August 29, 2012 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has released the preliminary agenda for its 71st annual meeting, to be held October 21-25, 2012, in Philadelphia, PA
Commercial Scup Quota to be increased for 2012 Winter II Quota Period
August 29, 2012 — NOAA Fisheries today announced that the commercial scup quota and the possession limit for the 2012 Winter II quota period (November 1-December 31) have been increased. This increase is because of the rollover of unused quota from the Winter I period.
NEFMC cancels September 4th meeting
August 29, 2012 — The NEFMC has issued a cancellation notice for the September 4 meeting of the Science and Statistical Committee.
The following was released by the NEFMC:
The agenda items scheduled for discussion on September 4th will be addressed at the SSC’s September 12-13 meeting in Providence, RI. You will receive an updated meeting notice, but also check the Council’s website for more information.
Fishery disaster call adds more steam
GLOUCESTER, Mass. — August 29, 2012 — New York joined Massachusetts and two other New England states Tuesday in seeking a federal disaster declaration for the Northeast groundfishery whose commercial and recreational fleets, in rapid consolidation, are facing catch reductions of 45-73 percent next year based on preliminary estimates by government scientists.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s office hinted late Monday that a regional disaster declaration is being drafted by the administration.
The radical catch cutbacks are driven by stock assessments, as mandated by the 2006 reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, but the government’s science has drawn increasing skepticism. Last week, Mayors Carolyn Kirk of Gloucester and Jon Mitchell of New Bedford urged a freeze on catch limit reductions until confidence was restored in the assessment process.
In his filing for Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick asked for $21 million, but there has been no estimate of the budget for a regional disaster.
Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine filed disaster requests six or more months ago, but have gotten no response, either from Jane Lubchenco at the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the Department of Commerce, NOAA’s parent agency, and the silence has angered elected leaders of the filing states.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times.
Maine Fishermen Meet With Top Federal Fisheries Official
August 28, 2012 — Fishermen gathered in Portland today to let the region's new top federal fisheries official know what they think about where the industry is going.
John Bullard was recently appointed to head the Northeast Regional Office of the National Marine Fisheries Service in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Soon after taking the job, Bullard launched a series of "listening sessions'' across New England to hear from stakeholders about the major issues facing the industry and thoughts on how it should be structured.
Today's session was being held at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, on Portland's waterfront. Among those voicing their opinions was Kirk Newkirk, who says he used to make a good living catching cod.
"It is National Marine Fisheries' job to make sure that every single one of us in this room has something to bring home at the end of the day," he said. "When one user group or another user group or any of us don't have fish at the end of the day it's a problem."
Read the full story at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.
Maine businesses look to help lobstermen
ROCKLAND, Maine — August 28, 2012 — It's been a rocky summer for Maine's lobster business, so people in Rockland are trying to give them a hand. Local businesses are promoting an event all this week called "Lobsterpalooza."
The promotion includes restaurants, retail stores and other businesses in Rockland, Rockport and Camden. All are offering a variety of deals involving lobster. They're even organizing cash mobs to buy lobster at local seafood dealers.
Local inn owner Cheryl Michaelsen, of the Berry Manor Inn and Historic Inns of Rockland, started Lobster Palooza. Michaelsen says the idea is to show support for local fishermen by having people simply buy more lobster. Michaelsen says they have 40 businesses involved already, and are hoping mo4re will come on board.
Maine's lobster fishermen have been struggling for several months with unusually low prices, which so far show little sign of improving. That may be good news for consumers, but not good for other businesses in the midcoast area. The communities around Penobscot Bay are the core of Maine's lobster industry. Last year the state landed more than 100 million pounds of lobster. This year's low prices mean tens of millions of dollars are being lost from the coastal economy.
Read the full story from WCSH Portland.
Anchovy price leap causes food industry chain reaction
August 24, 2012 — If you like anchovies on your pizza you'd better be careful," warns Mark Livingston, investment director of Fidelity Worldwide Investment.
You would not expect the head of a global asset fund managing £138bn of pensions and investments to care about the cost of pizza toppings. But the global nature of the food chain means severe storms off the coast of Peru have led to a dramatic jump in the price of the oily fish – which will in turn lead to a spike in Scottish farmed fish, Chinese pigs and even Omega 3 tablets in Holland & Barratt.
"That's the nature of today's food business – everything's connected," Livingston says. "If you can catch some anchovies you'll make some serious money."
And that's why Livingston cares about this silvery-coloured fish. Three years ago Fidelity spotted the growing importance of the "forgotten fish" and invested in Copeinca, a Norwegian company that owns a fleet of 30 Peruvian anchovy fishing boats and five processing plants across the country.
Just a few years ago no one outside of the fish oil industry really paid much attention to anchovies and they were lumped together with other unloved fish under the unappetising label "industrial fish".
"It covers all the stuff we don't consume directly. We caught 18m tonnes of industrial fish last year, which represents 20% of all fish caught worldwide," says Gorjan Nikolik, associate director of animal protein at Rabobank.
These fish are caught in massive quantities, dried, minced and ground down into fish meal [a brown powder made mostly from fish bones and fish offal] and fish oil [which is extracted from the tissues of oily fish].
Read the full story at the Guardian.
