Saving Seafood

US Commerce declares fishing disasters for 7 states

September 26, 2019 — U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has declared fishing disasters for seven states on three coasts.

“Fishing is the cornerstone of countless coastal economies and has been a way of life for generations of Americans,” he said in a brief news release Wednesday. “This determination acknowledges the critical role fisheries play in our communities, and the risks they face from natural disasters and other causes beyond their control.”

Ross’ action makes people and businesses eligible for NOAA fisheries disaster assistance. Congress has appropriated $165 million for such help for fiscal 2019 and the Commerce Department decides allocations to eligible fisheries, the statement said.

The statement said a regional disaster occurred for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because of “extreme flooding events in the Gulf of Mexico.” Alaska and California each had multiple requests approved; one for both Georgia and South Carolina will help shrimpers and shrimp processors. An unusually cold spell in January 2018 killed the vast majority of shrimp overwintering in estuaries, Erin Weeks, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said in an email.

Read the full story at The Star Tribune

ALABAMA: Climate and change: A different world, above and below Mobile Bay

September 4, 2019 — The salinity levels of water dictate what lives in and around it, and what doesn’t.

If there’s a lot of rain or a sudden surge of fresh water into a bay, salinity levels drop. If there’s a drought a surge of seawater from a major storm, salinity levels tend to rise. Climate change is already altering those balances.

And the changes wrought by those disruptions can be profound.

Earlier this year, heavy rains in the Midwest swelled the Mississippi River. To prevent flooding in New Orleans, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway, west of the city, twice this year. That sent a torrent of fresh water into the waters off Louisiana and Mississippi, west of Biloxi – and created a disaster along the oyster reefs in the area.

Read the full story at the Montgomery Advertiser

NOAA: Request for Comments on Red Snapper Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

August 8, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) developed six amendments to the Fishery Management Plan for Reef Fish Resources in the Gulf of Mexico (Reef Fish FMP) to allow the five Gulf of Mexico states some management authority for private angler red snapper recreational fishing. The Council has transmitted these Amendments to NOAA Fisheries.

  • NOAA Fisheries requests your comments regarding the changes these Amendments would make to Gulf of Mexico private recreational red snapper management in federal waters. Comments are due by October 7, 2019.
  • Amendment 50A includes actions that affect all states and Amendments 50B-F analyze actions specific to each Gulf of Mexico state (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas, respectively).
  • NOAA Fisheries will also publish a proposed rule to implement these changes and will send another Fishery Bulletin to request comments at that time. Comments on both the amendment and proposed rule will be considered in the final rule.

Read the full story at Fishing Wire

NOAA Fisheries Explores Electronic Reporting as Supplemental Source of Recreational Fishing Data

July 29, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

This month, NOAA Fisheries submitted a report to Congress (PDF, 19 pages) describing the Marine Recreational Information Program’s (MRIP) efforts to explore the suitability of electronic reporting as a method of collecting data from saltwater anglers.

Electronic reporting is a method of data collection that can include smartphones, tablets, and other technologies used to record, send, and store data. In some cases, electronic reporting allows samplers to use tablets instead of paper and pencil to record and submit data collected in the field. In others, electronic reporting allows anglers to record and submit data through a website or mobile device.

Electronic reporting has the potential to reduce data collection costs and improve the quality of reported information, and several states—including Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi—have adopted mandatory or voluntary angler reporting apps. But the challenges associated with using these technologies to collect data from private anglers—especially when anglers are asked to voluntarily report their data through a website or mobile app—have the potential to bias resulting estimates.

Opt-in angler reporting programs can experience low recruitment and retention rates, as well as a tendency for more avid angler to participate. To correct for these and other potential biases, independently conducted shoreside sampling must be used to confirm or correct missing or misfiled angler electronic reports. Shoreside validation is crucial, but adds cost and time to the data collection process. More research will help us understand how angler-submitted electronic data can best supplement the data the MRIP partnership collects through other means.

Read the full release here

Gulf lawmakers press US commerce secretary for disaster relief

July 25, 2019 — The letters keep pouring into U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ office from elected officials representing Gulf Coast states.

On Tuesday, U.S. Reps. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana), Steven Palazzo (R-Mississippi), Cedric Richmond (D-Louisiana), Bradley Byrne (R-Alabama), Garret Graves (R-Louisiana), and Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana), each signed a letter supporting the requests submitted by the governors of Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi for fishery disaster assistance.

“The livelihoods of many in our coastal communities are dependent on a healthy marine environment, and disruptions to these ecosystems have heavy impacts on both the commercial and recreational fishing industries, including the supply chains they support,” the congressmen wrote.

Record flooding throughout the Mississippi River basin has been recorded through most of the year. For example, earlier this week the river fell below flood stage in St. Louis for the first time in 127 days, breaking a record set 26 years ago.

As the water flows south, the flooding has created devastating effects on the fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. For the first time, the Army Corps of Engineers has needed to open the Bonnet Carré Spillway, causing millions of gallons of freshwater to spill eventually into the saltwater Gulf of Mexico.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Why So Many Sharks Have Bird Feathers in Their Bellies

May 22, 2019 — Marcus Drymon wasn’t expecting a baby shark to barf up a ball of feathers onto his boat.

The shark’s presence wasn’t the weird bit: Drymon and his team of fisheries ecologists regularly assess fish populations along the coasts of Mississippi and Alabama, and every year, they’ll catch, weigh, tag, and release thousands of sharks. In 2010, they were doing just that for the meter-long tiger shark when it coughed up the feathers. “Being an ecologist, I scooped them up and took them back to the lab,” Drymon says.

He passed the feathers to Kevin Feldheim, a molecular biologist at the Field Museum, who analyzed the DNA within them to work out what species they belonged to. The answer: a brown thrasher, a thrush-like songbird that lives in forests. What on Earth was it doing in the belly of an oceanic apex predator?

“I had expected a laughing gull or a brown pelican,” Drymon says. “The brown thrasher was the last bird I would have expected.”

Read the full story at The Atlantic

Triggerfish and amberjack seasons cut short by feds

March 25, 2019 — Better hurry if you want to catch a triggerfish in the Gulf of Mexico.

And get ready to wait a long time before you can put an amberjack in the icebox.

The recreational season for gray triggerfish will close on May 11, and will not reopen again until March of 2020. The 2019 season is just 72 days, instead of the usual 173 days. It is possible, depending on federal estimates of the 2019 harvest, that triggerfish could remain closed even longer.

Greater amberjack season, meanwhile, which would normally reopen on May 1 will remain closed until August. That’s because federal officials estimated that fishermen caught the entire annual quota of amberjack for the last year during August, September and October of 2018.

Read the full story at AL.com

Interior announces region-wide oil and gas lease sale for Gulf

February 15, 2019 — The Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that BOEM will offer 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2019. The sale would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lease Sale 252, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program). Under this program, 10 region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the Gulf, where resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas infrastructure is well established. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.

Lease Sale 252 will include approximately 14,696 unleased blocks, located from three to 231 miles offshore, in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from 9′ to more than 11,115′ (three to 3,400 meters). The following areas are excluded from the lease sale: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006; blocks adjacent to or beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap; and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

The Gulf of Mexico OCS, covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.

Revenues received from OCS leases (including high bids, rental payments and royalty payments) are directed to the U.S. Treasury, certain Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund.

Read the full story at Workboat

Shutdown might delay state management vote

January 28, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council opens its first 2019 meeting Monday in Orange Beach, Alabama, but its 17 members might not be able to take final votes on two key items.

Reef Fish Amendment 50, the hot-button item to hand recreational red snapper management to the five Gulf States, was scheduled for a final vote during the meeting’s run through Thursday.

A Gulf Council release explained, “Due to the partial government shutdown, the required Federal Register Notice was not published in advance of this meeting. As a result, the Council will not be able to take final action.”

The government re-opened Friday.

The other item is a move to move charterboat skippers into a new Federal Charter/Headboat Permits system.

The four-day agenda begins with committee meetings from 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Monday, and the Reef Fish Committee dominates Tuesday’s schedule and into Wednesday morning. The full council will meet from 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Wednesday with public comments taken from 1:30-4:30 p.m. before a 4:45-5:30 p.m. closed session and a full council meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday.

Read the full story at The Advocate

Bradley Byrne applauds NOAA’s increased Red Snapper catch limit under new rule

December 12, 2018 — Congressman Bradley Byrne, R-Montrose, applauded a new NOAA Fisheries rule to increase the annual catch limits and annual catch targets for the Red Snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This increase from NOAA shows exactly what those of us on the Gulf Coast have known for years: the health of the Red Snapper fishery is incredibly strong,” Representative Byrne said. “These latest numbers will further drive us to continue fighting for greater state control over the Red Snapper fishery and a full and adequate Red Snapper fishing season.”

The commercial annual catch limit would increase from 7.007 million pounds to 7.701 million pounds. The annual recreational charter boat catch limit would increase from 2.848 million pounds to 3.13 million pounds. The annual recreational private boat limit would increase from 3.885 million pounds to 4.269 million pounds.

The catch limits for Red Snapper are being increased because assessment of Gulf red snapper was completed in 2018 and indicated that red snapper was not overfished or experiencing overfishing, but the stock is still in a rebuilding plan. Based on the assessment, catch limits can be increased. The commercial, recreational, and component ACLs could also be increased.

The proposed rule would also decrease the annual catch limit of West Florida Hogfish from 219,000 pounds to just 129,500 pounds in 2019. It would increase to 141,300 pounds in 2020, and 150,400 pounds in 2021 and beyond.

Read the full story at the Alabama Political Reporter