Saving Seafood

Virginia: Will Lawmakers Agree to Menhaden Catch Limits?

February 21, 2018 — A battle over menhaden is underway in the Virginia General Assembly right now.

The oily, stinky fish makes up the biggest commercial fishery by volume on the Atlantic Coast, and more than 70 percent of its harvest is caught in Virginia waters. Menhaden also play a key role in the Chesapeake Bay’s food chain, as prey for sea birds, and bigger fish like rockfish.

The menhaden fishery is the only one regulated by the legislature, instead of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission or the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. Thus, lawmakers must rewrite current menhaden catch limits in order to stay in compliance with the newest fishery management plan.

The plan, drawn up by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in November, increases the allowable catch for the entire menhaden fishery, but decreases Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay harvest cap to 51,000 metric tons, which is rounded up from the previous five-year average .  Read more about the new management plan here.

The bill first introduced in Virginia’s General Assembly this winter got stuck in committee, but Virginia State Delegate Barry Knight has introduced a new bill on behalf of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, to comply with the ASMFC plan.

In a letter to Delegate Danny Marshall (R-Danville), the Chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources, Governor Northam writes, “Increases in stock abundance and relinquishment of quota from other states to Virginia have resulted in an increase of more than 4 million pounds of menhaden for the Commonwealth. Delegate Knight’s new bill reflects that, and does no harm to the menhaden industry.”

If the plan isn’t implemented, Virginia could fall out of compliance with the Interstate Fishery Management Plan, and the state could face a moratorium on all menhaden fishing.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine 

 

ASMFC Atlantic Striped Bass Board approves Option B

February 21, 2018 — On Feb. 7, the Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met to approve Option B in Maryland’s Conservation Equivalency Proposal for the summer/fall recreational striped bass fishery in the Chesapeake Bay.

The motion passed unanimously with one abstention.

The ASMFC acknowledges for stock assessment purposes that the mortality rate of fish that are released after being caught is about 9 percent, but many fishermen and scientists contend that the number is much higher in the summer months when hot temperatures affect survival.

At a fishing symposium I attended this past November, one Department of Natural Resources official said that while the accepted mortality rate is 9 out of every 100 released rockfish, the number could be as high as 30.

“We don’t really know,” said Mike Luisi, Estuarine and Marine Fisheries Division manager for DNR.

Both the Technical Committee and Law Enforcement Committee of the ASMFC did not endorse the mandatory use of circle hooks, but with pressure from stakeholders, the Advisory Panel decided that “the conservation benefits” outweigh any concerns and Maryland will be instituting the mandatory use of circle hooks with non-artificial bait and lures.

Back in 1999, Maryland’s DNR performed a study comparing the mortality of rockfish caught on conventional hooks versus circle hooks. The results are hard to argue with.

When air temperatures were below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.8 percent of rockfish caught on non-offset circle hooks died compared to 9.1 percent of rockfish caught on standard J hooks.

Additionally, the minimum size for keepers will be reduced to 19 inches from May 16 to Dec. 15.

Read the full story at the Calvert Recorder

 

Maine lobster industry facing many challenges, changes

February 21, 2018 — Maine’s lobster industry is pushing back against new rules that they say are costly and put onerous requirements on them to record data.

Maine does not have the funds to pay for the new reporting requirements mandated by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, according to Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. McCarron said the new rule, which requires 100 percent of Maine lobstermen to report certain catch data over the next five years, is cost-prohibitive.

“We have more than 4,000 lobstermen, so we have no way to collect trip-level data from all of them,” she told SeafoodSource.

Currently, data is collected from only 10 percent of the state’s lobstermen. The MLA opposed the ASMFC’s proposal on the reporting requirement, explaining that the state does not have the funds for data collection and that its current data system has a 95 to 98 percent confidence interval level.

“The question for Maine is how do we pay for it. We need electronic reporting technology that would make it simple and fast,” McCarron said.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association lobster analyst Peter Burns said the more thorough reporting requirements are necessary to give scientists a fuller picture of how the fishery is performing.

“We have a big black hole of reporting somewhere in the Gulf of Maine and into Georges Bank,” Burns told the commission, according to the Portland Press Herald.

As a compromise, ASMFC is phasing in the more stringent reporting requirements over five years, which it said would give Maine time to implement an electronic reporting requirement that may reduce the burden placed on fishermen to comply with the rules.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Maine: Benchmark study of lobsters begins

February 13, 2018 — In 2015, data collected in a benchmark assessment of New England lobster stocks showed record-high abundance for the combined stocks of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank and record lows for the lobster stock of southern New England.

