Saving Seafood

We’re accidentally driving this extremely ugly fish to extinction

January 14, 2019 — The Atlantic wolffish is not an attractive beast.

Its appearance is characterized by its large, fang-like teeth (where it earns its name), which are used to crush prey like crabs, lobsters and sea urchins. Its throat is also peppered with more serrated teeth.

It may come as a surprise then to hear that their numbers have dwindled relentlessly over the last century partly as a result of overfishing.

  • In the US, catches of Atlantic wolffish declined from over 1,200 tons per year to around 30 tons per year between the 1980s and the 2000s.
  • In the UK, wolffish have declined in English and Welsh trawl fisheries by 96% since 1889.
  • In the Baltics, the fish’s population has been classed as endangered, meaning it has a high risk of extinction in the wild.

But we don’t eat them. So why are they being overfished to the point of extinction?

Read the full story at Business Insider

Bycatch an Issue in 2018 Pacific Hake Fishery; Uncertainty Lies Ahead Amid Shutdown

January 10, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — None of the three sectors in the U.S. Pacific hake fishery attained its specified sector allocation in 2018 and all reported problems with bycatch — either smaller sizes of whiting or other species.

The catcher-processor sector achieved the highest percentage of its allocation, catching 116,074 mt of its 139, 612 mt allocation, or 85 percent. The shoreside sector harvested 76 percent of its 169,127 mt allocation for a total of 129,180 mt in landings. The mothership sector struggled the most last year and attained only 69 percent of its 96,614 mt allocation for 67,096 mt in landings.

“It was one of our better seasons,” Pacific Seafood’s Mike Okoniewski said, noting that the company’s Newport plant did exceptionally well while the Astoria plant had adequate production. “There was a greater amount of nice fish off of Newport this year, so fishermen didn’t have to travel far.”

Similarly, the Arctic Storm Management Group, a mothership company based out of Seattle, generally had a good season but that was not representative of the whole mothership sector, said Sarah Nayani, Arctic Storm’s director of compliance.

“In 2018 our company processed 38 percent of the mothership catcher vessel catch and 26 percent of the total mothership sector allocation. Unfortunately, 31 percent of the mothership sector allocation went uncaught, which is more than any single company processed,” Nayani said. “For next year we’ve planned additional trips to improve attainment and provide more MSC-certified sustainable product to the market.”

Around the Columbia River and into Washington, particularly near Willapa Bay, fishermen struggled to find larger fish, around 450 to 500 grams. The CPs and motherships, like shoreside fishermen, traveled north or south of the Willapa area to find bigger, more marketable hake.

However, traveling north led to other problems. The CP and mothership sectors said a lot of other species were mixed with whiting schools and many of those other species had hard caps. Pacific ocean perch rockfish bycatch was an issue as was sablefish, so both sectors continually moved their operations to avoid those other species. Southern areas were problematic as well, since Chinook salmon were frequently prevalent. Both of the at-sea sectors stopped fishing in November to avoid bycatch interactions.

“2018 was a good year for Arctic Storm overall,” Nayani said. “We saw demand and prices up for Pacific hake and a strong spring fishery with minimal bycatch. However, even with extra processing capacity from putting Arctic Fjord out on the water this fall (in addition to Arctic Storm) the fall fishery was slow for us due to patchy fishing, higher bycatch rates, and frequent movement to avoid bycatch.”

Now, everyone is looking forward to this year’s season, but any uncertainty now is due to the U.S. government shutdown and the inability of U.S. scientists to contribute to the stock assessment routinely done collaboratively with Canadian scientists. The stock assessment draft is due to be released Feb. 6, so scientists would normally be assimilating data and running models right now.

In an email to some Pacific hake stakeholders and U.S. fishery managers and scientists, Canadian stock assessment author Joint Technical Committee member Chris Grandin wrote Tuesday that Canadian scientists would produce the whiting stock assessment on time — but without the U.S. fishery dependent age composition data.

“If the government comes back online before Jan. 14, and U.S. JTC members are back at work we will be producing the hake assessment as usual without any changes,” Grandin wrote.

“If not, Andy and I will be producing a hake assessment on time for delivery Feb. 6. It will consist of adding 2018 catch to the base model from last year’s assessment, and some common sensitivity cases. Unfortunately, we cannot get access to the U.S. age composition data due to the shutdown and therefore will not include any 2018 age composition data in the models. Note that the assessment will be of the standard format with an executive summary, and all decision tables and projections in place for the base model.

“We realize the importance of this assessment to the fishery, and will endeavour to do as much as is possible given the constraints placed before us.”

U.S. industry representatives and scientists remain hopeful the shutdown will end soon so the stock assessment and management process will get back on track.

“We’re hoping we get a good quota this year, but won’t really know until we see the stock assessment,” Okoniewski said.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

Whale entanglements on the West Coast rise again in 2018, is this the new normal?

January 2, 2019 — News this month that the number of whales found entangled off the West Coast had decreased in 2017 prompted optimism among some. But, already preliminary numbers for 2018 are headed back toward the record highs of just a few years ago.

While whale entanglements in U.S. waters were slightly above the 10-year average in 2017, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported on Dec. 6 that West Coast numbers were nearly half the 2015 and 2016 stats. Of the 31 entangles whales reported in 2017, 25 were in the waters off California – humpbacks who like to feed on anchovies in the central coast areas fished for crab and prawn led the way, but gray whales were not far behind.

NOAA’s preliminary 2018 numbers report 45 entangled whales confirmed in the waters off Alaska, Oregon, Washington and California; 35 of which were found off California. Many of the struggling whales have been sighted off Orange County and Monterey – two areas that federal officials say are bustling with boaters, fishing and whales. Final numbers are expected in March.

Read the full story at The San Jose Mercury News

NOAA Calls for Protection of Female North Atlantic Right Whales

December 20, 2018 — NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues are taking a closer look as to why the endangered western North Atlantic right whale population is growing at far more slower rate than that of southern right whales, a sister species also recovering from near extinction by commercial whaling.

Researchers and colleagues looked at the question and have concluded that preserving the lives of adult females in the population is the most effective way to promote population growth and recovery.

Most of these deaths are attributed to entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships. The findings are reported in Royal Society Open Science.

“Had North Atlantic right whales increased at the annual rate that we show they are capable of, the population number would be almost double what it is now and their current situation would not be so dire,” said Peter Corkeron, who is lead author of the paper and heads the large whale research effort at NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The North Atlantic right whale is one of three species of right whales. Of the three, it lives in the most industrialized habitat and migrates close to shore.

From 1970 to 2009, 80 percent of all North Atlantic right whale deaths (70 of 87) for which the cause is known were human-induced, mainly from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ships.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

NOAA report links 70% of US whale deaths to fishing gear entanglements

December 10, 2018 — More than two-thirds (70%) of the 76 whales that were killed after being entangled in US waters in 2017 were caught up in fishing gear, including traps and buoy lines and nets, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says in its “National Large Whale Entanglement Report” released Thursday.

Most of the rest – 24% — were linked to lines that could not be attributed to a fishery activity, the US regulatory agency noted.

The data could get mentioned frequently as fishing-related regulatory agencies in the US and Canada take an increasingly harder look at how the use of lobster and snow crab traps might be contributing to whale deaths.

NOAA’s report notes that humpback whales accounted for 49 of the 76 whales that were snarled last year. That’s just above the 10-year average of 69.5 whales entangled per year. Gray and minke whales (seven each) were the next largest groups to be entangled.

Just three of the endangered North Atlantic right whales, the source of much of the controversy in the US and Canada, were part of the tally.

The majority of the whales, 33, were discovered on the northeastern US coast, from Maine to Virginia, though it’s not clear that’s where they got entangled in gear.

“Large whales are powerful and mobile. They can town gear with them for long, long distances, so where we observe them is not usually the place they became entangled,” Sarah Wilkin, national stranding and emergency response coordinator at NOAA Fisheries, is quoted by the Asbury Park (New Jersey) Press as saying.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Whales have worse than average year for entanglement in gear

December 7, 2018 — Federal officials say last year was slightly worse than average for the entanglement of large whales, which is a major threat to the animals’ populations.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report Thursday on the subject. The agency says the number of cases nationally was 76, and that 70 entanglements involved live animals, while the rest were dead. The 10-year average is closer to 70 entanglements.

The agency says about 70 percent of the confirmed cases were attributable to fishing gear, such as traps, nets and fishing line.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Whale Advocates Plan to Put Forward Ballot Question in Mass. to Ban Vertical Buoy Lines

December 5, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A whale conservationist with a radical style says he intends to move forward with a “whale safety” initiative petition for 2020 in Massachusetts to ban vertical buoy ropes used in commercial fishing, among other efforts to protect whales and sea turtles.

“We have to have a paradigm shift,” Richard Maximus Strahan, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, said of his advocacy efforts to stop the death and injury of whales and sea turtles from entanglement in rope used in commercial lobstering, crabbing and gillnetting.

On Oct. 11, Strahan withdrew his lawsuit in federal court in Boston that sought more federal and state enforcement against the use by commercial fishermen of vertical buoy ropes. Vertical buoy ropes are seen by scientists and conservation groups as a source of entanglement and often injury and death of marine animals. In withdrawing the lawsuit, Strahan said that the 2018 fishing season is over and that the court and defendants hindered his lawsuit by actions such as ignoring motions for discovery.

For next year, Strahan says he and Whale Safe USA, a political group of about 200, intend to try a variety of tactics, such as the Whale Safe Fishing Act 2020 initiative petition in Massachusetts. He says he also intends to sue individual or small groups of fishermen and block the issuance of commercial fishing licenses in Massachusetts. He proposes a boycott of purchases of lobster, and he wants to identify “green” commercial fishermen who have environmental goals, such as whale and turtle protection and reduction of plastic in the ocean.

Strahan said he would no longer be filing lawsuits in federal court in Boston.

“We are going to go outside the whale biz,” said Strahan, who describes himself as an indigent and a graduate student in the Oct. 11 document.

