NAMA Weighs In

The New England Fisheries Management Council released the dates of the public scoping hearings to seek public's comment on the Fleet Diversity Amendment 18. Please get in touch with NAMA staff if you have any questions about participating in this process. YOUR VOICE IS IMPORTANT and should be heard.

According to the annoucnement, SCOPING DATES AND LOCATIONS are:

• Jan 17: Ellsworth, ME
• Jan 18: Portland, ME
• Jan 20: Fairhaven, MA
• Jan 20: Kingstown, RI
• Jan 23: Riverhead, NY
• Jan 24: Manahawkin, NJ
• Jan 26: Hyannis, MA
• Jan 26: Plymouth, MA
• Jan 30: Gloucester, MA
• Jan 31: Portsmouth, NH

On September 28, 2011 the New England Fisheries Management Council voted to begin Amendment 18 to the Groundfish plan and approved the public scoping document. Here are the public comments that were submitted in support of the scoping document including our petition letter with over 1200 signatures!

Urging a vote on the Fleet Diversity Amendment 18 scoping document and start of the public hearing process.

The New England Fisheries Management Council (Council) is considering a significant step forward in the process to adopt Fleet Diversity protections. We urge the Council to ensure this process is grounded in a clear problem statement with clear goals also recognizing that loss of fleet diversity has major ecological, social, and economic consequences.

This discussion paper outlines five areas of recommendation for decision-makers to consider while setting goals and objectives related to fleet diversity and excessive consolidation. The four areas include: 1) Allow for quota set‐asides that invest in fishing communities and allow affordable access for new entrants. 2) Foster an affordable fishery through leasing policies and costs that do not disproportionately impact portions of the fleet. 3) Create owner-operator incentives. 4)  Limit the concentration of quota. 5) Work toward longer-term changes in a management approach that will facilitate a more incentive-based strategy for maintaining fleet diversity, including spatial management and market considerations.

The Council on Environmental Quality invited the public to send suggestions to the National Ocean Council regarding their drafting of a strategy for implementation of the 9 priority objectives in the National Ocean Policy established by Executive Order last year. NAMA prepared comments, which were circulated for sign-on and were submitted on behalf of a broad spectrum of 36 organizations and individuals around the country.

NAMA supports a Control Date in the NE groundfish fishery. Setting a Control Date is one step toward limiting excessive concentration of fish-quota ownership. We know excessive consolidation undermines the triple bottom line that we strive for - ecology, social, and economy.

NAMA urges the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) to set protections in order to achieve its own stated goals and objectives which includes: maintain inshore and offshore fleets, maintain a diverse fleet in terms of gear type, geographic location and boat size, and prevent excessive consolidation by any one entity. Currently the NEFMC has no plan to achieve these goals and that is a threat to coastal communities, the health of our oceans, and the security of our food system.

NAMA joins over 40 organizations and individuals in a letter to President Obama urging him to reign in the irresponsible and fast track approach the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is taking toward approving offshore aquaculture facilities.

Organized by RAFI-USA, National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and others, 135 organizations signed on to the comment to the US Department of Food and Agriculture on the Farm Bill related rules affecting meat packing and processing.

You may not immediately get why an organization like NAMA that works on fisheries issues might want to weigh in on USDA rules about meat packing and processing, but since fish are caught to end up in our food system we believe any opportunity to reign in corportate control of our food system is important. So I hope all of you - espcially all you folks working on food system and fisheries issues, will consider signing onto these comments as well. The kind of corporate control entities like the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), and the American Meat Institute (AMI) are asserting only erodes our ability to have a say over who brings us our food, what happens to the animals that end up on our plates, and ultimately, the safety, security, and sovereignty of our food system whether it comes from the land or the sea.

Along with the sign on letter, RAFI is also looking for large volumes of personalized comments from organizations and food producers.

Below are action alerts from different organizations that you can use for writing your own comment, if needed. The alerts are from Center for Rural Affairs (hogs), Food and Water Watch (consumers), National Farmers Union (concentration, support for the rule overall), National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (cattle, hogs and poultry), RAFI-USA (poultry), and WORC (cattle).

165 organizations, including NAMA, signed on to community comments submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency's docket stating the only way to protect public health from toxic coal ash is to finalize a rule regulating coal ash under Subtitle C of the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA).

Again, you may not at first make the connection between an organization focused on marine fisheries and coal ash, but there are indeed many connections.

We'll give you one specific connection: we know that mercury is a byproduct of coal burning power plants which rely on coal as their source of fuel. We also know that mercury is one of persistent and bioaccummulative toxicants that build up in the food chain. Mercury is connected to many human behavior, congnitive and other diseases. The advice we hear often is stay away from foods that contain too much mercury and of course tuna comes up all the time. Why, because tunas live at the top of the marine food chain. By the time they eat everything else that has mercury and potentially other toxicants, they are getting a pretty good dose that is building up in their fatty tissue.

Tuna like to eat other fish and we seem to like to eat tuna.

By what is the mercury doing to the tuna? What if the human diseases associated with mercury are happening to tuna and other marine animals. Many of us are working to ensure the tuna populations remain health and not in danger from over fishing. But if all our fights in the fishing picture is undermined by toxicants that may be affecting the animals, how good of a job are we really doing?

So if we don't care enough about the humans, let's get rid of the sources of mercury for the tuna and other marine animals.

There are, of course, many other connections, but more on that later. In the meanwhile, please take a moment and check out the letter.

Hannah Mellion from Farm Fresh Rhode Island testified in support of small-scale food harvesters and explained why 'who fishes matters' just like 'who farms matters' to communities, sustainable ecosystems, and healthy food.

Fleet diversity is an essential element of achieving the ecological, economic and social goals of fisheries management. NAMA recently submitted a White Paper to the New England Fishery Management Council outlining recommendations that could ensure fleet diversity at a time when consolidation and accumulation is being encouraged.

Signed by nearly 70 fishermen and fishing organizations from around the country expressing concern about ocean acidification and its impact on the marine ecosystem and fisheries, the attached letter was submitted and entered into the record for the Senate hearing on the Environment, Economic Impacts of Ocean Acidification.

Brett Tolley of NAMA, Dr. Kenneth Downes - organization development and vision coach, and, Christopher Brown, Rhode Island fishermen deliver testimony to the Interspecies Committee of the New England Fisheries Management Council about the importance of the Fleet Vision Project outcomes and how they can help the council answer important questions before them.

A group of New England fishermen, community advocates, local food advocates, and scientists signed this letter to New England Congress Representatives urging for support of the Fleet Visioning Project. 

113 organizations sent a letter to the US Senate expressing opposition to the nomination of Islam Siddiqui as Chief Agriculture Negotiator at the office of the United States Trade Representative. The organizations— representing family farmers, farmworkers, fishermen and sustainable agriculture, environmental, consumer, anti-hunger and other advocacy groups—urge the Senate to reject Dr. Siddiqui’s appointment when it comes up for a floor vote, despite the Senate Finance Committee's favorable report of his nomination on December 23, 2009.

Siddiqui’s record at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his role as a former registered lobbyist for CropLife America (whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow), has revealed him to consistently favor agribusinesses’ interests over the interests of consumers, the environment and public health. Siddiqui’s nomination severely weakens the Obama Administration’s credibility in promoting healthier and more sustainable local food systems here at home. His appointment would also send a harmful signal to the world that the United States plans to continue down the worn but now obsolete path of chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture while promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate seed biotechnologies and unfair trade agreements on nations that neither want nor can afford them.

Take a look at NAMA's comments to the Amendment 16 Proposed Rule.  The new rule, if approved, will take effect May 1, 2010.

Read Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance's comments on Amendment 16 of the Groundfish Fishery Management Plan in support of community-based fishermen across New England.

Islam Siddiqui has been nominated to be the new Chief Agriculture Negotiator for the United States Trade Representative.

Siddiqui’s record at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and his role as a former registered lobbyist for CropLife America (whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont and Dow), reveals him to be consistently in favor of agribusinesses’ interests over the interests of consumers, the environment and public health. His appointment sends an unfortunate signal to the rest of the world that the United States plans to continue down the failed path of industrial agriculture by promoting toxic pesticides, inappropriate biotechnologies and unfair trade agreements on nations that do not want and can least afford them. As the global food crisis deepens and negotiators prepare to meet at the upcoming World Trade Organization ministerial on November 30, the United States needs a trade negotiator who understands that current trade agreements work neither for farmers nor the world’s hungry.

Organizations representing environmental, consumer, anti-hunger, family farm, farmworker, fishing groups, sustainable agriculture and other advocacy groups submitted a letter to the Senate Finance Committee urging them to reject Siddiqui’s appointment.

In July 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a new task force that would focus on the creation of Catch Shares systems of fisheries management. The Task Force opened the door for discussions with interested parties on the goals, purpose and process of developing a Catch Share policy for NOAA.

NAMA and our allies submitted a joint letter to the Task Force that focused on two of their stated primary objectives, which are the full consideration of Catch Shares in fisheries management plan amendments; and, Catch Share design for the best possible environmental and economic performance.

We continue to gather signatures, so if you are interested, please contact Boyce Thorne Miller at boyce@namanet.org.

To protect and ensure the recovery of the region's groundfish, NAMA once again calls on fisheries managers to prohibit industrial scale fishing for herring in areas closed to groundfishing. Herring are a critical food of the groundfish and evidence shows industrial herring vessels have bycatch of juvenile groundfish.

New England fishing organizations ask President Obama for leadership that supports local small-scale fishermen who want to turn the decline of fisheries around. Community-based fishermen in New England propose a strong stewardship ethic; a focus on high-quality and low-volume local markets; and, an ecologically sound management strategies that acknowledge distinct ecologically defined areas, integrate all species within those areas and are adaptable to real time changes.

NAMA joins 27 other organizations to express our concern about pending revisions to the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) regulatory guidelines on Confidentiality of Fisheries Statistics. The recent Obama Administration memorandum halting work on federal regulations left unfinished at the end of the Bush Administration includes the proposed rule on confidentiality of statistics, which has languished at the Fisheries Service for nearly two years. The groups urge NOAA to take the opportunity to thoughtfully review and revise as necessary the draft regulations to ensure that all proposed revisions support public access to fisheries observer data and other fisheries information to the maximum extent allowed by the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (MSA). 16 U.S.C. 1801 et seq. Public access to such information is vital to ensure that fisheries management decisions are made in a manner consistent with public trust management of the nation’s marine resources.

NAMA joins over 70 organizations in expressing our deep concern over the Bush administration’s departing gift to the chemical industry on October 15th, 2008 -- the formation of yet another review of the EPA’s health assessment study on dioxins, one of the most toxic chemicals on earth. The groups request that President-Elect Obama direct the EPA to cancel the unnecessary review and release the Dioxin Reassessment so that the EPA and others can move forward in developing protective dioxin policies and standards.

The deregulation of the chemical industry has hurt the United States just as much as the deregulation of Wall Street, with effects likely to last generations. Scientists, physicians, health advocates, worker organizations, parent groups, health-affected groups and many others view the fundamental reform to current chemical regulations and laws as urgent and necessary to protect children, workers, communities, and the environment now and in the future.

NAMA urges the NOSB to reject the Proposed Organic Aquaculture Standards: Fish Feed and Related Management Issues, and Net Pens and Related Management Issues. The latest round of the development of Organic Aquaculture standards -- NOSB Livestock Committee Proposed Organic Aquaculture Standards for Net Pens and Fish Feed -- does not comply with organic principles. Adoption of both proposals would fatally undercut any proposed USDA organic aquaculture standard and we urge the full Board to reject them.

NAMA submitted these comments to the National Marine Fisheries expressing concerns that the proposed rules for implementing the provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Reauthorization Act (MSRA) to address integration of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and fishery management processes could result in such significant failures that the best course is to abandon this rule and start over.

Public health, labor, environmental health and justice organizations unite in requesting Congress's assistance to hold oversight hearings and/or initiate a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation with the goal of amending the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) and related legislation to improve protections from and remedies for work-related chemical-induced illnesses. The letter was prompted by concerns that the cleanup workers for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill (EVOS) are suffering from long-term health problems resulting from chemical exposures and that the lack of adequate OSHA and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) standards and oversight have contributed to these devastating outcomes.

The Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance is pleased that there are candidates for New England Fisheries Management Council appointment that share out values and who are the kind of individuals that we want to see in that position.

In December 2006, the Area Management Coalition (AMC), consisting of fishing community organizations, advocates and individual fishermen submitted a proposal to the New England Fisheries Management Council requesting that the Council fully analyze and consider Local Area Management as an alternative management system in the Amendment 16 to the New England groundfish plan's supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS). The AMC believed this plan would lead to greater accountability, ecological sustainability, equitable management, and an enduring fishing industry throughout New England.