Saving Seafood

The New England fish dish that saved a nation

Shad bakes are a dance of heat and timing that have been going on for generations up and down the East Coast of the United States for more than 100 years.

September 6, 2017 — Joseph Shea presides over a culinary jigsaw puzzle. He and his apprentices squat around a hexagonal fire, shifting slabs of wood with fish nailed to them against the heat. Flames lick at angled oak planks, coaxing out the oils of the American shad, Connecticut’s state fish, and cooking it to a delicate crust just steps away from where it was spawned.

At a call from the bake master, a fire-tender hoists a numbered plank from the heat source and hurries it across the lawn, where a team of workers unhinge half a dozen fish from their crucifix and pass the plate to the server with assembly-line accuracy: gill to gullet in 30 minutes or less.

This dance of heat and timing has been going on up and down the East Coast of the United States for more than 100 years. Though home-planked shad can be traced back to early 18th-Century cookbooks, large-scale shad bakes similar to Shea’s began in the late 1800s, when savvy travel marketers used the events as a way to entice an emerging middle class to the suburbs for entertainment and a taste of country life.

Today, the tradition is kept alive by civic organisations, most famously in the tiny Connecticut hamlet of Essex, which has held an annual Rotary Club shad bake since 1958.

This unique way of cooking large amounts of shad is a rite of spring in my home state of Connecticut. The filleted fish, its 1,000 tiny bones expertly removed, is nailed to boards and circled around a roaring fire. Angled in such a way and blackened by decades of reuse, the planks help release the excess fish’s oils into a pan below to make the fish light, imparting a flavour that cannot easily be replicated outside of an open fire.

The resulting delicacy, sometimes compared to a lean salmon, requires little else beyond the smoky taste of the fire – and strip of salt pork fat and a smattering of paprika for added flavour, applied to the fish before it hits the flame.

Read the full story at the BBC

NOAA Fisheries Announces Proposed Management Measures for the 2016-2018 Atlantic Herring Fishery

June 22, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries announces proposed management measures for the Atlantic Herring fishery for the 2016-2018 fishing years. The proposed catch limits for fishing years 2016 through 2018 are slightly lower than the current catch limits because the most recent assessment shows a slightly lower spawning stock biomass and a slightly higher fishing mortality.

We are also proposing to increase the catch cap limits for river herring and American shad to increase access to the fishery, while still providing sufficient protection for these species.

Read the proposed rule as published in the Federal Register and supplemental documents.

The comment period is open through July 21.

You may submit comments by any one of the following methods:

  • Electronic Submission: Submit all electronic public comments via the Federal eRulemaking Portal. Click the “Comment Now!” icon, complete the required fields, and enter or attach your comments.
  • Mail: Submit written comments to NMFS, Greater Atlantic Regional Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930. Mark the outside of the envelope “Comments on 2016-2018 Herring Specifications.”
  • Fax: (978) 281-9135, Attn: Shannah Jaburek.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Goebel at 978-281-9175 or email jennifer.goebel@noaa.gov.

Susquehanna River: Deal reached on fish, eel passage at Conowingo Dam

May 3, 2016 — Exelon Corp. has pledged in a deal announced last Monday to work to enhance spawning fish passage at Conowingo Dam over the next 50 years, seeking to revive the Susquehanna River’s meager stocks of American shad and river herring.

The Chicago-based company and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said they had reached agreement to improve at least one of two fish lifts at Conowingo and meanwhile start trucking migratory shad and river herring upriver past it and three other dams in Pennsylvania.

The agreement comes after years of negotiations between the company and wildlife agencies and conservation groups, which were seeking to revive the once-legendary spawning runs of shad and herring. The number of returning fish each spring has been trending downward since the 1980s, and wildlife agencies and conservationists wanted Exelon to make potentially costly upgrades to fish lifts there as a condition of renewing its federal license to operate the hydroelectric facility.

The company’s license to operate Conowingo expired in 2014, but the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has extended the permit while the parties — including Maryland —attempt to hash out their differences. An even more contentious issue involves what Exelon may have to do about the buildup of nutrient-laden sediment in the dam’s reservoir, which studies have shown could complicated efforts to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s water quality.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Case for Shad & Herring Rules Circles the Drain

January 7, 2015 — (CN) – The D.C. Circuit cut the line on a case accusing the government of failing to protect ocean fish that feed New York and New Jersey eagles and striped bass.

Led by the New Jersey-based Anglers Conservation Network and its founder, Capt. Paul Eidman, the case centers on four dwindling stocks of fish – alewife, blueback herring, American shad and hickory shad – that school in the Atlantic Ocean from New York to North Carolina.

