Saving Seafood

Atlantic Herring Area 1A Trimester 2 Effort Controls Measures Maintained

August 9, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts reviewed the effort control measures for the 2018 Area 1A Trimester 2 (June 1 – September 30) fishery. The states agreed to maintain the existing Area 1A Trimester 2 Days Out Measures, which are outlined below.

Days Out of the Fishery

  • Vessels with a herring Category A permit that have declared into the Trimester 2 Area 1A fishery may land herring five (5) consecutive days a week. One landing per 24 hour period.Vessels are prohibited from landing or possessing herring caught from Area 1A during a day out of the fishery.
    • Landing days in New Hampshire and Massachusetts begin on Monday of each week at 12:01 a.m.
    • Landings days in Maine begin on Sunday of each week at 6:00 p.m.
  • Small mesh bottom trawl vessels with a herring Category C or D permit that have declared into the Trimester 2 fishery may land herring seven (7) consecutive days a week.

Weekly Landing Limit

  • Vessels with a herring Category A permit may harvest up to 640,000 lbs (16 trucks) per harvester vessel, per week.
  • 160,000 lbs (4 trucks) out of the 640,000 lbs weekly limit can be transferred to a carrier vessel (see below).

At-Sea Transfer and Carrier Restrictions
The following applies to harvester vessels with a herring Category A permit and carrier vessels landing herring caught in Area 1A to a Maine, New Hampshire, or Massachusetts port.

  • A harvester vessel can transfer herring at-sea to another catcher vessel.
  • A harvester vessel is limited to making at-sea transfers to only one carrier vessel per week.
  • Carrier vessels are limited to receiving at-sea transfers from one catcher vessel per week and can land once per 24 hour period. A carrier vessel may land up to 160,000 lbs (4 trucks) per week. The carrier limit of 4 trucks is not in addition to the harvester weekly landing limit. Carrier vessel: a vessel with no gear on board capable of catching or processing fish. Harvester vessel: a vessel that is required to report the catch it has aboard as the harvesting vessel on the Federal Vessel Trip Report.

The Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (ACL) is 32,084 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for a carryover from 2016 and the research set-aside. The Section allocated 72.8% of the sub-ACL to Trimester 2 and 27.2% to Trimester 3. After incorporating the 295 mt fixed gear set-aside and the 8% buffer (Area 1A closes at 92% of the sub-ACL), the seasonal quotas are 21,291 mt for Trimester 2 and 7,955 mt for Trimester 3.

These effort controls are projected to extend the Trimester 2 fishery through the beginning of September. Landings will be monitored closely and the fishery will be adjusted to zero landing days when the trimester’s quota is projected to be reached.

Due to the results of the 2018 Atlantic Herring Stock Assessment, which indicate poor recruitment and spawning stock biomass, the New England Fishery Management Council has recommended that the Regional Administrator allow for an in-season adjustment to the 2018 Atlantic herring sub-ACLs. The intent of this in-season adjustment is to reduce the severity of catch reductions in 2019. Following action from NOAA Fisheries to adjust the 2018 sub-ACLs, the Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts will reconvene via conference call to review fishing effort measures. Forty-eight hour notice will be provided before a Days Out Meeting.

Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip from Area 1A on no landing days. Please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740 for more information.

A PDF of the announcement can be found at – http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/5b6b5e15AtlHerringDaysOutTri2_Aug2018.pdf.

VIRGINIA: Menhaden landings pacing below disputed cap

August 8, 2018 — Chesapeake Bay landings of menhaden are coming in at a pace well below a controversial cap imposed by an interstate fisheries commission, Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner Steven Bowman said.

As of the end of June, landings for the so-called reduction fishery came in at 24,000 metric tons, Bowman told the management board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) this week.

He said that meant landings this year would almost certainly come in below the 51,000-ton cap the interstate commission imposed last year — a cut of more than 40 percent that the General Assembly balked at adopting.

Bowman, joined by Maryland’s director of fisheries, asked the board to hold off declaring that Virginia was not in compliance with the cap because the General Assembly had not written the 51,000-ton limit into state law.

That finding, if adopted by the commission and accepted by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, could shut down the menhaden fishery, which employs about 300 people working on Omega Protein’s fishing boats and its processing plant in Reedville, on the Northern Neck. While the cap applies only to menhaden caught by the big “purse seine” vessels Omega operates to catch fish to be processed for oil and fish meal, board members said a finding of noncompliance could shut down the bait fishery, in which smaller operators use a different technique to catch fish used by crabbers and in commercial fin-fisheries

Instead, Bowman and Blazer proposed that the commission find Virginia out of compliance if landings this year actually exceeded 51,000 tons.

That effort failed, but the board decided to delay until February acting on an alternative declaring Virginia out of compliance.

Omega spokesman Ben Landry said he believed the menhaden board’s decision to delay acting reflected commissioners’ new-found concern, underlined by NOAA’s Lynch, about the scientific basis for the cap.

“We have no intention of blowing past the 51,000,” he said. “But it’s an artificial number … our concern is flexibility; if there are storms out in the ocean, we’d like to be able to come into the bay.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Regulators will not allow lucrative baby eel fishery to grow

August 8, 2018 –A regulatory board decided Wednesday that Maine’s baby eel fishery, the only one of its kind in the U.S. and one of the most lucrative fisheries in the country, will not be allowed to expand next year.

Fishermen in Maine are allowed to harvest a total of 9,688 pounds of the elvers per year, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission shot down a proposal to increase that by about 20 percent. The increase would’ve been a boost to a fishery that routinely fetches some of the highest prices in the country on a per-pound basis.

Baby eels, called elvers, can be worth more than $2,000 per pound at docks because they are used by Asian aquaculture companies in the worldwide supply chain for Japanese food. Maine is the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for them, and worldwide supplies have been low, making them even more valuable.

Maine’s elver fishery is coming out of a contentious season that ended in May, when authorities shut down the fishery early amid concerns about illegal sales. The fishery is tightly monitored to deter poaching, and the illegal transactions circumvented a swipe card system used to track elver sales in Maine, authorities said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Times

Decision due on whether to increase harvest of baby eels

August 6, 2018 –Maine’s baby eel fishery has been through ups and downs in recent years, and regulators might be about to let fishermen catch a lot more of the valuable fish.

Baby eels, called elvers, can be worth more than $2,000 per pound because they are used by Asian aquaculture companies and worldwide supplies are low. Maine is the only state in the U.S. with a significant fishery for them.

Fishermen in Maine are allowed to harvest a total of 9,688 pounds of the elvers per year. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will consider increasing that by about 20 percent on Wednesday.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WABI

NEW YORK: Young fishermen being driven from Long Island fishing industry

August 6, 2018 –A generation of young fishermen are being driven from the industry by an antiquated licensing system that makes it difficult if not impossible to transfer permits, fishermen said at one of several state meetings last week.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has hired a consultant from Maine to meet with commercial fishermen across the metropolitan area over the next month to compile proposals for fixing the system.

Licenses for many fisheries are closed, due to the declining populations of species such as lobster, or because New York has only a limited portion of the coastal quota for thriving species such as black sea bass and fluke.

As a result, the only way younger fishermen can hope to access the fishery is if their parents die and they live in the same house as the previous license holder, or through one of the occasional lotteries held by the state for a handful of permits.

Read the full story at Newsday

MASSACHUSETTS: Thousands of fish found dead on banks of Mystic River

August 6, 2018 –Last week about 40,000-50,000 Atlantic menhaden (pogies) were found dead along the Mystic River in Everett and Somerville, MA.

There are no perpetrators responsible for the mortality. Menhaden are victims of their own success, flourishing in large, dense schools that can cause them to “suffocate” and die off from lack of oxygen.

David Pierce, director of Massachusetts Marine Fisheries said, “When large schools of fish enter warmwater estuaries and rivers in large numbers during the summer months, they can deplete the water’s dissolved oxygen, making survival impossible. Oxygen must pass across and through fish gills, and when used up by tightly-packed fish in shallow waters, the inevitable occurs.”

Pierce said, “Management and regulation of menhaden is overseen by the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), having adopted compliance criteria of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Menhaden Plan and approaches best suited for the Massachusetts menhaden fishing industry. Our commercial quotas were raised this year due to high menhaden abundance finally re-establishing itself north of Cape Cod and (somewhat expectedly) causing re-occurrences of past years’ typical hot-weather kills – over 20 years ago.”

Read the full story at The Sun Chronicle

ASMFC 2018 Summer Meeting Supplemental Materials Now Available

August 2, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Supplemental materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Summer Meeting are now available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/2018-summer-meeting for the following Boards/Sections (click on “Supplemental” following each relevant committee header to access the information). For ease of access, supplemental meeting materials have been combined into one PDF – http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/2018SummerMeeting/2018SummerMeetingSupplemental.pdf.

Executive Committee – Delaware Appeal Criterion 1 Clarification

Atlantic Herring Section – SARC 65 DRAFT Atlantic Herring Assessment for 2018 and Public Commen

Atlantic Menhaden Management Board – Public Comment

American Eel Management Board – Technical Committee Task List and Maryland Update of 2017 Eel Harvest

Coastal Sharks Management Board –  Technical Committee Task List &  Draft Addendum V

Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board – Technical Committee Task List; Memo on 2019 Summer Flounder Recreational Management; FMP Reviews for Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass

South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board – Atlantic Croaker & Spot Traffic Light Analysis Update Results; Atlantic Croaker and Spot Plan Development Team Recommendations for Management Response; FMP Reviews for Atlantic Croaker and Red Drum; Technical Committee Task List

As a reminder, Board meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning August 7th at 10:15 a.m. and continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 1:45 p.m.) on August 9th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board/section deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible. Go here – https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3101304879756771073 – to register for the webinar.

ASMFC 2018 Summer Meeting Final Agenda and Meeting Materials Now Available

July 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The final agenda and meeting materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2018 Summer Meeting can be obtained at http://www.asmfc.org/home/2018-summer-meeting; click on the relevant Board/Committee name to access the documents for that Board/Committee For ease of access, all Board/Section documents have been combined into one document Main Meeting Materials. Links to individual board/committee materials can be found on the 2018 Summer Meeting page. Supplemental materials will be available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/2018-summer-meeting by August 1, 2018.

