The Winding Glass

Gloucester Industry faces stark choice in approach to future at demonstration tonight

here is another in our series of editorials about the fishing crisis in Gloucester.  In a nutshell, they are fighting the last war, and putting the New England industry at risk.  This appeared on our paid news site yesterday. SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - [Editorial Comment] July 8, 2009 - The recent developments in the New England Fishing industry have struck a nerve in Gloucester, and the entire community is mobilizing to respond.  Gloucester, long one of the centers of the New England Fishing industry along with New Bedford, has faced stepped up enforcement, more reductions in days at sea and fishing time, the threatened temporary closure of the fish auction for violations, and now a wholesale change in fisheries management to a system of catch shares. It is no wonder the community feels under siege. But the industry faces a stark choice tonight, and it is time to put forward a positive vision of the future the industry wants. Most of the outrage over this situation has been directed at the wrong targets. The Gloucester Times is incensed that NOAA chief Lubchenco has a prior association with the Pew Foundation, mentioning it in every story they write. They have gone on to suggest that the money being spent by environmentalists is to support the oil industry, since the original funding for the Pew foundation came from an oil company. Yet they never suggest that because Gloucester got a large cash payment for an offshore natural gas terminal as part of $10 million spent in Gloucester by a Texas energy giant, that their own views are compromised by the oil industry. They have also seized on a statement from one of the Environmental Defense funds executives touting the investment potential (up to 400% return) in buying up quota shares. Anyone who believes this should have invested in Bear Sterns. It is nonsense. Actual markets for quota shares in Alaska trade at five to seven times the per lb. value of the catch, well within the normal range of returns for a large number of investments. So while Gloucester is tilting at windmills, such as Pew and Environmental Defense and Lubchenco's past associations, the real issues of catch shares are not even on the radar. The issue is whether catch shares end up concentrating the fishery in a few corporate hands so that crews become employees, as has happened in the offshore clam fishery, or if catch shares are implemented in a way that keeps fishing vessels in local communities, provides for orderly retirement and income for boat owners, and provides an avenue for new entrants, i.e. crew, to become captains and run and own their own vessels. One of the key tests for this is whether there are owner-on-board requirements for the new catch shares. Owner-on-board requirements make it impossible for outside investors to become more than minority partners in the various fishing enterprises. It certainly is one way to protect local communities. Owner on board requirements also force environmental groups to partner with fishermen, not dictate to them.  Yet there is a downside, which is for those who are currently leasing and want to sell their shares, the owner on board requirement reduces their value because there is a more limited universe of buyers. This should not be an issue if the goal is to retain the present decentralized nature of the fishery.  Another important consideration in catch shares is the percent of total quota that can be held by any single company or individual. It is true that some New England companies see catch shares as a bonanza, because they will be in a position to buy up significant amounts and control a portion of the total catch. Once this happens, catch shares are aggregated on to a few boats, drastically reducing the size of the fleet. In the Alaska crab fishery, the fleet went from around 280 vessels to 80 operating vessels virtually overnight.  If Gloucester is concerned about concentration, they should advocate for a strict limit in both species quota and total quota to be held or used by any individual share holder or sector.  The catch share system is not a straight jacket, but rather a different way of managing fisheries. The environmental community is rapidly learning to navigate in this new environment, while Gloucester continues to fight old battles. Hopefully tonight, someone will stand up and tell the crowd that there are ways to achieve a healthy fishery in the community by insisting on certain rights under catch shares - but unfortunately it is more likely we will hear more of the vilification of NMFS, the government, environmentalists and Pew, without anyone putting forward a positive vision of how to retain a healthy fishery in Gloucester in the face of changing times. Given the speed of the changes going on in New England, not putting forward a positive vision could be fatal. Gloucester is fighting the last war. History has not been kind to those who make this mistake.

Greenpeace freaks out at Trader Joe's 'We simply listen to our customers' approach

