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fishing
President Biden: Make Your LNG Pause Permanent to Save Gulf Fishing Families
It’s up to the administration to prevent export terminals from destroying what’s left of Louisiana’s seafood industry.
Jun 07, 2024
In January, the White House announced a pause on liquefied natural gas terminals, called “LNGs” in industry jargon. Though it ruffled feathers in the oil and gas industry, the “pause” did little to stop their ongoing operations; it just meant that the federal government was taking a break from approving new export terminals—facilities that have yet to be built. For those of us who make a living fishing and shrimping here on the Gulf of Mexico, the pause has made little visible difference.
Our coastline and fisheries are already littered with gas export terminals. To build the plants—each larger than a football stadium—the industry digs up wetlands and pours concrete, destroying estuaries, fishing grounds, and the coast that protects us from storms. To make room for massive supertankers, the gas export industry digs up and dredges the shallows near shore, which has destroyed the habitats of Louisiana oysters and shrimp. My fellow fishermen and I are forced out of the way when supertankers cut through our fishing grounds. We have to pull up our nets, and we lose at least half a day’s work.
Every part of the operation is disruptive and destructive to our trade. Where we used to be able to pull up enough shrimp to bring to market, the dredging and shipping is so disruptive to aquatic life, it barely leaves enough shrimp behind for us to feed ourselves and our families. It’s not just the industry’s disruptions to our work though; it’s their outright attack on Louisiana’s fishing community.
My fellow fishermen and I are doing our part to hold the LNG companies accountable... But we cannot and should not have to fight this Goliath alone.
Last month, I witnessed a tanker barging through our local waters where shrimpers and fishermen usually put in. The ship whipped past us fishermen at such a speed that it caused a wake taller than the nearby boats. One of them—the one closest to the tanker—was sunk completely by wake, costing the fishermen who own it an untold sum and threatening the lives of everyone on board. To this day, none of us have heard of the tanker’s owner reaching out with an apology or an offer of compensation.
A couple of weeks after that boat was sunk, I went down to the dock to start my day, only to find my own boat sinking in shallow water. That morning and the night before, we hadn’t had any rain. My boat did not have any leaks. Yet somehow, on a clear day, my seaworthy vessel was almost completely submerged.
I’ll never know exactly how this happened to my boat, or who may have caused it to happen, but what I do know is that this industry has created an air of fear and intimidation. What I can say with certainty is that the more the industry encroaches on our fishing grounds, and the more that local fishermen like me speak out, the more accidents seem to happen.
I’ve lost thousands of dollars because of the industry’s actions—and that doesn’t include lost income from the depleted stocks of fish and shrimp, or from the lost days of work. One time, a tanker came through with skimmers in the water near shore, causing a sucking action that pulled in water from every direction. I watched helplessly as the vessel pulled the entire aluminum frame for my fishing nets, crumpling it like paper. To get it repaired, I had to take a day off work, drive nearly 200 miles round trip, and spend thousands on aluminum welding.
Another time, an LNG dredger was parked near our dock. The suction from the dredge almost caused me to capsize and lose everything. When I told the dredge operator what had just happened, he yelled at me, “Ain’t my effin’ problem.”
He didn’t say “effin.’”
That’s been the attitude of the LNG export industry since they’ve come here. They’ve taken our homes, our fisheries, and our livelihoods, and treated us like we’re just a nuisance standing in their way.
My fellow fishermen and I are doing our part to hold the LNG companies accountable. We’re tracking these assaults and keeping records of the decline in our fish, shrimp, and oyster catches. But we cannot and should not have to fight this Goliath alone.
This administration must make its pause on LNG export approvals permanent and direct the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stop rubber-stamping permits for new terminals. It’s up to them to prevent this industry from destroying what’s left of Louisiana’s seafood industry, a cornerstone of culinary culture in America. We need President Joe Biden to see reason and save the Gulf’s fishing families.
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Frontline Fishers Force Early End to New Orleans Gas Conference
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," one participating fisherman said.
Jan 19, 2024
Frontline fishers and environmental justice advocates forced the meeting of the Americas Energy Summit in New Orleans to end two hours early on Friday, as they protested what the buildout of liquefied natural gas infrastructure is doing to Gulf Coast ecosystems and livelihoods.
Fishers and shrimpers from southwest Louisiana say that new LNG export terminals are destroying habitat for marine life while the tankers make it unsafe for them to take their boats out in the areas where fishing is still possible. The destruction is taking place in the port of Cameron, which once saw the biggest catch of any fishing area in the U.S.
