Saving Seafood

New Study Seeks To Reveal The Secrets Of Halibut

August 29, 2018 — Fred Bennett has been a fisherman for about 60 years and he just stared, perplexed, at a graph supposedly showing a halibut, tagged to track its progress, moving in the water column.

He shook his head in consternation and looked at fellow captain Mike Anderson who has spent more than 40 years on the water.

How is that possible? Bennett wondered.

Anderson was laughing.

It’s not, he said – unless the storied flat fish had been eaten by something, most likely a great white shark.

“The tag was hanging out near the bottom during the day and was near the surface of the water during the night time, plus the tag temperature shot up suddenly and stayed there – pretty clear indications that it was eaten by a shark,” agreed George Maynard, research coordinator at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

Stumping Bennett and Anderson would be tough. The two spent many years catching halibut, a great-tasting fish that is making fishermen money in Canada, and used to make fishermen money here. But stocks crashed, and for the last 18 years local fishermen have been allowed to land only one fish per trip, and that one has to measure at least 41 inches.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Chronicle

 

Sens. Markey, Warren support right whale legislation

July 11, 2018 — Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren will co-sponsor the SAVE Right Whales Act, filed June 7 by four other Atlantic Coast senators.

“Senator Markey wanted to ensure that all of the stakeholders in Massachusetts that would be impacted by the legislation were briefed on the bill, understood its provisions, and had the opportunity to share their perspectives before he committed to co-sponsorship,” a spokesman for the senator said.

On Monday, Markey and Warren both became co-sponsors of the bill joining Democrats from New Jersey, Delaware, New Jersey, Florida and New York.

U.S. Rep. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., introduced a similar bill in the House on June 7 with three other representatives.

The legislation would allocate $5 million annually in grants through 2028 for conservation programs, and the development of new technology or other methods to reduce harm to right whales from fishing gear entanglements and ship collisions. Grants could promote cooperation with foreign governments, affected local communities, small businesses, others in the private sector or nongovernment groups. The National Marine Fisheries Service has funded North Atlantic right whale protections at more than $8 million annually since fiscal year 2009, with another $128,000 released last year with announcement of an unusual mortality event after 17 right whales were observed dead in Canadian and U.S. waters.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association gave its nod of approval on June 20 to the SAVE Act. The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance has endorsed the bill as well.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New England Fishery Management Council to Host Herring Trawler Forum

June 18, 2018 — Members of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance will meet with federal fisheries managers Tuesday to discuss the impact of big mid-water trawls working of the Cape’s coast.

After decades of lamenting the trawlers’ effect on local fishing, the fishermen will be able to testify in front of managers about how the local ecosystem has suffered from the prolonged presence of the industrial-scaled boats.

They will be advocating for a buffer zone off the coast that not only protects ocean herring, but also river herring and other forage fish that are caught and discarded as bycatch.

Public officials from every Cape town, Barnstable County, and the region’s State House delegation all support a year-round buffer, as do many environmental, scientific and civic organizations.

“Of all the issues facing us as a fishing community, protecting herring and forage fish might be the most important step we could take to rebuild our fishery and revitalize our waters,” said John Pappalardo, CEO of the Fishermen’s Alliance.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Herring Hearing Happening June 19

June 7, 2018 — The New England Fishery Management Council is holding a rare public hearing in Chatham next week to consider rules designed to protect one of the most important fish species in our waters: Atlantic herring.

The council is mulling a host of options designed to protect sea herring from overfishing by mid-water trawlers, which can scoop up entire schools in a single haul. While local boats do not take part in large-scale herring fisheries, the species is a critical food source for groundfish like cod, haddock and flounder and other species like bluefin tuna.

The hearing is set for Tuesday, June 19 at 6 p.m. at the community center, one of seven sessions being held between Maine and Pennsylvania to consider the proposed rules. Known as Amendment 8 to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan, the proposals cover two major components: a control rule to govern catch limits and proposed area closures to address localized stock depletion and user conflicts.

