Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: $63.5K to help reshape Gloucester’s fish industry

December 20, 2018 — When the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund was established in 2007, the Gloucester fleet already had transitioned away from its sizeable offshore groundfish fleet to a largely inshore fleet dependent on cod and other groundfish species in the Gulf of Maine.

More than a decade later, the demise of the Gloucester inshore fleet continues, fueled by regulation, environmental restrictions and the simple demographics of an aging and declining workforce.

“The aging-out of the fleet and attrition have really taken a toll,” said Vito Giacalone, GFCPF executive director. “We’ve now experienced two generations of fishermen who saw no value in continuing to fish.”

The seascape has changed dramatically and now the GFCPF, best known as a source for preserving and leasing permit privileges to Gloucester fishing vessels, is looking toward the future and its role in helping reshape the Gloucester fishing community.

The non-profit organization, with the assistance of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, became one of seven organizations in the country this week to receive fisheries innovation grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishing industry wins EPA exemption for deck wash

December 11, 2018 — Gloucester fishermen and their contemporaries across the nation, following years of uncertainty, finally caught a break in the new federal law regulating incidental deck discharges from fishing vessels.

A provision within the new Vessel Incidental Discharge Act, signed into law last week by President Donald Trump as part of an omnibus Coast Guard bill, exempts commercial fishing vessels of all sizes and other vessels up to 79 feet in length from having to obtain a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency to cover incidental deck wash.

“Specifically, discharges incidental to the normal operation, except for ballast water, from small vessels (i.e., less than 79 feet in length) and commercial fishing vessels of all sizes no longer require National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit coverage,” the EPA said in its statement about the new law. “Thus, permit coverage for any vessel covered under the (Small Vessel General Permit) is automatically terminated.”

Commercial fishermen have operated under a series of temporary exemptions since the initial regulations were enacted in 2009 for commercial non-fishing vessels. But if forced to comply with the existing regulations, fishing vessels larger than 79 feet would have faced regulations dealing with 27 different types of discharges — including routine discharges such as deck wash, fish hold effluent and greywater.

The permanent exemption, according to industry stakeholders, removes an impediment that might have economically sunk commercial fishing nationwide.

“It could have killed the industry,” said Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, which worked with Washington-based consultant Glenn Delaney to help build a network of commercial fishing interests to change to obtain the permanent exemption. “It’s been a ticking time bomb for the entire fishing industry in the U.S. This is such a game-changer.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA leader looks to cultivate culture of collaboration

March 1, 2018 — As debuts go, Mike Pentony’s first day on the job as the regional director for NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office was a corker.

The federal government marked his ascension on Jan. 22 as only the federal government can — shutting down all but the most essential government services as a consequence of the usual congressional mumbley-peg.

“My first action was to come in and proceed with the orderly shutdown of government operations,” Pentony said recently during an interview in the corner office on the uppermost floor of GARFO headquarters in Gloucester’s Blackburn Industrial Park.

The respite was short-lived. The shutdown lasted a day. When it was over, the 53-year-old Pentony began his new job in earnest as the leader of the regional agency that manages some of the most historically productive — and at times contentious — fisheries in the United States.

It is, as his successor John K. Bullard would attest, a monumental task, working on a canvas that stretches geographically along the Eastern seaboard from Maine to North Carolina and west to the Great Lakes.

But the geographical sweep pales in comparison to the scope and density of the regulations Pentony is charged with enforcing.

There is the crisis of cod in the Gulf of Maine, the alarming demise of the North Atlantic right whales, the malfeasance of cheaters such as New Bedford fishing kingpin Carlos Rafael and a myriad of other issues that affect every fishing community within his purview.

There is incessant wrangling over habitat protections, the usual tug-of-war between environmentalists and conservationists on one side and fishermen on the other. It is a drama with a disparate cast of characters and Pentony is convinced the only way to address extraordinarily intricate problems — usually requiring even more intricate responses — is by forging a collaborative spirit.

