Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Public Input on Proposal to Close Commercial Salmon Fishing in the Cook Inlet EEZ

June 4, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Council recommended measure responds to court ruling requiring Federal management of EEZ waters in Cook Inlet

NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comments on a proposal to amend the Fishery Management Plan for the Salmon Fisheries in the Exclusive Economic Zone off Alaska (Salmon FMP) to prohibit commercial salmon fishing in federal waters, also called the exclusive economic zone or EEZ, in Cook Inlet. The proposed action would not close any salmon fishing in State of Alaska waters.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council first developed the Salmon FMP under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act more than 40 years ago. The current Salmon FMP excludes designated federal waters in Cook Inlet. That has allowed the State of Alaska to manage commercial salmon fishing in the area.

Read more.

Read the full release here

Amendment 14 to the FMP for the Salmon Fisheries Off Alaska

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

Summary

Amendment 14 would incorporate the Cook Inlet EEZ Subarea into the Salmon FMP’s West Area, thereby bringing the Cook Inlet EEZ Subarea and the commercial salmon fisheries that occur within it under Federal management by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (Council) and NOAA Fisheries. Amendment 14 would manage the Cook Inlet EEZ Subarea by applying the prohibition on commercial salmon fishing that is currently established in the West Area to the newly added Cook Inlet EEZ Subarea. The Council submitted Amendment 14 to the Salmon FMP to the Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) for review.

Federal Register

MARY PELTOLA, SCOTT VAN VALIN, & MICHAEL KAMPNICH: Fisheries managers should reverse course on censoring public comments

May 14, 2021 — The North Pacific Fisheries Management Council process is difficult to navigate. It is a world of acronyms, statistics and legal jargon; but decisions made there impact the lives of all Alaskans, and directly affect allocations of federally-managed species — including king salmon and halibut — to Indigenous, sport and commercial stakeholders. Meetings occur over weeks and can last more than 10 hours per day. It requires significant time to participate, time the average Alaskan does not have. Recently, the Council enacted a policy that makes it more difficult for Alaskans to effectively advocate for their communities, businesses and food sources.

At the April meeting, a policy tightening restrictions on written public comment was quickly proposed and passed. This meeting drew an outpouring of testimony on two items: halibut and king salmon bycatch by the trawl sector. The overwhelming majority of testimony favored reducing that bycatch and managing it based on abundance. People expressed their viewpoints passionately. A few included profanity, but those were dwarfed by the number who respectfully expressed concerns about the future of our ocean ecosystems, fisheries, communities, cultures and livelihoods.

Late on the final day of the meeting, the Council adopted a policy that significantly tightened the rules on written testimony and gave Council staff broad authority to censor and filter comments. Part of their stated rationale for the new policy was that “members of the public linked the comment portal… and broadcast it on social media platforms (Facebook, Reddit), which generated numerous comments from people not familiar with the Council process” and “numerous comments were made prior to any documents being uploaded, and many comments were unrelated to the eAgenda item under which they were posted.” It may be frustrating to the Council when stakeholders are not as familiar with their process and culture as paid advocates whose lobbying contracts are compensation for intimate knowledge of the complex rules and relationships within the system. However, this is not a valid rationale for censoring the public, nor is it inappropriate to share information on how to participate with a broad audience of Alaskans for whom the process may be new or discouraging.

Read the full opinion piece at the Anchorage Daily News

NPFMC June meeting via Webconference

May 12, 2021 — The following was released by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council:

The NPFMC will hold meetings June 1-16, 2021, via webconference.  The eAgenda, Schedule, and a list of when documents are available is now posted. Please note the SSC has a separate SSC eAgenda. More detailed information is available on our website.

You can submit comments for each agenda item through the Council and SSC eAgendas. Written public comment for the Council is open May 12 – 26th at 5:00 PM AST.  Comments will be reviewed, then publicly posted after the deadline.  The full draft comment policy can be viewed here.

If you have questions, please email npfmc.admin@noaa.gov.

Read the full release here

DAVID WITHERELL: Council responds on public comment changes

May 11, 2021 — I read NF’s op-ed “Cut off: Council makes sweeping changes on public input” on the North Pacific Fishery Management Council policy change on written public comments, and I would like an opportunity to clarify and answer the questions you pose.

The council’s policy on written comments changes every couple of years. It has been modified several times in the past two years in response to changes in technology and an interest by the council in making it easier for the public to provide written comments.

Since I started working for the council, we have gone from getting comments by regular mail, to fax, to email, and most recently (in 2018) to an open and direct comment portal. The portal has been wildly successful in that comments have increased in response, and the public has expressed appreciation for the development of the portal, and ease of commenting and reviewing comments. The comment portal is just one recent initiative to create more public input opportunities.

The council established a Community Engagement Committee in 2018 to identify and recommend strategies for the council and council staff to enact processes that provide effective community engagement with rural and Alaska Native communities. While it was intended to be a temporary committee, the council opted to expand its membership and retain it as a standing committee.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

North Pacific Council’s New Public Comment Policy Triggers Intense Reactions

May 6, 2021 — Personal attacks and profanity laced five of the 250 written comments submitted to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council last month on just one of the half dozen issues before the Alaska fisheries management panel. Council staff pulled the comments after they’d been live for a few hours and reached out to each author to ask them to resubmit their comments without the offensive language. Only one did.

The issue was abundance based management (ABM) of halibut in the Bering Sea, where far more halibut is taken as incidental bycatch in bottom trawls than by halibut quota holders with their longline gear, and salmon bycatch in mid-water trawls in an area that has seen precipitous drops in Chinook returns. Public testimony during the meeting was intense but for the most part civil. ABM and bycatch is one of a few lightning-rod issues — like the on-shore/off-shore fight over the Bering Sea/Aleutian Island fisheries and others — that the council has faced in the nearly half century it has managed Alaska’s federal fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Stakeholders worry after profanity prompts federal fisheries council to tighten comment policies

May 6, 2021 — For all the controversy and high-strung emotion that can accompany fisheries decision-making bodies, the federal council that manages fisheries in the North Pacific says it hadn’t ever received public comments with explicit language… until last month.

North Pacific Fishery Management Council members like Bill Twiet said at the council’s April meeting they worried that crude language and personal attacks could prevent people from speaking up.

“We lose collectively — the council loses, but also the council family loses — when people choose not to engage with us because they look at some of that testimony and they think ‘If that’s the cost of speaking up, I don’t want to,’” Tweit explained.

Council members say five of the nearly 600 comments submitted to the council last month contained vulgar language or personal attacks. The council’s executive director says his staff reached out to the commenters and asked them to resubmit, sans swearing. One did.

But those five comments were apparently enough to prompt changes to the council’s written comment policies. That includes a profanity filter, tighter deadlines for submitting comments and some discretionary power for Council staff to move — or remove — off-topic comments.

And that’s prompted outcry from longtime fisheries advocates. The head of the Alaska Longline Fishermen’s Association Linda Behnken says she’s never seen the council move like that: “I mean, never seen them bring something up, take action, boom, done without more opportunity for meaningful engagement.”

Read the full story at KSTK

North Pacific Fishery Management Council Acts to Reduce Threatening Online Comments

May 5, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council has approved changes to its public input process after “instances of profanity or threats” were included in comments at a recent meeting.

The council — the primary entity that manages Alaska’s federal fisheries — made changes that included allowing staff to remove comments that are inconsistent with policy, such as those that use vulgar language, personal attacks, offensive terms, service or product promotions, unsupported accusations, or comments that are not related to fisheries or are off topic.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NOAA Fisheries releases new video looking at environmental conditions in the Gulf of Alaska in 2020

May 4, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

More than 90 researchers and local community members contributed knowledge and information to help NOAA Fisheries scientists generate an ecosystem status report for the Gulf of Alaska ecosystem last year. This new video captures some of the high points of that report.

“We are excited to offer another way of sharing what we learned about ecosystem conditions in the Gulf of Alaska last year,” said Bridget Ferriss, Gulf of Alaska Ecosystem Status Report editor. “This video is a nice complement to our other communications products.”

For decades, scientists at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center have been pulling together data for numerous indicators of ecosystem health including water temperature, plankton abundance, and seabird reproductive success. NOAA Fisheries and other scientists from other organizations monitor these indicators for the four marine ecosystems that surround Alaska–the Aleutian Islands, the Bering Sea, the Gulf of Alaska, and the Arctic.

Every fall, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council sets catch limits for groundfish and crab in federal waters off Alaska for the upcoming fishing year. They base these decisions on scientific research and analysis including fish stock assessments, economic information on the commercial fishery, and these annual ecosystem assessments.

“Ecosystem assessments help us understand the context by explaining, among other things, how changes in the ecosystem might affect present and future abundance of commercially important fish and crab stocks,” said Ferriss.

For each of the Alaska Ecosystem Status Reports, a variety of indicators are evaluated annually. All of this information helps fisheries managers to determine what steps to take to ensure sustainable fish and crab fisheries while preserving the health of the overall ecosystem.

The goal of this video is to communicate our updated summary of ecosystem information beyond the Council, to the broader community.

Read the full release here

Cut off: Council makes sweeping changes on public input

April 30, 2021 — A long with the certainty of death and taxes, fishermen know universally that the council process is a slog. We are often faced with the dual realities that a slow process works to ensure robust stakeholder input as well as sometimes letting fishery oversight slip behind the pace of changing ocean dynamics.

Indeed, by the time a management plan is amended, the council and stakeholders typically get right to work on the next one to address the problems that evolved during the arduous process of making the last one.

Though there are many things one might change about the process, none of them is likely to transform fishery management into that elusive unicorn of efficient bureaucracy.

Earlier this month, however, at the close of its spring meeting, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved faster than I’ve ever witnessed in council history by making a series of rule changes in response to something that happened around that very April meeting. This swift action was taken to address the council’s public comment guidelines based on the quality and apparent abundance of input on halibut and salmon bycatch.

I understand that stakeholder input in a blue-collar industry is not always going to be composed in the same language an office dweller might employ. I also appreciate that social media and casual access to industry leadership may encourage less formal and even occasionally uncomfortably personal commentary. I don’t think it’s appropriate for anyone to submit public comments that include personal attacks, profanity or baseless accusations. And ostensibly, that’s what these new rules aim to curb.

Read the full story at National Fisherman