December 20, 2024 โ Lawmakers in the U.S. Congress are scrambling to pass a continuing resolution that will keep the government funded through March after President-elect Donald Trump pressured House leaders to scrap a carefully negotiated deal.
Congress has already missed its mandated 30 September deadline for fiscal year 2025 appropriations, punting any disagreements on the budget until after the November elections.
September 28, 2023 โ As the United States barrels toward a shutdown of the federal government, commercial fisheries and the seafood industry are bracing for potential impacts.
The federal governmentโs fiscal year ends 30 September, but Congress has not passed the 2024 appropriations bills or voted on a continuing resolution that would keep the government open. Lawmakers are scrambling to find a solution that will keep the government fully operating into October, but success seems unlikely, according to Politico.
March 7, 2019 โ The 35-day, partial shutdown of the federal government is forcing NOAA Fisheries to make some accommodations to the permitting process for the upcoming 2019 commercial fishing season.
The federal fishery manager, still digging out from the administrative backlog created by the shutdown in December and January, will accept fishing permit applications for the upcoming season even if they include expired or un-issued Coast Guard certificates of documentation.
Those applications will be accepted at the Gloucester-based Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) through May 1, the start-date for the new season.
Fishermen must meet at least one of several conditions to submit an application without a current certificate of documentation:
* The permit renewal application contains no changes in vessel ownership or only a change in the name of the vessel.
โWe will accept expired certificates of documentation for fishing vessels that are renewing their fishing permits but are not changing ownership or are simply changing the vessel name on the certificate of documentation,โ GARFO said in a statement. โApplicants must provide a copy of their most recent certificate of documentation.โ
February 7, 2019 โ Some of the important summer research surveys that the US National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) conducts each year off the shores of Alaska to estimate the health of key commercially caught groundfish stocks like pollock and Pacific cod could face delays due to the recent partial government shutdown, officials said.
In a report to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, NOAAโs Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said that the shutdown that sent most of its staffers home from Dec. 22, 2018, until Jan. 25 has already affected one research cruise, a winter pre-spawning acoustic survey of pollock stocks in the Gulf of Alaska.
โUnfortunately, due to the delay in starting the survey, the first two legs (in the Shumagin Islands and outer Kenai regions) will not be conducted,โ science center staffers wrote in a report to the NPFMC.
February 7, 2019 โ Yesterday, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing examining the economic impact of the recent government shutdown. The seafood industry was among the most affected; recent testimony from fishermen highlighted how the closures of NOAA offices have prevented many of them from fishing for the duration of the 35-day shutdown.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce praised the decision to hold the hearing, writing in a letter to the Committee that a government shutdown โis not something businesses large and small should have to worry about.โ The letter cited, among others, the experience of New Bedford, Massachusetts captain Jack Morris, Director of Vessel Operations for the F/V Madison Kate. Captain Morris, at a January 25th Chamber event, recounted how the shutdown prevented a routine license transfer between two of his vessels, keeping an entire crew off the water and without pay until NOAA offices reopened.
Saving Seafood recently spoke with both Captain Morris and Captain Justin Dube, also of New Bedford, about the effects of the shutdown.
February 4, 2019 โ Should the US government slide into another partial shutdown on Feb. 15, itโs likely that the harvesters of Atlantic scallops off the coast of New England could be looking at smaller landings, warns an article published in Forbes Magazine.
Michael Pentony, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationโs administrator for the greater Atlantic region, warned last week that his group was already backed up as a result of the shutdown that was at least temporarily halted after 35 days on Jan. 25 when he briefed the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) at its New Hampshire meeting, as reported by Undercurrent News.
But should president Donald Trump and Democratic party leaders not reach an agreement over his demands for a wall on the Mexican border in 11 days, the shutdown would resume and NOAAโs National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) probably wouldnโt be able to make the deadline necessary to implement regulations necessary to increase scallop harvest before the season kicks off on April 1, Forbes warned. That means the earlier default quota would have to be used.
Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney for the Fisheries Survival Fund, is quoted as suggesting treating Feb. 15 as if another shutdown was going to happen.
โGet everything that you can get done now,โ he said. โHopefully itโs not going to be a shutdown. But I think itโs foolish to assume it wonโt be a shutdown again. We donโt know. Nobody knows.โ
But Minkiewicz also was concerned about the next season.
โDuring the whole 35 days that weโve been shut down, the government was supposed to be moving (next seasonโs) package forward. Is that 35-day delay going to not allow us to have that in place for April 1? I donโt know the answer to that yet,โ he said.
February 1, 2019 โ SEAFOOD NEWS โ The Pacific Hake Joint Technical Committee, comprising both U.S. and Canadian scientists, is hustling to include U.S. Pacific hake age data in the coastwide draft stock assessment, the Committee said in an email to interested parties this week.
The researchers made the update this week after the partial U.S. government shutdown ended. U.S. scientists Ian Taylor and Aaron Berger, both with the NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center, were furloughed during the shutdown. The JTC is responsible for producing the coastwide whiting stock assessment upon which both countriesโ allocations are based.
At the time of the shutdown in December 2018, U.S. age data was not included in the modelling. Canadian researchers said then they would do their best to produce the stock assessment based on information they had at the time. The draft assessment is due for publication on Feb. 6.
In this weekโs email notice, the JTC said it will โpresent the assessment based on the modelling done so far, without 2018 age data included for the base model and sensitivities. The Executive Summary will be based on the model which does not include 2018 age data.โ
However, they are still hoping to get 2018 U.S. age data included.
โIf this happens within the next few days, the model with 2018 age data included will be run as an MCMC and presented as an appendix with all projections and decision tables, the same as what appear in the Executive Summary,โ the JTC said in the email. โIt will be subject to review and can be chosen to be the model for providing advice by the [Scientific Review Group] should they choose to do so.โ
The SRG is scheduled to meet Feb. 19-22 in Vancouver, British Columbia, to review the assessment.
This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
February 1, 2019 โ The world is smitten with scallops. Their subtle sweetness and firm but somehow delicate bite has many wanting more. When I previously worked in seafood sales, I couldnโt believe how much chefs in Los Angeles would pay to put the great New Bedford sea scallop on their menus. Weโre talking over $35 per pound for the big ones. Iโd think to myself, โThese chefs know there are scallops in the Pacific, right?โ
They did know, of course, but Pacific scallops lack one thing that consumers have grown to demand โ heft. The Atlantic sea scallop is the largest commercially fished scallop species, with meat weights of up to 70 grams. This means restaurants can put four on a plate and sell their dish for $30 or more, and still make a profit.
For the most part, scallopers are thriving. Scallops caught in the U.S. each year are worth more than $430 million โ making them one of the most valuable seafoods in the nation. But recently, there has been a major setback.
During the longest government shutdown in American history, fishermen and businesses in the seafood industry struggled to stay afloat. Until the partial closure ended on January 25, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the federal agency in charge of regulating fishermenโs operations, was closed, with only โessentialโ personnel working. This caused cascading effects all the way down the seafood supply chain, from processors to distributors to restaurants. Without the full NMFS workforce available, scientific data collection was put on hold, which restricted the ability of fisheries managers and federal workers to do their jobs.
February 1, 2019 โ Recreational cod fishing will remain off limits in one of New Englandโs most significant bodies of water for at least the first several months of this year.
Possession of cod in the Gulf of Maine was prohibited during 2018. The New England Fishery Management Council met this week to consider recreational fishing rules for species such as cod and haddock.
The fishery council says the long federal shutdown has left recreational fishermen wondering what will happen on May 1, which is the start of the 2019 fishing year. The council says rules for Gulf of Maine cod and other species will remain in effect unless they are replaced with new measures. That means Gulf of Maine cod are still off limits.
January 31, 2019 โ Some of the cost of the US federal governmentโs partial 35-day shutdown must now be borne by New Englandโs commercial fish and shellfish harvesters waiting for their permits to be renewed, but earlier this week Michael Pentony described how his staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was trying to mitigate the pain.
In a briefing provided to the New England Regional Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) at their meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Pentony, the director of NOAAโs Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO), said his team was prioritizing the backlog of new fishing permit requests as well as renewal requests that didnโt get attention. (Undercurrent News has been provided a recording of the comments.)
Fishing vessel permits begin to expire on March 1 for several species, including red crab, squid and butterfish, and scallop permits expire on April 1, he noted. Permits for several other species expire on May 1.
The backlog of permit renewals โwas the thing that really kept me up at night as the shutdown dragged on and on with no end in sight for a whileโ, Pentony told the NEFMC.
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