Saving Seafood

Western Pacific Council Makes Recommendations to Keep US Pacific Island Fisheries Viable

October 26, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council concluded its two-day meeting in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) this week with recommendations regarding pelagic, international and American Samoa fisheries.

Council discussion centered around keeping healthy, sustainable U.S. Pacific Island fisheries viable amid an accumulation of U.S. regulations and international negotiations.

Billfish Conservation Act and Bigeye Tuna

The Council expressed dismay over the recent amendment to the Billfish Conservation Act of 2012, which bans the interstate commerce of billfish (excluding swordfish) landed by U.S. fishermen in Hawaii and the US Pacific Islands. The billfish stocks caught by Hawaii and U.S. Pacific Island fisheries are healthy, unlike the billfish in the Atlantic, the Western Pacific Council said in a press release.

The bill to amend the Act was introduced and promoted by Congressional delegates and sports fishing organizations from Florida. Recent guidelines from the National Marine Fisheries Service say the billfish landed in the US Territories and Hawaii are also prohibited from being sold in foreign markets. The Council directed staff to develop a list of questions and issues associated with amendment compliance and send them to NMFS for a response.

The Hawaii deep-set longline fishery catches billfish incidentally when targeting bigeye tuna. The amount of bigeye in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) the fishery may retain annually is developed by the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), an international regional fishery management organization to which the U.S. is a party.

The Council endorsed recent WCPFC’s Permanent Advisory Committee to advise the U.S. commissioners (PAC) majority recommendation to obtain a longline bigeye quota of 6,000 metric tons (mt) at the upcoming WCPFC meeting in December in Honolulu. This amount is slightly less than the amount of bigeye caught in the WCPO in 2016 by Hawaii longline vessels, including those vessels operating under agreements with U.S. Participating Territories. The Council said it will communicate this recommendation to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. The Hawaii longline fleet is the sole fishery that utilizes the U.S. quota, which is currently set at 3,554 mt.

South Pacific Albacore

The Council also endorsed the PAC recommendation that the U.S. position generally be in support of adopting a South Pacific albacore target reference point. The reference point is a catch target that supports economically viable operations and healthy stock biomass. The American Samoa longline fishery, which harvests this stock, has been in decline since 2011. The Council asked NMFS to provide economic evaluations of the fleet’s performance at various target reference points in advance of WCPFC15.

Hawaii Longline Fishery

Among other pelagic and international fishery matters, the Council recommended initial action be taken that would require electronic reporting in the Hawaii longline fishery. The Council will ask NMFS to continue to develop electronic reporting in the Hawaii longline fishery and to work with Hawaii longline participants and Council staff to address several implementation issues and report back to the Council at its March 2019 meeting.

The Council intended to take action regarding the management of loggerhead and leatherback sea turtles in the Hawaii shallow-set longline fishery, which targets swordfish. However, action was postponed as a draft biological opinion due from NMFS on Oct. 1 has not been completed. The Council will reconvene its Scientific and Statistical Committee Working Group when the draft opinion is available. The Council may convene an interim Council meeting, if needed, to review the draft opinion and consider revisions to its June 2018 recommendations, including a possible specification of individual trip limits for leatherback sea turtle interactions.

American Samoa Fisheries

Regarding American Samoa fisheries, the Council recommended an annual catch limit (ACL) of 106,000 pounds for the American Samoa bottomfish species complex for fishing year 2019. The Council noted the next benchmark assessment, which is scheduled for review in February 2019, will provide new information to set the ACLs for fishing years 2020 to 2022. The Council also directed its staff to work with the Council’s American Samoa Advisory Panel to develop a plan for outreach and education, preferably in cooperation with Territory’s Department of Marine and Wildlife Resources, to educate communities on various fisheries and fisheries-related issues.

The Council will reconvene at 11 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 26, at the Hilton at Tumon, Guam.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.

 

Hawaiian Longline Operators Accept $475,000 MARPOL Fine

September 12, 2018 — The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Coast Guard have reached a consent decree with Hawaii-based operator Asure Fishery over the discharge of oily waste from a commercial longliner. It is the fourth MARPOL enforcement action that the USCG has brought against a Hawaiian longline fishing firm this year.

In a federal complaint filed last Friday, federal prosecutors alleged that the tuna longliner Jaxon T was not equipped for the treatment or storage of oily bilge waste under way, and she often discharged these wastes at sea. The complaint alleges that company managers Khang Quang Dang and Hanh Thi Nguyen had reason to know that the vessel lacked proper equipment for handling oily waste, but still allowed it to sail.

According to the complaint, the bulkhead separating the Jaxon T’s engine room from the fish hold had penetrations that allowed “free flow of fluids” between the two compartments. Apart from the potential safety implications of this arrangement, “substantial” amounts of water from melted ice would flow into the engine room, where it would raise the level of the water in the bilge. To address this problem, the crew would allegedly pump the bilge water directly over the side using a portable electric water pump, “one or more times per day.”

Read the full story at the Maritime Executive

 

Hawaii swordfish industry shut down to protect endangered turtles

May 11, 2018 — A federal court order to protect endangered loggerhead sea turtles has forced the National Marine Fisheries Service to immediately close the shallow-set longline fishery in Hawaii for the rest of the year.

A 2012 lawsuit filed by the Turtle Island Restoration Network and the Center for Biological Diversity, represented by the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice, was rejected in a Hawaii district court but they eventually won a split decision on appeal in December.

The parties reached an agreement Friday to settle the case. It included an immediate shutdown of the shallow-set longline fishery, which targets swordfish. NMFS implemented the closure Thursday.   

“The National Marine Fisheries Service, which is supposed to be protecting our wildlife, has instead been illegally helping the longliners push sea turtles to the brink of extinction,” Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff said in a news release.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

 

Workshop series aims to boost “harvest strategy” for tuna management

April 23, 2018 — On late February, Fiji’s Ministry of Fisheries and the World Wildlife Fund hosted a two-day regional workshop to create a better understanding among states in the western and central Pacific Ocean of the “harvest strategy” approach to tuna management. About 40 participants from Fiji and across the Pacific region attended.

The event, held in the city of Nadi, was funded by the Global Environment Facility’s Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction project. The term “areas beyond national jurisdiction” generally refers to the high seas, which lie outside of any country’s exclusive economic zone. The Global Environment Facility is a grant-making organization formed after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to address environmental problems around the world. Its members include the World Bank and the FAO as well as many countries. Several business partners are also involved.

Ocean Outcomes, an organization funded by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, helped design the program, and the workshop was also attended by a representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization. It was the seventh in a series of eight workshops, held in locations around the world, including Dakar, Senegal; Bali, Indonesia; and Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Hawaii: Longliners codify ethics in push-back against human rights allegations

April 9, 2018 — Stung by lingering allegations of human trafficking and forced labor, the Hawaii fishing industry has developed a formal code of conduct, crew handbook and model employee contract aimed at protecting the workers aboard its fleet of more than 140 vessels.

“It makes the most amount of sense that we give the public a certain degree of confidence that none of this is happening in our industry,” said Khang Dang, owner of 22 fishing boats and a member of the Hawaii Longline Association board of directors.

The documents — available in five languages and distributed to fishermen in the harbor last week — are designed to let the largely foreign ranks of contract fishing crew members clearly understand their rights, benefits and grievance procedures while they are working in Hawaii.

The Hawaii Longline Association initiated the effort following a September 2016 Associated Press investigation that brought national attention to allegations of forced labor, human trafficking, mistreatment and unsafe conditions.

The owners of the boats that make up the Pacific fishing fleet based in Honolulu were portrayed as taking advantage of a loophole in federal law to abuse foreign workers via inhumane working conditions, broken contracts and lousy pay.

The report prompted wholesale buyers and retailers to question whether the fish being sold was ethically sourced and led to an effort by state lawmakers to propose leveraging state fishing licenses to improve conditions in the industry.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Star Advertiser

 

Rise in reports of abandoned fishing nets washing up in Hawaii

April 3, 2018 — HONOLULU — Organizations are dealing with a surge in reports of abandoned fishing nets washing up along Hawaii’s coastlines.

The nets pose a entanglement threat to marine life and can also destroy coral reefs.

“A lot of the debris accumulation is due to our geographic location in the North Pacific,” said Mark Manuel, Pacific Islands Regional Coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program. “We’re just prone to having high levels of debris accumulate on our shorelines and coral reef environments.”

POP Fishing & Marine maintains a drop-off bin for derelict nets at Honolulu Harbor’s Pier 38 as part of Hawaii’s Nets-to-Energy Program.

“In the past several months, there’s been a large uptick, a large volume of nets and debris washing up, probably due to ocean current conditions. We’ve never seen this much volume in such a short period of time,” said Neil Kanemoto of POP Fishing & Marine.

The marine debris is taken to a scrap metal recycling facility where it is chopped into small pieces. The fragments are then sent to the city’s H-POWER facility to be burned, producing steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Last month, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund sent 11.6 tons of marine debris from the Big Island to Oahu in a Matson container. The non-profit is now working with its partners to start removing a massive pile of netting from Kamilo Beach.

Read the full story at KFVE

 

California: Surprise Drop in Domoic Acid Levels in N. California Mean Fisheries Are Clear; Oregon to Retest Also

January 3, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Late Friday, before New Year’s weekend, California state agencies released welcome news: recent testing showed a commercial lobster area could be opened and an advisory lifted for sport crabbing north of the Klamath River in northern California.

State agencies have been testing for domoic acid, a naturally occurring neurotoxin, routinely in the fall and winter in anticipation of opening closed lobster areas and lifting crabbing advisory for sport fishermen or opening the commercial crab season.

