March 6 - The Bottom Line: Changing Course for America’s Oldest Fishery - Recent scientific studies estimate that cod populations are at or near record lows. But this serious problem has not stopped the New England Fishery Management Council from proposing to end protection of their waters off the New England coast, a move that will make it even harder for cod—a fish that helped build the region’s economy—to recover.

March 8 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 8 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the state is concerned fisherman are misreporting the location of their catch; recreational limits for cod remain unchanged for 2013; Tom Nies promises to focus on ecosystem-based management with NEFMC; a New York Times discussion series features Callum Roberts and Vito Giacalone; the Gulf of Maine is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification; Dave Goethel asks for changes to discard calculations; Cape Pond Ice’s property in Gloucester put up for sale.

February 26 - Destructive Trawling and the Myth of “Farming the Sea” - In the wake of significant but highly warranted cuts to catch limits for cod, the New England Fishery Management Council spent the last day of their most recent meeting in January discussing the development of a suite of habitat protection measures known as the Omnibus Habitat Amendment. Despite the obvious need for new habitat protections to help restore Atlantic cod populations, the Council had already taken action to potentially open over 5000 square miles of previously protected areas to destructive bottom trawling. By doing so, the Council has continued to demonstrate a lack of regard for the immeasurable documented benefits of habitat protection to the health and productivity of our fisheries.

March 1 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, March 1 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, NOAA proposes measures to increase the monkfish catch, John Bullard writes an op-ed on the New England groundfish fishery, SMAST’s yellowtail avoidance system is growing, dogfish MSC certification expands, public lectures focus on seafood fraud and fleet consolidation, scientists Daniel Pauly, Trevor Branch, and Ray Hilborn face off in Nature.

CLF and CLF Ventures couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities for innovation in financing that build our regional food system. We’re working to foster greater investment in the innovations that will transform our communities, make us more self-sufficient and resilient to climate change, and build a sector that will sustain us over the long term. That’s why we recently partnered with Federal Street Advisors, a wealth management advisory firm for families and foundations, to co-sponsor a regional summit, Financing a Sustainable Food System for New England. Together with Federal Street Advisors, we gathered a select audience of interested investors and invited both seasoned and emerging entrepreneurs and experts from around New England to tell their stories, focusing on the critical issues in growing and financing sustainable food businesses. The room was full of excitement, stories, and passion for food, and several important themes emerged:

• GROWING DEMAND FOR SUSTAINABLE FOOD:
  

  (L-R) Mass. Agricultural Commissioner Greg Watson and Ed Maltby of Adams Farm Slaughterhouse

  Greg Watson, Massachusetts Agricultural Commissioner, explained that supply currently can’t match demand. He proclaimed that this is not a trend, “this is the future of agriculture!”

• NEED FOR ALTERNATIVE FINANCING:
  Several entrepreneurs, including Ed Maltby of Adams Farm Slaughterhouse and Bill Eldridge of Maine’s Own Organic Milk, spoke of the need for alternative financing that allows the organic growth of their business and matches the timing and return expectations of their business models. While some models do create high value, others are challenging to do profitably, because the value of the sustainable dimension is not yet captured in the economics. For example, farming organically creates the need to certify, but for smaller growers, the “local” advantage can’t compete with large national businesses.

• CONTRIBUTION TO CLIMATE RESILIENCY: 
  

  Dorothy Suput, The Carrot Project

  Many panelists discussed the role of sustainable agriculture in addressing resiliency to climate change, including Roger Berkowitz of Legal Sea Foods, who mentioned fish ranching as a strategy to address the declining coastal fish populations resulting from warming waters, and Henry Lovejoy of EcoFish, who explained, “We don’t need to raise any food that’s bad for the planet.”

• NEED FOR AGGREGATION: Aggregation was a theme — farmers and investors alike can benefit from pooling resources to make innovations, and investments in them, sustainable.

