December 31 – The New England Fishery Mismanagement Council - December 20th’s Council meeting in Wakefield, MA, was another excruciating chapter in the tragedy of New England groundfish management. This is not the fishermen’s resource; these are not the fishermen’s fish. This is the public’s resource: yours and mine. It is understandable that fishermen were angry at the meeting because their business world is a mess and getting worse. But conservationists and the general public should be getting just as angry, because their public resources are being plundered and pillaged while no one is being held accountable.
January 1 – Talking Fish’s Look Back at 2012 - A look back at the big stories in fisheries management this year and Talking Fish’s most-read posts of 2012.
January 4 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 4 - This week in Fish Talk in the News, the Senate approves Sandy relief but the House avoids a vote, causing outrage; the 112th Congress concludes with the departure of lawmakers active on fisheries issues; the industry responds to NOAA’s report on the multispecies fishery in 2011; debate continues on groundfish closed areas.
December 18 – There’s No Place Like Home for the Holidays – After being declared a “fishery disaster,” changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary seems counterintuitive to ever devising a long-term strategy that could help restore groundfish populations in the Gulf of Maine. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase bottom trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?
December 20 – The Bottom Line: Don’t Remove Protection When Cod Need It Most - New England is famous for cod fishing. But the industry is ailing – and the cure being proposed might be worse than the disease. A proposal by regional fisheries managers to reopen areas where groundfish are currently protected is a big step in the wrong direction.
December 21 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, December 21 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, NEFMC opens closed areas and delays decisions on catch limits; ASMFC cuts menhaden catch 20%;NOAA will return $543,500 in fines; Brian Rothschild replaces as head of Marine Fisheries Institute; a Gloucester scallop boat goes missing; warm waters in the Gulf of Maine cause environmental change.
Will you help keep this Atlantic wolffish home for the holidays?
For the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home. “Home” means something different for each wildlife species in their ocean habitat of the Gulf of Maine. For example, animals like the Atlantic wolffish tend to live in rocky areas where they can hide out, guard their eggs and ambush prey. Wolffish depend on this particular type of habitat to live, and other species are just as dependent on other types of habitat. Places such as Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provide rich habitat for highly depleted cod and haddock, sea turtles and four species of whales.
Most of these three areas in the Gulf of Maine currently benefit from fishing regulations which prohibit harmful bottom trawling, but these protections are temporary. With groundfish populations at their lowest recorded levels, some members of the trawling industry are pushing for regulations to increase trawling in the few protected habitat areas in the Gulf of Maine. After being declared a “fishery disaster,” changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary seems counterintuitive to ever devising a long-term strategy that could help restore groundfish populations in the Gulf of Maine. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase bottom trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?
Other New England fishermen, both commercial and recreational, understand the value of protected habitat and how healthy habitat benefits their own interests. In fact, the recreational fishing advisory panel of NEFMC voted in October to retain all current protections for habitat areas. Recreational fishermen and charter captains from Maine to Rhode Island well know that the cod their clients catch in the Gulf of Maine spawn from areas where large bottom trawlers are not allowed. In the words of one recreational fishing captain, “I’m not an advocate of opening any of the closed areas and dead set against the opening of the WGOM (Western Gulf of Maine) area. You’re destroying the livelihood of the recreational boats and you’re allowing the big boats to compete with the little boats.”
Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range 80 miles off the coast of Maine, supports the largest and deepest kelp forest off the Northeastern United States and is home to an enormous diversity of ocean wildlife – from whales, Atlantic wolffish, and blue sharks, to fields of anemones and sponges. This kelp forest provides an important source of food and habitat for a vast array of ocean wildlife. Other places such as Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provide rich habitat for highly depleted cod and haddock, sea turtles, and four species of whales.
Most of these three areas in the Gulf of Maine currently benefit from fishing regulations which prohibit harmful bottom trawling, but these protections are temporary. Some of the largest commercial fishing trawlers in the region are pushing for changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.
After the last cod crisis in the 1990s the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), after a court decree spurred by a CLF legal action, designated Cashes Ledge and an area known as the “Western Gulf of Maine” which holds Jeffreys Ledge and 22% of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, as “mortality closures.” The action restricted destructive trawling, but it allowed a wide array of other commercial fishing gear such as bottom gillnets, purse seines, hook and line and more the questionable practice of “mid-water trawls,” which despite their name, often catch groundfish. Recreational fishing and charter boats were not restricted.
After a new stock assessment released one year ago showed that populations of cod, haddock and other groundfish were at all time lows, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under pressure from some of the largest trawlers in the New England fleet started to hint that allowing bottom trawling in previously protected habitat areas – places like Cashes Ledge – might help to increase falling harvest amounts. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?
