Saving Seafood

NOAA slowdowns and new science delay the usual ‘scramble’ to set fishing catch limits

March 26, 2025 — The start of this year’s commercial fishing season could be a bust for fishermen who catch groundfish species like cod, haddock and flounder.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has yet to approve new catch limits for the season slated to open May 1. People in the fishing industry said the annual process has been delayed by changes to the science used to measure cod populations, and the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency.

Scallop fishery regulations also won’t be finalized by the season’s start on April 1. But since there aren’t new regulatory strategies under consideration like with cod, there are default catch limits in place for scallops. Scallopers are facing just 10 fewer fishing days at the start of the season.

Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the Sustainable Scalloping Fund, said this “doesn’t have much of an impact” on the fishery. He’s expecting new limits to be approved within a week of the start of the season.

Scalloper Eric Hansen of New Bedford said he’s cautiously optimistic about an approval coming soon. He remembers a similar slowdown when the Biden administration took over four years ago.

“ If history repeats itself, it won’t be catastrophic,” he said. “And that’s a big if.”

Read the full article at wbur

Codfish regulators should consider effects on fishermen’s lives, researcher says

January 27, 2025 — New England’s cod industry would benefit if its regulators pay more attention to how their decisions affect fishermen and their communities, a Northeastern University researcher says.

In a presentation at UMass Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology last week, Jonathan Grabowski said management decisions for the cod fishery have been based on trawl surveys to estimate fish populations, plus economic and environmental factors.

Yet federal and regional fisheries management officials have not as readily included the social impacts of their decisions on fishermen and their communities.

Fishermen have experienced high levels of stress and social disruption as the cod industry has declined due to overfishing and ineffective conservation measures. Meanwhile, their distrust in regulators has increased, he said.

Using more social and experiential data from these fishermen could allow regulators to make better management decisions, Grabowski said. That could help the fishery function better, improve outcomes for the industry, conserve environmental resources, and rebuild trust.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

NEFMC moves forward with cod changes despite fishermen’s protest

December 13, 2024 — The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) has moved forward with Framework Adjustment 69, approving changes to the region’s cod fishery that fishermen claim will cause dire circumstances for the industry.

The council selected a series of preferred alternatives for Framework 69 of the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery Management Plan, which governs the region’s groundfishing stocks, including cod, haddock, flounder, hake, and pollock. Part of that framework was Amendment 25, which will change how cod is managed in the region and institute four separate cod stocks instead of the current two.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Groundfish: NEFMC Takes Final Action on Framework 69 With Catch Limits for Four New Atlantic Cod Stock Units

December 10, 2024 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council took final action on Framework Adjustment 69 to the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery Management Plan when it met in Newport, Rhode Island December 3-5, 2024. The framework contains catch limits and management measures for the 2025 fishing year and beyond.

The Council received three reports before beginning its decision-making on Framework 69:

  • The Northeast Fisheries Science Center presented the peer-reviewed results of 2024 Management Track Stock Assessments for American plaice, pollock, witch flounder, Atlantic halibut, Georges Bank haddock, and Gulf of Maine haddock;
  • The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) presented overfishing limit (OFL) and acceptable biological catch (ABC) recommendations for each of those newly assessed stocks; and
  • The Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC) presented recommendations for U.S./Canada shared groundfish resources on Georges Bank.

Read the full release from the New England Fishery Management Council

Oceanographers record the largest predation event ever observed in the ocean

November 4, 2024 — There is power in numbers, or so the saying goes. But in the ocean, scientists are finding that fish that group together don’t necessarily survive together. In some cases, the more fish there are, the larger a target they make for predators.

This is what MIT and Norwegian oceanographers observed recently when they explored a wide swath of ocean off the coast of Norway during the height of spawning season for capelin—a small Arctic fish about the size of an anchovy. Billions of capelin migrate each February from the edge of the Arctic ice sheet southward to the Norwegian coast, to lay their eggs. Norway’s coastline is also a stopover for capelin’s primary predator, the Atlantic cod. As cod migrate south, they feed on spawning capelin, though scientists have not measured this process over large scales until now.

Reporting their findings in Communications Biology, the MIT team captured interactions between individual migrating cod and spawning capelin, over a huge spatial extent. Using a sonic-based wide-area imaging technique, they watched as random capelin began grouping together to form a massive shoal spanning tens of kilometers. As the capelin shoal formed a sort of ecological “hotspot,” the team observed individual cod begin to group together in response, forming a huge shoal of their own. The swarming cod overtook the capelin, quickly consuming over 10 million fish, estimated to be more than half of the gathered prey.

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Ottawa shirked own guidelines when it reopened commercial cod fishery, say scientists

September 23, 2024 — Fisheries scientists say the federal government ignored its own guidelines when it hiked cod quotas off the northern and eastern coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador last June.

The scientists, some of whom worked for Fisheries and Oceans Canada for decades, say they’re struggling to understand the decision to reopen the commercial Northern cod fishery.

“I was baffled when I heard the news”, said Noel Cadigan, a long-time DFO scientist who now works at Memorial University’s Marine Institute. “And that hasn’t changed.”

A May 6 briefing note obtained by CBC/Radio-Canada shows DFO recommended against reopening the fishery to offshore vessels and increasing quotas.

But it also assured Federal Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier that lifting the moratorium and hiking the total allowable catch – as all six Liberal MPs from Newfoundland and Labrador were pushing her to do – would nevertheless align with the Fisheries Act and its rules on stock management.

Read the full article at CBC

MASSACHUSETTS: The Codfather’s 2nd act: ‘I’m the bank now’

July 10, 2024 — Carlos Rafael made an offer the bank couldn’t refuse.

It was February 2021, and Rafael, the infamous New Bedford fishing mogul known as “the Codfather,” was serving out the final stretch of an almost four-year prison sentence. He and his two daughters placed a $770,000 bid to acquire the Merchants National Bank building in downtown New Bedford.

The historic sandstone building with tall, arched windows and an ornate ceiling no longer functions as a commercial bank. It’s vacant, and there is no money locked behind its heavy, iron vaults. But for the 71-year-old Rafael — flush with more than $70 million in cash from the court-mandated sale of his fleet and barred from ever again involving himself in the commercial fishing industry — acquiring the bank set the stage for a second act.

Three years after his release from prison, Rafael, still banned from owning fishing vessels, has embarked on a different business venture: a multimillion-dollar real estate financing operation sprawling across New Bedford and its suburbs.

“I’m the bank now,” Rafael said in a recent interview, leaning back in his dark leather office chair in his South End industrial warehouse. The wall behind him was adorned with paintings of Catholic saints, multiple sketches of Tony Montana (Al Pacino’s gangster protagonist in “Scarface”) and a sea-green miniature replica of one of the three-dozen fishing vessels once part of his fabled fleet.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

Is there a new hybrid fish in New England? Meet the ‘coddock.’

July 2, 2024 — Linda Hunt was hoping they would call the strange fish she came across last winter a “Lindacod.”

“Then some of the fishermen that don’t like me would have to say, ‘You got any more of those Lindacods?’” Hunt quipped.

Hunt, a fishmonger with Coastline Sea Food, was offloading boxes from a boat in Gloucester when she saw the fish, the likes of which she had never seen.

“I just thought it was cool and took the picture,” Hunt said.

A couple of weeks later, Hunt, who has been in the fishing industry for 32 years, saw the same curious creature, with speckled dots similar to a cod, but also resembling another white fish.

Read the full article at  The Boston Globe

North American East Coast cod stocks facing “very dire situation”

June 14, 2o24 — Recent assessments of Atlantic cod stocks in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Gulf of Maine present a dire portrait of their commercial future.

In the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, which touches the Canadian provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, an assessment conducted in February 2023 by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) has found much higher levels of mortality than what is needed for the population to recover from the collapse in the stock’s population that has occurred driven by overfishing in the 1990s.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The fate of Atlantic cod stocks from optimism to concern

June 6, 2024 — The most recent assessment of Atlantic cod stocks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence does not show an optimistic future for the species. Five years ago, Fisheries and Oceans Canada issued a warning that the species’ extinction in the Gulf was probable. However, a fisheries scientist has recently claimed that they are “not ready to throw in the towel” on the northern cod stock.

In 2013, National Fisherman shared that scientific research suggested a rapidly growing gray seal population– 10 times greater (in 2013) than what it was 40 years before. Scientists believed this played a significant role in the high cod mortality in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Similarly to over ten years ago, today’s assessments are drawing the same conclusions; Federal Fisheries and Oceans biologist Daniel Richard claims that between 60% and 70% of cod in the southern Gulf do not survive past the age of five and are likely eaten by vast herds of gray seals in the region.

“It’s a very dire situation,” Richard tells CBC. “The most likely cause of the increase in natural mortality is an increased predation of gray seals.”

According to CBC Canada, cod could withstand large numbers of seals in the past, but that was before overfishing caused cod populations to plummet several decades ago. Scientists believe that the seals are now preventing the recovery of cod stock, even though recent surveys detected increased numbers of young cod.

Read the full article at National Fisherman