There were many key ideas conveyed, but I have to commend Chuck Lacy of Hardwick Beef for delivering two memorable take-aways:

• “You can’t just show up and get my tenderloins!” (Relationships are critical)

• “If you’re lucky, you will plant a seed that will help change an industry” (to potential investors)

Raw bar, courtesy of Island Creek Oysters

Of course, no sustainable food summit would be complete without good eats, and the Financing Sustainable Food System summit showcased an abundance of local and regional treats, including grass-fed beef stew with panelist Chuck Lacy’s Hardwick Beef, fish and seafood from panelist Jared Auerbach’s Red’s Best, and many donated items, including an Island Creek Oysters raw bar, desserts from Henrietta’s Table of Cambridge, an assortment of prepared foods produced at Boston culinary incubator CropCircle Kitchen, and dozens of other tempting New England products.

CLF has a long history of work on sustainable agriculture issues in New England, including efforts to improve the sustainability of our fisheries.

• In our current Sustainable Farm and Food Initiative, CLF and CLF Ventures focuses on issues of growing urban agriculture, developing innovations to overcome market and policy barriers, here in Boston and throughout the region.

• CLF Ventures is working to regionalize a fish permit investment fund in the Gulf of Maine, aiming at the triple bottom line of social, environmental, and economic benefits.

• And through our partnerships with Federal Street Advisors and others, we are evaluating the sustainability claims and working to bring structure and discipline to the innovation and excitement of social entrepreneurship.

CLF and CLF Ventures have a vision for reinventing our food supply that

• builds on our region’s history and tradition of self-reliance and our roots in fishing and farming;
• leverages our culture of innovation as a firm foundation for our regional economy;
• creates healthier ways to feed ourselves;
• combats climate change; and
• rebuilds the health of our environment.

CLF Ventures co-organized the Sustainable Food System summit to discuss the benefits of investing in this growing economic sector, including greater food security and higher quality food, job creation, and improved quality of life for our urban and rural communities. The need to build capacity and sustainability in our food supply creates an opportunity to invest in sustainable economic growth for our region. Key to this growth is an understanding of the barriers — such as the need to aggregate production and distribution to scale, the need for effective financing models, for policy changes, for new public and private partnerships, for market development — and understanding the extent to which the emerging alternatives unlock the potential.

By design, there was a lot of expertise and activity in the room — from seasoned entrepreneurs and investors as well as from the next generation of innovators. We were fortunate to have generous co-sponsors: Goodwin Procter, Pinnacle Associates, Trillium Asset Management, and Eastern Bank. We are not the inventors of the idea, but we are the ones to carry it forward.

Stay tuned for updates on our urban farming work, triple-bottom-line funds, links between climate change, resilience, and sustainable farming practices, as well as entrepreneur stories, expert advising and more.

The effort to restore Alewives to the St. Croix River is about to go into full gear. In addition to our lawsuit challenging the state law that prevents Alewives from getting above the Grand Falls Dam, we are collaborating with other groups and the Passamaquoddy Indian Nation on a legislative solution as discussed in this recent story in the Maine Sunday Telegram. I’d like to take a second to add a couple of points to this fine story by Colin Woodard on the plight of alewives in the St. Croix River.

First, the so-called adaptive management plan that the LePage administration is promoting in a competing bill at the Legislature is, at this juncture, only supported by the LePage administration – it has never even been considered for adoption by the International Joint Commission, has been disavowed by the federal agencies that have jurisdiction over the River, and is not supported by the Canadian government. The lack of any support for the plan is appropriate because it mirrors the lack of any scientific support for its provisions and its inconsistency with sound fishery management that considers more than just the ups and downs of one sport fish.

Second, in a time of fiscal challenges, the legislation that CLF is supporting, L.D. 72, has no costs associated with it – all it requires is the removal of the board that currently blocks the existing fish ladder at the Grand Falls Dam. That is not the case with the adaptive management plan; annual costs for that plan will be at least $50,000 and in some years could be as much as $100,000.

