April 29, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Today, NOAA Fisheries scientists released the findings of two research projects that shed light on how climate change may affect some Arctic marine species.
Cabral seeks $450,000 for SMAST project
DARTMOUTH, Mass. — April 28, 2015 — UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Divina Grossman and officials from the University’s School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) praised legislators in the House of Representatives Tuesday for their continued commitment to invest in fisheries research to pursue accurate data.
An amendment, filed by Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral, would provide $450,000 for the Division of Marine Fisheries in collaboration with UMass Dartmouth to assess the biomass of fish.
“I want to thank Chairman Cabral and his House colleagues who have demonstrated how valuable this funding is to the important collaborative research at SMAST,” said Grossman in a news release. “UMass Dartmouth is fully committed to research that strengthens the scientific basis for fisheries management, which is critical to the social and economic development of the region.”
LOUISIANA: Why pogies for speckled trout fishing?
April 29, 2015 — Pogies are readily available in good numbers and are easy to catch if you can throw a cast net.
Steve Shook is known for two things: using live pogies to catch big speckled trout and fishing the rocks of East Timbalier Island.
Shook has notched up three 10-pound speckled trout in his life: a 10-pound, 1-ounce fish he took in December 1989 on a smoke-colored plastic shrimp on a jig; a 10-pound, 2-ounce fish caught in June 1989 on a live pogie near Belle Pass; and a 10-pound, 8-ounce fish taken with a live pogie from Fourchon Beach.
Note that none of the fish came from East Timbalier proper.
Strangely, the idea for fishing for speckled trout with live pogies came to him while he was slow-trolling with pogies on a down-rigger for king mackerel off of North Carolina. Pogies are excellent kingfish bait.
Read the full story from the Louisiana Sportsman
NEW YORK: Goodbye Seals, Hello Whales: City Marine Life Changes With Warmer Weather
April 28, 2015 — One of the last seals of the season was spotted waving goodbye on the beach in Rockaway Park on Monday morning.
Springtime marks a changing of the guard in marine wildlife, as many seals move north out of our inlets and bays and Humpback Whales arrive from more southern waters.
Over the weekend, a seal, this one entangled in some kind of netting, was spotted in Brooklyn near Kingsborough Community College, according to the Riverhead Foundation for Marine Research and Preservation, an organization that aids injured marine animals.
The Brooklyn seal darted back into the water before Riverhead workers could get to it.
The foundation encourages anyone who spots the injured seal or any other whale, seal or turtle to report it to its 24 hour hotline and help determine whether or not the animal is injured.
Ray Hilborn Asks If the Drive for MPA’s is Environmentally Shortsighted
SEAFOODNEWS.COM — April 29, 2015 — Most NGO’s assume that Marine Protected Areas (MPA’s) are an unmitigated good, with little thought to their impact on the global food system.
But, converting large areas of productive fisheries to no-take zones, while appealing to NGO’s, actually may increase global environmental degredation.
The reason, says Professor Ray Hilborn in our latest video, is that marine protein is essential to global food systems, and as countries get richer and consumer more protein, you must ask where that protein will come from.
Already one quarter of all the ice-free landmass on earth is used for grazing animals. Growing and feeding beef cattle is very land and energy intensive.
Hilborn says “Most ecolabeling systems make no connection between what we do in the oceans and what we do elsewhere.”
He goes on to say that unless you consider how marine protein is going to be replaced, such a narrow view of priorities could make global envinronemtnal problems worse, not better.
To supply the current level of marine protein from land based animals would require an area 22 times larger than all global rainforests put together.
This story and video originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.
Habitat, access in hot fisheries debate
April 25, 2015 — It could have been worse.
That was the consensus among Cape Cod participants in the New England Fishery Management Council’s hotly debated meeting this week in Mystic, Connecticut, where the discussion centered on what areas to protect as fish habitat, one of the most fundamental elements in bringing stocks like cod and flounder back from historically low levels.
Using a new computer model and lots of new data that identified and mapped critical habitat in the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and the Great South Channel, the council was supposed to evaluate and update the validity of closures that have lasted as much as 20 years and enact new closures to protect newly identified critical habitat and spawning grounds.
From the outset the process threatened to morph into a turf war over opening access to thousands of square miles of ocean that have seen little or no fishing in decades. The scallop fleet, for instance, campaigned to be allowed into the northern portion of Georges Bank because new data showed that some of the closed area was not critical to fish stocks but contained large amounts of scallops.
Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times
Catch limits expected to raise the price of seafood
April 27, 2015 — A cutback on cod fishing is expected to affect the cost of fish across the country. New government restrictions have New England fishermen and seafood dealers anticipating a year of limited supply and higher prices for several popular species of fish.
The New England Fishery Management Council voted last year to reduce the catch limit for Gulf of Maine cod by almost 75 percent. Starting next month the limit will go from 1,550 to 386 metric tons.
Lean Year For New England Cod Ahead As Shutdown Looms
April 26, 2015 — Catch limits set to take effect this week will take a bite out of an industry that dates back to America’s colonial past: New England cod.
The stricter quota on cod taken from the Gulf of Maine — a 75 percent cut from the current year — will also affect the catch of other similar fish, meaning New England fishermen and seafood dealers expect a year of meager supply and high prices for several popular fish.
The New England Fishery Management Council voted last year to reduce the total allowable Gulf of Maine cod catch limit from 1,550 to 386 metric tons starting May 1. Conservationists say the rules are needed to save cod from commercial extinction.
But Gulf of Maine cod are what fishermen call a “choke species,” as they must also stop fishing for some other species when the cod fishery shuts down.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS Boston
Maine ranked as second-largest Atlantic fishing state, report says
April 24, 2015 — Maine is the second-largest fishing state on the Atlantic Coast by value and volume, with total seafood landings valued at $475 million in 2013, up 63 percent from 2009, according to a report from Íslandsbanki, an Icelandic bank.
The report looked at trends and issues shaping the seafood industry nationally.
It found that Maine and Massachusetts together account for about 60 percent of the value of landings along the East Coast.
In Maine, total landings increased by 41 percent – from 93,695 tons in 2009 to 132,276 tons in 2013 – primarily due to increases in the state’s two largest species, lobster and herring.
CCA files suit to stop divvying up of recreational red snapper quota
April 23, 2015 — The Coastal Conservation Association has filed suit to block a move by the Department of Commerce to grant special red snapper-fishing privileges to the Gulf of Mexico charter-fishing fleet.
Under the plan, called Amendment 40, federal fisheries managers would pull the charter take of red snapper from the recreational quota and award it to individual captains. The measure was endorsed by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council in a 10-7 vote in October, and signed by Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on April 10.
Amendment 40 has been stridently opposed by recreational-fishing interests since it was proposed because it would mean a smaller quota for the industry. Traditionally, the entire recreational fleet — charter captains and private anglers — has received 49 percent of the annual red-snapper quota. Commercial fishers get 51 percent.
Read the full story from The Times-Picayune