The agenda is subject to change. The agenda reflects the current estimate of time required for scheduled meetings. The Commission may adjust this agenda in accordance with the actual duration of meetings. Interested parties should anticipate meetings starting earlier or later than indicated herein.

Board/Section meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning August 7th at 10:15 a.m. and continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 1:45 p.m.) on August 9th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board/section deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible.

As a reminder, the guidelines for submission of written comment for issues for which the Commission has NOT established a specific public comment period (i.e., in response to proposed management action) are as follows:

  1. Comments received 3 weeks prior to the start of a meeting week will be included with the main meeting materials.
  2. Comments received by 5:00 PM on the Tuesday immediately preceding the scheduled ASMFC Meeting (in this case, the Tuesday deadline will be July 31, 2018) will be distributed electronically to Commissioners/Board members prior to the meeting and a limited number of copies will be provided at the meeting.
  3. Following the Tuesday, July 31, 2018 5:00 PM deadline, the commenter will be responsible for distributing the information to the management board prior to the board meeting or providing enough copies for the management board consideration at the meeting (a minimum of 50 copies).

The submitted comments must clearly indicate the commenter’s expectation from the ASMFC staff regarding distribution. As with other public comment, it will be accepted via mail, fax, and email.

Documents Released on Trump Administration Defense of National Monument Actions

July 25, 2018 — In today’s print edition, the Washington Post published an article by Juliet Eilperin on the Trump administration and national monuments. The article, based on internal documents from the Interior Department, was critical of senior officials for allegedly dismissing positive information on the benefits of national monuments.

The majority of the story focused on land-based monuments, but with regard to marine monuments, the Post reported that,“On Sept. 11, 2017, Randal Bowman, the lead staffer for the review, suggested deleting language that most fishing vessels near the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument ‘generated 5% or less of their annual landings from within the monument’ because it ‘undercuts the case for the ban being harmful.’”

Saving Seafood executive director Bob Vanasse was quoted in the article noting that “‘Trump administration officials have been more open to outside input than their predecessors.’ … ‘They had a lot of meetings with our folks but didn’t listen,’ he said of Obama officials, adding even some Massachusetts Democratic lawmakers raised concerns about the New England marine monument’s fishing restrictions.”

The article suggested that Mr. Bowman, a career Interior Department employee and not a Trump administration appointee, purposefully excised information from logbook data indicating that, on the whole, most vessels fishing near the monument generate just 5 percent of their landings from within the monument.

However, there are valid reasons to be cautious about the logbook-data driven 5 percent statistic. There are more sources available to characterize fishing activity – in addition to just logbooks, formally known as “vessel trip reports”, which was the sole source cited in the email referenced in the Post story. While, as the material references states, the information comes from NOAA and the fishery management councils so it can be presumed accurate, the context is missing.

An Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) survey identified recent (2014-2015) fishing activity within the boundaries of the National Monument that, if the Obama executive order is not reversed, will be closed to the fishery in the future. The results indicate that 12-14 percent of the offshore lobster fishery effort and 13-14 percent of revenue ($2.4-2.8 million annually) for the lobster and Jonah crab fishery comes from the area of the National Monument. This revenue is significantly higher than that derived from the vessel trip report (logbook) analysis, which is only about $0.7 million annually.

The document cited in the Post story correctly cites the $2.4-$2.8 million annual revenue in those fisheries, but it does not make clear the significant percentage of offshore revenue that comes from the monument area. Similarly, when the document cites $1.8 million from the Monument region annually (2010-2015), that includes only the $0.7 million lobster trap revenues derived from vessel trip reports, not the total indicated by the ASMFC survey for more recent years.

While it is generally accurate, if one looks at the entire fishing industry in the region, to make the statement that only a small number of vessels derive more than 5 percent of their revenue from the Monument area, for those vessels and fisheries that conduct significant portions of their operations in the monument area, the economic harm is significant.

Also, in a document attached to the story, a margin comment erroneously states that NOAA advised the Interior Department that the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for red crab was “revoked.” That is not the case. In 2009, the red crab fishery became the first MSC-certified fishery on the East Coast. The certification was never revoked. The certification expired because the participants in the fishery determined that the cost to pursue renewal of the certification exceeded the financial benefits they anticipated would arise from maintaining it, and they decided voluntarily to allow it to lapse.

Read the full Washington Post story

Read further coverage of this story from E&E News

Changes coming to herring fishery as bait crunch looms

July 25, 2018 — New England’s lobster fishing industry is again facing the possibility of a bait shortage, and ocean managers are looking to make some tweaks to the herring fishery.

The lobster and herring fisheries are tied to each other because herring is the preferred bait for lobster traps. But fishermen in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts have sometimes had trouble getting enough bait in recent summers.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission changed some of the rules about herring fishing off of New England starting on Monday. The rules have to do with how many days herring fishermen can operate, and how much fish they can bring to land.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald