Saving Seafood

Fishers want ‘incredibly important’ Georges Bank protected against offshore wind development

September 17, 2024 — As Nova Scotia rushes to establish an offshore wind industry, some fishers are calling for explicit protection for the rich fishing ground on Georges Bank.

The cabinet minister in charge of developing renewable energy projects says he will keep turbines off the bank, but not by changing a piece of legislation that is now moving through Province House.

Ian McIsaac, president of the Seafood Producers Association of Nova Scotia, brought his concerns to a legislature committee Monday as it reviews a new bill that, if passed into law, would enable offshore wind development.

McIsaac said Bill 471 doesn’t update the Georges Bank moratorium that’s been in place against offshore petroleum development since the 1980s.

“We feel this is a technical error,” he said.

“In the past, whenever the moratorium has come up for consideration, it has been subject to intense study of the environmental and socio-economic impacts of change, to determine if, in fact, such changes are appropriate.”

Read the full article at CBC News

Knives out on Maine-Canada border as lobster fishery gray zone dispute gets pointed over poaching accusations

September 16, 2024 — A long-running dispute over lobster fishing rights on the disputed border between the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the U.S. state of Maine is heating up.

After being “harassed, threatened, and attacked” with shotguns, knives, and bear spray, Canadian fisheries enforcement officers appear to be pulling back on enforcement efforts, with as many as many as 35 percent of agents assigned to marine patrols in the area refusing to report for duty, according to Union of Health and Environment Workers President Shimen Fayad. Fayad’s union represents fishery enforcement officers across Canada, including around 100 conservation and protection supervisors and fishery officers in Nova Scotia and southwestern New Brunswick.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Canada’s cod fishery reopens, yet quickly paused

September 11, 2024 — Canada’s Federal Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier made the decision to reopen the commercial cod fishery off Newfoundland and Labrador in June after a 32-year moratorium on cod fishing that put thousands of locals out of work. The newly restored fishery was opened in late July and, a little over a month later was paused due to landings approaching the seasonal limit.

According to sources, northern cod used to be vital to the province’s 400-year-old fishing industry; however, this has changed due to overfishing, poor fisheries management, and environmental changes, causing the population to crash in the early 1990s.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

US lobster fishery faces delay in gauge-size increase; Canadian harvesters call for government to do more to combat illegal fishing

August 13, 2024 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Lobster Board has initiated the process to delay a gauge size increase for the U.S. lobster fishery until 1 July 2025.

The ASMFC first delayed an increase in the lobster gauge size in October 2023, after lobster trawl surveys indicated a decline in the population of sub-legal lobsters. The gauge size increase was first initiated in 2017 as a proactive measure to improve the resiliency of the lobster stock in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, but that process was paused to focus on issues related to entanglement of  North Atlantic right whales.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

U.S. and Canada held talks on lobster gauge increase

August 12, 2024 — This article was first published in Landings, the Maine Lobster Community Alliance (MLCA)  newspaper, in August 2024.

U.S. and Canadian lobster fishery representatives met in Saint John, New Brunswick in late June to discuss the implications of the U.S. gauge increase for Lobster Management Area 1 (LMA 1) scheduled to take effect in January 2025. The meeting was in response to the concerns raised by Maine’s lobster industry at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) American Lobster Board meeting in May.

Background

ASMFC adopted Addendum 27 in May 2023 as a proactive measure which would automatically trigger a gauge increase for LMA 1 if the abundance of young lobster showed a 35% decline. The addendum was developed over five years. It was initiated in 2017 but delayed twice – in 2018 and in 2022 – because the lobster industry was deeply embroiled in management and litigation concerning right whale conservation requirements. Following the Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s (MLA) historic court victory and Congressional action to delay new whale rules for six years, the ASMFC held public hearings in March 2023 and adopted Addendum 27 in May.

Addendum 27 garnered little attention until last fall when, to everyone’s surprise, scientists determined that the abundance of young lobsters had dropped 39% from the historic high, thus triggering the management action just three months after the addendum was adopted. Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) Commissioner Patrick Keliher urged ASFMC to delay implementation of the gauge increase from June 2024 to January 2025.“I don’t think when we were sitting here in May that we expected to be hitting the trigger as quickly as we did,” he said. He argued that more time was needed to continue discussions with Canada on the implications of having differing gauge sizes between the two countries. The ASMFC moved the date to January 2025.

At the Lobster Institute’s U.S.-Canada Town Meeting in January 2024 in Moncton, New Brunswick, the gauge increase was discussed by an international audience; many in Canada’s lobster industry were surprised to learn about the U.S. gauge increase. They were concerned that a U.S.-only gauge increase would disrupt lobster supply and markets due to the interdependence of the U.S. and Canadian lobster industries.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Canada to ban open-net salmon farms in British Columbia waters by 2029

June 20, 2024 — Canada will ban open-net salmon farms off the coast of British Columbia by the middle of 2029 in order to help protect dwindling wild Pacific salmon populations, the federal government said on Wednesday.

Salmon are a culturally and ecologically significant species on Canada’s west coast, but more than half of the 9,000 distinct populations in British Columbia are in a state of decline, according to the Pacific Salmon Foundation.

US regulators maintain fishing quota for valuable baby eels, even as Canada struggles with poaching

May 2, 2024 — U.S. regulators decided Wednesday to allow American fishermen to harvest thousands of pounds of valuable baby eels in the coming years, even as authorities have shuttered the industry in Canada while they grapple with poaching.

Baby eels, also called elvers, are harvested from rivers and streams by fishermen every spring. The tiny fish are sometimes worth more than $2,000 per pound because of their high value to Asian aquaculture companies.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission decided Wednesday that U.S. fishermen will be allowed to harvest a little less than 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) of the eels per year. That quota, which holds current levels, will stand through at least 2027 and could be extended beyond that year, the panel decided.

Read the full story at the AP

Children, pregnant women in the US and Canada are not consuming enough seafood, study finds

April 3, 2024 — Women of childbearing age, pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and children are not consuming recommended amounts of seafood in the U.S. and Canada, according to a new study.

The research, organized by Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, was summarized in a webinar titled “The Role of Seafood Consumption in Child Growth and Development,” which took place on 26 March.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Op-ed: Marine protected areas in British Columbia only good for bragging rights

March 25, 2024 — Ray Hilborn has a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and is a professor at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. He has been awarded the Volvo Environmental Prize and the International Fisheries Science Prize, and has published over 300 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Marine fisheries in British Columbia, Canada, not only provide excellent seafood for Canadians, they also employ thousands of people and support small coastal communities, and yet these fisheries are seen to be in trouble, the industry is vilified, and immediate action is demanded.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Lobster community address increase to lobster size limits

March 2, 2024 — The Lobster Institute’s U.S.- Canada Lobster Town Meeting took place in mid-January to open dialogue within the lobster industry in the Northeast of the United States and Canada. The event included various industry members, including commercial fishermen, scientists, policymakers, managers, and association representatives. Together, these individuals came to discuss matters that are shaping the lobster fishery.

The focused sessions at the meeting included lobster markets and the implications of gauge size changes in the United States, climate change, offshore wind development, and innovations in gear.

Session 1 was focused on lobster market issues and the impact of the U.S. minimum gauge size increase. In October, National Fisherman shared that if the bigger gauge is enacted, lobstermen will need to find ways to address the state of Maine’s inequities with Canada if this change is implemented within the states. The lobster abundance index passed a predetermined threshold of a 35% decline in recruit abundance indices and, as such, triggered the minimum gauge increase in hopes of enhancing spawning stock biomass.

Initially, the change was to be implemented on June 1, 2024. However, comments from the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and others have delayed the increase to January 1, 2025. They hoped the delay would provide additional time for the Maine lobster fishery to work with Canadian fisheries officials on management measures that support the equity of fishermen and stock resiliency on both sides of the border.

Read the full article at National Fisherman