Saving Seafood

Management & Regulation

NOAA lays out plans for expanded testing of ropeless fishing technology

August 11, 2022 — In their latest effort to protect endangered right whales, federal regulators have released a plan to increase the use of on-demand – or ropeless – fishing gear, an initiative that includes expanded testing of the new technology.

In an effort to address the two main causes of human-induced whale mortality – vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released rules to reduce ship speeds and its “Ropeless Roadmap” to prepare for widespread adoption of ropeless fishing.

The vertical lines that connect strings of traps on the ocean floor to buoys on the surface can get caught on a whale’s fins or in its mouth as it swims, leading to death in some cases. There are fewer than 350 North Atlantic right whales, according to NOAA.

On-demand fishing gear would eliminate the need for the vertical lines in the water until the lobster trap, pot or gillnet is being hauled. Different technologies are under development now. Some include floatation devices that are triggered by an acoustic signal to return the gear or rope end to the surface when the fishing boat returns to collect it. Others use timers to release the rope and buoy to the surface, reducing the amount of time the rope is in the water column. And in a lower-tech option available in some cases, the traps or other gear can simply be removed by a grappling hook. The location of the gear can be communicated to boats above by acoustic signal.

Read the full article at the Press Herald

NOAA Calls for Applications for American Fisheries Advisory Committee

August 10, 2022 — The Following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is calling for applications for the new American Fisheries Advisory Committee. The Committee was established by the American Fisheries Advisory Committee Act in May 2022 to make recommendations for Saltonstall-Kennedy priorities and grant award funding.

The Act requires the establishment of a 22-member committee with three representatives from each of six regions. Members will represent seafood sectors, including processors, recreational and commercial fishermen and seafood farmers, fisheries scientists, and regional fishery management council members. Additionally, there will be four at-large members, including one representative each from the retail and marketing sector, commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, and NOAA Fisheries.

“The new American Fisheries Advisory Committee will bring together a wide breadth of industry and stakeholder representatives from around the country to thoughtfully consider program priorities and make recommendations for the awarding of funds for Saltonstall-Kennedy grants,” said NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator, Janet Coit. “NOAA Fisheries is pleased to assist Secretary Gina Raimondo with the process of identifying candidates, and I encourage anyone who is interested in providing input on priority fisheries research and development projects to please apply.”

Read the full release here

How the climate bill would shift offshore wind in 4 states

August 10, 2022 — The Democrats’ climate bill would erase former President Donald Trump’s 10-year moratorium on offshore wind in the U.S. Southeast, but few experts are betting on a regionwide surge in projects.

Signed by Trump in 2020, the moratorium banned new leasing for all types of energy off the coasts of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. It went into effect last month (Energywire, Sept. 29, 2020).

The “Inflation Reduction Act” — which the Senate passed over the weekend and is expected to be taken up by the House soon — would strip away the ban on offshore wind lease sales, while leaving it in place for oil and gas drilling.

But wind power has not generally experienced warm welcomes in the Southeast. Just one onshore wind farm — the Avangrid-owned Amazon Wind Farm near Elizabeth City, N.C. — currently generates electrons across the four moratorium states. Interest in offshore wind also has been mixed.

Lifting the moratorium may not transform that reality, even if Democrats’ climate bill becomes law, some clean energy advocates and environmentalists acknowledge.

In places such as Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, state officials largely haven’t enacted measures to promote offshore wind. This is in stark contrast to the state guarantees to buy offshore wind power that were crucial to the industry’s emergence in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic.

North Carolina stands out as the region’s clear exception, taking concrete steps to embrace the industry. One of its major utilities, Duke Energy, won the right to generate power from federal lease areas for offshore wind in May, as did French oil and gas major TotalEnergies SE. The state’s Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, also has laid out specific targets for the sector: 2.8 gigawatts by 2030, and 8 gigawatts a decade later.

Across other states, however, little groundwork has been done to establish offshore wind’s foothold as a future resource. And it remains unclear if, or how quickly, official indifference might transform into boosterism.

In South Carolina, for instance, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster recently signed a law calling for a first study of how offshore wind’s need for locally made parts and staging ports could benefit the state economically.

That could help convince South Carolinians that their state is well positioned to host the industry, said Hailey Deres, program associate at the Southeastern Wind Coalition.

Read the full article at E&E News

Red Grouper harvest to close in federal waters on August 30

August 9, 2022 — Recreational harvest of red grouper in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf) will close at 12:01 am, local time, on August 30, 2022, and will remain closed until the 2023 fishing year begins on January 1, 2023.

Landings information received from the Southeast Fisheries Science Center and Southeast Regional Office indicate the 2022 recreational annual catch target (ACT) of 1,840,000 pounds gutted weight (lb gw) is projected to be met on August 29, 2022.

In accordance with the regulations, NOAA Fisheries must close harvest when the recreational ACT has been met or is projected to be met. Therefore, this closure will begin on August 30, 2022. This closure is needed to prevent overfishing of red grouper (annual catch rate is too high).

Read the full article at KATC

Atlantic menhaden not overharvested, fisheries commission concludes

August 8, 2022 — An updated menhaden population assessment that takes into account the ecological role of the species as a popular food for other fish deems the coastwide stock to be in good shape.

The latest assessment, presented to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Aug. 3, incorporates data collected through last year. It concluded that “overfishing is not occurring, and the stock is not considered overfished.”

Menhaden are a small fish but have long stoked big controversies, especially in the Chesapeake Bay, where conservation groups contend commercial harvests leave too few of the “forage” fish in the water to support striped bass and other fish.

That concern spurred the ASMFC, an organization made up of fishery managers from East Coast states and federal agencies, to make adjustments to their assessment methodologies two years ago to better account for the role of menhaden in the food chain.

But even with the new methodology, the latest assessment concluded the overall stock was healthy — a finding immediately touted by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition, a group representing commercial harvesters.

“Using these stricter standards that incorporate the forage needs of predators, the new assessment has found that the menhaden fishery is sustainable, and that menhaden fishing does not negatively affect predator populations,” it said in a statement.

Some conservation groups contend the assessment evaluates the menhaden stock coastwide and does not necessarily reflect what is happening in the Bay, where much of the harvest takes place.

Read the full article at Bay Journal

IATTC meeting closes with agreements on transshipment and monitoring

August 8, 2022 — The 100th meeting of the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) ended on 5 August with agreements on transshipment and compliance, and a commitment to adopt a harvest strategy for north Pacific albacore at next year’s meeting.

IATTC members followed the lead of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) and the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) by adopting stronger oversight for transshipment at sea. Transferring catches from a fishing vessel to a larger carrier vessel which takes fish to port is a common practice, but according to a statement by the Pew Charitable Trusts, which holds observer status at the IATTC, there were loopholes in the data collection requirements that allowed for the misreporting of catch, or in some cases, no reporting at all. The latest decision by the IATTC closes those loopholes.

Read the full article at SeaFoodSouce

New federal red snapper regulations could allow bigger limits for some states, smaller for others

August 5, 2022 — Dozens of congressmen in Southern states are pushing back against proposed federal regulations for red snapper, though the new rules could result in more opportunity for Louisiana anglers.

Nearly 40 members of Congress, including Louisiana’s delegation, penned a letter to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo last week urging her to direct the National Marine Fisheries Service to improve the science behind how the agency sets limits on red snapper harvest.

The letter alleges proposed rules from NOAA Fisheries that concluded public comment on July 28 decreases the percentage of Gulf of Mexico red snapper that anglers can catch relative to the sustainable limit.

Gulf coast states estimate angler harvest each year throughout the season, and states’ annual fishing limit was typically set just below the total overfishing limit to ensure a sustainable fishery. A Great Red Snapper Count — an independent study required by Congress — resulted in a proposed increase in the federal overfishing limit because it showed more fish than federal regulators previously realized through the NMFS’ Marine Recreational Information Program, but the proposed acceptable biological catch hardly increased.

