Saving Seafood

News for the New England Region

MA Governor Baker meets fishermen in Gloucester

August 13, 2015 — Gov. Charlie Baker will journey to Gloucester this afternoon for a private meeting with fishermen and fishing stakeholders to hear concerns and address recent and pending regulations from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the governor’s office confirmed.

Baker’s press office said the the event is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. at the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Memorial on Stacy Boulevard, and that his private meeting with the fishing stakeholders will be followed by a press availability session.

The governor also is scheduled to meet with the editorial board of the Gloucester Daily Times during the day.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Technology buoys fishermen devastated by cod’s collapse

August 11, 2015 — Late last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service released an unexpected, midseason stock assessment estimating that the number of spawning cod is 3 to 4 percent of a sustainable population. Within months, cod fishermen — already operating under shrunken quotas — had to find a new species to target and build a business around.

And then another blow: By the end of this year, NMFS wants groundfish fishermen to pay for their own “at-sea monitors,” the independent observers who collect data on bycatch and ensure fishermen follow the rules. Such monitors can cost $800 for each day on a boat, and NMFS requires one to be on 20 percent of trips, in addition to the observers NMFS pays to put on board.

Ford and other fishermen say they can’t afford it. Without cod, they say, their profit margins are slim.

Here’s Ford’s budget: On a good day of fishing flounder, he might make $1,500. His two-man crew gets 25 percent. Fuel costs about $250. And then there’s insurance, maintenance and other recurring expenses. Spending up to $800 on an at-sea monitor, he said, would make the trip not worth it.

“That’s the thing I can’t get past — is the cost of it,” Ford said. “I’ll tie the boat up before I pay for an observer.”

Is there another option?

Read the full story here

 

JACKIE ODELL: Emergency action needed on at-sea monitoring

August 10, 2015 — The New England senators stated in their April 29, 2015, letter to NOAA Fisheries that such a directive would “avert the collapse of our fisheries and secure their healthy and stable future.” The Northeast Seafood Coalition greatly appreciates the exceptional efforts and support the groundfish industry has received from the Senate Appropriators and members of Congress throughout the Northeast on at sea monitoring. Unfortunately, we continue to bite our nails and watch the clock tick. At this time, one crucial request by the Council to NOAA Fisheries remains unanswered. Specifically, the council’s request for NOAA Fisheries to initiate an administrative action to improve the efficiency of the existing at-sea monitoring program that will reduce costs of the program for groundfish sectors, fishery-wide — without compromising compliance with regulatory requirements.

This administrative action request is logical — it follows regulatory directive — and is another attempt to reduce inefficiencies of the at-sea monitoring program and thus costs to groundfish fishermen, fishery wide. It also reflects the strong message delivered by the Senate Appropriators in their pending fiscal year 2016 funding legislation for NMFS — to work with the regional fishery programs on a transition plan to an at-sea and dockside monitoring program that is more cost-effective, accurate, and commensurate with the ex-vessel value. The Northeast Seafood Coalition strongly supports the council’s request.

Read the full letter at the Gloucester Daily Times

Read a letter from the New England Fishery Management Council to NOAA regarding at-sea monitoring

 

MONEY FOR NEW ENGLAND GROUNDFISH MONITORS TO LAST THROUGH OCTOBER

August 5, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries now says it expects to continue paying for at-sea monitoring of Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels through Oct. 31, two months longer than the federal agency initially projected.

The news that that permit holders will have at least two more months before they have to absorb the responsibility for paying for at-sea observers on their boats certainly is welcome, even if the reason for it is not.

“Due to reduced effort (by fishermen), the money is lasting longer,” Jennifer Goebel, a spokeswoman at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Gloucester, said Wednesday.

NOAA initially projected the money allotted for at-sea monitoring would run out around Aug. 31, but shrinking catch quotas, area closures and the absence of any opportunity to land cod, which remains the elemental stock for Gloucester and the region’s groundfishermen, has left NOAA with fewer vessels to monitor on far fewer trips.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

The Shark Fishermen of New England

August 6, 2015 — MARTHA’S VINEYARD, Mass. — Ever since Steven Spielberg set a shark fin gliding through the waters of a fictional New England town, Martha’s Vineyard has become irrevocably associated with the movie “Jaws.” The photographer Maggie Shannon was born more than a decade after the film was shot on the island, in 1974, but growing up on the Vineyard she had a “Jaws” poster hanging from her wall, and would attend the annual Monster Shark Tournament that took place each July. Since then, the Vineyard—its close-knit year-round community, the legacy of “Jaws,” and the island’s relationship to the many tourists who descend upon it each year—has become a central subject of her work.

For her new series, Shannon joined one of the fishing crews who participated in this year’s Monster Shark event, documenting the bait, the blood, and the physicality involved in hauling sharks from the ocean.

Read the full story at The New Yorker

Feds Let New England Fish Go to Waste, Oceana Claims

August 3, 2015 — WASHINGTON — New federal bycatch rules are not enough to keep Northeast Fisheries from circling the drain, environmental protection group Oceana claims in Federal Court.

Oceana filed a lawsuit against the government last week for its “continued failure to create a method for monitoring the amount of wasted catch in New England and Mid-Atlantic fisheries, a region spanning from North Carolina to the Canadian border,” according to an Oceana statement.

The group sued United States Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

“Bycatch” is the term for the collection of ocean species other than the ones for which commercial fishery crews are fishing. Often, these fish and animals are discarded, either dead or dying, into the ocean, or when the boat reaches shore.

In its statement announcing the lawsuit, Oceana writes, “New England, in particular, has been plagued for decades by lax monitoring and overfishing. The failure to monitor catch and enforce catch limits is in part responsible for the collapse of the New England groundfish fishery, including historically important Atlantic cod populations in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, which are currently at 3 and 7 percent of their former population levels.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service 

US wants struggling fishermen to pay for observers

August 4, 2015 — One was knocked overboard on a winter trip in the middle of the night, while another was handed a noose and told to hang himself. Their computers have been tossed into the sea, their bunks set up over a boat’s toilet, their water bottles tainted with tobacco spit.

The men and women who monitor the catch of New England’s once-mighty groundfishing industry, a job required by federal law to curb overfishing, have long had strained relationships with the fishermen who take them to sea.

Now, with federal funding for the controversial program set to run out this fall, the region’s long-beleaguered fishermen are being told they have to pay for the observers themselves — or they can’t fish.”

“This could be the final hit that pushes us into bankruptcy, causing the collapse of the whole fleet,” said Phil Lynch, 45, a Scituate fisherman who has persisted while the number of groundfishing boats in the region has plummeted by more than 70 percent over the past decade. “The guys still left will be gone.”

The threat to the estimated 200 boats remaining, more than half of which are based in Massachusetts, became more palpable last week when the National Marine Fisheries Service denied an emergency request from the council that oversees New England’s fishing industry to suspend the observer program. The agency said fishermen who catch cod, flounder, and other bottom-dwelling fish will have to find a way to pay for the region’s approximately 100 observers, who accompany them on about a quarter of their trips.

Fishermen insist they can’t afford to pay for the observers, especially after major cuts to their quotas. At a government-estimated cost of $710 every time an observer accompanies fishermen to sea, the program would cause most boats to operate at a loss, they say.

“They’ve set up fishermen to fail, and now they want to monitor the failure,” said Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, an advocacy group for commercial fishermen. “I believe they’re out to put us out of business.”

Read the full story from The Boston Globe

Read a letter from NOAA Northeast Regional Administrator John Bullard officially rejecting the request for emergency funding

NOAA: At Sea Monitors Remain on Board, Likely at Cost to New England Groundfishermen

August 3, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries has denied the request by the New England Fishery Management Council in June to use emergency measures to immediately suspend at-sea monitoring for vessels in the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s decision, which was not unexpected, signals the federal agency intends to proceed with its plan to shift the costs of at-sea monitoring — currently absorbed by NOAA — onto the groundfish permit holders later this month. It is estimated that will cost each boat an additional $700 to $800 each time a monitor is on board.

In a letter dated July 30, NOAA Regional Administrator John K. Bullard said the council’s request did not meet any of the criteria for emergency action.

“This was a foreseeable problem that does not justify an emergency action,” Bullard wrote to Tom Nies, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council.

Bullard also discounted the safety element included in the underlying rationale for the council’s request, which asserted that shifting funding responsibility in mid-season could create safety issues by motivating fishermen to condense their fishing into the period when NOAA was paying for monitoring.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

MASSACHUSETTS: MEETING TO DISCUSS GROUNDFISH DISASTER AID

August 2, 2015 — GLOUCESTER — Two bins down, one to go.

The distribution of the nearly $33 million in federal groundfish disaster aid has moved through the first two phases — or bins, in the parlance of NOAA Fisheries and the respective state fisheries directors — in the past year-and-a-half.

Bin 3? That’s become something of a stickier wicket.

NOAA and the fishery directors for the five coastal New England states and New York initially agreed on a formula that would use the $10 million in the third bin to address long-term issues of the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery, including a potential vessel buyout and/or permit buyback plan.

Those plans dissolved in the spring when the respective regulators and stakeholders couldn’t agree on the inordinately complex equation for developing long-term solutions for the fishery declared a federal disaster in 2012.

Now, the money has been returned to Bin 2, which means each of the six states will individually decide how to best spend their allotment from the $10 million.

Tonight, the Gloucester Fishing Commission will take a stab at coming up with what it believes to be the best option for the nearly $7 million earmarked for Massachusetts.

Read the full story at The Salem News

 

Massachusetts boat captains face charges for alleged clam harvesting violations

July 28, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — Reports to the state environmental police about illegal dredging for surf clams off Herring Cove Beach has resulted in criminal charges pending against two boat captains.

Matthews Collins, 29, of New Bedford will be arraigned Wednesday in Orleans District Court on a charge of violating state law for allegedly harvesting surf clams on the F/V Aimee Marie on March 24 shoreward of what is called the 12-foot depth contour line, according to the report of Massachusetts Environmental Police Lt. Robert Akin. The police seized 36 bushels of surf clams, with an estimated value of $666.

Under state law, dredging for surf clams is prohibited from Nov. 1 to April 30 within an area shoreward of the 12-foot depth contour, as measured at mean low water, south of Point Allerton in Hull to the Rhode Island border including Cape Cod and the Islands.

Collins is also charged with failing to properly display the boat’s identification number. The 1974 commercial fishing vessel is owned by Patricio Palacios, according to Akin’s report. The vessel typically works out of Provincetown, Provincetown Harbormaster Rex McKinsey said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times