Feb 25
2011
By Richard Gaines Staff Writer
U.S. Sen. John Kerry has put his political weight behind the struggles of the fishing industry in its growing fight for relief from the regulatory, economic and law enforcement policies created and being carried out by the Obama administration.
photo © 2009 Center for American Progress Action Fund | more info (via: Wylio)
Expressing disappointment and frustration at the lack of progress in a year’s struggle dating to the Feb. 24, 2010, national fishermen’s rally in Washington, D.C., Kerry announced plans organize a field hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee — somewhere in Massachusetts, and no later than April.
The hearing would gather testimony for comprehensive legislation aimed at modifying the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the landmark 1976 law that governs America’s fisheries and is credited with achieving sustainable stocks and ending overfishing.
Read the rest of the story here.
Feb 24
2011
WASHINGTON – Feb. 19, 2011 (Saving Seafood) – Amendment #548 to H.R. 1 sponsored by Walter Jones (R-North Carolina) and cosponsored by Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) and Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey) passed the United States House of Representatives on a recorded vote of 259-159 at 1:43 a.m.
The Amendment would prevent funds from being expended by NOAA to enact new limited access fishing programs. The Amendment, if H.R. 1 is passed by the Senate and signed into law, would prevent spending on new catch shares programs.
51 Democrats joined 208 Republicans voting in favor of the Amendment.
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here.
Feb 24
2011
photo © 2009 Mike Baird | more info (via: Wylio)
CBS focuses on excessive fines, abusive enforcement, lack of oversight
By Richard Gaines Staff Writer
A nationally televised report has told the world of the travails of the Gloucester-based fishing industry at the hands of government regulators.
Featuring testimony from longtime port of Gloucester fishermen Bill Lee and Richard Burgess, the CBS News report broadcast Wednesday night marked the first extended network coverage of a struggle that was joined with the start of the Obama administration and has built in intensity for two years
The grievances against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service trace back more than a decade, as the federal Commerce Department inspector general has acknowledged.
The report by CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian covered issues that readers of the Times have been immersed in — stultifying overregulation and vindictive, debilitating law enforcement, which together put small businessmen out of business — but CBS also added a new perspective.
Read the rest of the story here.
Feb 24
2011
photo © 2008 Dion Hinchcliffe | more info (via: Wylio)
The U.S. House has voted to cut off funding for future catch share programs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration policy that opens the door to commodities trading of fishermen’s catch allocations — and a policy already steering control of the fishing industry to larger corporations while driving out smaller, independent boats.
The 259-159 vote early Saturday morning was largely un-lobbied by either fishing industry backers or the Obama administration and its environmental allies, notably the Environmental Defense Fund that developed and has pushed hard for catch share policies.
The vote marked the first time a House of Congress has weighed in on the management regimen, and it looms as a setback for the Obama administration, whose most visible advocate of catch shares is Jane Lubchenco, the embattled NOAA administrator who formerly served as a top board member with Environmental Defense.
While with EDF, she helped organize a disputed scientific justification for catch shares, implying that without them, all food fish would soon be taken.
Feb 17
2011
NOAA Fined One Fisherman $19,000 for Catching About 20 Extra Codfish
By Armen Keteyian
(CBSNews)
For 37 years the waters off the coast of Mass. were a way of life for fishermen Bill Lee. Then, without warning – it all changed.
“NOAA took a career that I enjoyed and put me out of business,” Lee said. “And laughed all the way to the bank.”
NOAA is short for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the federal agency that oversees the $3.9 billion dollar fishing industry.
CBS News chief investigative correspondent Armen Keteyian reports in 2009 NOAA fined Lee $19,000 for catching about 20 extra codfish – nearly three years after he caught them. A fine, he says, that destroyed his one-man operation.
“They just took it away,” Lee said.
Now dozens of New England fishermen charge their livelihood is at risk. Sinking under the weight of 700 pages of confusing federal regulations.
Read the rest of the story here.
