Saving Seafood

DELAWARE: Hudson, Freeman and menhaden industry will be Lunch and Learn topic Sept. 9

August 30, 2016 — The Lewes Historical Society’s Lewes Lunch and Learn for noon, Friday, Sept. 9, will feature Joanne Guilfoil with “Joe Hudson, Ted Freeman, and the Menhaden Fishing Industry” at Hotel Rodney. This is the first Lunch and Learn of the new season.

As best friends in high school, local boys Joe Hudson and Ted Freeman played football on the first team in the area and were “really hurt by those Rehoboth boys,” as Joe Hudson recalled. As 10th-graders in the late 1940s they traded work for flying lessons, and then began flying out of the Rehoboth Airport.

During this presentation, learn how these two best friends became pioneer fish spotters flying for Otis Smith, before graduating from high school, the Lewes School, in 1948. Attendees may be surprised by the significant impact their influence had on changing the developing menhaden industry, which by 1956 recorded the haul of fish at over 2 billion pounds.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette

NEW JERSEY: Are humans causing the fish die offs?

August 30, 2016 — An increasing number of fish kills like the four that occurred in New Jersey this past week are in the state’s future if officials don’t take steps to improve the water quality, environmentalists warned.

The die-off of more than a million peanut bunker since Aug. 22 along the waterways of Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay in Monmouth County and Great Bay in Ocean County were caused by a lack of sufficient levels of oxygen for the fish to survive. But human activities on land have helped contribute to that oxygen deficiency, said L. Stanton Hales, director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership.

Hales, who has studied New Jersey’s waterways for more than two decades, said that while fish kills caused by low dissolved oxygen levels are naturally occurring events, they are now exacerbated by the deteriorating conditions of the state’s waterways.

“These things can happen naturally, but they’re made worse by everything we’re doing (on land),” he said.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has said the fish kills in Monmouth and Ocean counties were caused by too many peanut bunker – a juvenile form of Atlantic menhaden – in water that had too little oxygen because of warm temperatures.

Bob Considine, a spokesman for the DEP, has said the number of Atlantic menhaden has been “extremely high” this year, the highest it has been in a decade off the Atlantic coast.

Data from the past few years shows that spawning of Atlantic menhaden has been high because of favorable conditions, including water temperatures, salinity and food availability for them, said Tina Berger, spokeswoman for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

She said there are about 3 billion pounds of Atlantic menhaden off the Atlantic coast and national fisheries requirements limit the total catch allowed to about 416.5 million pounds a year.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW JERSEY: Bay water temperatures come back down, a relief to fish

August 29, 2016 — In the Keansburg area a massive fish kill was experienced on Waackaack Creek where an estimated million peanut bunker died, a result of low levels of dissolved oxygen in the water, the state Department of Environmental Protection said.

Low levels of oxygen can be caused by a prolonged increase in water temperature. Officials said the creek water can also get stagnant during certain tides and with so many fish concentrated in a small body of water, there just wasn’t enough oxygen for them to survive.

Some fishermen don’t think oxygen depletion was the only cause.

Rich Isaksen a third-generation Belford commercial fishermen, said it was a result of menhaden mismanagement. New Jersey purse seine fishermen reached their quota of bunker almost two months ago and their nets are sitting dry on the dock.

“There’s so many fish right now and nobody’s catching them. That’s why you had this fish kill. You’ll see more of them,” he said.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Several hundred thousand dead fish wash up in New Jersey creek

August 24, 2016 — KEANSBURG, N.J. — Several hundred thousand dead fish have washed up in a central New Jersey marina’s creek in the past week, wildlife officials said.

The fish in Waackaack Creek, which peaked Saturday, are peanut bunker — the name describing Atlantic Menhaden after hatching, according to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. Bluefish or skates probably chased them into the creek, officials believe.

“Although the water is tidal, the creek and other surrounding waters where the fish have washed up can get stagnant during certain tides and we believe at this point that the die-off is due to dissolved oxygen levels in the water,” Bob Considine with the state EPA said.

Read the full story at UPI

MAINE: Pogy fishery reopens with strict new rules

August 16, 2016 — Maine made bait fishermen and lobstermen happy Monday when it reopened its pogy fishery after concluding there is still enough menhaden left in the Gulf of Maine to keep the population healthy.

Those who hunt for nearshore schools of the flat, oily-fleshed silver fish – the second most popular lobster bait in Maine after herring – must follow strict new rules to prevent unusual damage or imminent depletion of the Atlantic menhaden. If they limit their fishing days to three and their catch to no more than 120,000 pounds a week, Maine fishermen can use up the remaining 2.3 million-pound quota allotted to Maine, Rhode Island and New York during a so-called “episodic” fishing event, when pogies are deemed unusually plentiful in New England waters.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources closed the traditionally quiet fishery on Aug. 5 after initial landing reports indicated the state had used up its usual pogy quota of 166,000 pounds a year and was racing through an extra 3.7 million “episodic event” pounds given to qualifying New England states much faster than expected. With the herring shortage already creating a tight bait market, DMR didn’t want to risk running out of pogies just as the lobster season peaks, when the state’s biggest commercial fishery, with a value of nearly $500 million in landings, need them most. Any overage could also trigger severe federal penalties.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Thanks for all the fish!

August 16, 2016 — It can sometimes be difficult, depending on the choppiness of the waves, for pilot Wayne Davis to spot from his two-seater plane the dark silhouettes of great white sharks swimming off the coast of Chatham during research expeditions with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

But there was no missing a giant school of fish this week as he flew near the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

The conservancy, a non-profit based on Cape Cod, shared a photo Friday taken by Davis from his Citabria earlier in the week of what looks to be hundreds — if not thousands — of menhaden, or forage fish.

The fish are gathered together not far from a lurking great white, forming a shape like a pinpoint on a Google map. The collection of fish creates a striking black dot in the middle of the blue-green Cape waters as though a shadow were cast over the sea.

The conservancy’s nearby boat is dwarfed by the mass of menhaden, which can live to be 12 years old and are known to swim in large schools close to the water’s surface during the spring, summer, and fall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MAINE: DMR closes pogie fishery

August 10, 2016 — AUGUSTA, Maine — The Department of Marine Resources has closed the menahaden fishery because fishermen have already landed more than the state’s annual quota for the fish commonly called pogies.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Atlantic Menhaden Management Board had approved a total allowable catch (TAC) of menhaden for both the 2015 and 2016 fishing seasons of 187,880 metric tons per year. The TAC is further allocated among the ASMFC member states.

The percentage of the TAC allocated to Maine for 2016 is 0.04 percent, or 161,466 pounds. Each state is required to close its directed commercial fishery after its quota has been reached.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

MAINE: Shortage of herring used for lobster bait sparks run on pogies

August 9, 2016 — In the midst of a bait shortage, Maine has closed down the fishery for lobstermen’s second-favorite type of bait after fishermen exceeded the state’s quota on pogies for the first time.

Despite anecdotal reports of strong lobster landings and prices this season, lobstermen have been struggling to find suitable bait to fill the bags used to lure lobster into their traps.

The offshore supply of fresh Atlantic herring, the go-to bait for most Maine lobstermen, has been in short supply, driving prices up as much 30 percent in late July, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said. The shortage triggered near-shore fishing restrictions to try to stretch out the summer herring catch in hopes of keeping bait bags full as Maine’s lobster season hits its peak.

With herring getting scarce and expensive, fishermen have turned to other bait for relief, especially the pogie, the local name for Atlantic menhaden. It’s the No. 2 bait fish among Maine lobstermen, according to a state Department of Marine Resources survey.

Maine fishermen have never landed the state’s entire pogie quota, which is set at about 166,000 pounds annually. But this year they had caught all of that and a bit more by July 31, said Megan Ware, head of the menhaden program for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which oversees the pogie catch and other migratory fisheries on the East Coast.

Read the full story from the Portland Press Herald

Regulators fail to decide on 2017 Atlantic menhaden harvest cap

August 4, 2016 — A new 2017 coastal catch limit for Atlantic menhaden proved a slippery target Wednesday as regional managers failed over and over to agree on a number.

In vote after vote by the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board meeting this week in Alexandria, representatives from Maine to Florida knocked down motions to raise the cap by as little as 1 percent to as much as 20 percent.

In the end, they could only agree to try again at their next meeting in October. The board is part of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

“They just kicked the can down the road,” said Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood Inc., a D.C.-based outreach and advocacy group that coordinates the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition and supports raising the catch limit.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Science on Menhaden Continues to Support Increased Quota

August 3, 2016 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:

Peter Baker, the Director of U.S. Oceans, Northeast for the Pew Charitable Trusts, argues in a recent article that fisheries managers should not raise the coastwide Atlantic menhaden harvest level (“10 Reasons to Maintain the Atlantic Menhaden Catch Limit in 2017”). But this recommendation goes against the last two years of menhaden science, which found in 2015 that the stock is healthy and sustainably managed, and this year finds that the quota can be significantly and sustainably raised.

Mr. Baker writes that “the [Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission] created the first coastwide catch limit in 2013 and set the allowable catch lower than the amount taken in preceding years in order to help menhaden rebuild.” In fact, the cuts were made to address overfishing that turned out never to have existed. The quota cut was instituted following a flawed stock assessment in 2010 that underestimated the health of the menhaden population, leading to an unnecessarily strict quota. Contrary to that assessment, menhaden was, and remains, a healthy and vibrant stock.

The numbers are not better now because cuts allowed the stock to rebuild, but rather because the earlier numbers were inaccurately low and have been corrected in the most recent assessment. The more recent, accurate ASMFC assessment, released in 2015, conclusively found that menhaden was “neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing” – in other words, the stock is sustainable and successfully managed.

Scientists with the ASMFC Menhaden Technical Committee recently gave regulators further evidence in favor of a quota increase. In a series of simulations – 9,000 to be precise – the Technical Committee analyzed what would happen if the menhaden quota was raised by various increments, up to a 40 percent increase. Their conclusion: there is a zero percent chance of overfishing occurring should the quota be increased.

Mr. Baker also questions the ecological effect a quota increase would have. Menhaden play a role in the food chain, with juvenile menhaden—menhaden from ages 0-1—serving as food for larger predators. Commercial fishermen do not fish for juvenile menhaden, a fact supported by the available data.

Additionally, Mr. Baker alleges that striped bass and weakfish populations are diminished because they have a lack of menhaden to consume. But striped bass and weakfish are susceptible to a wide variety of environmental factors, which regularly cause fluctuations in the population.

Lastly, Mr. Baker argues that the public supports the existing quota limitations based upon the results of online petitions with leading questions, funded and promoted by his organization.  The accuracy of Pew’s campaigns notwithstanding, commercial fisheries are not managed by popularity contests.

Over the past three years, commercial fisheries and related industries have suffered lost revenue and workers have lost jobs.  We now know that the unnecessarily low quotas were based on flawed data.

It is time to set quotas based on solid data and scientific review, not by demands made in well-funded media campaigns from the Pew Charitable Trusts and other special interest groups.

About the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition
The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition is a collective of menhaden fishermen, related businesses, and supporting industries. Comprised of over 30 businesses along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the menhaden industry to ensure that members of the public, media, and government are informed of important issues, events, and facts about the fishery.