The basic fact is that opening scarce protected habitat in the Gulf of Maine to bottom trawling at a time of historically low groundfish populations is among the worst ideas for recovering fish populations and the industry which depend upon them. But fisheries politics in New England remain. On Dec. 20th the NEFMC may take action through a backdoor exemption process to allow bottom trawling in a large portion of Cashes Ledge and other areas. NOAA needs to keep current protections in place. CLF is committed to securing permanent protection to ensure the long-term health of this important and vulnerable ecosystem. Click here to urge NOAA to protect New England ocean habitat and help ensure a healthy future for New England’s ocean.
December 10 – Closed Areas Cautionary Tales Pt. 3 – Something Rotten in Denmark - Previously on Talking Fish we looked at the actions that led to commercial extinction of the cod fishery in some Canadian waters, and the collapse of fish populations in Scottish waters after protected areas were removed. The waters between Denmark and Sweden hold another sobering lesson for New England officials.
December 12 – The Bottom Line: Big Turnout for Little Menhaden - The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has seen a lot in its 70-year history but nothing quite like this. More than 128,000 people flooded the commission’s inboxes with postcards and emails last month, a new record for public comment. Scientists, small business owners, nature lovers, and anglers sent letters and spoke out at public hearings. And it was all about a fish that almost no one ever eats—Atlantic menhaden.
December 14 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, December 14 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, a historic vote on menhaden; NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco steps down; a fishermen argues that the decline of cod stocks contributes to seafood fraud; continued calls for the release of a report on NOAA enforcement; the Senate Appropriations Committee proposes fisheries disaster aid; warming waters threaten Maine clams.
Yesterday, the North Atlantic right whale was only an historical symbol of one consequence associated with the relentless and unsustainable pursuit of energy. Today, it is also a new symbol of renewable energy done the right way. The agreement CLF is announcing today reflects support for the pursuit of renewable energy and also demonstrates that real leadership to change how we pursue energy can come from industry itself.
The pursuit of cheap energy from the 17th century forward hasn’t exactly been what one would call sustainable. From the time the first right whale was killed for its oil to today’s efforts to take and refine oil from the Canadian tar sands, our industries have drawn down limited resources with little regard for the environmental consequences. In fact, the right whale stands as a particularly distressing symbol of our history of exploitation.
The North Atlantic right whale was so-named because it was considered by whalers to be the “right” whale to kill. It was slow, swam close to shore, and was easy to harvest – accommodatingly floating to the surface with a head full of oil after it has been killed. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, the North Atlantic right whale, an animal that according to Herman Melville’s 1851 reflections in Moby Dick “would yield you some 500 gallons of oil or more” in just its lip and tongue, was hunted to the brink of extinction. The relentless pursuit of this limited resource in such an unsustainable way is the reason that today the North Atlantic right whale is considered critically endangered, with fewer than 500 animals remaining.
Despite the right whale’s lesson, our reliance on oil continues. According to the United States Energy Information Administration, the United States consumed a total of 6.87 billion barrels (18.83 million barrels per day) in 2011. Our reliance on exhaustible, limited fossil-fuel resources is causing climate change and setting into motion a series of unavoidable consequences, but still we drill for oil – albeit no longer in the head of a whale.
So while today’s landmark North Atlantic right whale agreement is a collection of voluntary measures designed to provide further protections for the North Atlantic right whale, primarily by reducing or avoiding sound impacts from exploratory activities that developers use to determine where to build wind farms, it is also so much more than that.
The offshore wind developers party to this agreement – Deepwater Wind, NRG Bluewater, and Energy Management, Inc. (owner of Cape Wind) – are willing to go above and beyond because they recognized that more could be done to protect North Atlantic right whales in the pursuit of energy. These developers’ willingness, and indeed enthusiasm, for protecting the whales reflects a new way of thinking – a 180-degree turnaround from the way other companies viewed energy generation over the last century and a half. Instead of treating the natural world as an adversary to be exploited and consumed, these companies recognize that we can accommodate natural systems (like the whales’ migratory patterns and feeding grounds), that we can avoid extracting limited resources, that we don’t have to burn fuels that exacerbate climate change, and that we can still produce the energy to fuel modern society. Now that’s the right way.
Those who say coordinated and collaborative ocean management can’t be done have yet to see the world through Karen Meyer’s eyes. Karen is the Executive Director of Green Fire Productions and the director and producer of Ocean Frontiers. This groundbreaking movie showcases the real-life experiences of fishermen, conservationists, energy companies, shipping interests, farmers, and local community leaders in four areas of the country who worked together to improve ocean health and the management of our oceans and coasts:
Recognizing that their fishing grounds were in jeopardy if they didn’t start planning better, the community of Port Orford, Oregon,united to create a unique Community Stewardship Area that encompasses not only their fishing grounds, but also the upland watersheds that drain into them.
A group farmers in Iowa headed to the Gulf of Mexico for a fishing trip to see why the Gulf needs to be protected from the nutrients that flow off Midwestern farmlands into the Mississippi River, and on to the Gulf, where they create enormous dead zones. “I guess I didn’t realize the value of it (the fishing industry) and how important it is” says one farmer, in a series of moving interviews. Some creative and effective nutrient management measures are being implemented across Iowa, with the full support of the farmers that use them – who feel like they have an obligation to not harm their downstream neighbors.
An extremely contentious conflict on the coral reefs of the Florida Keys (at one point a Marine Sanctuary Director was hung in effigy) involving the seemingly incompatible uses of tourism, recreational and commercial fishing and diving, and resource conservation led to a difficult but ultimately successful planning process and the creation of a special set of marine zones that could only have happened with the full involvement of all the stakeholders. As one commercial fishing representative said “It really worked out in our best interest that they’re protecting these resources because what they protect helps us in the long run.”
Right here in New England’s own Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary the unlikely allies of shipping industry representatives, natural gas companies, conservationists, and scientists came together to work on the difficult problem of shipping traffic around Boston striking and killing endangered whales. After careful and thorough research on the feeding habits of the whales, the shipping lanes in and out of Boston were re-routed to avoid the areas most heavily used by the whales. In a success story that is one of the best examples of regional ocean planning in New England we find a blueprint for future ocean use decisions.
Karen talked to us recently about the film, and some of the outstanding stories of collaborative ocean management she has documented in Ocean Frontiers. Thousands of coastal residents, governmental leaders, and ocean users are seeing Ocean Frontiers in venues from theaters to the US State Department to home viewing parties. You or your group can host a screening, or find one near you here.
Robin: What is your goal for Ocean Frontiers?
Karen: To share the ocean conservation success stories that are unfolding across the country so that we can all learn from these ocean pioneers and begin replicating their successful approaches in our own communities. Together we are moving in a positive direction. We are educating ourselves about what works and incorporating the lessons learned as we move forward with regional ocean planning. More than a film, Ocean Frontiers is a campaign designed to inspire people to better care for the ocean, for the good of all.
Robin: What was it like talking with people in small towns and rural areas like coastal Oregon and Midwestern farming regions about ocean planning? How did they receive the idea?
Karen: We were talking with people in places where ocean planning was already in the works or actively underway – people who had seen positive results from ocean planning. So, they were happy to share their experiences and insights to help others in different regions where people are just embarking on ocean planning.
One thing we heard often was that people were resistant or concerned about ocean planning at the beginning – and then they realized that this could affect their use of the ocean, so it made sense to be involved. Through the course of ocean planning, when it was done well, people came away with a strong sense of ownership about how the ocean was being managed. They saw their input reflected in decisions that were made, they were proud of the collaboration among all decision makers and stakeholders, and they felt strongly they were ensuring a healthy ocean and healthy communities.
Robin: Who have you seen benefit from regional ocean planning?
Karen: In the Florida Keys, as one example, it’s been all of the stakeholders as well as the ecosystem – the coral reefs and the fish. The stakeholders include: commercial and sport fishermen, the dive industry, recreational boaters, the charter boat industry, scientists – and ultimately everyone who lives in or visits the Florida Keys.
Robin: What is your favorite ocean planning success story, or the one that surprised you the most?
Karen: The commercial fishing town of Port Orford, Oregon is especially significant to me. The town depends on natural resources for their economic livelihood: timber was big here, and commercial fishing makes up 60% of their economy now. The people of Port Orford show us that we can change the way we do business, we can have an environmental ethic around the way we fish and that this could be the key to maintaining a way of life and the economic engine of our coastal fishing towns. The Port Orford community has been willing to address the problems brought on by the boom and bust of the fishing industry and take some risks in pursuing the triple bottom line. They are thinking big, by looking at the entire ecosystem of where they make a living – land and sea – and they designated the Port Orford Community Stewardship Area that encompasses state and federal waters of their historic fishing grounds as well as the watersheds that feed into the nearshore.
Robin: What kind of responses do you get in the surveys you pass out after your screenings?
Karen: There’s been a phenomenal response to Ocean Frontiers. More than 80% of the people surveyed after watching Ocean Frontiers express not only a better understanding about ocean planning, but an intention to participate in ocean planning. People tell us that they are thrilled to see that collaboration among competing interests is possible – and they see that it’s vital to our success. People respond strongly to the solutions portrayed in Ocean Frontiers and have let us know that they are tired of the doom and gloom stories we so often hear. Witnessing examples of deeply entrenched conflicts where different groups of people could never imagine working together, and then eventually finding solutions that address both economic and environmental concerns is invigorating and motivates the audiences to strive for the same.
Robin: What has been the best Ocean Frontiers event so far?
Karen: The premiere in Port Orford, Oregon. Oregon Governor Kitzhaber, First Lady Hayes and Republican and Democrat leaders in the state legislature attended and in their opening remarks, all spoke as one, affirming the vital link between healthy oceans and healthy communities. It was a thrill to have this kind of a kick-off for Ocean Frontiers, which set the stage and the tone for all of the events to follow. To date, we have worked with 365 partners to organize 150 events for 10,000 people in 27 states and 7 countries.
Robin: What was it like presenting Ocean Frontiers to the US State Department?
Karen: We were honored to be invited to present Ocean Frontiers to the State Department. They are interested in the film because it highlights how industries, governments, and citizens can work together and find solutions to pressing ocean issues. Their work is primarily international so it was exciting to bring these stories from across the US to them and introduce them to the inspiring work taking place here.
Just going into the State Department and seeing so many people from all over the world there, the pictures of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lining the hallways, it was impressive and an experience I won’t soon forget!
Robin: Who would you most like to see Ocean Frontiers?
December 3- Video: Menhaden Matter – Pew Environment Group’s Atlantic Menhaden Campaign produced this short video to show how protecting this little fish can have big benefits for our coastal ecosystem.
December 7 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, December 7 – In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, ASMFC makes sharp cuts in the 2013 northern shrimp quota; the Boston Globe continues its investigation of seafood fraud; congressmen attempt to tack aid for groundfishermen onto a Hurricane Sandy relief package; a Gloucester Daily Times editorial supports the Amendment 18 process; Cape Cod towns want more shark monitoring; NOAA proposes new rules to help target healthy dogfish and redfish stocks.
This week, the federal First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston dashed the hopes of the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester to throw out the management structure that has been in place since May 2010 for harvesting cod, haddock, flounder and other groundfish. The court upheld a prior decision by the district court in favor of the government and CLF, which intervened on the side of federal agencies. The carefully written and thoroughly considered 68-page opinion demolished every claim brought by New Bedford, calling New Bedford’s views in one case “misguided,” in another “inaccurate”, and in a third as having “no textual basis for the argument.”
At stake was the validity of the significant new management plan that was adopted by the regional fishery management council in 2010 and approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service that same year.
The judicial review of this plan bordered on frivolous. The 60,000+ page administrative record memorializing the decision to approve the new program provides extensive documentation on each and every decision made. New Bedford and Gloucester barely participated in that public process but nevertheless felt at liberty to drag the issue into court for two years. As the Court concluded: “the record demonstrates that the [National Marine Fisheries Service] engaged in reasoned decision-making and reached rational outcomes to hard choices.” That is what good fisheries management is all about. It’s never easy and there are always winners and losers, but decisions have to be made.
In this case, an overhaul was desperately needed. As the First Circuit said in its decision, “[t]wo decades of [a different form of fishing limits on the industry] has left the [f]ishery’s stocks on the brink of collapse.”
The new plan, created by Amendment 16 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, accomplished two goals. First and most importantly from a conservation perspective, scientific opinion became paramount in setting catch levels, removing the politics that had previously trivialized scientists’ warnings about the risks of overharvesting. As a result of using scientifically-set fishing limits, the amount of groundfish that was available to the fleet at the beginning of the fishing year on May 1, 2010 was drastically reduced.
The second accomplishment of the new plan was the expansion of the “sector program,” an approach that had been pioneered in the region by the Cape Cod Commercial Hook Fishermen’s Association. The sector program allowed fishermen to form voluntary organizations in which they could pool their catch allotment and re-distribute it amongst themselves in any way that made the most economic sense to them. Since they were guaranteed a set amount of fish, they could choose when to fish, freeing them up to wait for high wholesale prices or good weather or to reserve some quota for late season holidays like Easter, which always brought strong prices. In return for forming the sectors and agreeing to be bound by the “hard” quota of fish, other regulations were relaxed, further increasing the potential for efficient operations.
It is a mystery to me why New Bedford and Gloucester, and their Congressional allies U.S. Representatives Frank and Tierney, tried to blow this new scheme up in court. None of their publicly stated reasons hold much water, and the Massachusetts representatives, including those from New Bedford, overwhelmingly approved the plan in 2010.
Perhaps the best explanation is that the lawsuit provided a handful of political demagogues with an opportunity to decry federal oversight of the public’s fisheries. In doing so, they diverted scarce federal management resources away from solving fisheries problems, no doubt spent significant municipal dollars on a fruitless goose chase, and intentionally destabilized and attacked a new management system in the front pages of their local papers. Now that the challenge to Amendment 16 is behind us, we can better focus our efforts on restoring the prosperity of this region’s fisheries.