“I want to try to develop a culture, not just within GARFO and the agency, but within the region, both mid-Atlantic and New England, where we’re all partners with a collective goal of healthy fisheries and healthy fishing communities.” Pentony said. “The problems and challenges are so huge that we’re only stronger if we’re working together.”

He also understands, given the varying degrees of conflict that exist among fisheries stakeholders, that achieving that collaboration will be far more difficult than contemplating its benefits.

“There’s always going to be people that find it easier to stand outside the circle and throw stones than to get inside the circle and work,” Pentony said. “If they stand outside the circle and just shout about how everything is wrong, that generally doesn’t do much to solve the problem.”

Campaign of engagement

Pentony served under Bullard as assistant regional administrator for sustainable fisheries starting in 2014. He was asked what advice his predecessor gave him.

“He told me there are a lot of people cheering and hoping for your success,” Pentony said. “Not just me personally, but if I’m successful, then the regional office can be successful and the agency can be successful. And if you tie that success to our mission, then our success would mean healthy, sustainable fisheries, healthy and sustainable resources and healthy and sustainable fishing communities.”

Pentony made his fishery management bones as a staff member at the New England Fishery Management Council prior to joining NOAA Fisheries in 2002. That experience, he said, instilled in him a solid faith in the ability of the council system to ultimately arrive at the best decision once all implications are considered.

“I’ve been involved with the council process for 20 years,” Pentony said. “It’s not perfect. But I have a ton of respect for the work and effort council members put into being informed and working through what I think is unique in the federal regulatory process. We have this incredibly unique process that engages stakeholders.”

Pentony didn’t even wait for his first official day in the big chair to begin his own campaign of engagement.

The Friday before his official starting date, he traveled to the Yankee Fishermen’s Cooperative in Seabrook, New Hampshire, to meet with David Goethel — a frequent critic of NOAA Fisheries — and other New Hampshire fishermen to give them a sense of how he plans to approach the job.

Later that day, he had lunch in Gloucester with Vito Giacalone and Jackie Odell of the Northeast Seafood Coalition. He’s also traveled to Maine to breakfast with Maggie Raymond of the Associated Fisheries of Maine and met with New Jersey fishing companies and processors while in the Garden State on personal business.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Something fishy in the quotas?

September 8, 2017 — There hasn’t been a large enough quota for fishermen to intentionally catch cod for four years, said Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, which contends the federal limits on groundfish such as cod and flounder contradict what commercial fishermen are finding. The coalition has launched an effort to have input into the research done by the federal government as it sets the regulations.

“We’ve been seeing it for the past two decades, but more so in the past seven or eight years, especially on the [flounder and cod],” Giacalone said. “What we’ve seen in the last seven or eight years is that you can catch any fish you want at any time. That’s how available it is. So, we’re certain that the government estimates are wrong.”

Giacalone noted that scientists have a huge area to cover, and variables such as fish behavior — sometimes swimming near the top, sometimes the bottom, or abandoning certain geographic areas that are still included in the surveys — can influence the results.

The management plans are written by the New England Fishery Management Council in Newburyport, with input from several sources, including stock assessments from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. The assessments include surveys and catch and discard numbers from the commercial fishing industry, said Teri Frady, spokeswoman for the center.

The Northeast Seafood Coalition wants to play a bigger role by providing more information from the field. To do so, it is fund-raising to hire independent scientists to develop a method of collecting information that could be shared with government officials to develop more accurate assessments of species numbers.

“What [the regulators] should be doing is using the industry’s data to come up with a relative abundance index,” Giacalone said. “We realize it’s difficult because it has to be standardized, [and] it has to be unbiased. But until they admit that they could be getting it wrong, by a lot, they’re never going to put that work in. What the coalition is trying to do is shine a light on that.”

Frady said the NOAA center in Woods Hole is interested in any input.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Despite guilty plea, Carlos Rafael continues to fish

August 14, 2017 — Gloucester fisherman and vessel owner Vito Giacalone is the chairman of governmental affairs, and sits on the board of directors of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, the umbrella organization that oversees a dozen sectors, including Rafael’s. Up until 2016, Rafael was also a coalition board member.

Giacalone believed that Rafael was simply too big to be allowed to fail, that his sector worked with NOAA to enact changes — including bringing in new board members and a new enforcement committee — that allowed them to stay in business.

Rafael’s vessels control considerable groundfish quota, up to 75 percent of what New Bedford holds, according to New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, and Rafael has said he has 280 employees.

“You don’t have to be too imaginative to see that that is an enormous collateral impact as soon as that operation is stopped in its tracks,” Giacalone said, estimating that as many as 80 fishermen would be immediately out of work.

“I wish Carlos Rafael had thought about that before he did what did,” said Hank Soule, manager of the Sustainable Harvest Sector in South Berwick, Maine.  “The bottom line is New Bedford is the richest port in the U.S. The loss of his groundfish boats won’t devastate the port.”

NOAA is reportedly working with Rafael’s legal team on an agreement that would have him selling off his vessels and permits and leaving fishing forever, including scallop and lobster vessels not involved in the fish smuggling scheme.

At least 13 vessels are scheduled to be forfeited to the government as part of the plea deal and Giacalone thinks NOAA may be trying to maintain the value of the assets by keeping them fishing.

“I think it would be clumsy of the sector to cause collateral damage that could be excessive to innocent third parties,” Giacalone said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

What’s Happening To Cod In New England?

April 4, 2017 — Cod stocks in New England are at an historic low, down 80 percent from a decade ago, according to new data from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

Those findings are contested by some in the fishing community.

Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition in Gloucester, said, “Everyone that fishes the Gulf of Maine, amateur fishermen that go out for the first time — no one can believe that someone can actually say that this cod stock is not in good shape.”

Listen to the interview at WBUR

In boon for Gloucester fleet, flounder limits doubled

January 26, 2017 — In a victory for the local inshore dayboat fleet, fishing regulators on Wednesday approved new specifications for witch flounder that will nearly double the annual catch limit for the species in 2017.

Meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the New England Fishery Management Council approved an acceptable biological catch of 878 metric tons of witch flounder, also known as grey sole, for 2017. When adjusted for management uncertainty, the move will result in a 2017 annual catch limit of 839 metric tons — nearly twice the 2016 annual catch limit of 441 metric tons.

“I think the council was compelled by the industry’s own observation that we have a pretty strong witch flounder stock,” said Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition.

The council action on witch flounder should provide a significant boost to the local dayboat fleet and the fortunes of the fishermen that are immutably tied to the stock.

“It’s huge,” Giacalone said. “Everybody who is left fishes for it. The inshore dayboat fleet is almost entirely dependent on this stock.”

The spike in the 2017 annual catch limit should provide a double-edged benefit, according to Giacalone.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

President Obama Will Not Designate Cashes Ledge as a National Monument

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — March 25, 2016 — Earlier today, a spokesperson for the White House Council on Environmental Quality told the Associated Press that Cashes Ledge is “not under consideration for a [national monument] designation at this time.” According to attendees at meetings held yesterday in Massachusetts, Christy Goldfuss, Managing Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, stated, “Based on feedback we received, we are not considering Cashes Ledge for any kind of action at this time.” Located approximately 80 miles offshore in the Gulf of Maine, Cashes serves an important and historic area that has been fished commercially and recreationally for decades.

The Northeast Seafood Coalition and Associated Fisheries of Maine noted in a joint statement that, “Consideration of National Monument designations in the offshore Canyon areas of Southern New England remains ongoing, and affected fishermen should remain vigilant in assuring that any concerns they may have are addressed.”  Fishing interests including the Atlantic red crab fishery, offshore lobster fishery, squid, mackerel, butterfish, tilefish, albacore wahoo,dolphinfish (mahi mahi), and others have interests in areas that remain on the table. Pelagic longline, rod and reel and greenstick fisheries including yellowfin tuna, bluefin tuna, bigeye tuna and swordfish could also be affected.

The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) is in the midst of an ongoing process working with fishing, environmental and scientific interests to protect deep sea coral and other important sea bottom attributes in the Northeast Canyons. NEFMC executive director Tom Nies told Saving Seafood, “The Council’s recommendations to protect Cashes Ledge are still being reviewed as part of our Omnibus Habitat Amendment. The Council has not taken a position on any of the monument proposals that have been circulated, but the meeting in Boston did give us the opportunity to explain our deep-sea coral amendment process directly to Ms. Goldfuss. We are very pleased that CEQ traveled to New England to give us this opportunity. I think the industry and state representatives present also appreciated this face-to-face meeting and we all look forward to a continuing dialogue.”

In response to the announcement, Terry Alexander, President, Associated Fisheries of Maine said, “Commercial fishermen in New England face continuous regulatory uncertainty, so it is a relief to know that there is one less restriction on fishing to worry about. We believe that the President was persuaded by a lack of scientific information to support such a designation, as well as the position expressed by stakeholders that decisions about closing areas to fishing should take place under the process outlined in the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).”

Vito Giacalone, Chair of Governmental Affairs for the Northeast Seafood Coalition said, “We are relieved by the President’s decision to forego a National Monument designation on Cashes Ledge, As stakeholders who participated in a lengthy, thorough and transparent public process to identify and protect important marine habitats such as Cashes Ledge, we are grateful and pleased to hear that the MSA process we all followed has been acknowledged and respected by the Obama Administration. We are sincerely grateful that the President, after gathering all pertinent facts, saw that the use of Executive Order was unnecessary in light of the process that has already taken place through the New England Fisheries Management Council.

The American Antiquities Act of 1906 provides authority for the President to declare national monuments by public proclamation on lands owned or controlled by the Government of the United States, but fishing representives attending the meeting expressed concern that establishing an Atlantic marine monument usurps the public, inclusive Council/NMFS processes already undertaken and ongoing.

While the process in New England is ongoing, similar processes in the Mid-Atlantic were praised by environmental groups. For their efforts Garden State Seafood Association (GSSA) Executive Director Greg DiDomenico and Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council (MAFMC) Chairman Rich Robbins were lauded last September as as Conservation Leaders by the New York Aquarium. In October, the two men were honored again together with GSSA president Ernie Panacek as Regional Ocean Champions by the Urban Coast Institute at Monmouth University. “The process in the Mid-Atlantic should be the model for developing targeted habitat protection in New England,” said Mr. DiDomenico. “An open, collaborative process is the best way to build on these efforts.”

Proposed fishing framework: Something for everyone to hate

March 23, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries has opened the public comment period for the proposed management rule that includes withering cuts to several groundfish species and reductions in the overall level of at-sea monitoring (ASM) coverage for the beleaguered groundfish fleet.

It seems the proposed rule, also known as Framework 55, has a little bit of something for everyone to hate. They have until close of business on April 5 to submit their comments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Environmental groups, such as Oceana, are bitterly criticizing the projected reduction in ASM for groundfish boats to about 14 percent from about 24 percent, saying the rule will “weaken the chances of recovery for this historic fishery.”

Fishermen point to the further reductions in what they already consider minuscule catch quotas and say those reductions — combined with the absorption of the costs for ASM — could finally be the management initiative that shutters the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery for good.

Savage quota cuts

The catch limits, set by the NOAA Fisheries for the 2016 fishing season that begins May 1, include savage cuts to the annual catch limits for gray sole (55 percent), Georges Bank cod (66 percent), northern windowpane flounder (33 percent) and Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder (26 percent).

“We will not have a fishery as we know it anymore,” Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said on Tuesday. “In fact, I think you can already make the case that we don’t have a fishery you can recognize now compared to any period in the past.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A National Marine Monument for New England? Maritime Gloucester Talk

March 23, 2016 — A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action. A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times. Recorded at Maritime Gloucester on 3/3/2016

Watch the full video at Cape Ann TV