Saving Seafood

Expert: New England herring industry to receive $11M

June 2, 2022 — The federal government is giving $11 million to New England herring fishermen following a declared disaster within the industry.

However, some experts claim the situation was avoidable.

Overfishing herring created the situation in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of New England, according to Niaz Dorry, director of the North American Marine Alliance.

In November, the federal government declared a “fishery disaster” allowing assistance in tax dollars to flow into the region, the Gloucester Daily Times in Massachusetts reported. Maine will receive $7 million, Massachusetts over $3.2 million, New Hampshire will receive $600,000, and Rhode Island is set to receive $241,299.

Read the full story at The Center Square

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Fish column debuts

January 16, 2017 — There’s a whole, wide world of fishing and maritime stories taking place outside the realm of Cape Ann and New England, stuff that doesn’t necessarily merit full stories here in the Gloucester Daily Times, but still is worth knowing.

And that brings us to FishOn, a new weekly roundup column that will feature fishing-related briefs and items from around the globe, as well as serving as a forum for advancing important public meetings and events related to commercial and recreational fishing.

The column is scheduled to run in print and online on Mondays and public submissions are welcome. The column is strictly for the purposes of entertainment and information. So, no wagering.

Slow down, enjoy the spawning

You think it’s easy being a salmon? Think it’s all just swimming around, searching for a little nosh and nookie? Well, think again.

In a study produced at Sweden’s Umea University, researchers claim that human anti-depressants that make their way into salmon habitats are having a debilitating effect on young Atlantic salmon.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

GLOUCESTER TIMES: Obama should hold firm on Cashes Ledge decision

July 12, 2016 — The Obama administration must hold firm to its decision earlier this year to reject so-called monument status for the vast swath of ocean around Cashes Ledge despite last-minute arm twisting from powerful environmental lobbying groups.

Earlier this spring, the administration passed on a proposal that he decree a large portion of the Gulf of Maine, including Cashes Ledge, a permanent “maritime national monument.” The edict, made through the federal Antiquities Act, would have come with little or no input from the citizenry at large or groups whose livelihoods are tied to the ocean, like the Northeast fishing industry.

Cashes Ledge, about 80 miles off the coast of Cape Ann, serves as a habitat for sharks, dolphins and sea turtles as well as migrating right whales. The area — more than 520 square miles is already off limits to fishing. There are no efforts on the part of the industry to change that.

“We’re not all nut cases here,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of the fishing advocacy group Saving Seafood. “It’s pretty much every non-environmentally subsidized fishery organization that is opposed to the use of the Antiquities Act to create marine monuments. The Magnuson-Stevens process works. It could be better, but it’s working.”

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A National Marine Monument for New England? Maritime Gloucester Talk

March 23, 2016 — A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action. A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times. Recorded at Maritime Gloucester on 3/3/2016

Watch the full video at Cape Ann TV

Maritime Gloucester Talk: A Marine National Monument off Cape Ann, Massachusetts?

February 22, 2016 — The following was released by Maritime Gloucester:

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Registration : MGTalks are free of charge. Please consider making a donation at the door.

Audience: General Audience; students encouraged.

A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times

A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action.

NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE GLOUCESTER HIGH SCHOOL LECTURE HALL.

Register for Maritime Gloucester’s event

GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES: Cooler heads needed on marine monument plan

September 24, 2015 — Everyone — from fishermen to environmentalists — agrees on the need to preserve Cashes Ledge and the swath of deepwater canyons and seabeds south of Georges Bank.

There is a deep distrust, however, over the method several environmental groups — including the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Pew Charitable Trusts — are using to make that happen.

Their heavy-handed, autocratic attempt to create a so-called “marine national monument” off the coast of Cape Ann is creating a political quagmire, with Democrats and Republicans weighing in on the issue alongside fishermen and environmentalists. The resulting scrum could lead to a situation no one wants, namely fewer protections for one of the more stunning underwater regions in the Atlantic Ocean.

We are hoping cooler heads — including U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Salem — can prevail on the interested parties to collaborate on a preservation plan, bypassing a proposed presidential fiat.

The fight centers on conservationists’ push to create the national monument at Cashes Ledge and south of Georges Bank. President Obama, they note, can use his executive powers — through the Antiquities Act — to make it happen with little or no public input.

The move would make the areas, located between 80 and 100 miles off Cape Ann, permanently off limits to activities such as drilling and fishing (though that’s not happening there now).

No one is arguing the areas shouldn’t be protected. The spot south of Georges Bank, parallel to Cape Cod, for example, is made up of stunning seamounts and canyons that rise and plunge thousands of feet from the sea floor.

Somehow, however, the conservation groups decided they were the sole arbiters of the best way to manage the area, and have moved to shut out other stakeholders, including the region’s fishermen. That’s not only wrong, it’s anti-democratic. The Gulf of Maine is a shared resource, which by definition means the decisions about how to manage it must also be shared. Fishermen and other groups deserve a voice.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Conservation groups eye protection for Cashes Ledge

August 31, 2015 — National groups this week plan to call for sprawling areas in off Cape Ann, Cape Cod and Rhode Island to be declared the first “marine national monument” on the Eastern Seaboard.

A January 2009 presidential proclamation established three Pacific Marine National Monuments — the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, which is on the Samoan archipelago 2,500 miles south of Hawaii and is the southernmost point belonging to the United States.

Now the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and partners such as the National Geographic Society, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking protections for the Cashes Ledge Closed Area, about 80 miles due east of Gloucester in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts off Cape Cod — areas CLF describes as “deep sea treasures.”

A CLF official told the News Service on Monday that the Cashes Ledge area covers 530 square nautical miles in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts encompasses 4,117 square nautical miles, for a total of 4,647 square nautical miles of protected areas.

The designation, according to CLF press secretary Josh Block, “ensures that this area remains permanently protected from harmful commercial extraction, such as oil and gas drilling, commercial fishing and other resource exploration activities.”

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘It’s really wicked bittersweet’

August 31, 2015 — Well, they could have just laid him out atop a wooden pyre and lit him up like a viking, but that might have been a tad extreme even for Bill Skrobacz’ friends at the Crow’s Nest.

So, the dozens that showed up at The Nest on Thursday night to bid adieu to Scrobacz — Billy or Skrobie to just about everyone but the IRS — had to settle for personalizing the wooden cap the long-time fisherman built over the back of his Dodge truck in anticipation of his final move to Florida.

Many of the messages were touching, wishing him fair winds and all that. Some were bawdy because, well, this is The Nest, and this is Skrobie. And some had absolutely no shot of making it verbatim into a family friendly newspaper. If you want to read them, you’re just going to have to stake out Interstate 95 this weekend and look for the old salt heading south.

In his 63rd year, after more than four decades of being whipsawed by the life of a commercial fisherman, William Dixon Skrobacz has had enough. He’s had enough of the physical rigors of fishing that have gnarled his hands and hobbled and scarred his legs. He’s had enough of NOAA regulations up the ying and last winter’s snow up the yang.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

Gloucester Commission Targets Disaster Aid to 2012-14 Groundfishing Fleet

August 5, 2015 —  The Gloucester Fisheries Commission on Tuesday night recommended a spending plan for the final phase of the federal disaster aid that would preclude using any of the nearly $7 million to pay for at-sea monitoring.

The Gloucester recommendation, which will be contained as public comment in a letter to the state Division of Marine Fisheries, closely mirrors the recommendation of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition by urging the state to use the money as direct financial assistance to fishermen who landed a minimum of 20,000 pounds of groundfish in any of the fishing years 2012, 2013, and 2014.

Commission members Joe Orlando and Al Cottone said using those three fishing years in the eligibility criteria would help expand the pool of potential beneficiaries in the small-boat groundfish fleet.

“Anyone who fished in 2012 caught at least 20,000 pounds of fish,” Orlando said, while Cottone pointed out it 2012 was the last full season of fishing before the deep cuts in groundfish catch allotments.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

Lobstering: Monitors more likely on boats with state, federal permits

July 16, 2015 — Federal plans to expand observer coverage on lobster boats from Maine to Maryland may have a hit a lull, but they are not going away, especially for lobstermen who hold both state lobster and federal access permits, according to the NOAA Fisheries official that oversees the program.

Amy Martins, manager of the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program, said Wednesday the number of calls to lobstermen to schedule observer trips have declined substantially in the past month primarily because of concerns lobstermen expressed at a contentious June 4 meeting at NOAA Fisheries’ regional headquarters in Gloucester.

“We heard concerns from the lobstermen that our observer program was calling too frequently and that we were perhaps overly aggressive,” Martins said. “We’ve also done quite a bit of work since that meeting that has allowed us to zone in a little more clearly on the specific parts of the fishery we want to monitor, the fleet-within-the-fleet, so to speak.”

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times