(this appeared on the Seafoodnews.com website on Monday) SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - July 6, 2009 - Trader Joe's has had one of the best run and innovative seafood programs for many years. They have pioneered a custom-pack frozen display that consistently offers a variety of frozen fillets and steaks - often featuring products like Alaskan cod and salmon, as well as other items like snapper, mahi mahi, and frozen shrimp. True to its philosophy of buying when deals are available, Trader Joe's does not attempt to consistently keep certain species in stock, but rotates through a range of seafood items. The variety makes their frozen seafood case a good stop for heavy seafood users, and because of its emphasis on frozen and frozen at sea product, it is unique among retailers. Most other banners emphasize their fresh fish counters or tray pack fresh items. What has flipped out Greenpeace is that Trader Joe's has refused to engage with them over their seafood purchases. In correspondence dated March 11, 2008 (which Greenpeace says is the most recent and only time Trader Joe's management deigned to discuss the issue of seafood sustainability with Greenpeace), Jon Basalone, Senior Vice President of Marketing for Trader Joe's, stated "We simply listen to our customers", when refusing to participate in Greenpeace's survey of American retailers.  This attitude has provoked fury. First, Greenpeace has built a web site, called Traitor Joe's, to argue that the company is a poor environmental steward. What Greenpeace cannot abide is that for most customers, Trader Joe's has a strong environmental approach that includes copious labeling and lots of organics. Greenpeace says of Trader Joe's customer first approach "This view is antithetical to the basic tenets of Corporate Social Responsibility - to take social, environmental, and political concerns into account when doing business - and runs counter to consumer preference and marketing trends toward sustainable products." In otherwords, unless Trader Joe's buys into the social, environmental, and political concerns of Greenpeace USA, the company is an outlaw. Greenpeace has a nice little skull and cross bones icon on their Traitor Joe web site. The problem for Greenpeace is not that Trader Joe's might in fact be making a strong statement about corporate responsibility, but that they are not doing it according to Greenpeace's rules. Greenpeace says that their surveys found Trader Joe's sells 15 of the 22 red list seafoods: Alaskan pollock, Atlantic cod, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic sea scallops, Chilean sea bass, Greenland halibut, monkfish, ocean quahog, orange roughy, red snapper, redfish, South Atlantic albacore tuna, swordfish, tropical shrimp and yellowfin tuna. What Greenpeace did not find out was how the Trader Joe purchasing model of taking advantage of seasonal opportunities for good seafood when available, is in fact very compatible with sourcing wild products whose abundance and seasonality fluctuates. The most destructive purchasing practices for seafood are when companies seek to have certain items at any price - for in this way buyers distort the market and drive demand for illegal fishing, assuming that they must have a product to please their customers, even if it is in short supply and at a high price. This had lead to abuses for illegal supplies find a ready market. More flexible policies, such as providing the customer with a variety of available frozen fish that changes depending on what is in season, what is packed, and how it is priced, is a much more long term sustainable policy than purchasing from a fixed list of items no matter if these items are red or green. Trader Joe's should take Greenpeace's anger as a badge of honor. It is obvious that seafood is an important part of their vision of customer satisfaction, and that is a long term benefit to the entire seafood industry.

Gloucester should learn to look across the Annisquam bridge - there is a big world out there (editorial comment)

The following editorial appeared on Seafood.com News on Monday, June 29, 2009 -

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton (Editorial Comment  June 29, 2009 - Once again,  the Gloucester Times has demonstrated a woeful lack of knowledge regarding the recent decision of the N.E. management council to implement a catch sharing plan. 

In the latest article (link  ) , the paper acts like the only people who support catch shares are environmentalists and pointy eared bureaucrats - to bring back a phrase from the 1980’s.

It reminds me that it is time to think about the things that Gloucester really has lost. 

Back when the 200 mile limit was put in place, the entire Northeast peak of George’s Bank was open to Gloucester fishermen.  For offshore draggers, it was their primary fishing ground.  The problem was that the peak was also claimed by Canada, since it was within Canada’s 200 mile limit as well. 

In 1979, Lloyd Cutler, working as White House counsel , negotiated an agreement with Canada that would have given American fishermen harvest rights to about 70% of the allowable catches on the Northeast Peak, while Canadians would have gotten 30%.

The guys in Gloucester were thrilled.  This was a solid agreement, and prevented the issue from going to the World Court.

At that time, it was the port of New Bedford that could not see beyond its nose.  In the years running up to the agreement, New Bedford scallopers had harvested around 90% of the scallops on the Northeast Peak, and they vociferously objected to the 70% figure.

 Then, as now, New England fishermen were wired politically, with access to Senators and Congressmen who followed their lead. The uproar from New Bedford led the Senate to kill the treaty.    Basically, the Senate said that if the industry could not accept this deal, the agreement was dead.

New Bedford rejoiced.  They had retained their 90% scallop share, they thought.  Gloucester was furious - they had lost the opportunity for a permanent solution to sharing George’s Bank. 

And the maritime boundary dispute went to the World court. 

In 1984, the court made a decision.  It awarded 100% of the Northeast Peak to Canada.  New Bedford scallopers lost about 50% to 60% of their historic scallop grounds. Gloucester draggers were now prohibited from fishing on the most productive area on George’s.

I am bringing up this ancient history because today, something similar, although without the power of a Senate ratification, is taking place over catch shares.

Convinced that catch shares will end traditional fishing in New England, the writers in Gloucester think wharf talk in Gloucester is the be-all and end-all of fisheries knowledge. 

The fact is that many fisheries have prospered tremendously with catch shares. Others have suffered problems.  The key to a successful program lies in a lot of details, including how allocations are made, how rights of others who have invested in the fishery - such as the Gloucester auction, for example - are protected, and how local fishing communities can retain their fleets and not have them scooped up by outside investors.

But Gloucester’s writers are not focusing on these issues. Instead, there is a one note symphony:  Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, and environmentalists have done this to us, and we are being victimized.

A few weeks ago, Gaines even quoted a couple of brothers from upstate New York, - never in the fishing industry before - who came to Gloucester and now are fishing their vessel because they love it, and are mad about the upcoming regulations.

I like to cut down trees.  Give me someone else’s forest, a chain saw, and no need to look at the property again for 50 years, and I will do just fine, for the one year I can sell the timber.  But the idea that somehow fishing is exempt from any limits is simply wrong.  And yet, the attitude reflected again and again is that the enemy is the regulation - not recognizing that the world has changed.

After the 200 mile limit got rid of the Russian fleet off New England, capital investment, encouraged by the government, poured into the industry and the capacity of the fleet exploded.  Fish finding sonar, GPS, Autopilots, rock hopper gear - suddenly anyone with a map and a memory could catch more fish than the old time high liners. 

With no plan to make things better, the economic fallout of the collapse has hit many individual families, who are no longer fishing.  Others, without access to investment partners or money to buy or lease licenses, have not been able to grow their business.  But some others have managed to be quite successful in the New England fishery for decades, running multiple boats.   In our system, we allow good businesses to thrive, and poor ones to fail.  Why should fishing be different.

Far from being a death knell, catch shares are a system that puts a firm foundation under fishing businesses.  The good ones will take advantage and thrive.  The poor ones will actually have an asset they can use to sell out -  not a trivial matter.

The writers of the Gloucester Times remind me of the scallopers in New Bedford in the early 1980’s.  Convinced that the end of their livelihood was at stake if they gave up 20% more scallop catch, they ended up losing far more.

Unless Gloucester’s fishermen and their writers can see across the Anasquam bridge to the wider world, they risk losing a lot as well.   In a time of revolutionary change in fisheries management around the world, to have leaders who stand up and say no change is simply not a viable option.   And it is not Pew or the Environmentalists who have brought this about.  It is the popularity and attention now paid to seafood, and the fact that the public, the buyers, and the industry who are there for the long term - all want to see the fishing continue at the highest possible level, forever.  And they will find a way to make it happen.

-John Sackton

'Fishing down the food web' debunked in new Scientific paper

 Fishing down the food web - the idea that fishermen target the largest species, then smaller, than the forage fish, until eventually the oceans have nothing but jellyfish, is a cornerstone belief of many environmentalists concerned about overfishing.  It was accepted without challenge at the recent Monterey Bay Aquarium Cooking for Solutions event.  It was popularized in papers by Daniel Pauly and Boris Worm, that gave the media the idea that all fish would disappear by 2048.  This idea is also the central premise behind the new movie 'End of the Line.'  A new study, published in a Canadian Journal, has debunked this theory, and shown that over 112 years in the N. Pacific, there is no evidence for fishing down the food web, and in fact the average tropic level of target species appears to have increased.   Here is the article on this which was in our news the other day, and which is being reprinted in New Zealand and elsewhere. 

Fishing down the food web debunked in new 112 year study of fish statistics

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - June 16, 2009 - Several years ago, Dan Pauly's paper predicting extinction of commercial fisheries by 2048 was seized on by the media and many environmental groups as the raison d' tre for updending the existing practices of fisheries management, since they had led to a total depletion of the larger fish species in the oceans.

At the time, the paper was widely criticized for being a simple extrapolation of data across a wide variety of fisheries that did not take into account more recent changes in management practice.

The idea that the commercial seafood industry was going to cause the oceans to become devoid of all life but jellyfish was highly popularized under the term fishing down the food web.

