Saving Seafood

N.H. researcher finds new bacteria contaminating oysters

February 15, 2017 — Scientists studying oysters along the Atlantic Coast have discovered a critical clue to understanding why more seafood lovers are getting sick from eating shellfish.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have found a new strain of the bacteria Vibrio parahaemolyticus, the world’s leading culprit of contamination in shellfish that, when eaten, causes diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain. In rare cases, people have died from contracting lethal septicemia.

Cheryl Whistler and her colleagues discovered the new strain ST631 and detailed their findings in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. Previously only one strain of the bacteria was blamed for this type of food poisoning, which Whistler said is on the rise in New England and already is responsible for an estimated 45,000 cases in the U.S. each year.

Whistler said the new strain is endemic to the region but it is unclear how it evolved to become so dangerous. It has similar virulent genes to ST36, the strain long blamed for infections and which is believed to have come from the Pacific Northwest.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Concord Monitor

New Jersey senators among group requesting offshore drilling ban

October 7, 2016 — TRENTON, N.J. — Senators Cory Booker and Robert Menendez are among 14 legislators who have called for President Barack Obama to ban drilling off the Atlantic Coast in any areas that have not already been leased.

NJ.com reports the two New Jersey Democrats signed a letter requesting the ban that was sent to Obama on Thursday along with fellow like-minded senators.

The letter also asked that Obama use his executive power to make the Arctic Ocean off-limits to oil drilling.

The senators say drilling in waters off the East Coast threaten fishing and tourism — key economic drivers for coastal states — because of the risk of a spill.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald 

New York Times spotlights perils faced by Atlantic scallop fleet

April 18, 2016 – In an April 15 story, the New York Times described in detail the challenges faced at sea by members of the limited access scallop fleet. The story covered the rescue of the Carolina Queen III, which ran aground off the Rockaways Feb. 25, during a storm with waves cresting as high as 14 feet. The following is an excerpt from the story:

Scallop fishing may not conjure up the derring-do of those catching crabs in the icy waters of the Bering Strait or the exploits of long-line tuna fisherman chronicled on shows like “The Deadliest Catch.” But the most dangerous fishing grounds in America remain those off the Northeast Coast — more dangerous than the Bering Sea, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 people died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast.

The scallop industry had the second-highest rate of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100,000 workers. Among all workers in the United States over the same period, according to the C.D.C., there were four deaths per 100,000 workers. The size of the crew and the time at sea contribute to the dangers.

Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, said that since 2010, the number of vessels permitted to fish for scallops has been limited, and with fewer unregistered ships at sea, there have been fewer accidents.

The Atlantic sea scallop — Placopecten magellanicus — has been popular since the 1950s, when Norwegian immigrants first scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The supply could swing between scarcity and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms known as brown tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to destroy the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even after those tides passed, the industry almost did itself in by overfishing. Only after regulations were passed in the 1990s and the industry banded together with the scientific community to improve fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound.

Now, scalloping along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina is among the most lucrative fishing in the world. In 2014, the catch was estimated to be worth more than $424 million.

The industry operates under strict guidelines, many aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To fish some areas with known scallop beds, a permit is needed, and the haul is capped. Open-sea fishing, on the other hand, is restricted only by the annual 32-days-at-sea limit.

The clock is always ticking.

“We get so few days to go out, we have to find every efficiency to maximize our days at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a boat called the Rigulus, is part of the tight-knit scalloping community.

In preparation for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the crew would have spent days getting ready, buying $3,000 in groceries, loading more than 20,000 pounds of ice and prepping the equipment on the twin-dredge vessel.

The vessel steamed north from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to reach the coast off New Jersey, where the crew would probably have started fishing. Then the work would begin.

It is pretty standard for a crew to work eight hours on and take four hours off, but in reality it often is more like nine hours on and three off. If you are a good sleeper, you are lucky to get two hours’ shut-eye before heading back on deck.

The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops dredge for about 50 minutes and are then hauled up, their catch dumped on deck before the tows are reset and plunged back into the water, a process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

While the dredge did its work, the crew on duty on the Carolina Queen sorted through the muddy mix of rocks and sand and other flotsam on the ship’s deck, looking for the wavy round shells of the scallops.

“The biggest danger is handling the gear on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is very heavy gear on a pitching deck, and you get a lot of injured feet, injured hands.”

Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they must be shucked by hand.

The crew spends hours opening the shells and slicing out the abductor muscle of the mollusks — the fat, tasty morsel that winds up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, where a plate of sea scallops à la plancha costs as much as $33.

A single boat can haul 4,000 pounds in a day.