Scallop and Monkfish precedents suggest ASMFC should consider northern aerial survey in Menhaden regulation
WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) August 28, 2012 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) is currently considering potentially drastic cuts to the Atlantic menhaden harvest, as a result of a 2010 assessment that showed overfishing. Not much data are available on the current state of the fishery, as the most recently available assessment from 2012 was deemed severely flawed by the ASMFC’s Menhaden Technical Committee, and is an unreliable gauge of the health of the menhaden stock. Outside of the 2012 stock assessment, there are new data on menhaden that potentially contradicts the overfishing designation, showing that the population may be twice as high as current estimates. There is precedent for regulatory agencies to consider such data, most notably in the late 1990s with the scallop fishery and in the early 2000s with the monkfish fishery.
The additional data, an aerial survey of the North Atlantic conducted by fish stock survey expert Dr. James Sulikowski of the University of New England, showed a significant number of menhaden in northern waters, areas menhaden are known to inhabit but for which little data were previously available. The survey results were analyzed by Dr. Doug Butterworth, a world-renowned stock assessment scientist from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and Dr. Alexia Morgan, who has consulted with organizations such as the New England Aquarium, the Blue Ocean Institute, and the Pew Environment Group. The results of the North Atlantic aerial survey were compared with contemporaneous aerial observations made by spotter pilots in the southern portion of the menhaden fishery’s range. Based on these comparisons, Drs. Butterworth and Morgan found that menhaden stock biomass may be twice as high as measured in the currently-used 2010 assessment, which found that overfishing is occurring but that menhaden are not overfished.
Using single-year, non-peer-reviewed data to temper the extent of new regulations is not unprecedented in fisheries management. In 1998, harvest cuts were enacted that would have been drastic enough to effectively shut down most of the New England scallop fishing fleet. Before the cuts in fishing opportunities scheduled for 1999 went into effect, the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth Center for Marine Science and Technology (now SMAST), the Fisheries Survival Fund, and NMFS collaborated on a scallop survey in areas that were then off-limits to fishing. The study revealed high scallop abundance in the closed areas and, as a result, the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) decided to keep the fishery at status quo through successive framework actions over the next few years.
Similarly, in 1999, after years of poor surveys, regulators developed a four-year plan to reduce overfishing and rebuild the Atlantic monkfish stock that was to have resulted in a zero possession limit in year four. Concerned for their livelihood and believing the stock to be in much better shaped than apparent in the NMFS annual survey, Brooklyn-based monkfish processor Marc Agger formed with other members of the industry the Monkfish Defense Fund (MDF). The MDF retained an independent scientific advisor, Dr. J. J. Maguire, who helped design and implement a cooperative trawl survey, which, according to Monkfish Framework 1, “provided a wealth of new information and allowed a more complete assessment of the monkfish resource than had been previously possible.”
Although the survey methodology and results had not been peer reviewed, the information gathered was used in the January 2002 Stock Assessment Workshop, which concluded the stock was in much better shape than previously thought. The industry survey’s results were also used to justify a one-year postponement of the fourth-year harvest reduction until more information was collected to get a complete picture of the health of the monkfish population. The monkfish survey sponsored by the MDF was conducted two subsequent times, with each survey showing consistently higher estimates than the official trawl survey.
The ASMFC recognizes the inadequacies of the existing menhaden stock assessment data. The Menhaden Technical Committee, the arm of the ASMFC that reviews menhaden stock assessments, concluded that the 2012 menhaden assessment is not a suitable guide for management decisions. Most notable among the flaws identified by the Technical Committee is the appearance of a retrospective pattern, meaning that the estimates in previous population assessments contradict the population estimates in the most recent assessment, and need to be revised in order to fit the more current data. The appearance of a retrospective pattern in a stock assessment indicates that some of the assumptions that are built into the assessment model are incorrect. It is a sign the model is no longer working and needs to be revised.
The Atlantic menhaden fishery currently faces a situation similar to those previously faced by the scallop and monkfish fisheries. Regulators are currently dealing with a data-poor situation and are considering large cuts to the menhaden harvest, while recently available data suggests that these cuts might not be necessary, or might not need to be as large. In previous cases, non-peer-reviewed data from a single year was used to delay potentially drastic management decisions. Adopting a similarly cautious approach could provide time to allow the ASMFC to acquire more comprehensive information on the health of Atlantic menhaden.
Additional resources
Areas of Concern in the ASMFC's 2012 Atlantic Menhaden Assessment Update
For a definition of "retrospective pattern", see our glossary.
Brown touts support for Mass. fishermen in ad
BOSTON — August 28, 2012 — U.S. Sen. Scott Brown has released new radio and television ads in which he touts his support for the troubled fishing industry and blames Washington for its problems.
Brown’s ad says the region’s fishing industry is dying because of unrealistically low federal catch limits, as well as unfair enforcement of fishing laws. He says no one has been held accountable for mistakes and errors that hurt fishing families.
Brown has been a consistent critic of federal fishery management, and has called on President Obama to fire Jane Lubchenco, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Read the full story from the AP at the Boston Globe.
NOAA briefly opens red snapper fishing in South Atlantic
August 27, 2012 — NOAA Fisheries approved Monday an emergency action that temporarily opens recreational and commercial red snapper fishing. The temporary opening applies to red snapper fishing in the South Atlantic region.
This area includes North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida's east coast, according to a news release from NOAA.
The recreational season will be open for two consecutive weekends of Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. The season will last from Sept. 12-14 and Sept. 21-23.
At that time, anglers may keep one fish per person per day with no size limit. The recreational catch limit for 2012 is 9,399 fish, the release said.
Commercial fishermen will have their chance to catch red snapper for seven days. The season opens September 17 and lasts until the 23.
The daily trip limit during the commercial season is 50 pounds, gutted weight. There is no size limit. The commercial catch limit for 2012 is 20,818 pounds.