The idea has become ingrained in many media stories. The basic argument is that fishermen first harvest the large fish, then the forage fish, and eventually no fish. Over time, more and more fishing is concentrated on the lower trophic levels, so eventually we are left with nothing but jellyfish.

Now, a peer-reviewed, scientific study that looked at 112 years of historical fishing records in the North Pacific, has thoroughly debunked the myth of "fishing down the food web."

Michael Litzow and Daniel Urban, from the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and the Alaska Dept. of Fish and game, respectively, writing in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science (66: 201-211 (2009)), have shown this is a false hypothesis.

They show that the fishing down the food web is localized to the history of fisheries in the North Atlantic, and that when applied to the history of fishing in the North Pacific, the effect disappears. 

Further, they say that the primary drivers of the trophic level of fisheries in major ocean basins is correlated with the size of the fishery on forage fish, which is in turn primarily driven by changes in climate and ocean conditions.

In the pacific for example, the abundance of anchovies is known to vary over time. The scientists who thought they were seeing evidence of fishing down the food chain actually were seeing anchovies come and go depending on ocean conditions - but they mistook the ratios to to deduce a false relationship between fishing at the higher trophic levels and the lower ones.

In Alaska, the authors say, over a 112 year fishery, there has been no net change in the trophic levels of the catch. The abundance of the higher trophic level fish like salmon, pollock, halibut, as remained constant over time compared to the abundance of the lower trophic fish, and in some cases increased.

Instead, the principal causes of fluctuation have been related to multi-decade scale temperature changes in the North Pacfiic.

They say "A broad consensus holds that global fisheries are poorly managed and unsustainable, and over exploitation of high trophic level stocks has been identified as a central part of this problem. However, a rigorous debate has recently played out over the exact nature of the global fisheries crisis."

"To our knowledge, our study and the study of Essington et al (2006) are the only published studies to explicitly test for declining catches of upper trophic level fish during the times when the mean trophic level of an entire fishery is declining. "

"Our results show that historical periods of declining mean trophic level in Alaskan commercial fisheries were due to increases in lower level trophic catches, rather than declines in upper trophic level catches. "

"We found that in recent decades the mean trophic level of the catch has been stable, or actually increased. " 

They go on to say that the results show that when sound fisheries management principles are applied that fisheries can exist for decades without impacting the trophic level of the harvest, completely contradicting the positions of those scientists who say trends in fishing are inexorably leading to commercial extinctions. 

This paper needs much more visibility, and it should be cited as an antidote to the claims of fishing down the food web, or that fishing will end in 2048, which serves to scare people, but is not scientifically accurate.

The fact is that the premise of the movie, End of the Line, is completely false. The issue is not that fisheries will become extinct if they continue. The issue is that poor management is a threat to the continuation of fisheries, and that poor management (such as is the case with bluefin tuna and Big eye tuna) should be targeted, and not the commercial industry. 

CDC says incidence of tapeworm rising due to popularity of sushi

Most people know that raw salmon, eaten for sushi, should be frozen before serving.  Freezing destroys a tapeworm parasite found in some types of salmon.  Now the CDC has published a paper saying that the incidence of tapeworm is rising in urban populations, due to the growing popularity of sushi and sashimi.  Here is the article we wrote about this today in Seafood.com News.   Popularity of sushi has led to increase in tape worm infections in urban populations

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - June 17, 2009 - Tapeworm parasites transmitted from eating raw salmon used to be endemic in some rural areas of Japan. However, researchers now say that the global popularity of sushi has led to an increase in tapeworm infestation in urban populations who eat more raw fish. In some species of pacific salmon, which are used by tapeworms as part of their life cycle, the eggs can be killed by freezing.  The paper, published by the CDC in the current edition of its Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, says 'the incidence of human infection with the broad tapeworm Diphyllobothrium nihonkaiense has been increasing in urban areas of Japan and in European countries.  A recent surge of clinical cases highlights a change in the epidemiological trend of this tapeworm disease from one of rural populations to a disease of urban populations worldwide who eat seafood as part of a healthy diet. The graph shows the increasing incidence of tape worm associated with eating raw salmon that has been recorded among some populations. "Annual incidence rates of the clinical cases show an apparent surge in recent years (Figure 2). In a broad assumption that the case numbers at MZ represent all cases of this tapeworm infection in Kyoto, the average incidence in the past 20 years was 0.32 cases per 100,000 population per year, and that in 2008 was 1.0 case per 100,000 population. " "Most patients regularly ate sushi and sashimi. Approximately half could recall that they ate raw or undercooked salmon in the past 6 months. Analyses of 149 cases at MZ and BH showed that the disease occurred during all seasons but that prevalence peaked in early summer (Figure 3). Every age group was affected, from 3 to 77 years. Most patients were 20Ð59 years of age, which probably reflects more frequent consumption of sushi and sashimi by persons in this age group than in other age groups. Twice as many men than women were affected."

Gloucester Times Goes off the Deep End

This originally appeared in Seafood.com News on June 12 - JS

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton (Commentary) - June 12, 2009 - The Gloucester Times, speaking for the fishing community in Gloucester, has been on the war-path against NOAA head Jane Lubchenco and NMFS.  The events of this year, including a court injunction against NMFS groundfish management, subsequently lifted, anger at cutbacks in days at sea, and unhappiness with an ongoing investigation into the Gloucester Display Auction, have caused some to have a knee jerk reaction that any regulation or enforcement action is harmful and biased against the fishing industry. This leads to the absurdity of claiming, as one writer recently did, that the spring spawning closure, in effect for more than 20 years, was somehow responsible for low cod prices fishermen received the first week in June. Another example of this thinking going off the deep-end is the latest editorial in the Gloucester Times (link here) suggesting that the inspector general's review of NMFS enforcement should only focus on New England, not the rest of the country. The paper urges the IG to ignore Lubchenco's request for a broad national review. They say this 'not the time to expand the investigation's focus to include National Marine Fisheries Service enforcement tactics across the entire nation. That would simply delay the probe and water it down.' In the thinking of the editorial, the case is closed. NMFS will be found guilty, and Gloucester complaints will be vindicated. But in fact, the picture is much less clear. Around the rest of the country, there is not nearly the level of complaint and aggression against NMFS enforcement as there is in New England. New England is thought to be the region with the highest non-compliance with fisheries regulations, and also has a regional management council that is the most out of step with national NMFS policy, repeatedly clashing with NMFS.  Some in Gloucester say the problem is entirely the making of NMFS, and that the fault lies with the regional administrator, Patricia Kurkul, and overly aggressive enforcement. And perhaps they are right, and IG investigation may show this.  But Lubchenco is more right to call for a national review. The only way to evaluate whether NMFS enforcement in New England is out of step is to determine whether NOAA acts differently in New England than in the rest of the country. If the probe finds instead that NOAA actions are consistent, and that the New England industry has a history of fighting compliance, it would point to the fact that the problem lies not in the rules or enforcement, but in the decent into outright war between harvesters in New England and NMFS. This question cannot be answered by focusing only on New England where there are problems. The Gloucester call to short circuit the national investigation is self-serving, because it would prevent any consideration of regional differences in compliance, which might make NMFS enforcement not the culprit, or as guilty, as they have already been declared in Gloucester. I for one want to see Lubchenco stick to her guns, and help bring New England more into line with the systems in use in the rest of the U.S. for fisheries management and enforcement, so long as they are fair and equitable.

IATTC and big-eye tuna: a glass half full (editorial comment)

(this editorial appeared in Seafood.com News on Monday, June 15th)

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - June 15, 2009 - The ISSF has correctly decided that the initial steps taken by the IATTC to finally begin conservation measures for big-eye tuna represent a glass half full, not a glass half empty.  The RFMO failed to adopt the conservation measures proposed by its scientific staff, but it did adopt measures that would provide conservation benefits, in terms of reduction of fishing pressure, by about 20%, rather than the 30% recommended.  The group also did not vote a binding recommendation at the meeting, but voted ad referendum, which allows the individual governments to state by July 15th whether they will abide by the resolution or not.  In a move that ISSF vice-president Bill Fox called "brilliant", the chair also followed the ad referendum vote with another vote, this time a recommendation embracing the same conservation measures. This vote passed 15-0, with every country on the commission but Colombia supporting the measure. Fox says this means that regardless of the action of Colombia by July 15th, there will be a conservation measure in place. The only question is whether Colombia will abide by it.  The ISSF and WWF (International Seafood Sustainability Foundation and World Wildlife Federation) represents the most significant conservation development in the seafood industry since the founding of the Marine Stewardship Council. In this case, purse seine tuna canners - representing about 70% of global capacity - have come together to demand effective management measures of global tuna stocks.  The group formed on the initiative of Bumble-Bee and other major canners, after spectacular failures on the part of RFMO's to manage bluefin tuna (not a species handled by canners) and Big-Eye, which is overfished in the Eastern tropical pacific, but no actions were being taken.  The tactic of the ISSF was to pledge to refuse to buy red-listed products, which can be species without effective conservation management, or which can by species from outlaw countries that refuse to abide by conservation measures adopted by the RFMO's.  What happened at the IATTC meeting was that Colombia became isolated, as the only tuna fishing country in the Eastern Pacific that is refusing to say whether it will abide by collective conservation measures or not.  The reason this glass is half full is that the outcome of the meeting, while not a 100% win for the ISSF, left them in a very strong position.  If Colombia does not abide by the conservation resolutions of the IATTC (something it has the right to do under current international law), the ISSF member companies should initiate a boycott of purchases of Colombian caught tuna.  There is no reason to allow an outlaw fishing nation to continue to profit from overfishing while other member countries take steps to control their fishing effort.  The campaign against Colombia, should the country decide to flout the will of the international community on tuna conservation, should include not simply private efforts of the major canners to boycott Colombia's fish, but should also include legal steps to prevent the import of fish from Colombia under the blacklisting and other regulations coming into force under the U.S. Magnuson Act.  The Act already gives NOAA the power to restrict imports from individual vessels that are blacklisted by the regional RFMO's as violating fishery restrictions. It seems like it would be a small step to extend that to an entire country's vessels if that country was acting in an outlaw fashion.  The stakes for Colombia are very high, and the ISSF had a key role in setting up this situation.  Finally, the advantage of this approach is it puts the onus on the real obstructionists. Instead of fighting the IATTC for being ineffective, the ISSF and WWF strategy, along with the broad support among 15 out of 16 countries of the IATTC, has created a situation where the target will become Colombia's outlaw industry if it refuses to abide by these conservation measures; not the IATTC itself.  This is not a perfect outcome, nor the end of the matter, as ISSF president Susan Jackson said. The IATTC did not adopt their scientific staff recommendations, but instead watered them down by approximately 1/3. But the meeting did set in motion a different approach to tuna conservation, one which has the potential to bring all global tuna stocks under effective conservation management in the future.  -John Sackton

Dysfunctional Fisheries Management continues in New England

The following is an editorial that appeared in our Seafood.com News newsletter last week during the New England Council meeting.  We are posting it here to make it more widely available for comment.


Dysfunctional Fisheries Management continues in New England (editorial comment)

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS - (Editorial Comment) by John Sackton - originally published April 8, 2009 - Because of working for many years in both New England and Alaska, I have long been extremely critical of the New England approach to fisheries management because it has suffered from a fatal flaw: a failure to believe in the basic goal of maintaining fish stocks at their optimum level.

This underlying rejection of the fundamental goals of fisheries management is what has led the New England council time and again to fail to adopt effective measures to rebuild stocks, which now for a generation have been in serious decline.

Now, the council is again acting like a dysfunctional spouse in a domestic abuse case - unable to stop fighting the last war despite the intervention of grownups.

Yesterday, following largely the advice of lawyers based in Gloucester, the council voted again to affirm its rejection of NMFS interpretations of the mixed stock exemption, arguing explicitly that in a situation where many stocks are harvested together, the council has the ability to refuse to rebuild those stocks most at risk if it interferes with the other stocks being harvested at their optimum yield.

NMFS says simply that Magnuson requires action be taken to halt overfishing when a stock is overfished, and it does not matter whether that stock is part of another species complex that may be healthy or not.

In fact in the rest of the country, this is not even an argument. On the West Coast, the groundfish industry accepted severe restrictions due to the depletion of some specific rockfish species. Hitting the rockfish target bycatch even shut down the far larger whiting fishery for a significant time in 2008.

In Alaska, the council just wrestled for days with how to reduce salmon bycatch by the pollock fleet, and at the end of the process, not only did the pollock industry support the lower caps, but said in effect that they would be well under them due to the right combination of incentives. Here again, a billion dollar fishery is being managed partly to protect a smaller and weaker stock.

But the New England council turns this logic on its head. They say that the fact that winter flounder in Southern New England are severely overfished and declining is not a good enough reason to continue existing restrictions on multi-species catches.

At a time when NOAA is asking them to focus on a new sector based management system that will align the interests of the fishing community with long term stock rebuilding, the council is fixated on fighting the last war, seizing the opening given them by an ill-fated intervention of the courts on a two year old ruling.

Why does such a discrepancy in attitude exist? I think it harks back to the failure of regional managers to force allocation decisions on fishing communities. When the first hard TAC's were imposed in New England in the late 1970's and early 1980's, so much illegal fish was being landed that New Bedford unloaded more pounds at night under darkness than they did during the day when inspectors were present.

Other fishermen in Gloucester and Maine openly told me personally how they evaded catch limits by moving in and out of state waters, and taking various action to make their catches untraceable.

This spring, when the Gloucester auction was cited by NMFS for selling illegally caught fish - the reaction has been widespread indignation that they would even get a citation.

The council buckled back then (1982) and abandoned the idea that they would ever shut the fishery down to conserve stocks. Since then, a series of measures involving effort reduction, days at sea, gear modifications, closed areas -- all have failed to gain wide support despite the fact that they did make some progress in stock rebuilding.

Anytime the regulations had to be tightened, various port and state representatives ran to their political allies and said their fishery was being killed.

In 1994, this was first ended by a lawsuit by the environmentalists, in which NMFS admitted it had failed to implement rebuilding measures, and settled an agreement to begin to do so. Since then, it has been a continuous fight to keep those measures on track and working.

The latest row between the council and NMFS is simply another turn in this hundred years war.

The legal memo written by the Gloucester lawyers lays out the explicit argument that some stocks must be sacrificed if they get in the way of the maximum sustainable yield of other stocks. In other words - the fishery must be free to prosecute to the maximum economic value whatever stocks are strong, even at the expense of never ending overfishing on the weaker stocks.

As anyone who has studied ecosystems in fisheries knows, this a recipe for fishing down the trophic chain until jellyfish become the most valuable fishery. It is how many unregulated fishing ecosystems actually work. Harvesters target the most abundant species in turn until nothing is abundant.

In other areas of the country, the industry interests have become strongly aligned with the scientific and regulatory case for keeping multiple stocks at their maximum sustainable yield, and accordingly, the industry supports the needed compromises and effort to make this happen, so long as they have real input and some influence over how these measures are carried out.

In New England, we have not yet even arrived at the point where the industry supports the goals of the Magnuson act. That is why this seems like a fight that will never end.

I actually feel sympathy for Jane Lubchenco, who will address the New England council today. She is going to have to start their re-education from an extremely low level. It seems absurd to me that the head of NOAA has to spend her first month on the job fighting a political fire that should have been settled decades ago.

Sins of Sensationalism

I was a little taken aback when i saw the breathless headline from one of our competitors:

----------------

Short weight, or selling seafood products at less than 100% net weight, is a serious problem in the industry, and is also a big problem in frozen shrimp.   By saying Cosco was routinely selling short-weighted shrimp, the headline was making a hugely serious allegation - on the order of saying something like "Top Bank regulator accused of taking bribes."  it's a charge that undermines the entire credibility of a chain like Costco, or any large consumer retailer in the eyes of the trade.

So imagine my surprise when I looked into the "breaking" news, and found it wasn't true.  Instead a crack-pot lawyer had filed a class action suit because he thought the fixed weight label on a processed shrimp ring was suspect, and he might convince a jury- who knows little about packaging, that the Costco label in question was in fact a statement about net weight that was false.

The product was a store level party platter with shrimp, lemon wedges, cocktail sauce and lettuce - and yet the headline would have you believe that somehow Costco was selling short weight bags of shrimp - likely its number one selling seafood item.

This is a stupid kind of journalism - that doesn't stop to analyze  the facts before rushing out the sensational headline.  This certainly did not deserve the title "breaking news."

Our story on this is below.

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - March 13, 2009 - At a time when 100% net weight is a huge issue in the frozen seafood industry, any headline that Costco was being sued for selling short-weight shrimp is bound to gather attention.

But in this case, there is a lot less here than meets the eye.

First, the product involved is not a packaged product, but a store-level party platter, packed by store employees with cooked, defrosted, 31-35 shrimp. The shrimp are placed in a ring - similar rings are sold in practically every retail chain - with a piece of garnish and a container of cocktail sauce in the center.

In this case, a New Yorker, Marc Verzani, noticed that when he weighed the amount of shrimp in his shrimp tray, it came out to be less than the net weight of 16 oz. advertised on the label. The shrimp weighed between 13 and 14 ounces. He didn't say if he weighed the other ingredients in the package he bought.

Instead of going back to the store and complaining, he went to a lawyer - who immediately smelled a payoff.

Arguing that the net weight has to refer to the shrimp only, and not the entire contents - which include cocktail sauce and lettuce, the lawyer filed a class action suit saying that nationally, Costco sells between 500 and 1000 shrimp trays per week at its 410 stores.

He is seeking damages based on a two ounce short weighting of 10,660,000 shrimp trays, or between $10.4 million and $40 million, depending on actual sales.

The suit seeks to force Costco (and presumably other retailers) to use random weight labeling for their shrimp trays.

In this case, it appears that the lawyer is trying to hold up Costco, which has a reputation it must protect, by tarnishing it with an accusation of short weight on shrimp, despite the fact that the accusation has nothing to do with the actual issue of short weights.

His case would be more convincing if he had sampled 16 oz bags of frozen shrimp. There, by law, the retailer has to sell at 100% net weight, and if it is short, should suffer enforcement and sanctions. But the fact he brought this action over a shrimp tray with multiple ingredients is simply silly. It is the type of action that gives class action lawyers a bad name.

Thoughts on the Seafood Industry at the end of the year

This editorial appeared in Seafoodnews.com on Dec. 31, 2008 -

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS [editorial comment] by John Sackton - Dec 31, 2008 -  Originally I was going to avoid writing end of year roundups of key stories.  Somehow, it just did not seem as relevant this year -- when so much that was so unexpected has happened.

But yesterday I got a call from Newfoundland, with the caller asking about next year saying “Just how bad do you think things are going to get?” with the assumption that most of the Province’s fisheries would be in for a very difficult time.

I had to say that wasn’t necessarily the case. 

And that got me to thinking about the broader seafood industry.  2009 does not have to be such a bad year.

In many ways, our thinking is stampeded by the media and news of the economic collapse of the financial sector.  And it is true, that operating credit and capital for loans is harder than ever to come by.

But it is also true that markets, particular seafood markets, go up and down, and we have been here before.  There is not a single sector in the seafood industry currently seeing lower prices that has not seen them before.  It is only in the light of the general panic that people tend to exaggerate what is happening.

Yes, there is a fall off in demand, and to some extent it is self correcting.  The hidden secret in the seafood industry is that lower catch levels often can return as much money as higher catches, if harvesters and processors are geared to take advantage of the right opportunity.

What is no longer possible in this climate is to “fish your way out of the problem.”  This means that if prices are low, simply go out and catch or buy more fish so that your overall revenue remains high, even if the per unit price falls sharply.

For years our industry was built to compete in this manner, and we had tremendous overcapacity of boats, processing plants and even brokers and distributors.

Over the past decade or more, the industry has become smaller, more concentrated, with fewer plants, more specialized producers, and in many cases, individual quota shares and buybacks that allow harvesters to either sell out or get more efficient.

The industry is far more attuned to producing a consistent quality product than dealing with boom and bust.  In this economic environment, survival means doing what you have always done, just being more efficient.

So, despite a $3.00 lobster boat price in Nova Scotia, or a 30% drop in cod prices in Alaska, the key to survival is to not compensate by glutting the market.  The structure of the industry makes this less likely.

At the same time the industry has made vast improvements in communicating with the public over conservation and sustainability, health, and food safety.

The food safety scares get the headlines.  But the infrastructure put in place in response  --such as the Trace Register system, used for aquaculture certification to track product from farm to plate; and the numerous inspections and lab processes now in place for most major buyers--, is what will eventually solve the problems.

The industry has vastly increased its control over product integrity and safety.  This bodes very well for retaining customers, and selling seafood at levels that maintain margins.   The reason is that many of the marginal operators - those who import seafood from anonymous Chinese suppliers and then undercut prices, are increasingly cut out of the market because fewer and fewer retailers can afford to buy their products.

As buyers lock in sustainability and certification requirements, they also lock in relationships with the largest and most responsible seafood producers.

The scenario for managing a decline in demand then is not to drastically cut prices, but to adjust supply to maintain market pricing within its traditional levels.  Of course this means that some prices will come down, but they don’t have to exceed previous market swings.

This is not to say there are no problems.  Overextended companies may very well go bankrupt - as happened with Poseidon Seafoods, and as is predicted for some restaurant chains.

Secondly, despite more publicity and prosecutions, there is still a lot of mislabeled and fraudulent seafood being sold as a different species, or being sold underweight.    But NFI’s campaign for economic integrity is slowly bearing fruit as more major companies abide by the NFI member requirements to not sell fraudulent product, even if competitors are doing so.

In looking ahead to 2009, it seems to me the seafood industry is as well positioned as anyone to survive whatever economic storms occur, due to changes and new practices that have been put in place over the past several years.  This coming year we will see some of that effort bear fruit.