Read the full story at the New York Times

NEW JERSEY: Fishermen’s Energy Ocean Wind Project Tries Again for Governor’s Approval

March 24, 2016 — Fishermen’s Energy, a consortium of South Jersey commercial fisheries that formed a wind power company in order to influence where such farms on the ocean can locate – away from important fishing and ocean scalloping grounds – has sought for six years to set up a demonstration wind farm 2.8 nautical miles off Atlantic City. Its plan for six wind turbines, producing 24 megawatts of electricity, has the backing of the New Jersey Legislature, environmental groups including the Sierra Club and the federal Department of Energy, and it obtained permits from state and local entities.

The only roadblock has been the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities. The BPU must issue a wind renewable energy certificate, a funding mechanism for the proposed project, before the small wind farm can move forward. The BPU has said in the past that the project would be too costly for ratepayers to support. Fishermen’s Energy has always denied that claim, stating the BPU had come to a faulty conclusion through faulty mathematics.

After a 2015 bill that would have given Fishermen’s Energy Wind Project an expedited pass through the BPU was pocket-vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie, the Legislature recently passed a revised bill that now awaits the governor’s signature.

The revised Senate bill, S-988, passed the Senate, 23-11, in February. The concurrent bill A-3093 was passed by the Assembly on March 14.

The Senate bill was sponsored by Sen. Jim Whelan, with the concurrent bill sponsored by Assemblyman Vince Mazzeo, both of Atlantic County. The revised bill eliminated language that directed the BPU to grant the required permit, and it deleted some language in the previous Assembly bill that would have eliminated a cost-benefit analysis. The cost-benefit analysis has been the bone of contention between the BPU and Fishermen’s Energy for the past two years.

Paul Gallagher, Fishermen’s Energy’s chief operating officer and general counsel, said he has no fears of such an analysis by the BPU now that certain qualifications have changed.

A company from China was originally going to supply the turbines, but now Fishermen’s Energy has decided to purchase turbines from Siemens, the world’s leader in wind turbine technology, with ocean turbines built in Germany and Denmark. On Tuesday, Gallagher said, “In December, Congress passed a five-year extension of the tax benefit project that makes it easier to attract investors. So we have a newly configured project, using Siemens turbines made in Germany and Denmark, traditional Western financing, plus tax incentives to make it even a more cost-effective project then what was rejected before” by the BPU.

“The bill is a relatively benign bill. It tells the BPU to let us come in and submit again. It’s on the governor’s desk, and we hope he signs it.”

Read the full story at The Sand Paper

Mississippi bill would allow pogy boats to keep more red fish

February 10, 2016 — A bill in the state Senate Ports and Marine Resources Committee would greatly increase the number of red drum a commercial fishing boat could have on board.

That, a conservation group says, is unacceptable.

“All of this has been done without any public scrutiny,” said F.J. Eicke of the Coastal Conservation Association. He said the conservationists were not included in any discussions about the bill.

Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula said he was asked by Omega Protein, which fishes for menhaden in Mississippi waters, to file the bill.

“They are looking out for their captains,” Wiggins said. “The way the law is now, there is zero tolerance. This allows law enforcement some leeway. As in any kind of law, there should be flexibility.”

Wiggins said the boat captains are responsible for the fines and have a violation that stays on their record that could hurt them during jobs searches.

The bill would increase from zero to 45 the number of red drum, also known as red fish, that can be kept by boats that fish with purse seines. Eicke said the red fish population is getting healthier but “we’re not where we need to be.

“And now they want to allow them to take 45 fish every trip.”

That’s not the only part of the bill the CCA doesn’t like.

A couple of times, “shall” would be changed to “may,” which Eicke said would enable law enforcement to let violators off with lesser penalties. Under both the current and proposed law, fines are $100 per red drum. But the penalty also would cost the violator the nets used to catch the fish. The change adds leeway to that penalty, though, by changing “shall” to “may.”

 

 

Congressman Frank Pallone Calls for Less Restrictive Policies for Summer Flounder and Sea Bass

January 25, 2016 – The following was released by the office of Congressman Frank Pallone:

LONG BRANCH, NJ – Today, Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) sent a letter to Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, regarding the Commission’s Draft Addendum XXVII to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan.  In the letter, Pallone called for fair and less restrictive policies relating to two important fisheries in New Jersey: summer flounder and sea bass.

“My district has thousands of private anglers and attracts individual anglers from all over the nation. These anglers support local small businesses and drive the coastal economy of my home state,” Pallone wrote in the letter.  “It is critical for New Jersey to receive fair treatment in the development of restrictions placed on key recreational species.”

