Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Few herring, no eels coming to spawn

May 21, 2019 — It appears, at least for the time being, that Cape Ann largely has fallen off the list of favorite places to visit for river herring and American eels.

And no one really seems to know the reason why the river herring have been so sparse at the West Gloucester alewife fishway and American eels have been absent from the eel trap set up at Millbrook Pond in Rockport.

“Officially, I’d say we’ve spotted fewer than 10 in our fish counts of river herring making their way up to the Lily Pond,” said Eric W. Hutchins, a fisheries biologist for NOAA Fisheries and the Gulf of Maine restoration coordinator. “Without a doubt, it’s significantly down this year and there isn’t much time left.”

The city, in cooperation with NOAA Fisheries, organizes volunteer fish counters at the alewife fishway to document the number of river herring making their way out of the Little River, up the fishway and into the Lily Pond to spawn. Three to six weeks later, they head back to the ocean.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Group offering lobstermen discounted lifejackets

April 17, 2019 — A nonprofit organization dedicated to the health, safety and economic security of commercial fishermen are offering discounted lifejackets to lobstermen this week.

Fishing Partnership Support Services has partnered with the Northeast Center for Occupational Health & Safety on its “Lifejackets for Lobstermen” Van Tour. The tour runs through November and is stopping at ports across Massachusetts and Maine. The van be will on Cape Ann and lobstermen may drop by:

Wednesday, April 17, at 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Morss Pier in Masconomo State Park in Manchester.

Thursday, April 18, at 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the lot near the Gloucester Harbormaster’s Office, 19 Harbor Loop.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA Fisheries: Making the most of a tough situation

February 14, 2019 —  The longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history started during the holidays when schedules and workloads are typically lighter. But as those initial couple of weeks stretched on, staff became anxious and stress increased due to missed or looming deadlines and missed paychecks. Several staff channeled this emotion into something positive by helping others and continuing to be dedicated public servants. While some staff became new volunteers with local organizations, others dedicated more time to their ongoing community service efforts. However one staff member, Mark Murray-Brown, took this to another level by volunteering with several organizations that serve the Cape Ann community – providing inspiration to fellow staff to volunteer in their communities.

Feeling the need for structure and wanting to do something positive with his unexpected time off, Mark reached out to some friends at The Open Door who immediately put him to work  volunteering with doing a variety of tasks from moving boxes to unloading and organizing supplies to weighing groceries for individuals and families. The Open Door’s main programs are The Food Pantry, which provides emergency groceries to those in need, and Community Meals, which offers free, nutritious meals to those in need of food or companionship. The Open Door was one of the many organizations that offered assistance to federal employees during the furlough. According to Mark, it was especially rewarding to return the favor and volunteer. His efforts inspired other fellow colleagues to volunteer for The Open Door.

Mark also volunteered at The Grace Center preparing breakfast, cooking and serving lunch for approximately 40 – 50 guests, and then meeting and talking with participants. Several years ago, he was part of a team that helped launch the Grace Center among local Churches in Gloucester. It is now located at one facility in Gloucester and serves more than 1,100 individuals yearly who are experiencing homelessness and those at high risk in need of a crisis shelter. Wanting to help this organization during the furlough, Mark introduced himself to their full-time Executive Director and Volunteer Coordinator and was put to work the next day.

Finally, seeing the furlough as an opportunity, a teacher friend of Mark’s asked him to assist her as a visiting educator to her class of approximately two dozen students at a local nursery school. Mark provided a short overview of his job at NOAA and personal background, followed by a lively discussion with the students of their experiences with the ocean and beach. After a short presentation from the BBC Blue Planet 2 documentary, he concluded with a question and answer session. The teachers were so grateful for the visit that they made him a beautiful thank you booklet that includes a section from the students on what they learned.

“I am extremely grateful for these opportunities to volunteer and be able to continue to engage in public service while on furlough,” said Mark. “Specifically to the volunteer coordinators, staff, directors and participants at each organization for being so welcoming and facilitating the process to bring me on board and volunteer so quickly. If I was to find myself in a similar situation again in the future, I would look forward to volunteering again immediately.”

Our thanks go out to Mark and other GARFO staff that volunteered during the furlough for your dedication to public service and for being an inspiration to all of us at GARFO and NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

Lobster pots becoming research platforms

October 11, 2018 — Massachusetts boasts more than 1,200 commercially licensed lobstermen who set more than 300,000 traps in state waters each season — and most of the gear is set without much in the way of credible scientific data on habitat or ocean conditions.

A project call LobsterNet is looking to change the old world approach to the analytics of harvesting lobsters by attaching sensors to the traps to collect data on ocean conditions such as acidity, or pH, and temperature.

The enhanced traps, which automatically will upload the marine data to a satellite network when pulled from the water, will be woven into a data collection network to help advance understanding of ocean conditions and potentially develop new business elements of a “Blue Economy.”

“It’s really kind of a transformative,” said Tom Balf, a Gloucester-based marine consultant on the LobsterNet project. “We’re taking an existing device, a lobster trap, and turning it into a research platform. At the same time, we’re adding value to the existing practice of going out and putting traps in the water by turning lobstermen into data collectors and researchers.”

LobsterNet received a $133,156 grant from the state Seaport Economic Council on Tuesday to begin developing and deploying the low-cost network of lobster pots that can collect and distribute key environmental data for fishermen and researchers alike.

The project’s other partners are Gloucester Innovation, the UMass Gloucester Marine Station, the Angle Center for Entrepreneurship at Endicott College, the SigFox network provider and the Scituate-based Lobster Foundation of Massachusetts.

“Data such as temperature and pH will be captured at depth and in greater spatial and temporal resolution than is now possible,” the Seaport Economic Council said in a release announcing the grants through its Grand Challenge program to promote Internet of Things, or IoT, technologies to bolster the state’s marine economy. “This information will help fishermen and researchers better understand what is affecting lobster habitats in general and individual lobster fertility, lifespan or health in particular.”

The sensors used in the project already have been developed, though Balf said they now will undergo further, more rigorous testing as the project ramps up. He said the project’s organizers expect to conduct trials with lobstermen “in the early fall and winter” across Cape Ann while simultaneously testing the SigFox wireless communication network.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts could boost dredging projects

July 12, 2018 — Sediment is piling up on the bottoms of rivers and harbors, putting cities and towns on Cape Ann and elsewhere into a multimillion-dollar bind.

State and federal funding for local dredging has dried up in recent decades, forcing local officials to dig into reserves or borrow money to remove silt in order to make their waterways deep enough for boats to navigate.

Gov. Charlie Baker has pitched a new program — with $50 million in grant money — to help coastal communities pay for dredging as part of a more than $660 million economic development proposal, which cleared the state House of Representatives late Tuesday.

The measure still needs approval from the state Senate.

Under Baker’s plan, communities would compete for matching grants and be required to cover half the costs of each project.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, said the money would go a long way because many communities along the coast haven’t dredged in decades. In many instances, he said, silting is making waterways less navigable.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester again at center of drilling fight

March 8, 2018 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — In the late-1970s, an unlikely alliance between environmentalists and commercial fishermen in this storied seaport helped block plans to open up Georges Bank to oil exploration — an effort that ultimately led to a federal moratorium on offshore drilling.

Georges Bank, a shallow and turbulent fish spawning ground southeast of Cape Ann and 100 miles east of Cape Cod, has been fished for more than 350 years. It is once again the center of a battle over drilling, this time stemming from President Donald Trump’s plan to allow private oil and gas companies to work in federal waters.

And, once again, Gloucester is poised to play an oversized role in opposing the efforts.

“It was a stupid idea back then, and it’s a stupid idea now,” said Peter Shelley, a senior attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, which teamed up with Gloucester fisherman to fight the proposal more than three decades ago. “But yet here we are, fighting it once again. It’s ridiculous.”

The Trump administration says existing federal policy keeps 94 percent of the outer continental shelf off-limits to drilling. A five-year plan announced by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke last year would open at least 90 percent of that area beyond state waters to development by private companies.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Gorton’s CEO bullish on seafood business

Long-term plan includes possibility of more jobs

March 2, 2018 — Gorton’s is navigating a gale of changing consumer trends and increasing global competition, pushing the venerable Gloucester seafood retailer to continually embrace innovation and change to retain its historic market presence, the company’s president said Thursday.

Judson Reis, speaking at the Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce’s annual economic outlook breakfast, also said the 170-year-old company — one of the nation’s oldest continually operating businesses — is committed to staying in Gloucester.

“It’s part of who we are, it’s part of our DNA,” Reis told breakfasters at The Gloucester House restaurant. “We’ve been here, next year it will be 170 years, so it’s very important part of who we are as a business. We are very committed to staying here.”

The only element that could alter that strategy is if Gorton’s, which operates in what Reis referred to as a “high-cost environment,” lost its ability to operate competitively in the frenzied international frozen seafood retail market.

“And I don’t think that is in the cards any time soon,” Reis said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Massachusetts: UMass placing sustainable fisheries professor at Hodgkins Cove

December 21, 2017 — The University of Massachusetts at Amherst embarked on recasting the role of its Gloucester Marine Station at Hodgkins Cove by hiring Gloucester resident Katie Kahl to serve as the liaison between research elements at the school and the Cape Ann community.

The university’s School of Earth and Sustainability is set to formally announce the appointment of Kahl on Thursday to the newly created position of extension assistant professor in sustainable fisheries and coastal resilience.

“I’m really excited and can’t wait to start,” Kahl said Wednesday. “This is really a great opportunity for the university to re-imagine its role at the Gloucester Marine Station.” Kahl’s mission, which begins Jan. 2, is a new one for the university’s research facility.

The university announced last January that it was establishing a permanent, full-time extension faculty position at the Gloucester Marine Station as the focal point for determining the future role of the facility.

Most recently, it housed the university’s Large Pelagics Research Center, which was nicknamed the “Tuna Lab.” Under the guidance of Molly Lutcavage, the center did internationally groundbreaking research on giant bluefin tuna and other highly migratory pelagic species.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Boat noise silencing cod, haddock love songs

December 19, 2017 — Communication among cod comes in the form of vocalized grunts. And for haddock, it’s knocks.

Now it appears that increasing traffic noise from large vessels in the Gulf of Maine may be reducing the range of communication for the two species of Atlantic groundfish, according to research by NOAA Fisheries scientists.

The study, undertaken by scientists from NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center and published in Scientific Reports, said the decline in the ability to communicate may generate widespread changes in the species’ “daily behavior, feeding, mating, and socializing during critical biological periods for these commercially and ecologically important fish.”

Cod, for instance, vocalize to attract mates and listen for predators and “not hearing those signals could potentially reduce reproductive success and survival,” according to the study.

Using bottom-mounted instruments to record the cod grunts and haddock knocks, scientists spent three months monitoring the sounds made by the two species at three separate spawning sites within the Gulf of Maine — two inside Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and one inshore south of Cape Ann.

“We looked at the hourly variation in ambient sound pressure levels and then estimated effective vocalization ranges at all three sites known to support spawning activity in the Gulf of Maine cod and haddock stocks,” said Jenni Stanley, a marine research scientist and lead author of the study. “Both fluctuated dramatically during the study.”

The variations of the sound levels, she said, appear to be driven by the activities of large vessels.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

 

Fish fleet film earns thumbs-up

November 22, 2017 — ROCKPORT, Mass. — John Friedrich drove down here from Amesbury on Saturday afternoon for the sole purpose of attending the premiere of the fishing documentary “Dead in the Water” at the Rockport High School auditorium.

Friedrich had read a story in the Newburyport Daily News about the documentary that chronicles the demise and unceasing challenges faced by the once-mighty Gloucester groundfish fleet and thought it was something he should see, to gauge for himself the true extent of the problem.

“I thought the film was very well done,” he said of the 15th documentary from veteran filmmaker and Rockport native David Wittkower. “But it was also very disturbing, just emotionally disturbing. It’s such a tragedy. The problem is so much more huge than I imagined.”

If Wittkower and producers Angela Sanfilippo and John Bell were looking for a template for the response they sought from Saturday’s packed house, that was it.

From the day he first envisioned the film in 2013, the mantra that has driven Wittkower has been to spread the story of Gloucester’s fishing crisis beyond the rocky shores of Cape Ann, to bring to the rest of America the tale of a disappearing American legacy and one of its first industries.

The showing on Saturday drew almost 300, most of them from Cape Ann and most with at least a nominal sense of the regulatory, environmental and market pressures faced by America’s oldest commercial fishing fleet.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Times at the Salem News