Now, about three years later, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is beginning preparations for the next American lobster benchmark assessment that is expected to be completed around March 2020.

“We’re in the very early stages right now,” said Jeff Kipp, senior stock assessment scientist at the Arlington, Virginia-based ASMFC that regulates the Northeast lobster fishery. “The process will be mostly data-driven.”

Nothing is certain in the periodic assessments of various seafood species. But if some recent projections hold, the 2020 assessment could sketch a different picture from the 2015 assessment, possibly reflecting the declining abundance predicted by a recent Gulf of Maine Research Institute study.

The study, compiled with the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, forecast a 30-year decline in the Gulf of Maine lobster boom that began around 2010. The culprit? Increasingly warmer temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, which scientists have said is warming faster than 99.9 percent of the rest of the world’s ocean waters.

“In the Gulf of Maine, the lobster fishery is vulnerable to future temperature increases,” the authors of the study wrote. “The researchers’ population projections suggest that lobster productivity will decrease as temperatures continue to warm, but continued conservation efforts can mitigate the impacts of future warming.”

The findings of the GMRI study were strongly disputed by some Maine lobster dealers and the state’s Department of Marine Resources. The Maine DMR criticized the GMRI computer model used to arrive at the study’s conclusions, calling it “an unreliable tool on which to base management decisions.”

The benchmark assessment of the region’s lobster populations — which will include data on lobster landings, lobster growth and prevalent diseases among the population — could go a long way toward determining exactly what is happening to the region’s American lobster stocks.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

ASMFC 2018 Winter Meeting Summary

February 12, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission: 

Press releases, meeting summaries and motions from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Winter 2018 Meeting are attached. These materials and presentations and audio files from this week’s meetings will be posted to the Commission’s web site next week.

The full summary of the ASMFC’s winter meeting is available here.

 

ASMFC Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Board Approves Addendum XXX for Recreational Black Sea Bass Management

February 12, 2018 — ARLINGTON, Va. — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Management Board approved Addendum XXX to the Summer Flounder, Scup and Black Sea Bass Fishery Management Plan. The Addendum establishes a regional allocation of the coastwide Recreational Harvest Limit (RHL) to address state concerns regarding equity and accountability in recreational black sea bass management.

From 2012-2016, the recreational fishery was managed under an ad-hoc regional management approach, whereby the states of Massachusetts through New Jersey individually crafted measures aimed at adjusting harvest by the same percentage, while the states of Delaware through North Carolina set their regulations consistent with the federal waters measures. While this approach allowed the states flexibility in setting management measures, some states expressed a need for increased equity and accountability in managing harvest to coastwide catch limits.

Accounting for geographic differences in the stock and fishery interests, Addendum XXX uses a combination of exploitable biomass information from the latest stock assessment and historical harvest to regionally allocate the coastwide RHL. The final allocation is based on a hybrid of the allocation options that were presented in the Draft Addendum. The three management regions are defined as Massachusetts through New York, New Jersey as a state-specific region, and Delaware through North Carolina; their respective allocations of the 2018 coastwide RHL are 61.35%, 30.24%, and 8.41%. The Technical Committee will work with the states to develop regional proposals for Board review and approval in March 2018.

To improve accountability, the states within each region will be collectively responsible for managing harvest to their regional allocation through the cooperative development of recreational measures. To increase regional consistency in measures, each region will establish a standard set of measures, with each state in the region afforded the flexibility to adjust their measures up to one inch in minimum size and three fish in possession limit. The Addendum also initiates the development of a new process for evaluation and specification of measures against the annual catch limit, which aims to provide more year-to-year stability in management measures.

Learn more about the ASMFC by visiting their site here.

 

All Maine lobstermen will have to report fishing details, including secrets of success

February 9, 2018 — All Maine lobstermen will have to start giving up their most treasured fishing secrets, including where they set their traps and how much they catch, in five years.

Starting in 2023, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will require all lobster fishermen to submit detailed reports on their fishing activities, including those in Maine, the nation’s lobster capital, where current regulations only require 10 percent of licensed lobstermen to share their fishing data. In other states, lobster fishermen have been submitting reports on every trip for years.

The commission was considering a plan to require Maine lobstermen to begin filling out these reports immediately, but Maine Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher argued against it. He said it would require state government to hire five employees and raise industry fees by $500,000 to review that many paper records. Keliher said he would rather wait a couple of years for the development of a cheap and easy electronic monitoring system before requiring 100 percent reporting in Maine.

“I’d rather spend my money on things that are more important at this time while we focus on electronic reporting development,” Keliher told the commission.

Fisheries managers say the data is necessary to assess the health of the Gulf of Maine lobster stock and understand the economic impact of other ocean projects, such as deep-sea coral protections or wind farms, on the valuable lobster fishery. In Maine, which lands 83 percent of the nation’s lobsters, the industry caught more than 130 million pounds of lobster valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Managers approve rules for better lobster catch data

February 8, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — Interstate fishing managers say they have approved a new set of rules for lobster and crab fishing that they expect will improve data collection about the two valuable species.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission approved the new rules earlier this week. The commission says the new rules expand the amount of data fishermen are required to report and prioritizes development of electronic reporting.

The new rules apply to lobsters and Jonah crabs. The commission says both fisheries are expanding in offshore areas.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News & World Report

ASMFC South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board Approves Draft Addendum I to the Black Drum Fishery Management Plan for Public Comment

February 8, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board approved Draft Addendum I to the Black Drum Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for public comment. The Draft Addendum proposes to open Maryland’s black drum commercial fishery.

Draft Addendum I was initiated in October 2017 in response to a proposal from the state of Maryland to reopen its commercial fishery for black drum in the Chesapeake Bay (Bay). In the late 1990s, Maryland closed the commercial black drum fishery in its Bay waters to conduct a tagging and migration study. The fishery was not reopened after the study. In 2013, the Black Drum FMP extended this closure by requiring states to maintain management measures in place at the time of the FMP’s approval.

Draft Addendum I presents a management option that would reopen Maryland’s commercial fishery for black drum in the Chesapeake Bay with a daily vessel limit of up to 10 fish and a 28 inch minimum total length size limit.

It is anticipated that a public hearing on the Draft Addendum will be conducted in Maryland, although other states may request additional public hearings. The details of any public hearings will be released in a subsequent press release. The Draft Addendum will be available on the Commission’s website, www.asmfc.org (under Public Input) by February 14, 2018. Fishermen and other interested groups are encouraged to provide input on the Draft Addenda either by attending state public hearings or providing written comment. Public comment will be accepted until 5:00 PM (EST) on March 23, 2018 and should be forwarded to Dr. Mike Schmidtke, FMP Coordinator, 1050 N. Highland St, Suite A‐N, Arlington, VA 22201; 703.842.0741 (FAX) or at comments@asmfc.org (Subject line: Draft Addendum I). For more information on black drum, please contact Dr. Mike Schmidtke, FMP Coordinator, at mschmidtke@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

 

ASMFC American Eel Board Approves Draft Addendum V for Public Comment

February 8, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Commission’s American Eel Management Board (Board) approved American Eel Draft Addendum V for public comment. The Draft Addendum proposes alternative coastwide landings caps, management triggers, state-by-state allocations, and transfer provisions for the yellow eel commercial fishery; as well as alternatives to the current Maine glass eel commercial quota and the aquaculture provisions of the plan. The Board initiated Draft Addendum V in October 2017 in response to concerns over the management program as specified in Addendum IV.

Currently, the yellow eel fishery is managed to an annual coastwide landings cap of 907,671 pounds. The coastwide cap is evaluated against two management triggers: (1) the coastwide cap is exceeded by more than 10% in a given year; or (2) the coastwide cap is exceeded for two consecutive years, regardless of the percent overage. If either of these triggers are tripped, state-by-state quotas will be implemented. 2016 landings exceeded the coastwide cap by less than ten percent. If landings in 2017 exceeded the coastwide cap by any amount, state-by-state quotas would be implemented. The Board expressed concern that the current management triggers do not account for annual fluctuations in landings and the immediate implementation of state-by-state quotas would pose significant administrative challenges. Draft Addendum V proposes alternatives to the coastwide cap, management triggers, state-by-state allocations and transfer provisions to address the Board concerns.

Draft Addendum V proposes alternative quota levels for the Maine glass eel fishery. Specifically, increasing the quota above the 2015-2018 level of 9,688 pounds. The Draft Addendum also proposes changes to the aquaculture provisions of the plan. It includes an option that would allow contiguously bordered states to pool their 200 pound glass eel aquaculture allowance, up to a maximum of 600 pounds.

It is anticipated the majority of states from Maine through Florida will be conducting public hearings on the Draft Addendum. The details of those hearings will be released in a subsequent press release. The Draft Addendum will be available on the Commission’s website, www.asmfc.org (under Public Input) this spring. For more information on American eel, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior FMP Coordinator, at krootes-murdy@asmfc.org.