Feb 3
2011
Anglers want the plan voided
By Mike Lee
February 2, 2011
Ron Baker, a fishing boat captain out of Point Loma, is opposed to the state’s decision to expand marine protected areas: “It’s going to affect a lot of people, not just sportsfishermen.” Photo by K.C. Alfred
Making good on a pledge, angler advocacy groups have sued the California Fish and Game Commission in an attempt to invalidate a sweeping marine protection plan for Southern California that was adopted by the state in December and another set covering the north Central Coast.
United Anglers of Southern California, the Coastside Fishing Club and San Diego fishing activist Robert Fletcher filed the lawsuit late last week in San Diego Superior Court.
“We think that the process is flawed — they didn’t follow the regulations,” said John Riordan, treasurer for United Anglers. “It’s restricting access to recreational fishermen (and) ocean users.”
Read the rest of the story in the San Diego Union Tribune here.
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Jan 24
2011
John Driscoll/The Times-Standard
Posted: 01/22/2011 01:16:15 AM PST
Tribes and local fishing and environmental groups on Friday repeated their support of a regional proposal for marine reserves along the North Coast before the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture in Eureka.
The hearing comes just prior to the California Fish and Game Commission’s Feb. 2 meeting in Sacramento at which a series of fishing and gathering closures and restrictions along the Humboldt, Del Norte and Mendocino county coastline are expected to be adopted. The regional group that generated a unified proposal for the Marine Life Protection Act Initiative has the support of more than 40 agencies and fishing and environmental organizations. The unified proposal was the first such agreement in the MLPA process in the state.
”I know it was a major achievement, but it doesn’t surprise me,” said committee Chairman Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro at the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors chambers.
Read the rest of the story from the Eureka Times-Standard here.
Jan 24
2011
By Ed Zieralski
Thursday, January 20, 2011
It’s still early, but the arrival of schools of mackerel off northern Baja has fishermen wondering if an early spring bite on yellowtail is in the works.
Fishing for rockfish, lingcod and even an occasional cowcod has been very good in Mexican waters, where the fish are legally caught right now. The rockfish closure in Southern California stretches to the end of February.
Meantime, fishing remains good for long-range boats out of San Diego, and another 300-pound tuna hit the Point Loma waterfront dock on Thursday.
Read the rest of the story from the San Diego Union-Tribune here.
Jan 17
2011
By Ray Hilborn (originally published in Pacific Fishing magazine, Jan. 2011)
Ray Hilborn
Perhaps no image of the impact of fish has captured the public as much as “fishing down food webs.”
The idea is very simple: Fishing begins, quite naturally, on the largest, most valuable fish. Once those are gone, fishermen move down the food webs to smaller, less valuable fish, and so on until the oceans are empty.
As Daniel Pauly, the prime apostle of the concept, has often said, we will soon have nothing to eat but jellyfish and zooplankton soup. This neatly fits the “apocalyptic” narrative that is so beloved by some environmental activists, but like many of these narratives, it is wishful thinking.
Pauly’s original paper, published in 1998, showed that the average fish caught in the world was becoming smaller and ever lower on the food web. This has been one of the most influential papers in the history of fisheries science. The “food web index” has been adopted by the Convention on Biodiversity and other groups as the best indicator of the health of marine ecosystems.
Read the rest here.
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Jan 12
2011
Has overfishing ended? Top US scientist says yes, but fishermen say cost was too high
photo credit: Max Braun
By JAY LINDSAY Associated Press
BOSTON January 8, 2011 (AP)
For the first time in at least a century, U.S. fishermen won’t take too much of any species from the sea, one of the nation’s top fishery scientists says.
The projected end of overfishing comes during a turbulent fishing year that’s seen New England fishermen switch to a radically new management system. But scientist Steve Murawski said that for the first time in written fishing history, which goes back to 1900, “As far as we know, we’ve hit the right levels, which is a milestone.”
Read the rest of the story here.