"We want our oystering back. We want our shrimp back. We want our dredges back. We want LNG to leave us alone," Cameron fisherman Solomon Williams Jr. said in a statement. "With all the oil and all the stuff they're dumping in the water, it's just killing every oyster we can get. Makes it so we can't sell our shrimp."
The protest was part of the growing movement against LNG export infrastructure, which is both harming the health and environment of Gulf Coast residents and risks worsening the climate crisis: Just one of the more than 20 proposed new LNG terminals, Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2, would release 20 times the lifetime emissions of the controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Activists have also planned a sit-in at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C., from February 6-8 to demand the agency stop approving new LNG export terminals.
The Americas Energy Summit is one of the largest international meetings of executives involved in the exporting of natural gas. More than 40 impacted fishers brought their boats to New Orleans to park them outside the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where the meeting was being held. After a march from Jackson Square, the fishers revved their engines to disrupt the meeting. One attendee said the disruption forced the meeting to conclude at 11 am ET, two hours earlier than scheduled.
"Wen you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes."
"They going to run us out of the channel and if they run us out of the channel then it's over," Phillip Dyson Sr., a fisherman who attended the protest with his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, said in a statement. "We fight for them. We fight for my grandson. Been a fighter all my life. I ain't going to stop now. So long as I got breathe I'm going to fight for my kids. They are the future. Fishing industry been here hundreds of years and now they're trying to stop us. I don't think it's right."
The fishers were joined by other local and national climate advocates, including Sunrise New Orleans, Permian Gulf Coast Coalition, Habitat Recovery Project, the Vessel Project, For a Better Bayou, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, and actress and activist Jane Fonda.
"I thought I understood. I read the articles, I read the science, I've seen the photographs. But when you're here on the ground, seeing it with your own eyes and talking to the people... it feels like looking into the devil's eyes," Fonda said at the protest. "I've talked to people who have lost what was theirs over generations and are losing their livelihoods, the fishing, the oystering, the shrimping…"
Fonda called on the Biden administration to take action: "If President [Joe] Biden declared a climate emergency he could take money from the Pentagon and he could reinstate the crude oil export [ban]. Once the export ends, the drilling will end. They're only drilling because they can export it."
The successful action came despite interference from police, who threatened to issue tickets and tow away the six boats the fishers had originally parked in front of the convention center. Some participants agreed to move their boats, but the group was able to park two boats in front of the center and persevere in their protest.
"We're standing in the fire down there. And these people over here, the decisions that they make, for which our fishermen are paying the price. That's bullshit," Travis Dardar, who organized the fishers' trip and founded the group Fishermen Involved in Sustaining our Heritage (FISH), said in a statement."The police got us blocked here, they got us blocked there. But know that the fishermen are here and we're still going to try and give them hell."
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How We Found Out What's Done to the Oceans When Nobody Is Watching
We found that a remarkable amount of activity occurs outside of public monitoring systems. Our new map and data provide the most comprehensive public picture available of industrial uses of the ocean.
Jan 07, 2024
Humans are racing to harness the ocean’s vast potential to power global economic growth. Worldwide, ocean-based industries such as fishing, shipping and energy production generate at least US$1.5 trillion in economic activity each year and support 31 million jobs. This value has been increasing exponentially over the past 50 years and is expected to double by 2030.
Transparency in monitoring this “blue acceleration” is crucial to prevent environmental degradation, overexploitation of fisheries and marine resources, and lawless behavior such as illegal fishing and human trafficking. Open information also will make countries better able to manage vital ocean resources effectively. But the sheer size of the ocean has made tracking industrial activities at a broad scale impractical – until now.
A newly published study in the journal Nature combines satellite images, vessel GPS data and artificial intelligence to reveal human industrial activities across the ocean over a five-year period. Researchers at Global Fishing Watch, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea, led this study, in collaboration with me and our colleagues at Duke University, University of California, Santa Barbara and SkyTruth.
We found that a remarkable amount of activity occurs outside of public monitoring systems. Our new map and data provide the most comprehensive public picture available of industrial uses of the ocean.
Operating in the dark
Our research builds on existing technology to provide a much more complete picture than has been available until now.
