Saving Seafood

Maine objects, but regulators vote to keep shrimp fishery closed for 2018

November 30, 2017 — Regional fisheries managers voted Wednesday to keep Maine’s commercial shrimp fishery closed for another year amid assessments showing record-low numbers of shrimp in the Gulf of Maine.

The northern shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission opted to extend for a fifth year, through 2018, the moratorium on shrimp fishing in northern New England to allow depleted stocks to rebuild. Fishermen and Maine’s representatives on the shrimp panel had been pushing for a modest commercial fishery – ranging from 500 to 2,000 tons – but failed to convince their counterparts from Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

“After 40 years in this business, I know that Mother Nature has a remarkable ability, if we leave the spawning stock in the water, to recover,” said Mike Armstrong, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries representative to the panel. “I’m not convinced that is going to happen … but I want to give this stock a chance to recover for a few more years.”

The decision frustrated Commissioner Patrick Keliher of the Maine Department of Marine Resources, who responded by saying Maine would not participate in the planned 13.3-ton “research set-aside” fishery for shrimp.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

 

Martha’s Vineyard herring stocks show alarming decline

November 30, 2017 — Herring Creek is a small stream that plays a mighty role in the Martha’s Vineyard ecosystem. It’s the one waterway that connects Menemsha Pond and Squibnocket Pond, and the one place on the Island where blueback herring and alewives — also known as river herring — come home to reproduce.

River herring are anadromous fish and live most of their lives, three to five years, in the ocean. When it’s time to breed, they return to the exact river or pond where they were born.

Twenty years ago, the herring run at Herring Creek was described as “one of the largest on the East Coast, with up to 1.5 million fish making their way through the creek,” according to David H. Killoy, then chief of permits and enforcement for the Army Corps of Engineers.

Read the full story at the Martha’s Vineyard Times

 

Shrimp fishery closes another season

November 30, 2017 — As expected, interstate fishery managers will close the Gulf of Maine to commercial shrimping in 2018 for the fifth consecutive year because of the continuing perilous condition of the northern shrimp stock.

The northern shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission, which regulates shrimping in the Gulf of Maine, voted 2-1 on Wednesday in Portland, Maine, to continue the shrimping moratorium into the next fishing season.

Representatives from Massachusetts and New Hampshire voted to extend the northern shrimp closure into 2018, rejecting the campaign by some shrimpers and Maine’s panel representative to reopen the region for a scaled-back northern shrimp season.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Panel recommends reopening New England shrimp fishery

November 29, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — An advisory group is recommending regulators reopen New England’s long-shuttered shrimp fishery next year.

An arm of the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will decide on Wednesday in Portland if there will be a fishery this coming season. The advisory board’s recommendation clashes with an opinion from the commission’s technical committee, which wants to keep the fishery closed.

New England shrimp fishing is based in Maine and has been shut down since 2013.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bradenton Herald 

 

Odds are tiny for a winter shrimp fishing season

November 28, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — With fisheries regulators slated to gather in Portland on Wednesday, a shrimp fishing season in the Gulf of Maine this winter seemed as likely as bipartisan tax legislation in Congress.

The schedule called for members of the Atlantic State Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section to meet in the afternoon to establish dates and landings limits for the 2018 season. All evidence suggested that, except for a tiny “research” fishery, the limit, or total allowable catch, will be zero and there will be no season at all.

According to the commission’s recently released “2017 Stock Status Report for Gulf of Maine, Northern Shrimp,” the resource is in terrible shape. For the past five years (2012 through 2017) the shrimp stock has been at its lowest, both in terms of number and total biomass, over the 34 years that the shrimp population has been surveyed.

Prospects for the shrimp resource to rebound in the Gulf of Maine are grim.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American 

 

Decision coming about future of New England shrimp fishing

November 27, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — A decision is coming this week about whether New England’s long-shuttered shrimp fishery can reopen.

New England shrimping, largely based in Maine, has been shut down since 2013. Regulators say the shrimp are suffering from poor reproduction and warming ocean temperatures.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is meeting on Wednesday in Portland to decide if there will be a fishery this coming season.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bristol Herald Courier

 

The Press of Atlantic City: Menhaden decision sticks to science-based fisheries management

November 27, 2017 — Few people eat menhaden, or mossbunkers, so the foot-long fish is familiar mainly to those who use it for bait to catch bigger fish such as striped bass. Lots of other animals, such as ospreys and dolphins, eat them, too, and people also use them for fish-oil supplements, feed for aquaculture and bait for lobsters.

The management of such a beneficial fish is therefore crucial to many human and wildlife interests. Half a century ago, menhaden were superabundant, and as much as 712 million metric tons of menhaden was caught and mostly used for fertilizer. That led to a population crash and the fishery collapsed.

Since the 1990s and the advent of fisheries management, which included the closing of the menhaden fishery for a time, the menhaden population along the Atlantic Coast has recovered significantly. Stock assessments show the biomass of Atlantic menhaden more than doubling to about 1.2 million tons.

This month, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission updated its menhaden management plan, taking into account the increasing menhaden stock.

The commission was heavily lobbied by the fishing industry and by a coalition of environmentalists and sport-fishing interests led by a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Read the full editorial at The Press of Atlantic City

Scientists Again Recommend Moratorium On Maine Shrimp Fishery

November 22, 2017 — Coveted Maine shrimp are likely off the menu again in 2018.

For the fifth straight year, federal scientists are recommending a moratorium on commercial fishing of northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine. The small, sweet-tasting invertebrates’ numbers and biomass in the gulf have been dropping steadily, reaching their lowest recorded level this year, according to Max Appelman, who coordinates the fishery’s management for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

“We haven’t seen consecutive low values like this in the history of this fishery. So, somewhat unprecedented, where we are right now,” he says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Maine’s shrimp fishery unlikely to open in 2018

November 22, 2017 — The Maine shrimp fishery appears headed toward another closed season in 2018 based on bleak stock assessments made earlier this year, according to federal officials.

If a panel meeting next Wednesday in Portland agrees with the recommendations released this week, 2018 would be the fourth year the small but much-loved winter fishery is closed.

“It was not a good result for shrimp this year,” said Max Appelman, who coordinates the fishery for the federal regulatory body, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, that oversees the fishery.

Abundance of the species was at a 34-year low in 2017, according to the commission. During the annual summer scientific survey, data showed that survival of the shrimp that spawned in 2016 was the second lowest observed in the history of the survey, which began in the mid-1980s.

Climate change is the likeliest cause for the crash in the fishery; Northern shrimp, or pandalus borealis, require cold winter water to spawn. Waters in the Gulf of Maine, the southern most waters the shrimp can survive in, are warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

The environment for shrimp is increasingly “inhospitable,” according to the report.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

ASMFC Northern Shrimp Section and Advisory Panel Meeting Materials Now Available

November 21, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission: 

Meeting materials for the November 29, 2017 meetings of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section and Advisory Panel are available at http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/NShrimpSection_AP_MtgMaterials_Nov2017.pdf  or on the Commission’s website athttp://www.asmfc.org/calendar/11/2017/Northern-Shrimp-Section-and-Advisory-Panel/1136. For more information, please contact Max Appelman, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mappelman@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

Learn more about the ASMFC by visiting their site here.