Saving Seafood

NOAA to Increase Enforcement Actions to Ensure Safety of Federal Fishery Observers, Monitors

March 2, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries is stepping up enforcement to ensure the safety of federal fisheries observers and at-sea monitors in the Northeast. Federal laws prohibit harassment, intimidation, and interference with federal fisheries observers. These laws apply to everyone onboard during an observed fishing trip.

“We take observer and monitor safety seriously and we want vessel owners, captains, and crew to take it seriously, too,” said Jeffrey Ray, the Assistant Director of the Northeast Division for NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement. “It is illegal to interfere with or harass federal fisheries observers in any way while they are near or aboard your vessel. No exceptions.”

Working with federal and state enforcement agencies, NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement will be conducting more operations focused on observer safety and preventing harassment and interference.

“No one, including the owner, captain, or crew, are allowed to intimidate, interfere with, or harass an observer,” said Ray. “There are standards of behavior that must be followed when an observer is present on the dock or onboard a vessel.”

NOAA’s goal is to increase awareness, promote compliance, and bring to justice those who mistreat observers. Violations include both civil and criminal penalties, which could include fines exceeding $200,000 and 10 years of imprisonment. “We are going to aggressively respond to any observer incidents in the Northeast,” said Ray.

“There are many vessel owners, captains, and crew who follow the law. Others do not. The violators are who we are after,” he added.

Read the full release from NOAA

 

2021 Commercial Halibut Season Is Set to Open

June 16, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The first 3-day commercial halibut fishing season of 2021 in federal waters off the West Coast begins next week. It starts on Tuesday, June 22 at 8 a.m. and ends on Thursday, June 24 at 6 p.m. NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement will be conducting patrols throughout the season along with our partners.

Patrols will focus on ensuring compliance with the rules and regulations governing commercial halibut fishing. These include:

  • Proper marking of fishing gear
  • Permitting and vessel documentation
  • Minimum size and possession restrictions

All setline or skate marker buoys carried on board or used by any U.S. vessel for halibut fishing must be marked with either the vessel’s state license number or registration number. The markings must be in legible characters at least 4 inches high and one-half inch wide in a contrasting color visible above the water.

Learn more about commercial halibut fishing regulations

Our partners in these patrols include:

  • U.S. Coast Guard
  • Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Police
  • Oregon State Police
  • California Department of Fish and Wildlife

Read the full release here

NOAA Enforcement Continues the Fight against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing

June 8, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

This past weekend marked the fourth observance of the International Day for the Fight Against Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing. This day was declared by the United Nations to raise awareness about IUU fishing and its threat to the sustainability of the world’s ocean resources. NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement plays a pivotal role in tackling IUU fishing every day.

Combating IUU fishing is a top priority for the United States. IUU fishing damages economies, threatens marine resources, and harms U.S. fishing fleets and consumers. Through partnerships and collaborative efforts, we address IUU fishing by:

  • Conducting investigations targeting IUU fishing activities
  • Enforcing domestic laws and international treaties to ensure that fisheries resources are conserved and protected
  • Facilitating government-to-government exchanges to provide capacity, technical assistance, and training workshops that strengthen fisheries enforcement aimed at restricting IUU fishing activities

Training Inspectors, Increasing Compliance

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement has helped countries enhance their fisheries enforcement capacities to combat IUU fishing for more than a decade.

Illegal fishers count on poor communication among relevant authorities and seek to take advantage of gaps in interagency coordination. They rely on global enforcement entities to not share information with one another—allowing them to continue to carry out their lucrative behavior.

To address this problem, the Port State Measures Agreement was created. It is the first binding international agreement specifically designed to target IUU fishing and is an important tool for us. Currently, there are 69 parties to the Agreement, covering 93 countries and more than half of the world’s coastal nations.

The Agreement works to prevent vessels carrying IUU fish and fish products from landing their catch at ports around the world. It sets minimum standards for:

  • Screening foreign-flagged fishing and fishing support vessels prior to entering port
  • Conducting dockside inspections of foreign-flagged fishing and fishing support vessels
  • Training of inspectors and the reporting of inspections

We have developed domestic and international Port State Measures Inspector Training Programs that provide technical assistance to global partners. These trainings—the first of their kind—help reduce the amount of IUU fish and fish products being landed and exported from nations around the world. They focus on the operational implementation of the Agreement to help global partners better detect and intercept IUU fish and fish products before they enter global commerce.

Building partnerships to combat IUU fishing is a top priority. It is critically important to the success of the Agreement that all parties have the support and tools needed to implement its provisions. We continue to help partners with legislative framework and policy support, in addition to fisheries inspector and officer training. These trainings enhance partners’ monitoring, control, and surveillance systems to combat IUU fishing and the trade in IUU fish products. They also help implement the operational requirements of the Agreement and promote increased cooperation and information sharing between interagency partners.

Training and Technical Assistance Highlights

NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement supports partners across the Asia-Pacific region and is expanding into Latin America and the Caribbean. This expansion follows the recent successes of our Inspector Training in Lima, Peru in January 2020, which brought together participants from Ecuador and Peru.

In Southeast Asia, we conducted our first Inspector Training-of-Trainers Workshop in Jakarta, Indonesia in fall 2019. We also co-facilitated a regional Port State Measures Inspector Training workshop for the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center with support from the USAID Regional Development Mission for Asia. In total, nine SEAFDEC members participated—Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—as well as India and Sri Lanka. In addition, we provided technical support to Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

We conducted joint monitoring, control, and surveillance assessments in The Bahamas, Guyana, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, in 2019 and 2020. These assessments were supported through a project with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. We have since held multiple follow-up technical exchanges.

Lastly, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have worked hard to pivot capacity-building efforts to a virtual landscape. In the near future, we will launch the first virtual edition of the Training Program. Through this innovative programming, we continue the fight against IUU fishing at home and abroad.

Recent Conviction Confirms Our Commitment to Observer Safety

June 1, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Part of our job at NOAA Fisheries is ensuring a level playing field for commercial fishermen. Fishery observers and at-sea monitors play a critical role in that process. Observers are professionally-trained biological scientists whose work helps monitor fisheries, assess fish populations, set fishing quotas, and inform management. Their work is vital to our mission.

For observers to be effective, their working conditions must be safe and professional. Although U.S. fisheries are among the safest in the world, we understand the inherent risks that observers face while working in remote and offshore locations. As our eyes and ears on the water, they spend days, weeks, or even months out at sea. Their work can be dangerous and puts them in vulnerable situations. It is our job to make sure their unique workplaces are as safe as possible.

Preparing observers for safe deployments requires an active partnership among NOAA Fisheries, observers, observer providers, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the fishing industry. Since the inception of the observer program in the 1970s, we have continually worked to develop and institute world-class training and safety protocols. This includes a zero tolerance policy for observer harassment or assault.

As part of their training, observers are encouraged to report inappropriate behavior. They are given examples of unacceptable behavior and taught what steps they can take if something inappropriate happens. Violators are subject to civil and criminal penalties of up to six months in prison and a $130,000 fine.

On May 3, 2021, Galen Burrell, a commercial fishing deckhand, was sentenced in the Eastern District of North Carolina to six months in prison after pleading guilty to sexually harassing a federal fishery observer. This prosecution is the result of collaboration between NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement, the Office of General Counsel, the Observer Program, and the Department of Justice. The successful prosecution of this case highlights our commitment to observer safety, and demonstrates that bad actors can—and will—be held accountable.

The NOAA Office of Law Enforcement will continue to pursue any and all credible allegations concerning an observer’s safety.

Any observer who has experienced harassment or assault should feel empowered to take action. Our Law Enforcement Hotline is always open at (800) 853-1964. There are numerous victim advocacy resources available such as NOAA’s Sexual Assault/Sexual Harassment Helpline and RAINN.

NOAA Fisheries Fact-Checks Orca Bycatch Photo Circulating on Social Media

April 22, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries would like to clear up the disinformation surrounding a photo being circulated on social media of two orca whales taken as bycatch by a trawler in Alaskan waters. NOAA Office of Law Enforcement has confirmed that the photo is from an April 2020 incident. In that case, there were two independent fisheries observers aboard the vessel. The orca takes were reported promptly by the observers and vessel owner/operator to NOAA Fisheries, as required.

We do not have any recent reports of bycatch involving orcas off Alaska.

The United States’ science-based fishery management process is designed to provide optimum yield while preventing overfishing, minimizing bycatch, and protecting habitats where fish live. Section 118 of the Marine Mammal Protection Act allows for the incidental, but not intentional, takes of marine mammals in commercial fisheries. “Take” includes harassment, hunting, capturing, collecting, or killing of marine mammals. However, a marine mammal take is not legal unless it is reported by the vessel owners or operators through the Marine Mammal Authorization Program.

Bycatch of orcas in Alaska fisheries by any gear is very low. While incidental take of any individual marine mammal is concerning, NOAA Fisheries does not consider the low level of interactions between orcas and commercial fisheries in Alaska to have an adverse impact on any orca stock at a population level. No orca stocks in the Alaska region are listed as endangered, threatened, and/or candidate species under the Endangered Species Act.

Through the North Pacific Observer Program, our agency has rigorous methods for tracking catch and bycatch. At least two fisheries observers are required aboard all trawl catcher-processor vessels fishing off Alaska, so every haul is observed.

In addition to information collected by observers, vessel owners or operators must report to NOAA Fisheries all incidental mortalities and injuries of marine mammals that occur during commercial fishing operations. They must be reported within 48 hours of the end of the fishing trip under the law.

Read the full release here

NOAA Office of Law Enforcement Names Three New Assistant Directors

March 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The NOAA Office of Law Enforcement is pleased to announce the appointments of Manny Antonaras, Martina Sagapolu, and Everett Baxter as their newest Assistant Directors. Antonaras was recently selected to lead the Southeast Division based in St. Petersburg, Florida and Sagapolu has been leading the Pacific Islands Division in Honolulu, Hawaii since last spring. Baxter took over the Investigative Operations Division in Silver Spring, Maryland last fall. As Assistant Directors in the regions, Antonaras and Sagapolu serve as OLE’s top regional leadership. At headquarters, Baxter leads OLE’s domestic and international investigative operations.

“NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement is essential to the sustainable management of our nation’s federal fisheries and the conservation of our protected marine species and habitats,” said Jim Landon, Director of NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement. “Together, Manny, Martina, and Everett bring a wealth of experience to their new roles with more than 65 years of federal law enforcement experience. I have every confidence that they will continue to support NOAA’s mandate to end overfishing and to protect marine resources through fair and effective enforcement of the laws and regulations under OLE’s jurisdiction.”

In his role as OLE’s Assistant Director in the Southeast, Antonaras oversees the largest of the continental divisions. The region has approximately 3,230 miles of coastline covering the South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean. It is home to three national marine sanctuaries—the Florida Keys, Gray’s Reef, and Flower Garden Banks—and the international border between Mexico and the United States where the division is actively engaged in combating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and seafood fraud.

Antonaras previously served as the Deputy Special Agent in Charge for OLE’s Southeast Division beginning in 2014. In this role, he oversaw the civil and criminal investigative work performed by special agents and enforcement officers. He also oversaw the division’s investigative support group, enforcement programs, and all patrol activities. During his tenure, Antonaras expanded the undercover operations program. He was instrumental in significantly increasing the uniformed enforcement officer program to enhance OLE’s visible presence and partnerships across the Southeast. He first joined OLE in 2002 as a student volunteer. He was hired as a special agent at the St. Petersburg, Florida field office after receiving his B.A. in Environmental Studies and Sociology from Eckerd College.

Read the full release here

Commercial Fishermen Across the Country Support Barry Myers to Lead NOAA

Fishermen Praise AccuWeather CEO for “Proven Record of Success”

December 13, 2017 — WASHINGTON — The following was released by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities:

Representatives of 71 commercial fishing companies and organizations and 31 fishing vessels from around the country have signed a letter urging the Senate to confirm Barry Myers’ appointment to lead the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The letter of support, produced by Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities, was delivered late last month to members of the Senate Commerce Committee and Senators representing the states of the letter’s signers.

Mr. Myers currently serves as chief executive officer of the weather forecasting company AccuWeather. He was nominated to serve as the next NOAA Administrator and Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere by President Donald Trump on October 11, and participated in a Senate confirmation hearing November 29.

“As CEO of AccuWeather, Mr. Myers has a proven record of success, working alongside scientists,” the fishing groups wrote. They praised his work as a fellow at the American Meteorological Society and a recipient of the prestigious AMS Leadership Award. They also complimented Mr. Myers for his service on an environmental working group of NOAA’s Science Advisory Board, under presidents from both parties.

The letter points out that, despite employing some of the nation’s best scientists, NOAA has been “plagued with ongoing mismanagement,” including abuse of power and misuse of funds at NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement; accuracy and credibility issues with NOAA’s collection and use of fisheries data; and long-running budget and hiring issues at the National Weather Service.

In light of these many issues, the fishing groups wrote, “While science remains one of the most vital elements of NOAA, new leadership with strong proven managerial experience is needed to right the ship after years of mismanagement.”

The groups also cited two experts in the field who have called for improved management at NOAA. David Titley, former NOAA COO under President Obama and a professor of meteorology at Penn State, said, “I think Barry would bring very practical, pragmatic expertise and management acumen to NOAA.” Cliff Mass, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington, said, “No NOAA Administrator has been willing to make the substantial, but necessary, changes,” and speculated that someone from the private sector might bring a “fresh approach.”

The letter was signed by fishing groups representing 15 coastal states: Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington.

 

Agency gave bad data to senator trying to stop shark finning

October 27, 2017 — A federal agency said on Thursday that it made a mistake with a key piece of data it gave to U.S. Sen. Cory Booker as he was building a case to shut down America’s shark fin trade.

Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, has cited more than 500 incidents involving complaints of shark finning in the U.S., dating back to January 2010, as cause to support shutting down the trade. But the number is actually 85.

Booker reached out to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration months ago to find out how often it investigates allegations of shark finning, an illegal practice in which a shark’s fins are removed and the shark is dumped back into the water, sometimes while it’s still alive.

An NOAA worker’s error involving a new case management system caused the mistake in the number of finning incident reports, said Casey Brennan, chief of staff for the NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement. He said the number of reports that led to charges was 26.

Saving Seafood, a fishing industry trade group, asked the NOAA to clarify the figures about shark finning incidents after seeing conflicting data on the agency’s website.

“Shark finning is a reprehensible activity that has been outlawed in the U.S. and is opposed by participants in the sustainable U.S. shark fishery,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of the group. “Members of our coalition do not believe there is any need for Booker’s bill.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Post

Footnote Error Leads to Dramatically Inflated Claims of Illegal Shark Finning from Sen. Booker, Oceana

October 26, 2017 (Saving Seafood) — The horrific practice of shark finning has been illegal in U.S. waters since 2000, and is vehemently opposed by all U.S. shark fisheries and participants in those fisheries. The Office of Law Enforcement at NOAA Fisheries is enforcing the current finning prohibition; US fishermen are in full compliance with the law.  There are very few incidents of this terrible practice on record in the United States.

On August 1, 2017, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) chaired a hearing of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, & Coast Guard regarding the reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).  During the hearing, Senator Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) asked Chris Oliver, NOAA Assistant Administrator for Fisheries and head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, to keep him informed on NOAA investigations of shark finning allegations. Sen. Booker introduced a bill earlier this year designed to prevent people from possessing or selling shark fins in America.

Leading up to his question, Senator Booker stated the following. “You know that shark finning was first outlawed in U.S. waters in 2000. And a loophole in that original law was closed by the Shark Conservation Act of 2009. I recently asked your office how many shark-finning investigations NOAA has opened since January 1, 2010. I was shocked to find out that since 2010, NOAA has investigated over 500 incidences of alleged shark finning. As of April, there were seven shark finning cases that were open but not yet charged.”

Sen. Booker’s statement, that NOAA advised him of over 500 instances of alleged shark finning immediately sparked incredulity in the commercial fishing industry, because in June 2016, in an article by Ally Rogers, a communications specialist for NOAA’s Office of Law Enforcement (OLE), entitled OLE Working Hard To Identify, Prevent Incidents of Shark Finning, Illegal Shark Fishing, NOAA stated that during the ten year period from 2006-2016, 40% of the “nearly 80 shark-related incidents” referred to “fins that were not naturally attached to the shark carcasses.”  That works out to fewer than 32 incidents involving shark fins in a decade, or on average no more than 3.16 per year.

Saving Seafood asked NOAA how it could be that the agency told Senator Booker that they had “investigated over 500 incidences of alleged shark finning” in the past 7.5 years.

While the information NOAA provided in response to Senator Booker’s staff was not entirely inaccurate, a footnote was attached to the wrong sentence, making it possible for a reader to misinterpret the over-inclusive information provided.

In the NOAA case management system, there were 526 reports that contained the word “shark” in some form or another.  This could include a number of legal and illegal activities including inspections, boardings, a legal or illegal take of a shark, by-catch, harvesting sharks during a closed season, and unpermitted shark fishing activities, to name a few.  Any report that came into NOAA with the word “shark” in it, would have appeared as an incident in the numbers provided to Senator Booker.

In fact, of those 526 reports, only 85 were incidents that referred to “shark fins” or “shark finning”.  Of those 85 incidents, only 26 resulted in charges that could be a criminal complaint, a summary settlement, a written warning, or a Notice of Violation and Assessment (NOVA).  So, in the past 7.5 years, with an annual average of 2.6 million pounds landed sustainably from Federally managed shark fisheries, there has been on average just 3.5 incidents per year resulting in charges. And that is consistent with the earlier data.

In 2016, just ahead of the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week,” Senator Booker, and House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce (R-California) joined with actor Morgan Freeman and the environmental group Oceana to introduce the Shark Fin Trade Elimination Act (S. 793/H.R. 1456, in the current Congress).  The ban is opposed by leading shark scientists David Shiffman of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and Robert Hueter, Director of the Center for Shark Research at Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida.  Delegate Gregorio Kilili Camacho Sablan (I- Northern Mariana Islands), and Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) are also original co-sponsors.

Oceana, the Humane Society International, Wild Aid, and COARE have used the inaccurate information in support of the shark fin ban, erroneously arguing that even “in U.S. waters, our anti-finning law does not effectively stop shark finning.”  In a recent blog post, Lora Snyder, Campaign Director at Oceana, Iris Ho, Wildlife Program Manager at Humane Society International, Peter Knights, Executive Director at WildAid and Christopher Chin, Executive Director at COARE, reference “government records cited during recent Congressional testimony” to make the claim that “more than 500 alleged shark finning incidents… have taken place in U.S. waters since January 2010.”  They go on to extrapolate from that number, stating “That is approximately five cases every month.”

In fact, over the past decade, there have been fewer than four incidents per year.

Oceana hired The McGrath Group, headed by six-term former Congressman and President of the National Republican Club Ray McGrath to lobby for the bills, spending $20,000 with the GOP firm between July 1 and Sept 31 this year.

New Voluntary Pilot Program to Pre-Measure/Tag Codends Now Underway; Designed to Assist Industry Compliance

September 11, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council is pleased to announce the launch of a new Codend Compliance Assistance Program (CAP) that’s designed to help fishermen document the purchase of legalsize codends and contribute to the collection of data on codend shrinkage rates. The program is in the pilot phase and participation is voluntary. It was developed by the Council’s Enforcement Committee, which includes representatives from the U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA Office of Law Enforcement.

As fishermen well know, new nets tend to shrink or “harden” once exposed to routine fishing.

“It’s just the nature of the material we use to build twine,” said Terry Alexander, a commercial fisherman and New England Council member who chairs the Enforcement Committee.

The Enforcement Committee began working on the CAP roughly two years ago under the premise that fishermen who volunteered to have codends pre-measured and tagged would be recognized as program participants. Then, in the event that codend mesh inspected during subsequent Coast Guard boardings measured-out smaller than on the original purchase date, the fisherman’s involvement in the CAP would be noted and possibly result in a “fix it” opportunity or reduced penalty.

“This is not a free ticket to tow illegal mesh,” emphasized Alexander. “But if you’re participating in the program and the Coast Guard boards your boat, it sends a signal that you’re a responsible harvester and are trying to fish legally.”

Read the full release here