Saving Seafood

Invasive species? Try new culinary treat

March 3, 2016 — It’s not easy being green . . . crabs, that is. Then, how could it be?

The green crabs are the poster child of invasive seafood species, prompting their fair share of hand-wringing and vitriol — not to mention legislative action here in Massachusetts to figure out ways to mitigate the far-flung eco-damage they’ve foisted on animal and plant species throughout the state’s Great Salt Marsh that stretches more than 20,000 acres from Cape Ann to the New Hampshire border.

Many people talk about the green crabs, but Spencer Montgomery is actually trying to do something about them. In short, he’d like restaurants and large-scale institutional food purveyors to start using them in recipes and for the consuming public to start eating them. 

Montgomery, a seafood buyer for Woburn-based food vendor Dole & Bailey, is trying to build up a consuming market for the small, ubiquitous crabs, even if he has to do it one chef and harvester at a time.

“There’s really no reason we shouldn’t be selling hundreds of pounds of the green crabs each week,” Montgomery said. “It would be better to get them out of the water to help protect our other seafood species and the marine environment, but they’re also a real alternative for chefs looking to use crabs and crab flavors in different ways and at a far lower price.”

Montgomery said he recently filled orders for about 70 pounds of the crabs from three New England restaurants and now he’s looking to build up his network of harvesters to handle the future demand he envisions from restaurants, hotels, universities and hospitals.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Maritime Gloucester Talk: A Marine National Monument off Cape Ann, Massachusetts?

February 22, 2016 — The following was released by Maritime Gloucester:

Thursday, March 3, 2016, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm

Registration : MGTalks are free of charge. Please consider making a donation at the door.

Audience: General Audience; students encouraged.

A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times

A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action.

NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE GLOUCESTER HIGH SCHOOL LECTURE HALL.

Register for Maritime Gloucester’s event

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester must relentlessly promote locally harvested seafood

February 20, 2016 — Gloucester needs to be relentless in promoting the benefits of its locally harvested seafood, as well as the fishermen and processors that send it to market, a city official told the Fisheries Commission this week.

Economic Development Director Sal Di Stefano said the city is addressing the challenges of operating in the modern, international seafood market with a marketing strategy designed to promote the city, its fresh seafood bounty, its fishermen and its shore-side businesses to the seafood-consuming world.

“If we don’t do this, other people will,” Di Stefano told the commission Thursday night during a discussion on the city’s plans for the upcoming Seafood Expo North America show in Boston. “And they will try to take it from us.”

The city’s new branding campaign, “Gloucester Fresh,” is at the heart of the promotional strategy aimed at helping consumers identify seafood harvested from the waters around Cape Ann and landed in Gloucester while appreciating its nutritional and sustainable benefits.

Working with Salem-based Sperling Interactive, the city is developing a website that Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken is scheduled to launch at the beginning of the Seafood Expo during the first week of March.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Fishermen, NOAA to talk whiting changes at workshop

February 11, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries will hold an informational workshop next week in Gloucester that could serve as the first step in potentially acceding to the requests of local fishermen to modify the access and fishing schedule in the exempted whiting areas.

The meeting is open to fishermen and potential research partners and is scheduled for Thursday from 10 a.m. to about 3 p.m. at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s regional offices in the Blackburn Industrial Park.

“We’re really viewing this as the first part of the discussion,” said Mike Ruccio, a supervising fishery policy analyst at NOAA Fisheries. “We want to try to gather everybody together in one place and tackle this a little more holistically.”

Local fishermen, led by longtime fisherman Sam Novello, have been working for more than a year to convince NOAA to change the permitted gear and expand the access and fishing season for the whiting exempted areas — most notably the Small Mesh Gear Area 1 in Ipswich Bay.

Currently, that area is open for whiting fishing from July 15 to Nov. 15. Novello and other Cape Ann fishermen would like to see that fishing season expanded to open earlier and close later.

Ruccio said the workshop will provide an overview of the fishery, including the whiting exemption programs and the extent of regional Director John K. Bullard’s authority to make the changes sought by fishermen.

He said the workshop also will include discussions on possible bycatch and stock assessment issues, as well as identifying potential funding sources and research projects necessary to produce the data that ultimately would be used to determine if the changes sought are even feasible.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Delving into the deep

February 5, 2016 — Maritime Gloucester has embarked on an ambitious slate of programs for 2016, many designed as teaching tools providing information on a variety of topics within the overarching themes of ocean planning and innovation on the waterfront.

The working museum and maritime education center on Harbor Loop built the schedule — including the MGTalks and HarborLAB series — to provide relevant information to Cape Ann residents from all sides on maritime topics of local interest, ranging from fisheries to ocean exploration, said Melanie Murray-Brown, Maritime Gloucester’s director of program information. 

“We decided that we didn’t want to shy away from controversial topics,” Murray-Brown said Thursday. “We’re not advocating for any particular side on these issues, but providing the information more as a public service.”

The MGTalks series kicks off next Thursday, Feb. 11, at 7 p.m. at Maritime Gloucester with a free panel discussion on who owns the ocean and balancing interests while managing ocean sprawl.

The panel, including Bruce Carlisle, director of the state’s Office of Coastal Zone Management, and Jack Clarke, a Gloucester resident who is director of public policy and government relations for the Massachusetts Audubon Society, will discuss the formation and goals of the Massachusetts Ocean Plan.

The discussion is expected to include the roles of specific stakeholders and the areas of dissent on issues stretching from sand and gravel mining to the ramping up of the exploration for gas and oil near entry points to the Gulf of Maine by Canadian public and private interests.

John Sarrouf of the Gloucester Conversations project will moderate the panel.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Coast Guard aids disabled fishing vessel off Maine

February 5, 2016 —  BOSTON — The Jocka, a fishing boat with a crew of four aboard, had to be towed to port by the Coast Guard from 45 miles southeast of Portland, Maine, after the engine became disabled.

“It was a pretty rough night, but they’re almost in and everybody’s OK,” ship owner Terry Alexander said late Thursday afternoon. “They just had to sit it out because of the weather.”

At approximately 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, a crew member aboard the Jocka used a VHF-FM radio to contact Coast Guard watchstanders to report the ship’s engine was disabled and the crew needed assistance, the Coast Guard said in a press release.

The boat is owned by the corporation Jordan Lynn Inc. is which headed by New England Fishery Management Council member and former chairman Terry Alexander. The home address for the corporation is Harpswell, Maine, though Alexander said Thursday the Jocka’s hailing port is Boston. He said none of the crew was from Cape Ann.

Alexander said the boat, which is registered in Massachusetts and permitted for off-shore, non-trap lobstering, experienced general engine failure Wednesday and had to stay out on the water overnight because of the harsh weather conditions made it difficult for the Coast Guard to get a line to the 61-foot trawler.

The crew aboard the 110-foot Coast Guard cutter Ocracoke, homeported in South Portland, Maine, responded to the hail for help. Ocracoke had arrived on-scene at approximately 3:15 p.m. Wednesday, but, as Alexander said, was unable to get Jocka in tow due to the weather, the Coast Guard reported.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

Environmental Advocates, Fishermen At Odds Over Turning Cashes Ledge Into National Monument

February 2, 2016 — It’s clear from listening to fishermen that they’re ambivalent about the fisheries management process and the rules it produces. They feel like the rules are stacked against them, but they abide by the council’s decisions, because that is the process they have signed onto. The presidential order would fall outside that process.

Jackie Odell advocates for New England groundfishermen with the Northeast Seafood Coalition. She said the fisheries management process is public and transparent, and decisions are data-driven, goal-specific and reached through compromise.

“You know, there’s legislation that’s out there to protect this process,” she said. “And if we don’t want to use that process what are we doing and why? Why are all stakeholders — states, fishermen, NGOs, scientific community — all engaging in a process that in the end we are going to say, it doesn’t matter.”

But, she added, the fishing industry and environmental groups don’t have to be adversaries: Fishermen are also concerned about mining and natural gas exploration.

Witman, the longtime Cashes Ledge researcher, agrees.

“In the long run, I think we want the same thing. We both value a healthy resilient ocean that can support fisheries,” he said.

But the sticking point might be one of perspective.

Many fishermen, including Testaverde, entered this profession because it’s what their family had been doing for generations. They take immense pride in their work and their heritage. They fear a future in which their descendants won’t experience that.

Skerry, the photographer, fears a future in which one of Earth’s beautiful places is irrevocably damaged.

Read the full story at WBUR News

Rep. Seth Moulton unites region on monitoring

January 11, 2016 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton has expanded efforts to reform at-sea monitoring for groundfishing vessels, corralling a regional and bipartisan group of federal legislators to urge NOAA to accept changes already approved by the New England Fisheries Management Council and supported by NOAA Regional Administrator John Bullard.

Moulton and 16 other members of Congress — totaling 12 Democrats, four Republicans and one Independent from five New England states — wrote to NOAA Administrator Kathleen D. Sullivan expressing support for the council motions approved in December and again voicing their opposition to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s plans to transfer at-sea monitoring (ASM) costs to permit holders sometime early this year.

Those costs are estimated at about $710 per day per vessel with monitor coverage.

“We have requested that your agency utilize authority provided by Congress through the Fiscal Year 2015 Appropriations process to cover such expenses in fishing year 2015 and continue to strongly support the deferment of ASM costs to the industry until these program reforms are fully implemented,” the legislators wrote to Sullivan.

The letter, sent Friday, represents the broadest congressional reach on the issue to date and reflects Moulton’s emergence as a leading congressional ally in the fishing industry’s effort to recast the monitoring program into a more efficient and economical operation.

“We felt we needed to educate a broader group of leaders across the region and here in Washington,” Moulton, the first-term Democrat representing Massachusetts’ Sixth Congressional District that includes Cape Ann, said Friday of the monthlong work that went into drafting the letter and convincing the other legislators to sign on.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Off Cape Ann, a rescue gone wrong

January 2, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — As dusk settled Dec. 3 on stormy seas 18 miles off Cape Ann, the crew of the Orin C felt a wave of relief. The Coast Guard had just arrived to tow them home to Gloucester, where they could unload 10,000 pounds of slime eel and repair their overheated engine.

But three hours later, the relatively routine tow took a tragic turn. The 51-foot Orin C rapidly succumbed to 12-foot seas, leaving three men bobbing in the dark, 49-degree waters amid a blizzard of heavy debris. Crewmen Rick Palmer and Travis Lane swam to safety, but the Coast Guard later said Captain David “Heavy D” Sutherland could not be revived after a rescue swimmer reached him.

“Rick says, ‘How is he? How is he?’ ” Lane recalled in mid-December as he geared up for his next fishing trip. “His . . . head was already underwater. He made a few strokes and just stopped.”

For all the well-known risks of commercial fishing, riding home with the Coast Guard isn’t one that fishermen generally fear. To lose both a vessel and a life in a controlled tow situation is extremely rare.

The Coast Guard is now considering a series of policy changes that would be binding nationwide as a result of this case, said Lieutenant Karen Kutkiewicz, spokesperson for the First Coast Guard District, which covers the Northeast seaboard. Among the considerations: new requirements for Coast Guard vessels to be equipped with defibrillators; new protocols to make sure sinking vessels receive reliable pumps; and new methods to deliver lifesaving items from helicopters without endangering personnel.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Would-be mussel farmers fishing for project money

December 14, 2015 — The aquaculture project Salem State University marine research scientists hope might ultimately produce acres of mussels in a stretch of deep, open waters off the coast of Cape Ann has received the necessary permits to proceed.

Now all the project managers need is … what else? Money.

Mark R. Fregeau, a SSU marine biology professor, said the project he is managing with SSU colleague and collaborator Ted Maney has been green-lighted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and will begin in earnest once they raise about $75,000 needed to begin laying the initial long lines upon which the mussels will grow.

The mussel aquaculture — or more simply, farm — will be located in federal waters, about 81/2 miles due east of Good Harbor Beach, at a site the researchers believe will provide the perfect environment for a deep-water mussel aquaculture that would be the first of its kind in the U.S.

“We’ve been authorized to put out a couple of (experimental) lines and see how they work and what issues might arise,” Fregeau said. “The reality is that until we actually get into the water, we don’t know exactly what we’ll be dealing with. So, it will be rolled out in phases, a couple lines at a time, and that will give us the opportunity to report back to the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA.”

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times