Saving Seafood

US House Ways and Means leaders request study of China’s IUU imports

December 20, 2019 — Two members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee are seeking the U.S. International Trade Commission to review the economic impact illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing has on American fishermen.

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts), the committee’s chairman, and U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), who chairs the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, wrote to USITC Chairman David Johanson on Thursday, 19 December, to request the study. The lawmakers are seeking to understand the true impact of IUU fishing, including its impact on production and pricing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ed Markey: Plan will spur ‘huge fight’ over offshore energy drilling

January 9, 2018 — BOSTON — The state’s environment, tourism and fishing industry could be threatened by President Donald Trump’s plan to open up more coastal areas to offshore drilling, according to U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, who said the proposal puts “nearly every single mile of coastline in the United States in the crosshairs of an oil spill.”

“Nothing is sacred,” Markey told reporters from the Kennedy Federal Building. “All of the United States is going to be open for the oil industry to be able to drill. That is something that the American people will want to have resolved on the floor of the House and Senate, and that is something that I am going to guarantee him that he will see. This is going to be a huge fight across our country.”

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday announced a proposal that would make more than 90 percent of the national outer continental shelf available for oil and gas exploration. Currently, 94 percent of federal offshore acreage is off-limits, according to the American Petroleum Institute.

The 380-page draft plan includes a note that Gov. Charlie Baker does not “support inclusion of areas adjacent to Massachusetts,” and Attorney General Maura Healey “strongly opposes opening up any of the Atlantic or any other new areas to oil and gas leasing.”

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimates there are 89.9 billion barrels of oil and 327.5 trillion cubic feet of gas that have yet to be discovered on the outer continental shelf, including 4.6 billion barrels of oil and 38.2 cubic feet in the Atlantic portion of the shelf.

According to the American Petroleum Institute, Atlantic oil and natural gas development could deliver $51 billion in new government revenue, nearly 280,000 jobs and 1.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent per day for domestic energy production by 2035.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Lawmakers call lobster ban ‘excessive’ in letter to EU

September 29th, 2016 — Sweden’s push to list live American lobsters as an invasive species and ban their import by the full European Union is “an excessive and unscientific response” that jeopardizes its $125 million lobster trade with Massachusetts, according to Rep. Seth Moulton, Sen. Edward J. Markey and the remainder of the state’s congressional delegation.

In a letter sent today to the EU’s directorate-general for the environment that listed Moulton and Markey as the lead signatories, the Bay State delegation picked up where many North American scientists and fisheries regulators have left off in the escalating international trade tiff.

“Isolated reports of individual American lobsters found in European waters do not constitute the invasion of an alien species,” the delegation wrote to Daniel Calleja Crespo. “This possible designation is not merited because, as indicated in the data provided to the (EU) Scientific Forum by the United States and Canada, there is no evidence that American lobster can reproduce in waters as warm as those of coastal Europe.”

They also insist that the initial Swedish risk assessment, which serves as the basis for the Swedish claim, “failed to demonstrate that interbreeding between European and American lobsters produces fertile offspring” and an “outright ban of the importation of live American lobster to the EU is an excessive and unscientific response.”

The import ban, they argued, would dismantle the $200 million trans-Atlantic lobster trade between Canada and the United States with the 28 members of the EU and severely and negatively impact the Massachusetts lobstermen and lobster sellers who annually send about $125 million worth of live American lobsters to the EU.

A link to the letter can be found here 

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times 

Mass. Governor, Congressional Delegation to Obama Administration: Fund At-Sea Monitoring for New England Fishermen

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — August 20, 2015 — Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and all nine Members of Congress from Massachusetts have called upon the Obama Administration to reverse recent policy decisions and continue the funding of at-sea monitoring for Northeastern fishermen. While the agency currently funds at-sea monitors, fishermen will have to assume the full cost of the program beginning this year, which the industry contends they will be unable to afford.

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and the Chairs and Ranking Members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, Governor Baker and the Massachusetts Congressional delegation expressed “serious concern over recent actions taken by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.” The signatories are especially critical of the agency’s current at-sea monitoring policy, specifically its plan to shift funding of the program from NOAA onto fishermen, noting that such a move could potentially bankrupt the industry.

The Republican Governor and the all-Democratic Congressional delegation have joined forces to criticize the Administration decision and the heavy costs that individual fishermen are likely to incur as a result of this policy, especially in light of the fact that fishermen are still recovering from the federal economic disaster declared by the Commerce Department in 2012.

Citing a NOAA analysis of the transfer, the letter notes that monitors will cost the fishery $2.64 million in the first year alone, and would lead to an estimated 60 percent of the vessels in the fishery operating at a loss. According to the Governor and legislators, this amounts to an “unfunded mandate that could lead to the end of the Northeast Groundfishery as we know it.”

At its June meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council requested that NOAA take administrative actions to “improve the efficiency of the program,” as well as “reduce costs of the [at-sea monitoring program] without compromising compliance” with current laws. In its response to the Council, NOAA rejected these requests, stating that they were not “consistent with current regulatory requirements and statistical standards.”

The Gloucester, Massachusetts-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, which represents a significant percentage of the groundfish fleet, criticized NOAA’s decisions, while coming out in support of efforts by Gov. Baker and Congress to force a change in agency policy.

“The Council has questioned the benefits and the costs to the groundfish fishery of the at-sea monitoring program, and has given their clear directive to the Agency to either suspend or make the existing program more cost effective,” said Jackie Odell, Executive Director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. “All requests made to date have received an astounding ‘no’ from NOAA. The Northeast Seafood Coalition strongly supports the requests made by the Council, Governor Baker and Members of Congress. When is enough, enough?”

In addition to Secretary Pritzker, the letter was sent to Sens. Thad Cochran and Barbara Mikulski, and Reps. Hal Rogers and Nita Lowey. Gov. Baker and Sens. Warren and Markey are joined by Reps. Richard Neal, Jim McGovern, Michael Capuano, Stephen Lynch, Niki Tsongas, William Keating, Joseph Kennedy, Katherine Clark, and Seth Moulton as signatories of the letter.

Read the letter from Gov. Baker and the Massachusetts Congressional delegation

Read the NEFMC’s request to NOAA on at-sea monitoring

Read NOAA’s rejection of the NEMFC’s at-sea monitoring request

 

Baker and Mass. congressional delegation urge federal officials to pay for ground fishing observers

August 19, 2015 — In an effort to reduce the financial burdens on the region’s struggling fishermen, Governor Charlie Baker and the state’s congressional delegation urged federal officials this week to pay for a controversial program that requires observers to monitor fishermen who catch cod, flounder, and other bottom-dwelling fish.

In a letter sent to the secretary of the US Department of Commerce, which oversees the nation’s fishing industry, Baker and the delegation expressed “serious concern” about a decision this year by the National Marine Fisheries Service to require the region’s fishermen to pay for the observer program.

Fishermen insist they can’t afford to pay for the observers, especially after major cuts to their quotas. The Fisheries Service estimates that it costs $710 a day every time an observer accompanies a fisherman to sea, and the agency’s research has suggested that requiring fishermen to cover those costs would cause about 60 percent of their boats to operate at a loss.

“To shift the cost of this ineffective program onto the fishery just as the industry begins to rebuild is not only imprudent, but irresponsible,” Baker and the delegation wrote. “This equates to an unfunded mandate that could lead to the end of the Northeast Groundfish Fishery as we know it.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe