Letters: MPA Proposal Off California Is Yet Another End-Around US Commercial Fishery Management

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Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] Opinion by Larry Collins – September 20, 2016

Collins is president of the San Francisco Cab Boat Owners’ Association and vice president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. He also manages the San Francisco Community Fishing Association. Collins’ letter is a response to a proposal by California Representatives Sam Farr and Ted Lieu to establish the California Seamounts and Ridges National Marine Conservation Area Designation and Management Act (HR 5797). The legislation invokes the Antiquities Act to set up an MPA to protect seamounts, ridges and banks in federal waters off the California coastline. This designation is another example of how special interest groups are able to sway federal legislators to protect large swatches of ocean waters at the expense of the commercial fishing industry without sound scientific research. Other commercial fishing groups and their backers have already argued how MPA designations are undermining existing environmental protections already in place under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.  

Dear Seafood News,

Do you know that you own the fish in the sea? Yes, you do.

We call fish a “public trust resource” for a reason. You, as a member of the public, own those fish in the sea, the water they swim in, and the habitats they call home.

I’m a professional seafood harvester. I offer a service by catching fish and making it accessible to you so you can concentrate on other productive endeavors. As part of my job, I comply with a dense set of rules to ensure the sustainability of the service I provide, and of the seafood at your dinner table.

Sustainability is the concept that Mother Nature can provide for us indefinitely, so long as we steward her carefully. In fishermen’s case, stewardship means leaving enough fish in the ocean so I can get them another day, and doing my best to minimize impacts on habitat.

It’s the role of the state and federal governments to make sure I achieve those goals. And together we do a great job of making sure your fisheries are sustainable. Overfishing is virtually non-existent on the West Coast, and the types of gear we’re allowed to use are already tightly regulated to protect habitat features.

So it’s confounding that non-fishermen who would claim to promote the sustainability of your oceans are actually working to shut your fisheries down.

U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Central Coast, recently introduced HR 5797, a bill that would permanently end several forms of fishing at seven ocean ridges and seamounts off the California coast. The justification for the closures is protection of creatures and habitat features on the seafloor.

As a commercial fisherman, I support protecting the environment from human threats that will hurt our shared marine resources. Oil exploration and mineral mining could cause irreparable damage at these sites.

But fishing threats to these seafloor resources are almost nonexistent.

The fishing community uses hooks and nets to harvest your albacore tuna, swordfish and sea bass at these sites. None of those gears come remotely near the ocean floor.

Moreover, bottom trawling, which does involve seafloor contact, is already prohibited at the seamounts.

Congressman Farr’s bill would use the Antiquities Act to permanently end harvesting of your fish at the seamounts. It’s an end-run around the normal fisheries management process, which has been successfully carried out by the Pacific Fishery Management Council for 40 years.

The normal course requires rigorous scientific analysis and public input, procedures that only improve the management fish and how fishermen go about retrieving them.

HR 5797 backers must want to avoid scientists and stakeholders when it comes to taking your fish away from you.
You should know that it’s already hard to bring home your seafood these days. Drought and water politics are decimating your iconic California King salmon. An algal bloom this past year forced the unprecedented closure of your crab fishery.

But while fishermen are going out of business and infrastructure is disappearing, I’ll be the first to tell you that proactively protecting your ocean is the only way to ensure your access to the best, most sustainable seafood in the world.

Our oceans can provide us an unending supply of healthful, sustainable food if we carefully articulate the “what” “how” and “why” we manage these resources.

HR 5797 is not a careful articulation. It’s a robbery by blunt force trauma of fish, family dinners, backyard barbecues and memories that belong to you.

Congressman Farr needs to leave fisheries management to the fisheries managers. It’s the only way to sustain your fish and your ocean into the future.

Larry Collins

Subscribe to SeafoodNews.com 1-732-240-5330  |  Copyright © 2016 Seafoodnews.com

Commentary: Leave fishery management to the pros

Vincent Pham, who owns the Five Star fishing boat, lowers a crab pot to Rudy Ziess, right, at the Santa Cruz Small Craft Harbor . Photo: Kevin Johnson, Santa Cruz Sentinel

Do you know that you own the fish in the sea? Yes, you do.

We call fish a “public trust resource” for a reason. You, as a member of the public, own those fish in the sea, the water they swim in, and the habitats they call home.

I’m a professional seafood harvester. I offer a service by catching fish and making it accessible to you so you can concentrate on other productive endeavors. As part of my job, I comply with a dense set of rules to ensure the sustainability of the service I provide, and of the seafood at your dinner table.

Sustainability is the concept that Mother Nature can provide for us indefinitely, so long as we steward her carefully. In fishermen’s case, stewardship means leaving enough fish in the ocean so I can get them another day, and doing my best to minimize impacts on habitat.

It’s the role of the state and federal governments to make sure I achieve those goals. And together we do a great job of making sure your fisheries are sustainable. Overfishing is virtually non-existent on the West Coast, and the types of gear we’re allowed to use are already tightly regulated to protect habitat features.

So it’s confounding that non-fishermen who would claim to promote the sustainability of your oceans are actually working to shut your fisheries down.

U.S. Rep. Sam Farr, D-Central Coast, recently introduced HR 5797, a bill that would permanently end several forms of fishing at seven ocean ridges and seamounts off the California coast. The justification for the closures is protection of creatures and habitat features on the seafloor.

As a commercial fisherman, I support protecting the environment from human threats that will hurt our shared marine resources. Oil exploration and mineral mining could cause irreparable damage at these sites.

But fishing threats to these seafloor resources are almost nonexistent.

The fishing community uses hooks and nets to harvest your albacore tuna, swordfish and sea bass at these sites. None of those gears come remotely near the ocean floor.

Moreover, bottom trawling, which does involve seafloor contact, is already prohibited at the seamounts.

Congressman Farr’s bill would use the Antiquities Act to permanently end harvesting of your fish at the seamounts. It’s an end-run around the normal fisheries management process, which has been successfully carried out by the Pacific Fishery Management Council for 40 years.

The normal course requires rigorous scientific analysis and public input, procedures that only improve the management fish and how fishermen go about retrieving them.

HR 5797 backers must want to avoid scientists and stakeholders when it comes to taking your fish away from you.

You should know that it’s already hard to bring home your seafood these days. Drought and water politics are decimating your iconic California King salmon. An algal bloom this past year forced the unprecedented closure of your crab fishery.

But while fishermen are going out of business and infrastructure is disappearing, I’ll be the first to tell you that proactively protecting your ocean is the only way to ensure your access to the best, most sustainable seafood in the world.

Our oceans can provide us an unending supply of healthful, sustainable food if we carefully articulate the “what” “how” and “why” we manage these resources.

HR 5797 is not a careful articulation. It’s a robbery by blunt force trauma of fish, family dinners, backyard barbecues and memories that belong to you.

Congressman Farr needs to leave fisheries management to the fisheries managers. It’s the only way to sustain your fish and your ocean into the future.

Larry Collins is president of the San Francisco Cab Boat Owners’ Association and vice president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. He also manages the San Francisco Community Fishing Association.

Read the original post: http://www.eastbaytimes.com/

RELEASE: Ten Years after Magnuson-Stevens Act, U.S. Fisheries are the Best Managed in the World

Washington, D.C. — United States fisheries are the most sustainably managed in the world. Critical legislation has governed federal fisheries for the past four decades, and the enactment of the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act, or MSRA, 10 years ago provided science-based management measures that have maintained the health of the U.S. ocean ecology and economy.

However, it is time to think about what comes next for the U.S. fisheries industry. The Center for American Progress has released a report looking at the successes of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and offering science-based recommendations to maintain and improve the health of U.S. fisheries over the next 10 years. The report was released at an event on the legacy of the MSRA featuring former Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane Lubchenco; Maria Damanaki, global managing director for oceans at the Nature Conservancy; and Margaret Spring, vice president of conservation and science at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

“It is no fluke that U.S. fisheries are among the best managed in the world,” said Michael Conathan, Director of Ocean Policy at CAP and co-author of the report. “The success of our science-based fishery management regime that has evolved over four decades of legislative oversight has made the resource far more sustainable while sustaining coastal economies. Now in the 21st century, federal fisheries face daunting challenges, including ocean warming and acidification stemming from climate change. The MSRA and its predecessors have made U.S. fisheries the healthiest in the world but it is now time to update these efforts to ensure their sustainability into the next century.”

The paper makes the following recommendations:

• Regulators should work to account for changes in fishery dynamics that fishermen around the country are already experiencing as a result of climate change, including ocean acidification and warming.
• Ecosystem-based management should be prioritized as a tool to facilitate a holistic fisheries management.
• To increase accountability and data collection, NOAA should aggressively pursue the development and deployment of electronic monitoring systems for fishing vessels.
• Congress should appropriate additional funding for ocean observation and baseline research to facilitate data collection and stock assessment science.
• Using the MSRA’s strong international provisions, the Obama administration should finalize regulations aimed at curtailing illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing abroad.
• U.S. leaders and government officials should press the International Maritime Organization to expand application of its vessel monitoring and registration standards to include all fishing vessels operating on the high seas.

Click here to read the report.
Click here to watch the live stream of the event.

Will Obama fence off more of the ocean? US fishermen are fearful

U.S. fishing boats that are crewed by undocumented foreign fishermen are docked at Pier 38 in Honolulu, on May 13, 2016. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones)

American fishermen are deeply fearful that the Obama White House could cut them off as early as this week from major fishing areas of the U.S. continental shelf on both coasts, further restricting one of the most highly regulated fishing industries in the world.

At stake are millions of dollars in fishing revenue and hundreds of jobs — and in some parts of the country, the survival of an embattled way of life that has persisted for centuries but is facing environmentalist pressures unlike anything before — and without  the chance for hearings and legislative back-and-forth that U.S. laws normally require.

“This totally affects us, but we don’t know what’s going on,” one fishing boat owner, who asked to remain anonymous, told Fox News. “We are just out of the loop. No one even wants to say what effect it will have.”

“They are throwing all fishermen under the bus, along with their supporting industries” declared Marty Scanlon, a fishing boat owner and member of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries advisory panel on highly migratory fish species in the Atlantic. “They’ve done everything they can to put us out of business.”

What the fishermen fear most is the kind of unilateral action by the White House that they have already seen elsewhere. As part of their ongoing environmental ambitions, the Obama administration’s Council on Environmental Quality, and the president himself, are aggressively interested in creating preservation zones that would ban fishing and other activities within large portions of the 200-mile U.S. “exclusive economic zone” of maritime influence, and just as interested in getting other nations to do so, in their own as well as international waters.

That aim, supported by many important environmental groups, is cited as urgently required for protection against diminishing  biodiversity, overfishing and damage to coral and unique underwater geological features — not to mention the fact that with only a few months remaining in his term, the president sees such sweeping gestures as part of his legacy of achievements, and as the boat owner put it, “the window is narrowing” for the administration to act.

As one result, pressure from lobbying campaigns both for and against new declarations of such no-go zones both along the U.S. northeastern Atlantic coast and the coast of California have been mounting.

So has, apparently, behind-the-scenes maneuvering to get influential Democratic legislators to support such new preservation areas publicly — a tough call, since the affected fishermen are also constituents. So far, many of the Democrats are keeping a low profile.

One exception has been U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut — whose state does not loom as a major fishing center — who earlier this month vocally nominated  an area he called the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts for preservation status.

Blumenthal was backed by some 40 environmental groups — but not by many of his neighboring Democratic Senate colleagues. Fox News emails to a number of  Democratic Senate offices regarding the issue went unacknowledged prior to this story’s publication.

A more specific  trigger for  the nervousness in fishing communities  is  the upcoming September 15 start of a two-day, State Department  — sponsored Our Ocean conference, which  has among other ambitions the extension of  marine preserves across greater areas of the world’s oceans.

More than 35 foreign ministers of various countries are expected to attend, and according to  a State Department official,  build on previous meetings that garnered international pledges of nearly $4 billion for ocean “conservation activities” globally, and also pledged to “safeguard nearly 6 million square kilometers” — 2.3 million square miles — “of ocean in Marine Protected Areas” — essentially, natural parks for marine life.

As the fishermen are well aware, two years ago President Obama dramatically kick-started the first-ever Our Ocean session by expanding the Remote Islands Marine National Monument by about 600 percent. He created a 140,000 square mile marine protected area northwest of the Hawaiian islands in which all commercial fishing and deep sea mining was banned.

Last month, Obama upped the ante once more. He expanded  the  Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, a protected area west and north of his native state, to the edges of the U.S. 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The latest move created  a 582,578 square mile preserve that is about double the size of Texas and West Virginia combined — and roughly a quarter of all the protected waters that the State Department claims its Our Ocean conference process has so far achieved.

According to Kitty Simonds, executive director of the Western Pacific Fishery Management Council — a joint federal, state and private sector agency set up under U.S. law to prevent overfishing and manage fisheries stocks in that region — “someone sent us an embargoed press release” about the latest expansion a day before the announcement was made public.

Simonds, whose agency had previously called for a “public, transparent, deliberative, documented and science-based process” in advance of the proposed monument expansion, called it “unbelievable that the government is kicking U.S. fishermen out of U.S. waters when the fishery is healthy.” Simonds and a coalition of local supporters are willing to live with the expanded preserve so long as it still allowed fishing under the supervision of the existing management authorities.

Otherwise, she says, the restriction would force U.S. fishing vessels — about 145 of them — into international waters to make their catches, where they would compete against fleets from China, South Korea and Indonesia, among others, “that have lower fishing standards.” The move would also, she charged, increase fish imports — currently about 92 percent of consumption — rather than lower demand for seafood.

The fishermen point out that in terms of many larger food fish, such as tuna, the preserve areas are meaningless. The bigger fish roam oceans worldwide, and the long-line equipment used to catch them does not damage coral reefs or the fragile ocean bottom.

The monument designation also over-rode a 40-year-old, federally legislated process of managing fish stocks in all U.S. waters by means of fishery management councils like the Western Pacific agency. Eight councils were established around the country to manage fishing resources under legislation now known as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act after its congressional sponsors.

The councils are hardly passive when it comes to conservation issues, and have prohibited a variety of restrictive fishing practices, as well as placing monitors on board fishing vessels to make sure catch rules are enforced.

Nonetheless, they did not speak to the kind of sweeping, surface-to-sea-bottom environmental protections, including for coral formations and deep sea habitats, that the marine preserve supporters, including President Obama had sought — even though opponents argue that fisheries management councils have even taken such issues as coral protection into consideration.

Just as in the administration’s 2014 action, the recent Pacific expansion announcement preceded an international meeting, this time with Pacific island leaders alongside the world congress of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), one of the world’s most prestigious environmental organizations.

Obama attended the Honolulu session and told his audience at the start of the IUCN meeting that “Teddy Roosevelt gets the credit for starting the National Parks system, but when you include a big chunk of the Pacific Ocean, we now have actually done more acreage than any other president.”

What worries the fishermen is Obama’s Big Stick — the American Antiquities Act of 1906, a statute signed into law by Teddy Roosevelt that allows the president by decree to set aside “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest.”

George W. Bush first used the act to set aside Pacific marine preserves related to World War II. But Barack Obama has used it at sea to create much more vast environmental sanctuaries, an approach widely advocated at home and internationally by major non-profit organizations like the Pew Charitable Trusts and the National Resources Defense Council.

The point of the upcoming Our Ocean meeting is to push those oceanic priorities even further, not only in terms of marine preservation areas but in expansive measures to combat illegal fishing, clean up pollution — including masses of ocean debris — and create further partnerships, both public and private, to carry on the effort.

CLICK HERE FOR THE MEETING WEBSITE

As the conference website declares:  “The world has agreed [via the United Nations-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals] to a target of conserving at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas, including through effectively managed protected areas, by 2020.  Through the Our Ocean conferences, we seek to help achieve and even surpass this goal.”

About specific additional maritime preserves, however, a State Department official queried by Fox News on the issue remained closed-mouthed.

“Many nations will be making announcements at the conference related to MPAs,” he said. “I do not have specific information about those at this time.”

The hush-hush also covers the past. An interactive map on the Our Ocean conference website promises to show “the impact of prior commitments,” on the world’s oceans, but revealed nothing at the time this story was published.

Read the original story: http://www.foxnews.com/

‘Son of Blob’ springs to life in the Pacific

NOAA GRAPHIC – Satellite monitoring on Sept. 10 found a huge area of much warmer than normal surface temperatures in the Northeast Pacific Ocean.

LONG BEACH — The Blob, a news-making patch of unusually warm ocean surface water from late-2013 through autumn 2015, was reborn this month.

The ocean warmed quickly. As recently as July, “The northeast Pacific off our coast was slightly above normal, but nothing exceptional,” University of Washington meteorologist Cliff Mass noted Sunday on his popular blog.

By Sept. 10, some limited areas of the nearby Pacific were 5.4 to 7.2 degrees F above normal, Mass noted, while satellite monitoring shows an enormous zone of overall warmth extending west from the coasts of Washington and Oregon, north to Alaska.

News about the birth of this “Son of Blob” comes just as climate experts have officially declared this will not be a La Niña winter. The flip side of more-famous El Niño conditions that influenced the winter of 2015-16, La Niña is a pattern of unusually cold surface waters in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It tends to result in wetter and cooler winter conditions here in the Pacific Northwest.

On Sept. 22, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will issue its new 30- and 90-day long-range forecasts, and will try to determine how the Son of Blob will influence our weather in a winter with neutral El Niño/La Niña conditions. The short-term forecast for this week is for warm and generally pleasant late-summer weather on the coast, but critical fire weather conditions for parts of the interior.

The original Blob

A result of a persistent zone of high atmospheric pressure in our part of the Pacific, the original Blob created “highly unusual weather,” according to Washington State Climatologist Nick Bond.

Ocean conditions made their way onto dry land in the form of drought and record temperatures — “2015 was by far the warmest year we’ve had in the Cascades” and “Oct. 1, 2014 through September 2015 [was a time of] record warmth in much of the Northwest,” Bond said at the 2016 Pacific County Marine Science Conference in Long Beach on May 21. Widespread forest fires and possibly the largest documented seabird mortality event in world history were linked to the 2013-15 Blob.

Mass said Sunday that experimental modeling he conducted found a modest 1 to 2 degrees F increase in land temperatures from the Blob. But even that amount of additional warmth can have a noticeable impact on snowpack and other terrestrial conditions in the Pacific Northwest.

Read the original post: http://www.chinookobserver.com/

U.S. Seafood Producers to White House: Don’t Harm Fisheries for Ocean Monuments

WASHINGTON (NCFC) – September 12, 2016 – Today, in advance of the “Our Oceans” conference being held later this week at the State Department, the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC) delivered a letter to the White House calling on the President to refrain from designating new marine monuments under the Antiquities Act. Copies of the letter were also delivered to the offices of Senators representing the states of the signers.

The letter, with over 900 fishing industry signers and supported by 35 fishing organizations that represent the majority of domestic seafood harvesters, instead urges the President to conserve marine resources through the federal fisheries management process established by the bipartisan Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Management Act (MSA).

