Saving Seafood

New Video System Can Help Count Cod Population

February 16, 2016 — DARTMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Researchers with the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth say a new video system will help provide data to better inform management of New England’s beleaguered cod population.

UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology scientists say their new video system will help assess the species in the Gulf of Maine. The system uses open-ended fishing net with video cameras mounted on its frame to take pictures of fish passing through.

The university says the scientists tested the system on Stellwagen Bank in January with good results.

Cod are one of the most important food fish species in the Atlantic, but the stock has collapsed. Cod fishermen caught more than 33 million pounds of the fish in 2001 and managed only about 5.2 million pounds in 2014.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WWLP

NOAA Issues Climate Warning for Scallops

February 9, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD — “Sea scallops have a high vulnerability ranking,” reads a Feb. 3 announcement from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which operates in Woods Hole under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Negative impacts are estimated for many of the iconic species in the ecosystem including Atlantic sea scallop, Atlantic cod and Atlantic mackerel.”

The NOAA study, formally known as the Northeast Climate Vulnerability Assessment, said Atlantic sea scallops have “limited mobility and high sensitivity to the ocean acidification that will be more pronounced as water temperatures warm.”

Water temperatures in Buzzards Bay have risen 4 degrees over the past two decades, for example, according to a recent study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Buzzards Bay Coalition.

Scallops are vital to New Bedford’s fishing industry. NOAA Fisheries announced last October that New Bedford, for the 15th year in a row, was the No. 1 port in the country in terms of dollar value of its catch. Much of that value, which totaled $329 million in 2014, comes from scallops.

The money has big local impacts. Eastern Fisheries captain Christopher Audette, for example, told visitors at an annual buyers’ tour in March 2014 that deck hands on his scallop boat had taken home more than $200,000 in 2013 — and that he had made even more than that.

Harbor Development Commissioner Richard Canastra, who has been instrumental to the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction since 1984, said this week that the scallop industry — and stock — continues to boom in New Bedford.

“The biomass has been increasing over the last 10 years, and there is no sign of it depleting because of the warmer waters,” Canastra said. “They’re talking a few degrees, and that’s not going to make much of a difference in terms of scallop population.”

Chad McGuire, associate professor of environmental policy at UMass Dartmouth, said that while the NOAA findings are not a surprise, they could be another “warning signal” for the industry.

“This study suggests that if you care about one of the largest economic drivers for this region, then you need to care about climate change,” said McGuire, whose work includes fishery management and climate change issues.

“We should be worried that this could greatly affect how many scallops we’re taking in the future,” he added.

Read the full story at New Bedford Standard-Times

Pass the dogfish nuggets? Seafood industry rebrands ‘trash’

January 20, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Call them fish sticks for millennials. At any rate, Dana Bartholomew is banking on college students warming up to “Sharck Bites.”

Ipswich Shellfish, of Massachusetts, for which Bartholomew oversees sales, is offering that product — nuggets of dogfish coated in a gluten-free, allergen-friendly crust. Bartholomew, who believes so-called “trash fish” such as dogfish are part of the new wave in New England seafood, already has a couple of colleges on board.

Bartholomew’s fondness for dogfish, a species East Coast fishermen catch millions of pounds of every year that sells for just pennies at the dock, is part of a growing trend in fish markets around the country. The industry is putting more emphasis on fish that have traditionally lacked market appeal or economic value as old staples — such as cod, tuna, haddock and shrimp — decline or become the subject of tougher fishing quotas.

“We know we have to make a great-tasting product that supports local fishermen, supports the local industry and economy,” Bartholomew said. “And it’s local — it’s right here.”

New England’s traditional food fish has long been the Atlantic cod, but it has faded in the face of overfishing and environmental changes. Restaurant owners, fishermen and food processing companies said a growing shift to other species is helping to fill that void. Catch of species such as spiny dogfish, Acadian redfish and scup have all increased dramatically since 10 years ago as cod has fallen.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CNBC

Marine Protected Areas Increase Survival of Atlantic Cod

November 11, 2015 — Marine fish populations are in decline worldwide. Of the 600 marine fish stocks monitored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 69 per cent are fully or over-exploited.