The control rule would guide regulators in setting long-term catch limits. Locally, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance has argued in favor of a control rule that focuses not on the commercial value of the sea herring fishery but on the role of the species in the larger ecosystem. Advocates for this approach say it will put a new emphasis on conservation while allowing regulators to consider the biological and ecological requirements of Atlantic herring stocks.

Ten alternatives are being considered for the control rule, encompassing 15 different ways that regulators could evaluate how catch levels affect the ecosystem. Regulators will also need to decide whether the control rule is implemented on a one-year variable basis or every three years with a fixed catch limit.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Chronicle

Fishermen call for defense of science-based fishery management

June 7, 2018 — Fishermen from across the United States have set up shop in Washington this week for Capitol Hill Ocean Week 2018, and the message they’re sending to lawmakers is: Defend science-based fishery management policies.

Ocean Week is an annual conference where stakeholders meet in the nation’s capital to discuss policy issues that affect the oceans and Great Lakes. The National Marine Sanctuary Foundation organizes the event and brings together stakeholders for high level discussions on these issues.

This year’s conference comes the Magnuson-Stevens act comes up for reauthorization. Some lawmakers have taken the opportunity to propose changes to fishery management policies, such as allowing states to have more flexibility and say in managing their plans.

However, one group of commercial fishermen are hoping that federal officials stick to science-based management plans. They note NOAA Fisheries’ most recent report to Congress that indicates the number of stocks on the overfished list is at 35, an all-time low. In addition, 44 stocks have been rebuilt since 2000.

“This latest report reaffirms that the Magnuson-Stevens Act is working,” said John Pappalardo, FCC President and CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. “But there is much work to do, and reversing course would be a grave mistake. Congress must continue to invest in fisheries science to ensure we have the data on which to base important management decisions and resist shortsighted efforts to undermine key Magnuson-Stevens Act accountability provisions.”

Among the meetings that took place on Wednesday 6 June was a roundtable meeting held by U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, with seafood industry leaders.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance to Host Herring Trawler Forum

June 4, 2018 — Members of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance will meet with federal fisheries managers later this month to discuss the impact of big mid-water trawls working of the Cape’s coast.

After decades of lamenting the trawlers’ effect on local fishing, the fishermen will be able to testify in front of managers about how the local ecosystem has suffered from the prolonged presence of the industrial-scaled boats.

They will be advocating for a buffer zone off the coast that not only protects ocean herring, but also river herring and other forage fish that are caught and discarded as bycatch.

Public officials from every Cape town, Barnstable County, and the region’s State House delegation all support a year-round buffer, as do many environmental, scientific and civic organizations.

“Of all the issues facing us as a fishing community, protecting herring and forage fish might be the most important step we could take to rebuild our fishery and revitalize our waters,” said John Pappalardo, CEO of the Fishermen’s Alliance.

“A strong call to action would be an important message for federal managers to hear.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Commercial fishermen question wind farm video

February 16, 2018 — BOSTON — Offshore wind proponents are touting new undersea footage that suggests a vibrant marine habitat is growing around the nation’s first offshore wind farm — a five-turbine operation off Rhode Island’s waters.

The American Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, says the roughly two-minute clip it posted on YouTube this week shows the potential for the nation’s fishing industry as larger projects are envisioned up and down the East Coast.

“The turbine foundations are now acting as an artificial reef,” said Nancy Sopko, the wind energy association’s director of offshore wind and federal legislative affairs. “This is a success story that can be replicated all along our coastlines.”

But the video does little to temper the concerns of commercial fishermen, who are worried about navigating dense forests of turbines to get to their historic fishing grounds, says Jim Kendall, a former scallop fisherman in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

“This is nice and fun to see, but it doesn’t tip the conversation,” Seth Rolbein, of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance in Chatham, Massachusetts, said of the video.

Offshore wind developers from New England to the Carolinas are racing to build the nation’s first large-scale wind farm. Many of the projects call for hundreds of turbines to be built miles away from shore, sometimes within or along the path to lucrative fishing spots.

