Tag Archives: New England Fishermen Stewardship Association

Fishermen look to give back with warm chowder for Christmas

To give back to those without the luxury of a warm holiday season, a handful of fishermen headed to Portland to serve up some fresh-caught haddock chowder for the holiday weekend.  Hosted by the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association, teamwork from about a dozen volunteers made it possible to create a mini-food drive for people living underneath the Casco Bay Bridge. “The association was created to bring all fishermen together all across New England and all different fisheries, and so we just kinda came up with the idea,” COO Dustin Delano said. Video, more, >>click to read<< 06:45

Maine Fishermen, scientists find flaws in potential wind energy lease areas

BOEM officials called the meeting to review newly released draft maps of where federal leases could be offered in the Gulf of Maine, known as the “call” area. They wanted fishermen’s feedback to see where the maps fell short based on what fishermen know from working on the water. “This is very difficult for our industry to face,” said Dustin Delano, New England Fishermen Stewardship’s chief operating officer, former vice president of the Maine Lobster Association and a fourth-generation lobsterman out of Friendship. “A lot of us feel this is going to wipe us off the map.” The fishermen present were unconvinced but resigned. >click to read< 07:55

Fishermen To Replace NOAA With NEFSA Due to Reliance on Inaccurate Data to Set Catch Quota

NOAA which has the task of managing and safeguarding the nation’s marine resources, sets catch quotas to ensure sustainable fishing practices annually. However, it has been discovered from an investigation that the agency uses heavily outdated and incomplete information to estimate its fish and marine life population, and subsequently set fish catch quotas’ sets quotas for particular species based on data it collects from its research vessels. NOAA’s research vessel for the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic is the Henry B. Bigelow, homeported in Newport, Rhode Island, U.S.A. A group called the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a new coalition of lobstermen, fishermen, and fishing-adjacent businesses was formed as a replacement due to the reported drawbacks of NOAA. >click to read< 10:5

Environmental Regulations and Wind Turbines Are Backing New England Fishermen into a Corner

Just three weeks ago, Jerry Leeman was a commercial fishing captain in New England and a very successful one at that. Now, as executive director of the newly formed New England Fishermen Stewardship Association, he’s leading the charge against Biden administration policies that threaten the industry he loves, including overregulation and wind-turbine development in the Gulf of Maine. Leeman said that he and fellow New England fishermen have serious concerns about the accuracy of the NOAA data. Fish-population assessments fell to the wayside during the Covid years — 2021 and 2022 — and the data-collection process has not yet been corrected. “Whether you’re a lobsterman or a ground fisherman, a trend up and down the coast here is that nobody wants wind turbines placed in our environment. It’s going to mess up our stocks and our species. Not to mention it’s going to change the viability for generations to come in the fishing grounds,” Leeman said. Photos, >click to read< 07:51

Democrats’ Green Agenda Will Gut America’s Oldest Industry And Turn Coastal Towns Into The New Appalachia

Biden’s regulators are driving fishermen of all kinds off the water in droves, while offshore wind development his administration backs is threatening access to productive fishing grounds. Coastal towns keyed to commercial fishing—like Stonington, Maine or Grand Isle, Louisiana—are facing social and economic oblivion. Fishermen are not a powerful political constituency. They do not give lavishly to politicians or command a powerful lobby in Washington. Of late, fishermen in the north Atlantic formed a grassroots organization, the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA), to advocate for jobs, coastal communities, and sustainable management of our oceans. >click to read< 13:35

New fishermen’s alliance seeks to fight back against Biden admin’s ‘hostile’ attacks

Marine industry stakeholders are joining forces this week to establish the New England Fishermen Stewardship Association (NEFSA), a first-of-its-kind effort to fight back against federal regulations targeting fishermen. “Fishermen and fishing communities are facing oblivion thanks to their own government,” Jerry Leeman, who will serve as NEFSA’s executive director, told Fox News Digital. “Hostile regulators are steadily eroding our ability to make a living, while the offshore wind industry threatens the fleet’s access to productive fishing grounds and disrupts the aquatic environment.” “Almost no one is standing up for New England’s working families, so NEFSA will,” said Leeman. >click to read< 08:38