To rebuild fish populations, MPAs, which ban some or all fishing activities in an area, have become widely used. Under the Natura 2000 network, almost 4 per cent of European waters have been designated as MPAs .

Despite their widespread use, understanding of how MPAs affect harvested fish populations remains poor, especially for areas where some fishing is still permitted (PPAs).

This study investigated the effect of a PPA on Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) along the southeast Norwegian coast of Skagerrak.

In 2006, a 1 km2 PPA was established in the region, where only hook and line fishing and research sampling (which involves fixed nets that do not harm the fish, so they can be captured and released alive) are permitted.

The researchers wanted to know whether implementation of the PPA changed fishing mortality proportions, and also if the protection caused survival rates to increase.

To investigate this, they collected data on live re-captures and dead recoveries of cod before and after its implementation, as well as at several unprotected sites along the coastline. Data was collected from 2005–2013 along Skagerrak.

Read the full story at The Fish Site

 

Climate change hurting New England cod population, study says

October 29, 2015 — The rapid warming of the waters off New England has contributed to the historic collapse of the region’s cod population and has hampered its ability to rebound, according to a study that for the first time links climate change to the iconic species’ plummeting numbers.

Between 2004 and 2013, the mean surface temperature of the Gulf of Maine — extending from Cape Cod to Cape Sable in Nova Scotia — rose a remarkable 4 degrees, which the researchers attributed to shifts in the ocean currents caused by global warming.

The study, which was released Thursday by the journal Science, offers the latest evidence of climate change — this time, affecting a species once so plentiful that fishermen used to joke that they could walk across the Atlantic on the backs of cod.

Fisheries management officials have sharply limited cod fishing in hopes of protecting the species, but they estimate the number of cod remain at as little as 3 percent of what would sustain a healthy population. The limits, in turn, have hurt fishermen.

“Managers [of the fishery] kept reducing quotas, but the cod population kept declining,” said Andrew Pershing, the study’s lead author and chief scientific officer of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. “It turns out that warming waters were making the Gulf of Maine less hospitable for cod, and the management response was too slow to keep up with the changes.”

The institute had reported last year that the rise in temperatures in the Gulf of Maine exceeded those found in 99 percent of the world’s other large bodies of saltwater. The authors of Thursday’s study link the rapid warming to a northward shift in the Gulf Stream and changes to other major currents in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

They say the warmer water coursing into the Gulf of Maine has reduced the number of new cod and led to fewer fish surviving into adulthood. Cod prefer cold water, which is why they have thrived for centuries off New England.

The precise causes for the reduced spawning are unclear, the researchers said, but they’re likely to include a decline in the availability of food for young cod, increased stress, and more hospitable conditions for predators. Cod larvae are View Story eaten by many species, including dogfish and herring; larger cod are preyed upon by seals, whose numbers have increased markedly in the region.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Cod Could Recover in Warming Waters

October 28, 2015 — The first clue came in 2008, recalled George Rose, a marine biologist at Memorial University of Newfoundland, when he saw the cod aggregating in large numbers offshore during the spawning season. It was a sight he had sorely missed in 15 years. In the early 1990s, cod fisheries suffered such a dramatic collapse that they emerged as an aquatic poster child for fisheries mismanagement, according to Rose.

In a paper published yesterday in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, Rose and his colleague, Sherrylynn Rowe, document the comeback of the Atlantic cod off Newfoundland and Labrador over the past decade. The fact that they have shown that the cod stock there is on the way to recovery is good news, Rose said, as “it shows that it is not all gloom and doom.”

Their study attributed the recovery to improved environmental conditions, better fish management and the availability of an important food source, capelin, whose populations also fell drastically in the early 1990s and have recently bounced back, too. The rebound of Atlantic cod in this region contrasts with their rapidly declining populations off the northeastern coast of the United States, where until last year the stocks remained significantly below sustainable levels. Previous research has associated this persistent population slump with the pressures of overfishing and also warming waters. The warming temperatures, however, seem to be favoring a cod fishery revival in Newfoundland and Labrador, or at least not hampering its recovery.

Read the full story at Scientific American 

 

The Great Northern Cod Comeback

October 27, 2015 — Once an icon of overfishing, mismanagement, and stock decline, the northern Atlantic cod is showing signs of recovery according to new research published today in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

This research, led by Dr. George Rose, tracks what is arguably the most important comeback of any fish stock worldwide. Studying the great northern Atlantic cod stock complex off Newfoundland and Labrador, once considered among the largest cod stocks in the world before its disastrous decline in the 1990s, Dr. Rose documents the stock’s rebound over the past decade from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand tonnes and growing.

Read the full story at Science Codex

 

Senators Collins and King Announce Grant Funding to the University of New England to Support Atlantic Cod Research

October 2, 2015 — The following was released by the office of Senator Angus King:

U.S. Senators Susan Collins and Angus King today announced that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will award $244,040 to the University of New England to determine best capture-and-handling methods and promote survival for Atlantic cod unintentionally caught in lobster gear in the Gulf of Maine.

“Historically dominant  in coastal Maine fishing communities, the Atlantic cod fishery is now almost non-existent,” Senators Collins and King said in a joint statement. “By better understanding all fisheries’ interactions with Atlantic cod populations, we can develop strategies to protect this vulnerable marine resource and create a more sustainable future for our fishing industry.”

This project will evaluate Atlantic cod released from standard lobster gear. Transmitters attached to the cod will allow scientists to analyze mortality data on cod released from lobster traps. Researchers will then be able to use this data to provide best practice recommendations to determine how cod can best survive capture in lobster equipment.

This grant funding was awarded through the NOAA’s Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program (BREP). BREP supports the development of technological solutions and changes in fishing practices designed to minimize bycatch. Bycatch is a fish or marine species caught unintentionally while fishing for a different species.

Read the release here

 

NOAA Fisheries Announces Increase in Common Pool Gulf of Maine Cod Possession and Trip Limits

September 15, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries announces an increase to the trip and possession limit for Gulf of Maine cod for common pool vessels.

We had reduced possession and trip limits to zero on June 15, 2015, to prevent the common pool from exceeding its Trimester 1 quota. To date, the common pool fishery has harvested approximately 31% of its annual quota for Gulf of Maine cod.

Through this action, we are increasing the possession and trip limit from zero to 25 pounds per trip for the remainder of the fishing year, though April 30, 2016.

This new limit goes into effect with publication in the Federal Register on Wednesday, September 16.

Read the rule as filed in the Federal Register today, and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Goebel, Regional Office, at 978-281-6175 or Jennifer.Goebel@noaa.gov.

 

BANGOR DAILY NEWS: The case for a marine national monument in the Gulf of Maine

September 14, 2015 — Legend has it that in the 1600s, one could walk across the ocean on the backs of Atlantic cod. The Gulf of Maine’s iconic groundfish was so plentiful the species spawned colonial America’s first true industry: groundfishing.

But after centuries of overfishing and failed regulation, the Gulf of Maine looks drastically different. There are few spots where Atlantic cod approach being as plentiful as they once were. One of the few is Cashes Ledge, a 530-square-mile area of ocean 100 miles southeast of Portland.

A coalition of conservation groups, supported by more than 200 marine scientists from across the U.S., are pushing for President Barack Obama to designate the area, essentially a submerged mountain range, a marine national monument. The designation would protect Cashes Ledge permanently from commercial fishing — phasing out the limited amount allowed now — and other activity that could exploit or disturb the area’s ecosystem.

The push to make Cashes Ledge a marine national monument has drawn opposition from groups representing fishermen, which point out the area is already largely off limits to commercial fishing and that the designation would circumvent the nation’s established fishery management system. It also is opposed by those, such as Gov. Paul LePage, who are wary of a potential federal designation.

Read the full editorial at the Bangor Daily News