Third, while the Maine Professional Guides Association may be the only groupthat continues to doubt the science that very clearly establishes that alewives and smallmouth bass do not compete for food or habitat, its executive director, Don Kleiner, is not bashful about praising the value of alewives to the smallmouth bass fishery in other forum, such as in this recent newsletter. As Mr. Kleiner noted, ”in the Saint George drainage we are fortunate to have large numbers of sea run alewives that come to lay their eggs in the ponds each spring. As the small alewives begin to move back to sea with the first rains, all of the predator fish begin to feed actively. Yesterday I was down in White Oak Pond with clients and many of the bass that they caught were actually potbellied from all of the feed they have been enjoying.”

Mr. Kleiner’s inconsistency mirrors the State’s inconsistency in its management of alewives on the St. Croix River as opposed to its management of that fishery in every other river in Maine. It’s time for the Legislature to correct itself and remove this inconsistency from the State’s otherwise laudable efforts to restore alewives to Maine’s watersheds.

February 6 - Peter Shelley to NEFMC: Shut Down New England Cod Fishery - Last Wednesday, January 30, the New England Fishery Management Council voted to cut catch limits for New England’s cod stocks by 61-77% from their 2012 levels. Conservation Law Foundation Senior Counsel Peter Shelley made this statement to the Council urging cautious management and asking them to consider shutting down the New England cod fishery so stocks can recover.

February 8 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 8 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, industry members respond to cod catch cuts; lobstermen discuss options for avoiding a glut; northern shrimp catches are low; new dogfish research says they don’t migrate as much as expected; Carl Safina supports groundfish closed areas; John Tierney introduces a new diaster relief bill, Vito Giacalone is exonerated by an independent review.

January 28 - New England’s Protected Waters are Threatened - Parts of New England’s waters set aside to protect cod, haddock, flounder, and other important fish could soon be subjected to some of the most damaging forms of large-scale fishing. Learn more about this 5000 square mile area with this interactive map.

January 29 - Investing in the Future: A Down East Groundfish Closed Area - Last week, the Groundfish Committee of the New England Fishery Management Council agreed to analyze a proposal for a new closed area off of eastern Maine that would protect known juvenile aggregations and historic spawning aggregations of groundfish, and important habitat. The current economic impacts of closing this area to groundfishing may be negligible, and this closed area promises significant benefits to the region and to Maine’s small boat fleet.

January 29 - “The Fish Just Aren’t There.” - There is no question that the expected reductions in annual catch limits (ACLs) will be difficult for an industry already in a declared disaster. But while these cuts for cod and haddock limits have grabbed headlines, the real story is that there simply aren’t enough fish. The science, the catch data and many fishermen say the populations of many important species are at or near all-time lows. Fishery regulators are eager to cushion the blow to those whose livelihoods are at risk. Unfortunately, many proposals intended to help fishermen do not address the real problem—a lack of fish—and instead risk further harm to weakened fish populations.

January 31 - CLF Calls to Shut Down New England Cod Fishery - Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively. Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and unconscionable risk. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

February 1 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 1 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the New England Fishery Management Council cuts cod catch limits and debates habitat protection measures and at-sea monitoring costs; Tom Nies is named the new Executive Director of NEFMC; a Gloucester trawler is accused of using an illegal net liner.

Yesterday the story of New England’s cod fishery took another tragic turn when the New England Fishery Management Council voted to drastically cut catch limits for New England’s two cod stocks—Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod—by 77 and 61 percent, respectively.

The Council’s action follows months of scientific debate on appropriate catch limits for cod. Recent assessments showed stocks at the lowest levels ever recorded and declining rapidly:

• Georges Bank cod biomass is at just 7% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• Gulf of Maine cod biomass is at 13-18% of healthy, sustainable levels.
• The last better-than-average year for young Georges Bank cod production was 1991.
• The amount of younger fish becoming available for fishing, known as recruitment, has been at the lowest estimated levels ever for the last five years running.

Confirming this dismal outlook, fishermen have been unable to find enough cod to even come close to filling their small quotas. The fish just aren’t there any more.

