News Summary July 17, 2017
Today's Main Story: 20% of Texas Shrimp Fleet Stuck in Port Due to Congressional Bad Immigration Decisions
Texas shrimp will be harder to find and cost more because of an immigration decision designed to appease conservative voters misinformed about our economy's reliance on foreign labor. This will create a windfall for foreign shrimpers, who will gladly take market share from local boats and damage the Texas economy. The Gulf Coast brown shrimp season opened Saturday, but 20% of the Brownsville-Port Isabel fleet was not expected to leave port because of a crew shortage, and reports indicate that almost every boat along the coast was short-staffed because Congress did not renew the H-2B Returning Worker Program.
In other news, in a stunning decision to grant New Jersey’s recreational summer flounder fishery a waiver from new regulations to conserve the stock, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross has shattered a 75-year practice of honoring the scientific process of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The letter was written to Executive Director Robert Beal and signed by Chris Oliver, Assistant Administrator NOAA Fisheries on July 11, 2017. Oliver notes that the Atlantic Coastal Act's compliance process rests on two criteria + whether or not New Jersey has failed to carry out its responsibility under the management plan and if so, whether the measures the state failed to implement are needed for conservation purposes of summer flounder. Oliver further notes that if the Secretary determines that New Jersey has not been in compliance, the Act mandates that Ross declare a moratorium on that fishery.
Elsewhere, when Pacific Coast Seafood reopens its plant in Warrenton, Oregon, crab will be on the roster of seafood it processes. The Warrenton Planning Commission on Thursday night approved, with conditions, a request to modify a previously approved site design for the facility. Representatives of the ...
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