Regarding summer flounder, Pallone requested that the Commission enable New Jersey to become its own region and allow anglers to have a more equitable size limit within the Delaware Bay area.  With respect to sea bass, he expressed his support for a less restrictive quota than the proposed 23% reduction included in the draft addendum for recreational harvest.  He also once again called for more reliable data collection to ensure that recreational anglers in New Jersey and along the Atlantic Coast have fair quotas based on sound science.

Read the full text of the letter here.

CFOOD: Do “Catch Reconstructions” really Implicate Overfishing?

January 22, 2016—The following is commentary from Michel J. Kaiser of Bangor University and David Agnew of the Marine Stewardship Council concerning the recently published article, “Catch Reconstructions Reveal that Global Marine Fisheries Catches are Higher than Reported and Declining” by Daniel Pauly and Dirk Zeller in Nature.

A new paper led by Daniel Pauly of the University of British Columbia that found global catch data, as reported to the FAO, to be significantly lower than the true catch numbers. “Global fish catches are falling three times faster than official UN figures suggest, according to a landmark new study, with overfishing to blame.”

400 researches spent the last decade accumulating missing global catch data from small-scale fisheries, sport fisheries, illegal fishing activity and fish discarded at sea, which FAO statistics, “rarely include.”

“Our results indicate that the decline is very strong and is not due to countries fishing less. It is due to countries having fished too much and having exhausted one fishery after another,” Pauly says.

Despite these findings, Pauly doesn’t expect countries to realize the need to rebuild stocks, primarily because the pressures to continue current fishing effort are too strong in the developing world. But this study will allow researchers to see the true problems more clearly and hopefully inform policy makers accordingly.

Comment by Michel J. Kaiser, Bangor University, @MicheljKaiser

Catch and stock status are two distinct measurement tools for evaluating a fishery, and suggesting inconsistent catch data is a definitive gauge of fishery health is an unreasonable indictment of the stock assessment process. Pauly and Zeller surmise that declining catches since 1996 could be a sign of fishery collapse. While they do acknowledge management changes as another possible factor, the context is misleading and important management efforts are not represented. The moratorium on cod landings is a good example – zero cod landings in the Northwest Atlantic does not mean there are zero cod in the water. Such distinctions are not apparent in the analysis.

Another key consideration missing from this paper is varying management capacity. European fisheries are managed more effectively and provide more complete data than Indian Ocean fisheries, for example. A study that aggregates global landings data is suspect because indeed landings data from loosely managed fisheries are suspect.

Finally the author’s estimated catch seems to mirror that of the official FAO catch data, ironically proving its legitimacy. “Official” FAO data is not considered to be completely accurate, but rather a proportionate depiction of global trends. Pauly’s trend line is almost identical, just shifted up the y axis, and thus fails to significantly alter our perception of global fisheries.

Michel J. Kaiser is a Professor of Marine Conservation Ecology at Bangor University. Find him on twitter here.

Comment by David Agnew, Director of Standards, Marine Stewardship Council

The analysis of such a massive amount of data is a monumental task, and I suspect that the broad conclusions are correct. However, as is usual with these sorts of analyses, when one gets to a level of detail where the actual assumptions can be examined, in an area in which one is knowledgeable, it is difficult to follow all the arguments.  The Antarctic catches “reconstruction” apparently is based on one Fisheries Centre report (2015 Volume 23 Number 1) and a paper on fishing down ecosystems (Polar Record; Ainley and Pauly 2014). The only “reconstruction” appears to be the addition of IUU and discard data, all of which are scrupulously reported by CCAMLR anyway, so they are not unknown. But there is an apparent 100,000 t “unreported” catch in the reconstruction in Figure 3, Atlantic, Antarctic (48). This cannot include the Falklands (part of the Fisheries Centre paper) and it is of a size that could only be an alleged misreporting of krill catch in 2009. This is perhaps an oblique reference to concerns that CCAMLR has had in the past about conversion factors applied to krill products, or perhaps unseen (net-impact) mortality, but neither of these elements have been substantiated, nor referenced in the supporting documentation that I have seen (although I could not access the polar record paper).

The paper does not go into much detail on these reasons for the observed declines in catches and discards, except to attribute it to both reductions in fishing mortality attendant on management action to reduce mortality and generate sustainability, and some reference to declines in areas that are not managed. It is noteworthy that the peak of the industrial catches – in the late 1990s/early 2000s – coincidentally aligns with the start of the recovery of many well managed stocks. This point of recovery has been documented previously (Costello et al 2012; Rosenberg et al 2006; Gutierrez et al 2012) and particularly relates to the recovery of large numbers of stocks in the north Pacific, the north Atlantic and around Australia and New Zealand, and mostly to stocks that are assessed by analytical models. For stocks that need to begin recovery plans to achieve sustainability, this most often entails an overall reduction in fishing effort, which would be reflected in the reductions in catches seen here. So, one could attribute some of the decline in industrial catch in these regions to a correct management response to rebuild stocks to a sustainable status, although I have not directly analyzed the evidence for this. This is therefore a positive outcome worth reporting.

The above-reported inflection point is also coincident with the launch of the MSC’s sustainability standard. These standards have now been used to assess almost 300 fisheries, and have generated environmental improvements in most of them (MSC 2015). Stock sustainability is part of the requirements of the standard, and previous analyses (Gutierrez et al 2012, Agnew et al 2012) have shown that certified fisheries have improved their stock status and achieved sustainability at a higher rate than uncertified fisheries. The MSC program does not claim responsibility for the turn-around in global stocks, but along with other actions – such as those taken by global bodies such as FAO, by national administrations, and by industry and non-Governmental Organisations – it can claim to have provided a significant incentive for fisheries to become, and then remain, certified.

David Agnew is the Director of Standards at the Marine Stewardship Council, the largest fishery sustainability ecolabel in the world. You can follow MSC on twitter.

Read the commentary at CFOOD

NORTH CAROLINA: Environmental issues roll into 2016

January 1, 2016 — Offshore drilling draws opponents

After a year of growing opposition from coastal communities against offshore drilling off the North Carolina coast, close watch will be kept on decisions in Washington in the upcoming year.

The Obama Administration is expected to release its proposed Atlantic oil leasing plan in early 2016.

To date, 93 communities along the Atlantic coast have gone on record against offshore oil and gas exploration activities.

That number includes several in the local area:

In Onslow County, the towns of Holly Ridge, Swansboro and Surf City have adopted resolutions.

In Carteret County, Emerald Isle, Morehead City and Beaufort have adopted resolutions opposing offshore drilling; and Atlantic Beach councilmen agreed to a resolution to be formally adopted this month. The Carteret County Chamber of Commerce and Tourism Development Authority have also taken a stance against it.

Read the full story at Jacksonville Daily News

Robert Boyles new ACCSP Chair of the Coordinating Council

November 2, 2015 — ST. AUGUSTINE, Fl. — The following was released by the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program:

Today, Program partners of the Atlantic Coastal Cooperative Statistics Program’s (ACCSP) Coordinating Council (the ACCSP’s governing body), acknowledged the many accomplishments of outgoing Chair, Cheri Patterson of New Hampshire and elected Robert H. Boyles, Jr. as its new Chair.

In assuming the chairmanship, Mr. Boyles spoke eagerly about his new position, “It is with much honor that I accept the position of Chair of the Coordinating Council. To be elected by my fellow colleagues is humbling and I pledge to continue to advance the ACCSP as the principle source of dependable fisheries data on the Atlantic coast. In order to achieve this goal, I plan on guiding ACCSP through a successful governance review process to ensure that the ultimate decision is in the best interest of the Program. I also commit to working with ACCSP staff and Council members committees to upgrade ACCSP applications to the standards that our partners deserve.”

“My predecessor, Cheri Patterson, has paved a smooth path for me as I take on Chairmanship through what I know was countless hours of dedication to this Program. In two short years, Cheri has guided ACCSP through 67 recommendations that were a result of an Independent Review of the Program, ensuring that all recommendations were addressed for implementation through seven different vehicles. Additionally, Cheri oversaw a historic meeting at our last annual meeting in Mystic, Connecticut where the ACCSP’s Coordinating Council met jointly with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) Interstate Fisheries Management Program Policy Board to decide on whether both groups, working with the Atlantic states, should move forward on conducting the Access Point Angler Intercept Survey (APAIS) portion of the Marine Recreational Information Program. The result was a unanimous vote to allow for state conduct of the APAIS beginning in 2016.

Mr. Boyles currently is the Deputy Director for Marine Resources with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. In this position, Mr. Boyles oversees the State of South Carolina’s marine resources research, management, and education operations. Mr. Boyles received his B.S. in Mathematical Economics from Wake Forest University and his M.S. in Marine Policy from the University of Delaware. In 1993, Robert was a Dean John A. Knauss Sea Grant Marine Policy Fellow, where he worked for the NOAA Coastal Ocean Program.

The Coordinating Council also elected Lynn Fegley from Maryland as its Vice-Chair. Ms. Fegley is the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service Deputy Director.

View a PDF of the release