Saving Seafood

State and Local

NORTH CAROLINA: Fishing communities bend into the storm

September 14, 2018 — “We have everything secured — as much as we could do,” said fisheries writer Susan West on Thursday morning from the Outer Banks village of Buxton, N.C., as Hurricane Florence bore down on the Carolina coast. “We have plywood shutters up on most of our windows. The boat has extra lines on it.”

Her husband, Rob, fishes their 34-foot gillnetter, the Lucy B., which is docked at Jeffery’s Seafood on the sound side of nearby Hatteras Village.

“Most of the folks that we know — the fishermen — all stayed here,” West said. “Hatteras Village is still a thriving commercial fishing center.”

Farther south in Merritt, just outside of Oriental and closer to the storm’s projected path, NF contributor Maureen Donald reported similar circumstances.

“A very unscientific survey of residents deciding to ride out the storm proved to be commercial fishing families. Reasons for staying inevitably center on being near their boats and equipment. At nearby Oriental, it’s evident that two of the largest commercial fishing operations have made preparations — the docks are lined with trawlers securely tied to the docks.”

She added that the fleet has been busy for days leading up to the storm’s arrival.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New York’s Whales Love Bunker. So Do Fishing Boats. Conflict Ensues.

September 13, 2018 –It has been a bountiful summer for bunker in the waters off New York, and for local whale spotters. Bunker, a favorite food of many larger predators, including whales, are enjoying another year in a decade-long recovery.

But [Paul] Sieswerda, the founder of Gotham Whale, a research nonprofit that provides commentary during whale cruises, sees a shadow on the horizon far bigger than a whale. Industrial-scale fishing boats from a fish processor in Virginia called Omega Protein have ventured a bit farther north than their usual range this summer.

On Aug. 30, a boat from Omega Protein lowered a net nearly six city blocks long into the water, about 25 miles southeast of the Rockaways, and pulled up about 800,000 pounds of bunker, also known as menhaden. On Sept. 6, Omega returned to the vicinity and hauled out nearly 2 million pounds more.

The catches, in federal waters outside the three-mile state line, are perfectly legal. Omega, which grinds and refines the oily, bony fish into pet food and fish-oil capsules and employs 125 fishermen, is authorized to harvest about 500 million menhaden (or about 340 million pounds) this year — over 70 percent of the total menhaden catch, according to quotas set by regulators.

That does not mean they are welcome.

Tom Paladino, a former charter fishing boat captain who started running whale watches from the American Princess in 2010 as local whale sightings began to grow, did not mince words. “We have a major issue with a fishing fleet coming in and taking all the food from the whales,” he told his passengers.

Omega says it is doing nothing of the sort and is removing only a tiny fraction of the local menhaden that its spotter pilots have estimated to be in the tens of millions. “The best science shows that this is a completely sustainable fishery and the whale diet is not being impacted at all,” said an Omega spokesman, Ben Landry.

Omega’s fishermen are not the only ones after local menhaden. Bait fishermen who sell menhaden to the shellfishing trade and also sometimes use purse seine nets can catch three million pounds this year in New York State waters, where Omega doesn’t fish. A bill stalled in the State Legislature would prohibit purse seining of menhaden in New York.

The regional management body for the waters in question, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which has been gradually increasing the allowable catch for menhaden for five years, does not see an issue. This year’s 476-million-pound cap on the Atlantic menhaden catch “has zero percent chance of subjecting the resource to overfishing or causing it to be overfished,” said Toni Kerns, director of the commission’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program.

At the local level, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is not concerned, either. “There’s not been any alarm bells about them coming up here,” James Gilmore, the director of D.E.C.’s marine resources division, said of the Omega Protein boats.

Read the full story at the New York Times

 

ALASKA: Biologists, fishermen puzzle over late Kenai sockeye run

September 13, 2018 — First they were underweight, with underwhelming numbers. Then they weren’t there at all. Then they were coming in late, showing up as Upper Cook Inlet fishermen were packing up their gear for the season.

The unpredictable and significantly smaller Kenai River sockeye run frustrated a lot of fishermen this year.

