Saving Seafood

House Lawmakers Challenge OMB’s Plan to Slash $1.3B From Coast Guard Budget

March 15, 2017 — A bipartisan group of 58 legislators has sent a letter to the House Appropriations Committee’s homeland security subpanel to oppose the White House’s plan to implement a $1.3 billion reduction in the U.S. Coast Guard’s budget, Defense News reported Monday.

Joe Gould writes the Office of Management and Budget proposed to eliminate the Coast Guard’s Maritime Security Response Team for counterterrorism efforts and cancel funding support for the service branch’s ninth National Security Cutter ship.

The lawmakers led by Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-California), chairman of the House Coast Guard and Maritime subcommittee, said in the letter that OMB’s proposed cut to the Coast Guard’s budget “should be dismissed” since it contradicts President Donald Trump’s aim to rebuild the military.

Read the full story at Executive Gov

Read the full letter here

U.S. to pull out of Pacific tuna treaty

January 19, 2016 — The U.S. State Department has announced its intention to pull out of a nearly 30-year treaty that allowed American boats to fish tuna in a vast area of the Pacific Ocean.

Prompted by some U.S. boats saying they could not pay fees to a cluster of Pacific island nations, the 37-boat fleet — many with ties to San Diego — were not issued licenses at the start of 2016.

The department gave formal notice this week to island nations in the South Pacific Tuna Treaty that it planned to pull out of the world’s biggest tuna fishery.

Pressure on the island nations will likely build as Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine, plans to introduce legislation in Congress at the end of this week to cut $21 million in foreign aid to 15 of the countries in the treaty.

Brian Hallman, executive director of the San Diego-based American Tunaboat Association, said the treaty has one year to expire and he was hopeful a new deal could be worked out.

“During that year, I believe there will be efforts and negotiations to try to get a restructured treaty,” Hallman said Tuesday, “and we support that.”

He said it was hard to say how many American jobs would be lost because many local fishing captains can transfer to boats in the eastern Pacific Ocean. However, he said the U.S. territory of American Samoa employs thousands who work in canneries and other jobs related to the U.S. fleet.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

 

Rep. Duncan Hunter to Kerry: Help save US tuna jobs

January 5, 2016 — U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter wants the U.S. State Department to step in to assist American tuna boats — many with ties to San Diego — that are shut out of a large area of the Pacific Ocean for the first time in nearly 30 years.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, given to The San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday, Hunter writes that the U.S. government must act fast to help the tuna fleet.

Last week, administrators of the South Pacific Tuna Treaty — a 27-year-old accord among 17 nations governing waters in the western Pacific — refused to issue 2016 licenses on Jan. 1. It said American boats must pay millions of dollars in fees, they agreed to in August, to fish international waters.

Some of the tuna boat operators in the 37-boat fleet say a bad 2015 fishing season has left them unable to pay the first quarterly payment of $17 million.

“An extended prohibition against the U.S.-flag tuna fleet fishing in the treaty area may well bankrupt the fleet and jeopardize the thousands of American jobs it supports,” wrote Hunter, R-Alpine.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune