October 2010 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 13.
NEW BEDFORD AND DUTCH HARBOR-UNALASKA TOP FISHING PORTS Commercial Fishing News
A NOAA Fisheries report finds the port of New Bedford, Mass. the top spot for value of landings for the tenth year in a row. The New Bedford port brought in $249.2 million in
2009, an increase of $7.9 million over the previous year. The amount of fish landed was also up by 23.6 million pounds, with scallops responsible for a large part of the high value.
TOP 10 COMMERCIAL FISHERY LANDINGS AT MAJOR U.S. PORTS, 2008-2009 Figures in Millions of Pounds Port
Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska Empire-Venice, La. Reedville, Va. Kodiak, Alaska
Intercoastal City, La.
Pascagoula-Moss Point, Miss. Cameron, La.
New Bedford, Mass.
Port Hueneme-Oxnard-Ventura, CA Gloucester, Mass.
2008 612.7 353.2 354.2 250.9 254.6 190.2 171.9 146.4 46.3
120.2 New Bedford, Mass.
Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska Kodiak, Alaska
Naknek-King Salmon, Alaska Cape May-Wildwood, N.J. Hampton Roads area, Va. Empire-Venice, La. Honolulu, Hawaii Sitka, Alaska
Dulac-Chauvin, La. 48.9 50.9 Note: To avoid disclosure of private enterprise, certain ports have not been included.
MISC. COMMERCIAL FISHING NEWS Continued from Page 12.
toring expenses.
To date the agency has committed over $47.2 million to the groundfish industry. These funds were distributed as direct grants to the industry, for training new sector man- agers, to cover dockside and at-sea catch monitoring and for cooperative research with the fishing industry to improve gear and fishing methods so that more of the available catch can be brought to shore. NOAA also is considering expanding the number of regula- tory exemptions available to sectors to pro- vide them more flexibility to target healthy stocks such as a program to allow the sea- sonal use of 6-inch mesh gillnets in the GOM Regulated Mesh Area (RMA) to target had- dock.
To provide comments on these pro- posed exemptions please visit the Feder-al Register website at:
http://www.nero.
noaa.gov/nero/hotnews/2010Funds/2010 MultiSectorOpsContacts PR.pdf Another major focus for NOAA has been to provide ongoing customer service to the fishing industry. For instance, during the first few weeks of the fishing year, staff were
2008 241.3 195.0 98.7 65.3 73.7 72.3 62.9 73.3 48.2
2009 506.3 411.8 349.4 282.9 244.7 217.8 178.8 170.0 141.3 122.3
TOP 10 COMMERCIAL FISHERY VALUES AT MAJOR U.S. PORTS, 2008-2009 Figures in Millions of Dollars Port
2009 249.2 159.7 103.8 76.1 73.4 68.1 67.1 59.4 51.3
For the 21st consecutive year, Dutch Harbor-Unalaska, Alaska was the country’s top port for the total amount of fish landed. Last year, commercial fishermen unloaded 506.3 million pounds of fish and shellfish there, mostly pollock.
Dutch Harbor-Unalaska also retained its position as the second-highest port for land- ings value, with landings earning $159.7 mil- lion in 2009.
Nationwide, the total domestic commer- cial landings for 2009 were 7.9 billion pounds, valued at $3.9 billion. This is a decrease from 2008, when the volume reached 8.3 billion pounds, with a value of $4.4 billion. Account- ing for most of the decrease was a decline in landings of both pollock and Pacific whiting. “The successful and collaborative man- agement of the New England scallop fishery is a main reason for the excellent year we saw in 2009,” said Eric Schwaab, NOAA assistant
administrator for NOAA Fisheries Service. “Fishing also supports a healthy industry and working waterfronts.”
The ports of Empire-Venice, La. and Reedville, Va., ranked second and third for quantity of landings in 2009, primarily due to menhaden. Some 411.8 million pounds of fish were landed in Empire-Venice and 349.4 mil- lion pounds were landed in Reedville. The report on the nation’s ports is part
of Fisheries of the United States 2009, a de- tailed statistical report on the nation’s com- mercial and recreational fishing, landings, import, export, per capita fish consumption and consumer expenditures for fish prod- ucts.
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources.
on hand 7-days a week to answer fishermen’s questions. Staff continue to conduct regular conference calls with sector managers to track how things are going and deal with operational issues.
The agency also conducted a series of 13 public meetings for the broader fishing com- munity to explain the new management mea- sures and provide technical training on soft- ware for reporting the amount of fish caught. New web-based tools were also developed for fishermen to view their individual catch information and sector managers to have timely access to sector vessel’s data for catch monitoring and allocation tracking. “Fishermen have had to make some sig- nificant adjustments in the way they do busi- ness due to lower catch limits needed to rebuild fish stocks and the expanded use of sectors in the fishery, helping them through this transition remains a priority for our agency,” Patricia Kurkul, Regional Adminis- trator, Northeast Region, NOAA Fisheries Service. “Early indications seem to show that fishermen are meeting new challenges head on because overall landings are only slightly down over last year and total groundfish revenues are up.”
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