As of the last day of sonar counts on Aug. 28, about 1.03 million sockeye had entered the river. More than half of them arrived after Aug. 1, leading to a stop-and-start fishery that included significant time and area cuts for commercial fishermen in Cook Inlet and a complete sockeye salmon sport angling closure on the Kenai River from Aug. 4–23.

That resulted in a total catch of 813,932 sockeye, less than half of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s preseason forecast commercial harvest of 1.9 million sockeye.

Even the late fish arrival wasn’t much of a boon to the area’s commercial fishermen. Per the management plans, the East Side setnet fishermen are largely out of the water by Aug. 15, and the drift gillnet fleet is moved mostly to the west side of Cook Inlet to focus on silver salmon.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

ALASKA: Southeast’s commercial red king crab fishery won’t open in 2018

September 13, 2018 — Commercial crab fishermen won’t have a season for red king crab in Southeast this fall. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game made that announcement on September 7.

The lucrative fishery was open last year for the first time in six years. The catch last season was over 120,000 pounds worth around $1.3 million at the docks.

Fish and Game says estimates of legal-sized male crab have declined nine percent from last year and are below the threshold in regulation that allows for a fishery. Those estimates are based in part on an annual survey of crab stocks in seven areas of Northern and Central Southeast.

Fishermen sought changes to regulations at last winter’s meeting of the Board of Fisheries in Sitka but were unsuccessful in attempts to have more king crab fishing opportunity even while crab numbers are low. The one change that passed will allow them to apply for a commissioner’s permit to explore for king crab in offshore waters, beyond three miles.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

Red Tide: Is Florida seafood safe to eat?

September 13, 2018 — The major red tide algae bloom along the Gulf Coast is certainly smelly, and at worst may have negative health effects in exposed humans.

But what about locally-caught seafood? What’s safe to eat right now? With customers staying away from beachside resorts and restaurants en masse, diners may be equating the fish on their plates to the dead fish on shore.

However, most commercial gulf species, including snapper and grouper, are caught 20 miles out from the shore, meaning they are not at all impacted by the red tide.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, it is safe to eat local finfish as long as the fish are filleted before eaten. Although toxins may accumulate in the guts of fish, these areas are discarded when fish is filleted.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Times

Researchers hope to get Maine green crabs on the menu

September 13, 2018 — Could deep-fried soft-shell green crabs be the next culinary sensation?

Researchers at Manomet, a Brunswick nonprofit, have discovered a culinary market for green crabs in Venice, Italy, that they think could carry over to U.S. restaurants.

Now they’ve received a $267,440 grant, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program, to see if the idea can be adapted to create a lucrative market for Maine fishermen.

A lucrative soft-shell green crab fishery has existed in Venice for over a century, Marissa McMahan, Manomet senior fisheries scientist, said. McMahan told Mainebiz that Venetian fishermen are getting $25 to $55 per pound for green crabs, depending on season and availability.

Manomet has worked with several volunteer fishermen to harvest soft-shell green crabs, which have been sold at $3 each to chefs at four restaurants: Brunswick Inn, Enoteca Athena and Henry and Marty, all in Brunswick, and at Salt Pine Social in Bath.

The chefs developed the crabs as a battered and deep-fried menu item, served whole.

“The chefs use the soft-shell green crab in the same way the use soft-shell blue crab,” McMahan said. “It hasn’t completely replaced blue crab on their menus because we don’t have the supply yet.”

The shells are soft enough that they become part of the food, she said.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford revives push to seize Northeast Fisheries Center

September 13, 2018 — Appealing to the new management team at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, elected officials from New Bedford are newly appealing to relocate the Northeast Fisheries Science Center from Woods Hole to New Bedford, arguing the change will help the federal government to more effectively engage with members of an active fishing community.

In a letter Tuesday to Acting Administrator Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet, officials cited media reports suggesting that NOAA had ruled out every possible location for the center except Woods Hole in Falmouth.

In asking for reconsideration, they also demanded the federal government release its “business case analysis” of potential locations in the Northeast.

