Saving Seafood

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

Groundfish: Council Begins Work on Amendment 25 to Add Four Atlantic Cod Assessment Units to Management Plan

April 28, 2024 — The following was released by New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has agreed to develop a new amendment to the Northeast Multispecies (Groundfish) Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to incorporate four new Atlantic cod assessment units into the FMP.

This action, now designated as Amendment 25, was discussed during the Council’s April 16-18, 2024 meeting in Mystic, Connecticut. It is the first step in the Council’s work to adjust the way it manages Atlantic cod based on the new scientific understanding of the composition of this species.

The Council will receive a progress report on Amendment 25 during its June 2024 meeting in Freeport, Maine. It expects to take final action in September 2024 when it meets again in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

IMPORTANT: This amendment will NOT modify the current management units for cod. It is intended to be a simple action to add the new assessment units to the management plan. Currently, the FMP identifies two cod stocks: Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. The amendment will modify the plan to instead identify:

• Eastern Gulf of Maine cod;
• Western Gulf of Maine cod, including winter and spring spawners;
• Georges Bank cod under new assessment boundaries; and
• Southern New England cod (see graphic below).

Atlantic cod stocks from the eyes of fishermen and scientists

April 9, 2024 — Scientists claim that Atlantic cod stocks are severely depleted in the Gulf of Maine, but on the other hand, fishermen look at the marine environment and see a thriving species that will be shipped and eaten around the world for years to come.

The question of how fishermen and marine scientists employed by government agencies can view cod stocks so differently has left Micah Dean, a Marine biologist with the Mass. Division of Marine Fisheries (MDMF) puzzled for years.  According to Northeastern Global News, Dean believed he discovered the answer when he was a doctoral student at Northeastern University.

He claimed that fishermen and scientists view the ocean depths with such different lenses that they are not viewing the same things.

“We did a telephone survey, and we asked commercial fishermen, over the last 10 years, do you think the cod population in the Gulf of Maine has gone down a lot, gone down a little, stayed the same, gone up a little, or gone up a lot,” Dean shared.

The most common response they received from fishermen was that the population had increased.

According to the article from Northeastern Dean stated,  government scientists say that the Gulf of Maine cod stock has declined about 80% from 2005 to 2017 and is less than 5% of its target level, making it “severely depleted.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Too little, too late: the desperate search for cod babies

January 23, 2024 — Guðrún Bjarnadóttir Bech sings to herself while she sorts through baby fish with a pair of tweezers. “Ding! Ding! Ding!” she suddenly bursts out. “That’s a plaice,” she says – her reaction testament to how few she sees.

It is 2021 and Bech is working onboard the Jákup Sverri, a Faroese marine research ship that’s trawling for juvenile fish around the Faroe Islands in the north Atlantic to assess the state of populations including haddock, sand eel and Norwegian pout.

But there is one juvenile the scientists onboard are desperate to find: cod. The babies are minute, each measuring between 2mm and 25mm (0.08in to 1in). The smaller the individual, the more difficult it is to distinguish between different species. But as cod grow, their eyes and heads get bigger, and their skin, though still quite transparent, turns grey-green.

Read the full article at The Guardian

NOAA Weighs Cod Research Near Offshore Wind Projects

October 2, 2023 — An area south of the Island near where several offshore wind energy companies have secured leases could soon be studied due to the potential adverse effects on cod spawning grounds.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering creating a “Habitat Area of Particular Concern” designation for the area in and around offshore wind farms in southern New England, including Cox Ledge. The designation was recommended by interstate fishing officials to mitigate the environmental impacts of new wind farm projects.

Read the full article at the Vineyard Gazette

NOAA could designate cod habitat around Cox Ledge, wind power sites

September 27, 2023 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering whether to outline a “habitat area of particular concern’ in and around offshore wind lease areas off southern New England.

The proposal, originated by the New England Fishery Management Council over concerns of how wind development will affect essential fish habitat, would include Cox Ledge, an important bottom area for cod spawning. NOAA, the Bureau of Offshore Energy Management, fishermen and wind power developers have grappled for years over how to build turbine arrays while protecting cod habitat in the region.

The often-bitter debate was one factor in the Sept. 1 mass resignation of the Rhode Island Fishermen’s Advisory Board, whose members charged the state Coastal Resource Management Council is too deferential to wind development interests at the expense of habitat and fisheries impacts.

NOAA Fisheries on Sept. 26 published the proposal for a formal habitat of particular concern (HAPC) designation around Cox Ledge and wind energy leases in the Federal Register, opening a 30-day public comment period.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman