underperforming came to the forefront recently at the Pacific Fishery Management Council meeting in Sacramento.

West Coast trawlers have been operating in fear of a “disaster tow” or “lightning strike” of a choke species since the beginning of the individual quota program in 2011. And for the F/V Seeker, a disaster tow of 47,000 pounds of canary rockfish – a species at the time listed as overfished — in November 2015 will prevent it from fishing for all of 2016.

The Seeker’s misfortune is an extreme example of the program’s failure, particularly for those fishing in the non-whiting sector.

Jeff Lackey, who manages the vessel, testified to the PFMC the vessel is in a bind and already has made plans to fish in Alaska for most of 2016 and return to fishing off the West Coast in 2017. The Seeker fishes in both the non-whiting shoreside sector and in the whiting mothership sector.

The Seeker is a victim of several features of the current regulatory system in the West Coast individual quota program.

First, current vessel limits prohibit the Seeker from acquiring enough quota to solve its deficit.

Second, canary rockfish was listed as overfished for more than a decade but an assessment accepted by the council in 2015 shows canary rockfish has been rebuilt.

And third, the PFMC’s management process operates on a two-year cycle, with no way to change annual catch limits (ACLs) mid-cycle.

“[The F/V Seeker] is not the only one,” Pete Leipzig, director of the Fishermen’s Marketing Association, told the Council. Other trawlers have come up against vessel limits for other species that have prevented them from fishing for some time, but none have been confronted with the extremity of the Seeker’s situation.

The vessel limits were designed to prevent consolidation of the fleet. Bycatch of choke species have prevented many vessels from capturing target fish. Fear of a disaster tow — one so extreme that a quota pound deficit cannot be covered in the existing fishing year — has limited trading of quota as fishermen hoard these species to cover their fishing operations for the year.

The biennial management cycle only complicates matters. Several years ago, the PFMC instituted two-year management cycles to streamline the management and regulations process, with stock assessments being conducted in off-year cycles. For instance, the council and the National Marine Fisheries Service set annual catch limits for 2015 and 2016 at the same time. Stock assessments are done and presented to the council for acceptance in odd years.

The council accepted the canary rockfish assessment in 2015. ACLs could double for the species were it not for the two-year management cycle.

There is no mechanism to allow the council or NMFS to increase the 2016 annual catch limits for canary in 2016. If higher ACLs would have been allowed this year, the Seeker’s deficit could have been covered and it would be fishing this year.

The Seeker is a member of the Newport, OR based Midwater Trawlers Cooperative. The organization proposed a solution to the Seeker’s problem: use an alternative compliance option that was eliminated during the development of the catch shares program. It would have been available for overly restrictive events, such as the Seeker’s, but still hold fishermen accountable. The council opted not to move forward with examining that option at this time.

This is the new reality of the West Coast individual quota program: rebuilding species will be encountered more frequently and fishermen could be held to conservative annual catch limits for a year or more if they experience an infrequent disaster tow and have insufficient quota to cover their deficit.

“As the regulations are currently written, any vessel that experiences the same situation would likely have to sit out of the shoreside trawl program for several years … This seems overly punitive and raises equity concerns,” Heather Mann, executive director of the MTC, wrote in a public comment letter to the council.

Although the Council took no action to try to remedy the situation in March, the issue is sure to come up again as the Council begins the five-year program review in June.

Between 2011 and 2015, the non-whiting shoreside quota program has harvested only between 20 and 35 percent of its annual quota. The industry has identified several dozen changes it would like to see implemented in an effort to make the program work.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission. 

BRAD KENYON: Don’t mess with success in Gulf States fisheries management

March 1, 2016 — Under federal fisheries management, red snapper populations in the Gulf of Mexico are recovering and the boating and fishing industries have grown. But on Thursday, a U.S. Senate committee will hear a proposal that could gut a decade of recovery and growth for both. The idea floated by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., would create a piecemeal system by extending the state waters of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi from 3 miles to 9. In addition, his plan would loosen some of the stronger tenets of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act — like science-based rebuilding timelines and annual catch limits.

The other gulf states’ gains would be Florida’s loss, particularly for anglers in the Tampa Bay area who must travel at least 30 miles offshore to find 60-foot waters where the red snapper population flourishes. In effect, those other three states’ extensions would create enough extra state-water fishing pressure that the stock’s rebound would be imperiled. To keep the fish populations from plunging, the government would have to severely limit the number of days for fishing in federal waters. As a practical matter, Florida fishermen would have far fewer days to catch snapper.

On Thursday, Vitter will argue before the Senate Small Business Administration Committee that the 3-mile limits hurt small coastal businesses across the gulf that rely on healthy fish populations and liberal access to them. He is wrong. And as a small boat dealership and marina owner, I know something about this.

Read the full opinion piece at Tampa Bay Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Study eyes fish freed from hooks

December 24, 2015 — Researchers at the New England Aquarium, in conjunction with those from state agencies, are getting closer to releasing study results on the collateral impact of recreational haddock discards on the overall mortality rate of the species.

Dr. John Mandelman, director of research at the Boston-based aquarium, said the the field work for the study was completed in early November. He expects the New England Fishery Management Council, which helped fund the study, to complete vetting the analysis sometime early next spring.

The field work was performed with significant assistance from recreational fishing operators such as Gloucester-based Yankee Fleet and Seabrook, New Hampshire-based Eastman’s Docks Fishing Fleet.

“As with all studies, what we very much tried to do was to work as much as possible as part of a legitimate fishing effort, or what we call a fishery-dependent exercise” Mandelman said. “This was a really nice partnership.”

Mandelman said project researchers made about eight trips last spring aboard some of the Yankee Fleet’s larger party boats, focusing on observing how a full range of anglers — from novice to veteran — performed catch-and-release of haddock discards, while also charting catch gear, catch conditions, injuries to the fish, time out of water and sea temperatures.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

New England fleet could see haddock quota double

December 4, 2015 — The annual catch limits for Gulf of Maine cod will increase slightly in 2016, while the quota for haddock will more than double if recommendations passed this week by the New England Fishery Management Council are approved by NOAA Fisheries.

One year after slashing total cod quotas by more than 75 percent to 386 metric tons, the council voted at its three-day meeting in Portland, Maine, to raise the total cod annual catch limit (ACL) to about 440 metric tons, with 280 metric tons designated for the commercial fishing industry in each of the next three fishing seasons.

The commercial industry’s Gulf of Maine cod ACL this year is 207 metric tons.

“It’s a slight increase and of course that’s always good,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition. “But it doesn’t come close to reflecting what fishermen — commercial and recreational — are seeing on the water and it’s certainly nothing that’s going to sustain the fishery.”

The council voted to increase the commercial quota for Gulf of Maine haddock in 2016 to 2,416 metric tons from the current 958 metric tons, or an increase of 152 percent.

“Haddock is going up substantially, like through the roof,” Odell said.

The news was not good on Cape Cod and Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder, with the commercial ACL falling 26 percent in 2016 to 341 metric tons, and witch flounder, which will have a 50 percent decrease in its 2016 ACL to 302 metric tons from the current 620 metric tons.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

NEFMC Declares Amendment 18 Flawed Then Votes It In

November 4, 2015 — PLYMOUTH, Mass. —“The core message, across the board, is—we don’t want this fishery owned and controlled by a small group of people.”

That was the consensus, as expressed by Brett Tolley, of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, delivered to the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) during their latest deliberations on Amendment 18 to the groundfish management plan.

Tolley continued, “That’s no good for communities or the fish or the seafood system. And right now, at the end of this process, we’re debating whether seven or five entities should control this fishery….So there’s something fundamentally flawed with this public process.”

In late September, NEFMC was considering measures that would impose limits on the amount of fishery permits and/or Potential Sector Contribution (PSC) that individuals or groups may hold, as well as other measures that might promote fleet diversity or enhance sector management.

But fishermen and others at the meeting said Amendment 18 failed to achieve the goals outlined by NEFMC.

“It feels like we’re making things up on the fly,” said NEFMC member John Pappalardo. “The document here doesn’t answer a lot of questions that have come up today. I’m still toying with the idea of making a motion to scuttle this whole thing and send it back for further development….There’s a sense that folks just want to get this over with, but I’m not sure that’s the best course of action right now.”

Ed Barrett, a commercial fisherman from Marshfield, Mass., said he predicted, during the development of Amendment 16, that sector management would never work.

“We’re here in Amendment 18, pretty far down the road in a process that’s included years of scoping and committee meetings, and we have an amendment that’s not going to fix a thing,” Barrett said. “Right now, all we’re arguing over is the minutiae of a bad business model. This has been a waste of taxpayer money. It has failed me as a business owner, it’s failed my family’s business, it’s failed my fishing community. We need to stop this amendment right here. We need to go forward with something that will fix the problems that are killing the industry right now.”

“Give us the names of the five or seven guys who are going to own this fishery,” said Sandwich, Mass., fisherman William Chaprales. “We’re going too fast. Slow down. Let’s shelve this.”

Chaprales referred to the report produced by consulting firm Compass Lexecon (CL), which was charged in 2013 by NEFMC to determine if excessive market share currently exists in the groundfishery and to recommend potential constraints that could prevent excessive shares in the future. CL concluded there was no evidence of excessive market share and recommended accumulation limits in the 15.5 to 25 percent range on stock-specific potential sector contributions, and said lesser controls could reduce efficiency unnecessarily. PSC is an individual fisherman’s historical share of landings of groundfish species.

Read the full story at Fishermen’s Voice