“We believe that that by siting the facility in the undisputed center of the commercial fishing industry on the East Coast, the Administration could at last begin to break down barriers to communication, and repair the distrust that has plagued the relationship between the National Marine Fisheries Service and the fishing industry in the Northeast for decades,” fishing industry and South Coast lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Free film in New Bedford follows Point Judith fisherman on the job

September 11, 2018 — The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues Friday, Sept. 21, 7 p.m., with “Rodman Sykes: A Life in the Fisheries.” The film is part of a series by Markham Starr documenting the commercial fishing port of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

Rodman Sykes is a lifelong commercial fisherman out of Point Judith. He began fishing with his grandfather as a child and has pursued this career his whole life. He discusses his life in the fisheries, how it has changed over time, and what increasing regulatory pressure is doing to the industry against the backdrop of a day aboard the F/V Virginia Marise, catching both groundfish for food and skate to be used as bait by local lobstermen.

Dock-U-Mentaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park and New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, 33 William St., in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New York’s offshore wind plan faces commercial fishing opposition

September 13, 2018 — The plan to turn ocean wind into energy calls for anchoring 15 wind turbines, each one a little taller than the Washington Monument, into the sea floor more than 30 miles off the coast of Montauk, Long Island.

They’ll be far enough out in the Atlantic that they won’t be seen from Long Island’s beaches, so far in fact, that it will require miles and miles of cable to deliver their 90 megawatts of energy – enough to power 50,000 homes – from ocean to land.

And that’s right smack in the middle of where Chris Scola makes his living.

Several days a week, Scola motors his rusting trawler – the Rock-n-Roll III — into the waters off Montauk’s coast, drops a dredging net onto the ocean floor and scoops up hundreds of pounds of scallops.

Once those cables go in, Scola fears his nets will get entangled, making dredging so difficult he’ll need to find a place to fish further offshore with a larger boat, sending himself deeper into debt.

“This isn’t just about fishermen,” said Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Montauk-based Long Island Commercial Fishing Association. “This is about the environment. You’re industrializing the ocean floor.”

Brady said developers have failed to properly account for the impact that two processes essential to the Montauk wind farm project will have on fishing habitats. One is the pile driving required to anchor 590-foot tall turbines in the ocean floor and the other is jet plowing, which liquidizes sediment so cable can be dug four to six feet into the ocean floor.

The project’s developer, Deepwater Wind, says the processes might have an initial impact on fishing habitats but over time things will return to normal.

Read the full story at the Poughkeepsie Journal

Stone crab catch in short supply across Florida

September 12, 2018 — It seems the only thing Florida stone crabbers harvested with any consistency during the season that ended May 15 was optimism. And that was often hard work.

The average annual haul since 2011 has been 3.7 million pounds, valued at $27.8 million. The harvest in pounds has climbed the past few years, with catch from October to December traditionally being better than January to May.

But 2018 bucked the recent seasonal trend, yielding just 2.1 million pounds — not much more than the 1.98 million pounds caught in 2013-2014 season that was labeled “historically low” by Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission officials.

Shorter supply resulted in higher dollar value, though. Commission landings data shows an estimated value for all claw sizes this season at $29.6 million.

Price aside, it was hard for some fish houses to meet demand.

“I don’t know if we broke 100,000 pounds this season,” said Tommy Shook, general manager of Frenchy’s Stone Crab Co. in Palm Harbor, Fla. “The year before was 190,000 [pounds sold].”

The independent crabbers he buys from just weren’t able to deliver. “It sure makes it hard when the phones are ringing and there’s nothing to sell,” he said. “Nothing worse than being a crab company with no crabs.”

“Stones were in very short supply in our area last season,” said Katie Fischer of Island Seafood Co. in Matlacha, on Florida’s Southwest Gulf Coast. “Our local crab house couldn’t supply us, so we had to drive to a crab house up in Englewood the whole season.” Island Seafood was paying $28 a pound for jumbo claws and $20 to $25 for large claws at the dock.

Read the full story at National Fisherman