On Friday, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Director Charlton H. Bonham lifted the commercial spiny lobster fishery closure on the southeast side of Santa Cruz Island east of 119°40.000’ W. longitude, west of 119° 30.00’ W, and south of 34°00.000’ N. latitude as recommended by state health agencies, the state notice said. According to the notice from the Director of the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, sampling of spiny lobster and analysis of samples by California Department of Public Health laboratories indicates that consumption of spiny lobster taken from this area no longer poses a significant threat for domoic acid exposure, it continued.

On Oct. 24, 2017, state health agencies determined that spiny lobster in waters around Anacapa Island, Ventura County and the east end of Santa Cruz Island, Santa Barbara County had unhealthy levels of domoic acid and recommended closure of the commercial fishery in this area.

The commercial closure remains in effect in all state waters around the northeast end of Santa Cruz Island east of 119°40.000’ W. longitude, west of 119° 30.00’ W, and north of 34°00.000’ N. latitude and the south side of Anacapa Island east of 119°30.000’ W, west of 119°20.000’ W, and south of 34°00.000’ N latitude. The closures will remain in effect until state agencies determine domoic acid no longer poses a significant risk to public health.

At the same time, CDPH lifted the last remaining health advisory for Dungeness crab caught along the California Coast in sport fisheries. CDPH lifted this advisory Friday due to recent tests showing that the amount of domoic acid has declined to low or undetectable levels in Dungeness crab caught in the area, indicating that they are safe to consume. The final health advisory lifted Friday was for Dungeness crab caught north of the Klamath River mouth, Del Norte County (41°32.500’ N. lat.) to the Oregon border.

The advisory lifting for the sport fishery gives commercial crabbers in Northern California they might be able to set gear on Jan. 15.

However, the second test in a row of clear crab from Pt. St. George Reef in northern California was a surprise to Oregon fishery managers who scrambled to get vessels out to harvest crab for testing in Southern Oregon. Without two clear tests in a row of domoic acid, at least seven days apart, Oregon managers will have to work with Tri-State managers to determine when and how to allow commercial fishing in southern Oregon and northern California.

Tri-State fishery managers already have announced a Jan. 15, 2018, commercial fishery opening north of Cape Blanco, near Port Orford, Oregon.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

 

Foreign fishermen settle human trafficking suit

January 3, 2018 — Two Indonesian fishermen who say they were enslaved on an American fishing boat have settled their lawsuit against the vessel’s owner seven years after escaping and receiving special U.S. visas as victims of human trafficking, their lawyers told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The attorneys said Sorihin, who uses just one name, and Abdul Fatah settled their lawsuit against Thoai Van Nguyen, the California-based owner and captain of the Sea Queen II.

The settlement outlines steps Nguyen must take to continue to fish but does not disclose a financial award. The captain denies all allegations of abuse or human trafficking and has always followed federal laws when employing foreign crews, Nguyen’s attorney said.

The lawsuit filed in U.S. court in San Francisco claimed the men were trafficked through the Hawaii longline fishing fleet and forced to work on the boat around Hawaii and off the shores of California.

Citing federal and international human trafficking laws, the suit sought an unspecified amount of money for fees they paid and compensation they were promised along with damages for mental anguish and pain.

The lawsuit was being prepared as a 2016 Associated Press investigation revealed the Hawaii fleet operates under a loophole in federal law that allows owners to use foreign laborers with no work visas or the ability to legally enter the United States. The lawsuit was in the works when the AP reported on the men’s ordeal.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Post

 

Coast Guard cites fishing boat for illegal foreign captain

January 1, 2018 — HONOLULU — The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday it found a foreign worker acting as the captain of an American-flagged commercial fishing vessel in federal waters off Hawaii.

The crew of the U.S. Cutter Oliver Berry boarded the unnamed vessel on Dec. 19 and issued a citation after they suspected a foreign national was acting as the captain and operating the boat, the Coast Guard said in a statement .

It’s illegal for a foreign national to operate a U.S.-flagged commercial vessel.

The Coast Guard said the vessel was cited for a violation known as a “paper captain.” The Coast Guard Hearing Office will review the violation and consider further legal action.

Officials boarded a total of six Hawaii-based commercial fishing vessels during a 10-day patrol. They issued eight violations.

A 2016 Associated Press investigation revealed the Hawaii fleet operates under a loophole in federal law that allows owners to use foreign laborers with no U.S. visas to work in the fleet.

While most U.S. fishing fleets are required to have 75 percent U.S. citizens as crews, the Pacific boats that target highly migratory species like tuna are allowed to have only one American, the captain, aboard.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at AM970

 

US appeals court: Feds erred in Hawaii fishery expansion

December 29, 2017 — HONOLULU — Federal agencies were wrong to allow Hawaii’s longline swordfish industry to expand fishing efforts while allowing the hooking or entangling of more endangered sea turtles, a U.S. appeals court ruled.

The panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that the National Marine Fisheries Service failed to consider scientific data that showed the loggerhead turtle population would significantly decline when it set limits for the industry. The judges also said the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service illegally allowed the industry to kill protected migratory birds.

Swordfish longline fishing involves hundreds of baited hooks on miles of line. The practice can ensnare birds, turtles and other marine life.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Hawaii Tribune-Herald