Generally, Strahan said he views federal and state marine fisheries regulatory agencies as siding with commercial fishing interests rather than marine animal conservation interests. He also said a handful of nonprofit groups in the region, such as the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, are colluding with those regulatory agencies to the detriment of the animals.

“We have been over this with him several times before,” Center for Coastal Studies CEO and President Richard Delaney said in an emailed response.

Strahan’s reputation stems from the 1990s, when right whale entanglement protections lagged and he filed a lawsuit that forced major, costly changes to the fishing industry in Massachusetts. Those changes include trap gear and gillnet bans in Cape Cod Bay while North Atlantic right whales are present, starting early in the year and ending in May, and gear modifications such as breakaway features for gillnets and weak links for trap gear buoy lines.

Strahan returned to the courtroom in February following what scientists and conservationists considered a devastating loss of 17 right whales in 2017 in Canadian and U.S. waters. Particularly since 2010 the right whale population has been in decline, with decreasing numbers of newborns each year as well as a heavy death toll among adult females.

In the civil case first filed in February, Strahan sued the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the assistant administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Other defendants in the lawsuit were the secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, commission members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. No person was named specifically in the lawsuit other than Strahan, who represented himself.

Strahan sought to have a judge confirm that federal officials were shirking their duties under the Endangered Species Act by authorizing and failing to enforce certain regulations for commercial fishing; that NOAA had shirked its duties by handing over whale and turtle protections to the National Marine Fisheries Service without evaluating the possible harm to the animals; and that all defendants were violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing for the taking of whales and turtles, either by licensing commercial fishing or actually doing the fishing.

In May, a federal judge declined to issue a restraining order Strahan had sought to temporarily stop commercial lobster pot fishing in Massachusetts coastal waters to protect the right whales. In that ruling, the judge said that, unlike the 1996 federal court ruling, Strahan failed to show that he would likely win in the broader case due to the few rope entanglements that had been recently documented and due to the list of regulations now in place, such as annual lobster gear bans from Feb. 1 through April 30.

The Center for Coastal Studies provides airplane survey data on right whale locations to the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which is then used to make decisions about when to lift the trap gear bans in May, among other uses. The center’s data was cited in the federal lawsuit in an affidavit of Daniel McKiernan, who is deputy director of the state Divison of Marine Fisheries.

The federal lawsuit officially closed Oct. 18.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

California May Soon Unravel Controversial Nets Used To Harvest Swordfish

November 9, 2018 — Ocean activists seem to be on the eve of winning a long battle against a controversial type of fishing gear that has been banned in most of world’s oceans. But many fishermen are not ready to let go of what has been a reliable method for catching valuable swordfish.

A federal court ruling last week could lead to strict limits on using drift gillnets in California, one of the last places where the gear is still allowed. Drift gillnets are used to snag swordfish but prone to ensnaring other sea life, too. The court decision comes weeks after the state’s governor signed a law that would phase the nets out of use over the next few years.

Todd Steiner, an environmentalist who has fought for stricter regulations on drift gillnets since the 1990s, believes the time has come to ban them everywhere.

“Drift gillnets should no longer be in the ocean,” says Steiner, founder of the Turtle Island Restoration Network based in Forest Knolls, Calif. “Only one in six or seven animals caught in these nets is a swordfish. They’re indiscriminate in what they catch.”

Drift gillnets are essentially long curtains of nearly invisible mesh that hang from buoys and entangle large creatures that swim into them. The nets are notorious for catching high volumes of unwanted creatures, or bycatch — the primary reason Steiner and other activists want them banned.

But Santa Barbara fisherman Gary Burke, who has been using drift gillnets since the 1980s, says environmentalists who oppose the gear have set unrealistic expectations. “We’ve reduced our bycatch so much at this point that it would take some dramatic tech innovation to reduce it anymore,” he says.

Read the full story at NPR

MASSACHUSETTS: Losing lobster lines

November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.

The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.

“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”

Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Conservation group seeks judgement in California crab gear lawsuit

November 1, 2018 — A year after the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California regarding its Dungeness crab fishery, the conservation nonprofit has requested the judge in the case issue a summary judgement ruling in its favor.

A lawyer for the CBD said the organization filed the motion for summary judgement last week in the U.S. District Court’s North California District in hopes of preventing more animals from getting entangled in the crab traps set by commercial fishermen. Through July, there have been 22 whale entanglements this year, according to the group.

The federal Endangered Special Act prohibits encounters with humpback whales, blue whales, and leatherback sea turtles that could lead to injury or death, and a favorable ruling would force state officials to take action, Kristen Monsell, the center’s ocean’s program legal director, said in a statement.

“Another crab season starts (this month), creating a minefield of heavy gear that migrating whales must navigate,” she said. “We need the court to order state officials to stop causing the injury and death of endangered whales and sea turtles while managing this fishery.”

Judge Maxine M. Chesney isn’t scheduled to rule on the motion until 8 February.

Earlier this year, the state’s legislature passed an omnibus fisheries bill that called for the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife to adopt rules that take into consideration the potential risk for entanglements. Until the regulations take effect, the state could restrict fishing for Dungeness crab in certain areas where the fishery “poses a significant risk” for whales and other marine life.

Read the full story at Seafood Source