Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Warren, Markey speak on port of New Bedford

March 27, 2017 — Behind closed doors, politicians from around the state discussed how to improve the Port of New Bedford Friday afternoon at Seatrade International.

“We want to make sure the 21st century is just as prosperous and even more so than the 20th and 19th centuries were for New Bedford,” Markey said. “We’re going to work down in Washington every day to advocate for the commercial fisherman of New Bedford.”

Senators Markey and Elizabeth Warren, along with state representatives Bill Strauss, Paul Schmid, Christopher Markey, Robert Koczera and Antonio Cabral joined Mayor Jon Mitchell, City Council President Joe Lopes and Ward 4 Council Dana Rebeiro, discussed policies affecting the port.

The meeting lasted about an hour and according to Ed Anthes-Washburn, the executive director of the Harbor Development Commission, about two-thirds of the discussion revolved around dredging.

“We heard example after example of what it will mean if we could get proper dredging for new businesses, expanded businesses, more opportunities,” Warren said. “That’s what we want to see in New Bedford. That’s what we want to see here in Massachusetts.”

The New Bedford Harbor Development Commission predicts the dredging would create  898 permanent jobs, $65.1 million in wages and $11.5 million in state and local taxes.

“We have a number of docks in the harbor that are on very shallow water,” Mitchell said. “There are businesses that want to pull boats up to those docks but can’t because of the shallow water.”

According to Washburn, who attended the meeting, lawmakers agreed that Phase V dredging would be most beneficial for the port in terms of cost and reward.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Receives Grant to Build Website Promoting Local Seafood

March 21, 2017 — New Bedford’s seafood has already gone worldwide. Now, it’s about to hit the World Wide Web.

The Baker-Polito Administration today announced that $105,500 in grants will be distributed to seven marketing campaigns that are designed to increase awareness and demand for Massachusetts seafood products. The grants were awarded through the Division of Marine Fisheries’ newly-created Seafood Marketing Pilot Grant Program.

As part of the grant, the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission will receive $13,000 to create a New Bedford Seafood website that will offer a central location for local, regional and international buyers, as well as the creation of a “Seafood Throwdown.”

“Let’s face it, we have the most lucrative fishing port in the country, and I will say wiht some bias, the best seafood in the country,” Senator Mark Montigny of New Bedford tells WBSM News. Montigny helped create the program in the state Senate. “It’s great news, with one thing in mind–promoting the industry, and continuing to retain jobs as well as creat new jobs.”

“Years ago, I would have said, ‘Hey, let’s spend this to make the biggest scallop festival in the country in New Bedford, since they use our scallops in other cities and towns for those events,” Montigny said. “But in this new world, (being on the web) is the key. You can have the most, and I feel we do have the best, but if you’re not constantly promoting the product online all over the world, you’re falling behind your competition.”

Read the full story at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: Port Of New Bedford’s Economic Value Totals $9.8 Billion

December 27, 2016 — A new study finds the Port of New Bedford generates nearly ten billion dollars in total economic value. That’s the finding of consultants Martin Associates and Apex Companies who were hired by the New Bedford Harbor Development Commission.

Port Director Edward Washburn says the $9.8 billion total reflects businesses that support the fishing and cargo industries, including warehouses, boatyards, ice houses, marinas and other maritime services.

Washburn tells WBSM News, the 40-or so fish processing houses reflect a big part of that economic value. “A lot of folks on our waterfront are sourcing product from around the globe. It’s coming to New Bedford and being processed and then its being set back out around the world,” said Washburn. “The value of that and the number of jobs associated with that is actually, incredible.”

The report says activity in the Port in New Bedford and Fairhaven Harbor in 2015 generated 36,000 direct or indirect jobs.

Washburn says he hopes the report will help generate more investment in the port, and enable some much needed improvements to get done. “Developing the North Terminal, north of where our existing bulkhead ends, really extending that and seeing what else you can bring in terms of fish processing and harvesting, but also the offshore wind industry.”

Read the full story at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fish catch most valuable in U.S.

November 4, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – Citing 2015 landings worth $322 million, for the 16th year in a row the city held the top-value title nationwide for its fishing catch, according to NOAA Fisheries. The top ranking was thanks largely to scallops, SouthCoastToday.com reported Oct. 28.

New Bedford’s catch was 124 million pounds, good for 11th in the country.

“We’re reaping the benefits of good, cooperative science, and solid relationships between the regulators, the fishermen and the scientists,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission.

The annual catch reports, released by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, showed New Bedford’s catch dipped by about 11 percent last year, falling to 124 million pounds in 2015 from 140 million in 2014. The 2013 catch totaled 130 million pounds.

Read the full story at the Providence Business News 

New Bedford Standard-Times: Cooperation pushes fishery advocacy to next level

June 6, 2016 — Last Thursday, House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) joined Rep. Bill Keating (D-MA) and Mayor Jon Mitchell in New Bedford, Mass., to discuss issues relevant to the local seafood and fishing industries. The National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC), which helped organize Rep. Bishop’s visit, hopes to continue working with the Natural Resources Committee and its staff to arrange bipartisan visits to all the seaports where NCFC members conduct their business.The following editorial about Rep. Bishop and Rep. Keating’s visit to New Bedford was published yesterday by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

Geography is both a blessing and a curse for commercial fishermen in the U.S. They have access to rich fishing grounds along thousands of miles of seacoast, but the distance between the fish they catch and the American consumer prevents a full understanding of the lives of fishing communities.

The visit to New Bedford’s waterfront Thursday by the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, was more than a step in the right direction, it’s proof of treading the right path. The committee is responsible for ocean issues, including the current reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

City support

The National Coalition for Fishing Communities was formed with city-directed grant money, and the Harbor Development Commission’s membership in the coalition emphatically states the city’s commitment and leadership. Their advocacy is often first to be heard, which means they’ll wait longest for remedy.

Advocacy

Saving Seafood’s years of advocacy in Washington on behalf of the Port of New Bedford and the East Coast has enabled the creation of the coalition. More than two dozen municipalities, businesses, and associations from around the country are represented: Alaska, Hawaii, West Coast, Gulf Coast and East coast. Members from Rhode Island, Long Island, New Jersey and around New England had their voices heard by the chairman on Thursday. An industry with such diversity had its voice heard on national issues and discovered new resources to address local issues more effectively.

The coalition’s website says: “We are committed to the tenets of National Standard Eight of the Magnuson-Stevens Act,” which is summed up in the balancing of the sustainability of both the ocean environment and the fishing community. For the record, The Standard-Times is similarly committed.

Good government

There seems little good to be done recounting the sins of either fishermen or government agents, but it is instructive when considering the case of an alternative for the monument designation proposed to protect corals in fishing grounds south of Cape Cod. Industry representatives cooperated at the White House Executive Office level, the Council on Environmental Quality, to produce an alternative that satisfies preservation and fishing goals alike.

In addition, the CEQ’s counsel can influence how frequently deference might be claimed by regulators, nudging court decisions more in line with the statutory balancing act of National Standard 8.

The chairman’s visit to New Bedford is a recognition that there remain injustices and inequities in the administration of Magnuson-Stevens; reaching out leads to better decisions.

Bipartisanship

Chairman Bishop’s congressional district in Utah borders on the Great Salt Lake, which sees millions of pounds of brine shrimp eggs landed each year. The industry can move more than a billion dollars through the economy annually, but its fortunes are fickle. The lake’s changing salinity affects shrimp reproduction, which can shut the season down if severe enough.

The chairman may have seen the workers in his district reflected in those at the display auction in New Bedford on Thursday, icing down Gulf of Maine flounder. Or at Northern Wind, where workers use machines to process vast amounts of scallops, the port’s signature harvest.

The only “politics” surrounding the chairman’s visit was of the traditional variety: How can we get the people’s business done? New Bedford’s Democratic U.S. Rep. Bill Keating could readily see eye to eye on the issues of fishing communities as they toured the New Bedford waterfront together.

Managing ocean resources may never be easy, but cooperation is what gets the people’s business done, moving toward National Standard 8’s goal of a sustainable balance between humanity and the environment.

Read the editorial at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishing industry, environmental groups spar over protected areas in Atlantic waters

November 21, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A growing effort to permanently protect deep-sea canyons, mountains and ledges in waters off New England has the local fishing industry on edge.

“It would be a big hit for the company,” Jon Williams, president of Atlantic Red Crab Co. on Herman Melville Boulevard, said about the potential for the first marine protected areas on the Eastern seaboard. “We’re going to lose an area that we fish regularly, and we’re going to lose it forever.”

There’s a big “if” behind Williams’ statement. Environmental groups and marine scientists have intensified their calls in recent months for President Barack Obama to declare “national monument” status for three ocean areas, which would permanently protect them from an array of commercial and industrial uses. No decision has been reached, though, and the timetable for action could extend over Obama’s last year in office.

That could make 2016 a nervous year for fishing industry leaders and advocates in New Bedford and elsewhere on the New England coast.

“I am strongly opposed to the national monument,” Stephanie Rafael-DeMello, co-owner of Bela Flor Seafood Brokerage Co. and manager of Northeast Fishery Sector 9, said in an email. “I believe it takes away from the public, science-driven process that goes into such considerations.”

After a flurry of activity this fall, the issue is stirring broad debate about how to balance preservation of marine life, ocean health and sustainable fisheries with potential oil and gas exploration, unsustainable fisheries, mineral mining, fishing-reliant regional economies and more.

Also at issue is how the protected national monument areas could be established. Backers of the effort are urging Obama to use the Antiquities Act, which dates to 1906 and allows the president to act unilaterally to preserve endangered areas. People opposing or questioning the monument effort, though, say use of that act could circumvent public input.

“The problem is it doesn’t use the normal process, which is the New England Fishery Management Council, to open or close (ocean) areas,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, executive director of the Harbor Development Commission.

Mayor Jon Mitchell expressed similar concerns.

“National monuments are declared by the White House without the same kind of vetting that NOAA applies to new regulations,” Mitchell said last week. “We’ve been making the case that the federal government needs to put the brakes on the declaration of a national monument over an area that has extensive sea canyons and sea mountains, which is a place that’s fished primarily for ocean crabs.”

Priscilla Brooks, vice president and director of ocean conservation for the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), a Boston environmental advocacy group, said about 800,000 square miles in the Pacific Ocean already have been protected as marine national monuments.

Obama established three of those Pacific monuments by presidential proclamation in January 2009, and a fourth was established in 2006, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

“We don’t have a single mile in the Atlantic. Not one,” Brooks said. “We think it’s time.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard – Times

 

New nationwide coalition seeking to unify commercial fishing interests

November 16, 2015 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — A Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group with strong New Bedford ties is creating a national coalition of commercial fishing interests to boost outreach and communication for the industry, which supporters claim often can be overmatched by unified environmental groups that promote competing interests.

“America’s fishing communities and seafood industry have been maligned by special interest groups working in collusion, who have slandered hard-working Americans with outrageous claims and misrepresentations,” Bob Vanasse, a New Bedford native and executive director of Saving Seafood, said in a Monday news release. “We’re aiming to bring the entire supply chain of fishermen, shoreside businesses, processors, markets and restaurants together to join this effort to move the national conversation in a positive direction.”

The Saving Seafood release said the nonprofit, formed in 2009, is conducting a membership drive for its new National Coalition of Fishing Communities (NCFC). Vanasse said the coalition, so far, has about 60 members across the country, including New Bedford’s Harbor Development Commission.

The NCFC will formally launch in Washington in January, during the next U.S. Conference of Mayors event. Vanasse said New Bedford Mayor Mitchell will be chairman of the coalition’s mayors’ group, reaching out to municipal leaders in Seattle, Honolulu, Atlantic City and other cities with strong commercial fishing ties. Coalition members already include commercial fishing associations from Hawaii, Oregon, North Carolina, New Jersey and more.

“I believe there needs to be a stronger voice for fishing communities in the halls of Congress,” Mitchell said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard -Times