“The federal fisheries management process is among the most effective systems for managing living marine resources in the world,” the letter states. “The misuse of the Antiquities Act to create a marine monument is a repudiation of the past and ongoing efforts of almost everyone involved to continue to make Magnuson-Stevens management even more effective.”

The NCFC members join an ever-growing list of fishing organizations and individuals opposing new ocean monuments via use of the Antiquities Act. TheAtlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the Council Coordination Committee, and over two dozen individual fish and seafood industry trade organizations have previously written to the White House asking for the MSA continue to guide fisheries management.

Mayors from major East and West coast ports have previously expressed their concerns with monument designations in letters to the White House. NCFC members have also spoke out in opposition to designating a monument off the coast of New England, which would hurt the valuable red crab, swordfish, tuna, and offshore lobster fisheries.

Today’s letter was signed by the following fishing organizations:

• Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers
• American Scallop Association
• American Albacore Fisheries Association
• At-Sea Processors Association
• Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Association
• Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association
• California Fisheries and Seafood Institute
• California Lobster & Trap Fishermen’s Association
• California Sea Urchin Commission
• California Wetfish Producers Association
• Coalition of Coastal Fisheries
• Coos Bay Trawlers
• Directed Sustainable Fisheries
• Fisheries Survival Fund
• Fishermen’s Dock Co-Op
• Garden State Seafood Association
• Golden King Crab Coalition
• Groundfish Forum
• Hawaii Longline Association
• Long Island Commercial Fishing Association
• Midwater Trawlers Cooperative
• National Fisheries Institute
• North Carolina Fisheries Association
• Oregon Trawl Commission
• Organized Fishermen of Florida
• Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
• Pacific Seafood Processors Association
• Pacific Whiting Conservation Cooperative
• Southeastern Fisheries Association
• Sustainable Fisheries Coalition
• United Catcher Boats
• Ventura County Commercial Fishermen’s Association
• Washington Trollers Association
• West Coast Seafood Processors Association
• Western Fishboat Owners Association

Download/read the letter here [PDF]

Pacific Council outlines offshore monument concerns in letter to White House

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — September 7, 2016 — Last Thursday, the Pacific Fishery Management Council (Pacific Council) sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing concern over the impact of proposed offshore marine monument designations on sustainable West Coast fisheries.

In the letter, Pacific Council executive director Charles A. Tracy emphasized the transparent and public fisheries management process already in place under the Pacific Council, one of the eight regional management councils established by the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA).

Through the Pacific Council’s essential fish habitat (EFH) process, nine of the eleven areas proposed for monument designation are already closed to bottom trawl fishing, Mr. Tracy wrote. In total, over 130,000 square miles of seafloor off the U.S. West Coast are closed to groundfish bottom trawling due to EFH provisions. Additionally, the two other areas proposed for monument designation are within the Cowcod Conservation Area West, and are therefore closed to all groundfish fishing in areas deeper than 20 fathoms.

“The fishing industry has sacrificed much to achieve [fish stock] rebuilding goals, to minimize impacts with protected or non-target species, and to ensure sustainable fisheries,” Mr. Tracy noted.

The Council also pointed out the potential unintended consequences of closing U.S. fisheries, including loss of American jobs and greater dependence on seafood imported from countries with illegal fishing.

“Displacing domestic fisheries costs U.S. jobs and increases reliance on foreign fisheries, which in many cases are less sustainably managed than U.S. fisheries, and many of which contribute to illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, a point of emphasis for your Administration,” Mr. Tracy wrote.

Attached to the Pacific Council’s letter was a letter from the Council Coordination Committee, comprised of senior leaders from all eight regional fishery management councils, voicing concern over the use of the Antiquities Act to designate marine monuments.

“We are concerned that authorities such as the Antiquities Act of 1906 do not explicitly require a robust public process or science-based environmental analyses,” the Councils wrote. “We believe fisheries management decisions should be made using the robust process established by the MSA and successfully used for over forty years.”

Download to read the letter and attachments here – [PDF]