For example, many vessels carry a device called an automatic identification system, or AIS, that automatically broadcasts the vessel’s identity, position, course and speed. These devices communicate with other AIS devices nearby to improve situational awareness and reduce the chances of vessel collisions at sea. They also transmit to shore-based transponders and satellites, which can be used to monitor vessel traffic and fishing activity.
However, AIS systems have blind spots. Not all vessels are required to use them, certain regions have poor AIS reception, and vessels engaged in illegal activities may disable AIS devices or tamper with location broadcasts. To avoid these problems, some governments require fishing vessels to use proprietary vessel monitoring systems, but the associated vessel location data is usually confidential.
Some offshore structures, such as oil platforms and wind turbines, also use AIS to guide service vessels, monitor nearby vessel traffic and improve navigational safety. However, location data for offshore structures are often incomplete, outdated or kept confidential for bureaucratic or commercial reasons.
Shining a light on activity at sea
We filled these gaps by using artificial intelligence models to identify fishing vessels, nonfishing vessels and fixed infrastructure in 2 million gigabytes of satellite-based radar images and optical images taken across the ocean between 2017 and 2021. We also matched these results to 53 billion AIS vessel position reports to determine which vessels were publicly trackable at the time of the image.
Remarkably, we found that about 75% of the fishing vessels we detected were missing from public AIS monitoring systems, with much of that activity taking place around Africa and South Asia. These previously invisible vessels radically changed our knowledge about the scale, scope and location of fishing activity.
For example, public AIS data wrongly suggests that Asia and Europe have comparable amounts of fishing within their borders. Our mapping reveals that Asia dominates: For every 10 fishing vessels we found on the water, seven were in Asia while only one was in Europe. Similarly, AIS data shows about 10 times more fishing on the European side of the Mediterranean compared with the African side – but our map shows that fishing activity is roughly equal across the two areas.
For other vessels, which are mostly transport- and energy-related, about 25% were missing from public AIS monitoring systems. Many missing vessels were in locations with poor AIS reception, so it is possible that they broadcast their locations but satellites did not pick up the transmission.
We also identified about 28,000 offshore structures – mostly oil platforms and wind turbines, but also piers, bridges, power lines, aquaculture farms and other human-made structures. Offshore oil infrastructure grew modestly over the five-year period, while the number of wind turbines more than doubled globally, with development mostly confined to northern Europe and China. We estimate that the number of wind turbines in the ocean likely surpassed the number of oil structures by the end of 2020.
Supporting real-world efforts
This data is freely available through the Global Fishing Watch data portal and will be maintained, updated and expanded over time there. We anticipate several areas where the information will be most useful for on-the-ground monitoring:
– Fishing in data-poor regions: Shipboard monitoring systems are too expensive to deploy widely in many places. Fishery managers in developing countries can use our data to monitor pressure on local stocks.
– Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing: Industrial fishing vessels sometimes operate in places where they should not be, such as small-scale and traditional fishing grounds and marine protected areas. Our data can help enforcement agencies identify illegal activities and target patrol efforts.
– Sanction-busting trade: Our data can shed light on maritime activities that may breach international economic sanctions. For example, United Nations sanctions prohibit North Korea from exporting seafood products or selling its fishing rights to other countries. Previous work found more than 900 undisclosed fishing vessels of Chinese origin in the eastern waters of North Korea, in violation of U.N. sanctions.
We found that the western waters of North Korea had far more undisclosed fishing, likely also of foreign origin. This previously unmapped activity peaked each year in May, when China bans fishing in its own waters, and abruptly fell in 2020 when North Korea closed its borders because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Better monitoring may help nations coordinate offshore activities in busy regions like the North Sea.– Climate change mitigation and adaptation: Our data can help quantify the scale of greenhouse gas emissions from vessel traffic and offshore energy development. This information is important for enforcing climate change mitigation programs, such as the European Union’s emissions trading scheme.
– Offshore energy impacts: Our map shows not only where offshore energy development is happening but also how vessel traffic interacts with wind turbines and oil and gas platforms. This information can shed light on the environmental footprint of building, maintaining and using these structures. It can also help to pinpoint sources of oil spills and other marine pollution.
Healthy oceans underpin human well-being in a myriad of ways. We expect that this research will support evidence-based decision-making and help to make ocean management more fair, effective and sustainable.
Fernando Paolo, senior machine learning engineer at Global Fishing Watch; David Kroodsma, director of research and innovation at Global Fishing Watch; and Patrick Halpin, Professor of Marine Geospatial Ecology at Duke University, contributed to this article.
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