Saving Seafood

New England fishing council frozen until NOAA, judge done with Rafael

September 27, 2017 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — There is no shortage of changes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration could make to the way catch limits are regulated and enforced in the Gulf of Maine in the wake of the Carlos Rafael’s sentencing on Monday. But first it will take recommendations from the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), and the 17-member panel this week put off staking out a position.

There is not yet a consensus in the group, which will wait to see how US District Court Judge William Young handles an argument over how much of Rafael’s fishing fleet will be seized by the federal government and what, if any, civil money penalties come from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration before addressing the issue, said  John Quinn, NEFMC’s chairman.

“We’ve got a regulation in place and we’ve first got to see what and how that regulation is applied,” Quinn told Undercurrent News on Tuesday, during a break in the first day of the group’s three-day regular meeting at a hotel on the water here.

Young gave Rafael a 46-month prison sentence and ordered him to pay more than $300,000 in fines and penalties in a Boston federal court for misreporting nearly 783,000 pounds of fish between 2012 and early 2016, but he said he needed more time to consider the arguments made by prosecutors and Rafael’s defense team regarding an effort to seize his assets.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Despite parent company’s woes, National Seafood turns a profit

October 3, 2016 — The bankruptcy proceedings involving international seafood processing giant Pacific Andes International Holdings has pulled back the curtain on the performance of its Gloucester-based subsidiary, National Fish & Seafood.

Quoting filings in Pacific Andes’ Chapter 11 bankruptcy case in New York, the Undercurrent News website reported that National Fish, normally mute on all matters related to its financial performance, turned a $1.28 million profit on revenues of $115 million for the six-month period that ended March 31.

That appears to be a marked improvement over the seafood processing subsidiary’s performance in the year that ended Sept. 28, 2015, when National Fish reported a similar profit of $1.27 million on revenues of $252.7 million for the entire 12-month period.

To date, National Fish, which processes and markets more than 40,000 tons of frozen seafood annually at its East Main Street facility under the National Fish, Matlaw’s and Schooner brands, has remained above the bankruptcy fray even as Pacific Andes has explored selling off other subsidiaries to pay creditors.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

State Department: Amid impasse, US could withdraw from Pacific tuna treaty

January 7, 2016 — Though there appears to be no immediate end in sight to a dispute over unpaid fees for fishing access that has seen the US tuna fleet grounded in the Pacific, one thing is clear: the parties involved agree that the existing treaty should be renegotiated in favor of a more flexible, permanent solution.

In statements to Undercurrent News, US State Department and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA), which manages access to the tuna fishery, both said they see serious issues with the existing system and would like to see reforms to the South Pacific Tuna Treaty.

“Longer-term, we are increasingly concerned about whether the treaty can remain operationally viable and believe a new approach is required,” a State Department spokeswoman wrote in a statement to Undercurrent.

She added that the US has told the PNA that it is weighing a pull out from the existing arrangement.

“The United States previously informed Pacific island parties that it was considering the possibility of withdrawal from the treaty as the terms offered in negotiations continued to deteriorate and commercial differences threatened to negatively affect our positive cooperation with the region,” the spokeswoman said.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

EU fishing sector accuses Pew of knowingly publishing misinformation

November 19, 2015 — The following is an excerpt from a story originally published on November 18 by Undercurrent News:

European fisheries industry body Europeche has issued an open letter to Pew Charitable Trusts, warning that statements which are “demonstrably untrue and contrary to scientific opinion” can cause damage.

Javier Garat, Europeche president, pointed to the Pew report ‘Turning the Tide: Ending

Overfishing in North Western Europe’ as containing such misleading inofrmation.

The report makes the assertion that:

  • Fishing in recent decades, in pursuit of food and profit, off North West Europe has dramatically expanded
  • Calls by scientists and environmentalists to reduce fishing pressure have been ignored
  • Many fish stocks collapsed throughout the region
  • The reformed CFP should prove a successful first step in restoring and maintaining the health of the fisheries and fish stocks

The unambiguous view of the scientific community has been clearly stated, most recently at the State of the Stocks Seminar in Brussels, said Garat, quoting Eskild Kirkegaard, chair of the ICES advisory committee:

“Over the last ten to fifteen years, we have seen a general decline in fishing mortality in the Northeast Atlantic and the Baltic Sea. The stocks have reacted positively to the reduced exploitation and we’re observing growing trends in stock sizes for most of the commercially important stocks.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News