As those fish migrate up rivers during their annual spawning in the spring, they are prey for bald eagles, ospreys and other birds, like cormorants and gulls, as well as for other fish at sea and for striped bass making their annual spawning run into many of the same rivers.

The case at hand contends that there are even fewer river herrings and shads available for bigger species on the food chain, thanks to a 2013 inaction by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, one of eight established by the 1976 Fishery Conservation Act, or Magnuson-Stevens Act.

That year, the council was considering adopting Amendment 15 to add river herring and shad to the 1983 Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan.

Rather than approving the amendment, however, the council voted 10-9 to table the issue for three years while a working group studied the fish further.

The plaintiffs say this decision violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act, but U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler dismissed the complaint on Sept. 30, 2014.

A three-judge panel with the D.C. Circuit affirmed Tuesday.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

 

Lecturers talk global conservation efforts, decline of fisheries

October 31, 2015 — Artist James Prosek uses fish as inspiration for his work.

Prosek, who has also written 13 books, told stories at a Saturday lecture at SUNY-ESF of when he was 9 years old and trespassing rivers to fish. Though his youth involved catching and releasing 30 fish to take a picture, Prosek said he now prefers to catch one and eat it.

About 100 people attended the most recent installment of the SUNY-ESF Dale L. Travis Public Lecture Series, which focused on the future of fisheries. The lecture, entitled “The Future of Fisheries: Choices, Decisions, and the Role of the Arts,” featured five speakers: Karin Limburg, John Waldman, Prosek, David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes.

During the lecture, Swedish folk music played in the background.

The music tied into Limburg’s discussion about fish hook experiments in Gotland, Sweden. Limburg was the first of five speakers during the lecture, which took place in Marshall Hall on the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry campus.

The talk opened with a traditional  reading and translation by a Haudenosaunee representative. The excerpt concluded with, “Now our minds are one.”

In addition to discussing her fish hook experiments, Limburg spoke in depth about her study of otoliths, which are chronometers in the ear of a fish that show its precise age and chemical makeup.

Read the full story at The Daily Orange

 

Inside North Carolina Science: DNA markers track fish migration

November 1, 2015 — On a cloudy spring day last year, I had the opportunity to go out on the Roanoke River with biologists from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. I collected fish with them as part of my job as a geneticist at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences. We work in conjunction with NCWRC and use genetics to track and manage stocking programs for American shad, a native fish currently in decline.

In an effort to bring American shad back to traditional population numbers, NCWRC goes out on the Roanoke and Neuse rivers every spring to collect adult American shad returning to spawn. These fish are taken to hatcheries to spawn; eggs are allowed to hatch safely without being eaten by the predators that share their river ecosystem. The baby fish, called fry, are then released back into the river. In the fall, NCWRC goes back onto the rivers to see how many juvenile fish they can find.

Read the full story at The Charlotte Observer

Conowingo Dam fish-lift overhaul urged to restore Susquehanna’s shad, eels

August 12, 2015 — Federal wildlife officials are calling for Exelon Corp. to overhaul its fish lifts at Conowingo Dam, arguing it’s the only way to revive the Susquehanna River’s depleted stocks of the iconic American shad, eels and other once-important fish.

In comments submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended the lifts be rebuilt and enlarged as a condition of renewing Exelon’s license to generate hydroelectric power at Conowingo.

The service also wants the power company to help more eels get upriver — by truck for now.

Rebuilding the dam’s fish lifts could cost millions of dollars. Exelon is reviewing the wildlife service’s prescription for improving fish passage, said Robert Judge, a spokesman for the Chicago-based parent of Baltimore Gas and Electric.

The service’s proposal comes after years of negotiations between Exelon and officials from Maryland, Pennsylvania and federal agencies over the dam’s relicensing, which has been hung up in part by debates over how to deal with a buildup behind the dam of bay-fouling sediment and nutrient pollution washed down the river.

The company’s license to operate Conowingo expired last year, but the federal commission has extended the permit while the parties attempt to work out their differences over the sediment buildup, fish passage and other issues.

“We’ve reached a crucial period,” said Genevieve LaRouche, supervisor of the wildlife service’s Chesapeake Bay field office. “It’s a 46-year license. It’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do something.”

LaRouche said the service hasn’t costed out the upgrades yet. But state and federal officials have previously said current fish passage facilities could be tweaked for less than $1 million, while replacing both fish lifts could run $24 million or more.

Read the full story at The Baltimore Sun