Despite this grim outlook, some in the industry asked for interim measures that would allow devastating overfishing to continue for yet another year, and the Massachusetts fisheries agency representative on the Council inexplicably asked for catch levels that were higher than the highest recommendations from scientists. NOAA regional administrator John Bullard rejected these efforts as legally and biologically unjustifiable.

Bullard told the Council yesterday that the “day of reckoning” for the fishery had arrived and that further management denial about the true state of the stocks could not be sanctioned. In this context, the Council chose to cut the catch – even in the face of industry opposition.

But the action to cut cod quota did not go far enough. The options implemented by the Council are the least aggressive cuts allowable by law, and under some assessments they still authorize overfishing. They push the limits of scientific advice and put the short-term economic interests over the long-term health of New England’s cod fishery and the viability of a whole generation of groundfishermen. Years of similarly short-sighted decision-making have caused the current biological disaster.

The Council unanimously rejected a motion to shut down the cod fishery entirely—an option that the NMFS Regional Director labeled as irresponsible, but one that may be the only chance for the recovery of New England’s cod stocks.

Canada took similar action to shut down its cod fishery in 1992, when its stocks were in a state remarkably similar to New England’s current disaster. Even their action in retrospect was too little and too late to avert a social and economic calamity; tens of thousands of people were put out of work, and cod stocks have still not fully recovered.

Unlike Canada, however, New England fishing communities are unlikely to see massive disaster relief funds. The New England Fishery Management Council now owns this problem and will bear full responsibility for the long term biological and socio-economic  consequences of their decision. While CLF hopes that the Council’s gamble is not reckless, decades of bad Council bets in the past and the current scientific advice do not bode well. Time will tell.

Now is not the time for denial. It is not the time for timid decisions and taking unconscionable risks. It is time to make the painful, necessary steps towards a better future for fishing in New England. Rather than arguing over the scraps left after decades of mismanagement, we should shut the cod fishery down and protect whatever cod are left.

January 24 - Recent paper points to a need for improved ecosystem modeling - Fisheries managers in the U.S., and increasingly around the world, use stock assessments and scientific information about fish populations to set catch limits for fisheries. It is typically assumed that more adult fish means more reproduction, and thus more fish available for us to harvest. But the authors of a paper published last week by several prominent fisheries biologists found that the productivity of fish stocks can be nearly independent of the abundance of adults, and is influenced by other factors.

January 25 – Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 25 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, the SSC sets 2013 Allowable Biological Catch for three stocks; John Bullard denies a request for interim measures; the New England shrimp season begins; the Marine Fisheries Institute will review the groundfish stock assessment process; concern over a loss of fisheries advocates in Congress; an investigation into fisheries rule making finds flaws in record keeping.

January 9 - The Bottom Line: A Better Way to Manage Fish - Some proposed fisheries rules would take us backward, with costly new delays and exemptions that could allow overfishing and reverse conservation gains. Other proposals offer an opportunity to improve the health of our oceans, by managing our fisheries as part of the larger ecosystem. This holistic approach — often called “ecosystem-based fisheries management” — looks beyond the health of individual species to also consider the food and habitat they rely upon.

January 10 - NOAA’s 2011 Groundfish Report by the Numbers - On December 26th, NOAA released its “2011 Final Report on the Performance of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery (May 2011-April 2012).” Overall, the report indicates that groundfish catch and net revenues are increasing steadily, although some stocks, most notably Georges Bank haddock, are fished at a level far below the annual catch limit. Consolidation and equity issues are still a major concern. Measures of fleet inequality generally improved from 2010 levels, and the decline in boat numbers has slowed noticeably following a sharp drop-off between 2009 and 2010. Here are some highlights of the data.

January 11 - Fish Talk in the News – Friday, January 11 - In this week’s Fish Talk in the News, fishermen have caught less than half the 2012 catch limit on 14 out of 16 groundfish stocks; Maine lobster landings hit a record high; the House debates Sandy aid; Brian Rothschild calls biological reference points arbitrary; some fishing advocates support Barney Frank for interim MA senator.