The proposed rule changes would also implement a “data calibration framework” designed to create a single currency among the various ways states monitor landings for the “state annual catch limit,” resulting in a reduction for some states and increases for others.

Read the full article at The Center Square

Sharing the Tools of Sustainable Fishery Management

August 5, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA:

They say it takes a village. But sometimes it takes a multi-agency, Pacific-wide collaboration.

With help from NOAA Fisheries, the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, and local partners, the U.S. territories of Guam and American Samoa are on their way to developing their first sustainable coral reef fishery management plans. Once completed, these plans will chart a path forward to ensure the islands’ marine resources are around for future generations to enjoy.

“The territories are taking a proactive approach in leading their efforts for sustainable coral reef fisheries management,” said Fatima Sauafea-Le’au, American Samoa coral reef fisheries liaison with NOAA Fisheries’ Pacific Islands Regional Office.

Importantly, added fisheries liaison Jonathan Brown, NOAA will have no ownership of the plans. “The resources that will be managed are within the local jurisdictions,” he said. “We are just in a support role, providing tools to help them develop the plans and helping them form partnerships with entities like The Nature Conservancy.”

One such tool is called FishPath. FishPath provides a suite of potential management options for a species based on answers to a lengthy questionnaire about the fishery. And it can be used in data-limited fisheries, like the coral reef fisheries in the Pacific Islands.

Brown and agency partners held a workshop for Guam’s management agencies in June 2022 to teach them how to use the tool to develop management options. These measures could then be incorporated into their sustainable fishery management plans.

Read the full release here

BOEM proposals to mitigate offshore wind fishing impact

August 4, 2022 — The federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management is looking for fishermen’s comments until Aug. 22 on the agency’s latest ideas on how wind energy companies might mitigate the impacts from building offshore turbine arrays.

On June 23 BOEM released its draft guidance documents presenting the agency’s thinking on ensuring the new U.S. offshore wind industry can work with the nation’s long-established commercial and recreational fishing industries.

The guidance document focuses on four areas:

– Project siting, design, navigation, and access

– Safety

– Environmental monitoring

– Financial compensation

BOEM began soliciting input on mitigation policies in November 2021. That first call brought in 92 comments from individuals, state agencies, wind energy companies and, of course, fishing trade groups and associations.

In the ensuing draft document, financial compensation gets the most attention. Many fishermen, especially those who fish with towed mobile gear like trawl nets and dredges, insist they will be effectively shut out of areas after turbines are erected.

Just how big those future losses may be developed within a separate ‘Appendix A’ in the document that presents BOEM’s ideas for calculating “revenue exposure estimates. Such calculations could determine fair payments to fishermen because of income lost to wind projects.

Estimating fishing effort, catches and value that come from wind lease areas has been intensely debated for years. BOEM’s earliest attempts using federal and state landings reports were hotly disputed by fishing advocates, who collected vessel tracking records to show where proposed wind development sites included heavily used fishing areas.

Since then, BOEM has worked closely with the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop better systems, mapping out the most intensely used and valuable fishing grounds.

The mitigation strategy methodology is built around using federal fisheries catch and revenue data as a starting point. NMFS and its Northeast regional office are the primary source for revenue calculations in that region. The first U.S. wind projects are to be built there, and mitigation measures could be adapted to fisheries on the Southeast, Gulf of Mexico and Pacific coasts.

Read the full article at The National Fisherman

Annual fisheries meeting tackles lobster lawsuits, whale protections

August 3, 2022 — On Tuesday in Washington D.C., key players from Maine’s lobster fishery tackled what it considers its most pressing issues.

Lawsuits, protections for Atlantic right whales, and new sizing limits for lobsters were some of the issues discussed by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, and lobster fishers.

The first issue was an update regarding Judge James Boasberg’s July ruling in the U.S. District Court case involving the Center for Biological Diversity versus Secretary Raimondo and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

This case made the news in early July after Boasberg ruled regulators aren’t doing enough to protect the right whale.

Just days after, he sided with environmental groups in another lawsuit to allow Area 1 to close again to fishermen this coming fall and winter.

Read the full article at News Center Maine