The wind energy association video shows beds of mussels taking shape and small fish swimming around the turbine bases. The brief underwater footage is juxtaposed with longer testimonials from local recreational fishermen and charter boat owners who say the Deepwater Wind project has been a boon for them since opened it more than a year ago.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

‘Groundbreaking’ fish protection plan in place in Northeast

January 5, 2018 — The following is excerpted from an article by Doug Fraser of the Cape Cod Times:

After 14 years of research, negotiations, hearings and two additional years of review, New England has a plan that uses science and the latest technology to decide which areas are important for the critical life stages of fish and shellfish species and how to protect them.

John Bullard, the regional director of NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, informed New England Fishery Management Council Chairman John Quinn in a letter Wednesday that his agency had approved most of their fish habitat protection plan.

“It was a massive undertaking and your staff, especially Michelle Bachman, should be proud of their groundbreaking work that went into supporting this amendment,” Bullard wrote in the letter. The council staff, along with researchers from the National Marine Fisheries Service, state fisheries agencies, and universities, especially the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology, put together models that incorporated photographic and other surveys of the ocean bottom with known areas of fish concentration and other research on spawning and other life stages, that helped the council evaluate what should be protected and how.

“The fact that it dragged on so long, people miss how groundbreaking this really is,” said Tom Nies, the New England council’s executive director. Two decades ago, habitat closures were decided based on drawing a line around areas where fish were congregating, Nies said. Now, with a model that compares the sea bed with the impact of fishing, they can make decisions he feels will have greater significance to restoring and protecting fish stocks. Plus, the habitat plan also set aside research areas to investigate the link between habitat and fish productivity, a piece of the puzzle that has seen relatively little conclusive research.

“If you compare where we are with this amendment in terms of how they were developed and analyzed versus the original habitat areas in 2002 and 2003, we are light years ahead of where we were then,” Nies said.

Scallopers from both the big boat and small boat fleets, which are often at odds, traveled to Washington in October to lobby [U.S. Rep. William] Keating and other congressmen on getting NMFS to finish its review of the habitat plan and open the area up to scalloping before that population died off. Their message was that allowing them into scallop-rich, nonessential fish habitat meant they spent far less time towing their heavy dredges through areas fish do use.

“From our perspective, it’s really heartening that they heard our concerns,” said Seth Rolbein, director of the Cape Cod Fisheries Trust, speaking for the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

David Frulla, an attorney and lobbyist representing limited access scallop vessels, and Fisheries Survival Fund attorney Andrew Minkiewicz agreed the council and NOAA made the right decision in closing the Great South Channel and opening the scallop grounds in what is known as Closed Area I. But they felt that there was just as much evidence to open up a portion of a second closed area on Georges Bank over 100 miles east of the Cape that had historically produced as much as 50 million pounds of harvested scallops. Bullard said more information would be needed for his agency to do that right now.

“There are only so many highly productive scallop beds, and this is one of them,” Minkiewicz said. Frulla admitted that the bottom there is more complex and may be harder to determine its value to fish, but Minkiewicz said adding another prime scallop area keeps scallopers away from the bottom where fish do congregate.

Assistant Regional Administrator Michael Pentony told Quinn in an email that his agency expected to publish the final rule containing the regulations to implement the plan this spring.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization bill advances in US House

December 14, 2017 — By a 22-16 vote on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources advanced HR 200, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act, legislation introduced by representative Donald Young, an Alaska Republican.

The bill was one of 15 scheduled for markup Tuesday and Wednesday by the panel.

With just days to go before Congress breaks for the holidays, the bill to reauthorize the Magnuson-Stevens Act so far has not received much attention in the Senate. Chances are strong that the debate over the measure will continue well into 2018.

However, that didn’t stop the ocean conservation group Oceana from responding, issuing a statement that warned HR 200 “would weaken science-based conservation of U.S. fish populations and increase the risk of overfishing by removing annual catch limits for many species”.

Oceana campaign director Lora Snyder called the vote “a slap in the face to anyone who cares about ensuring the health of our nation’s fisheries, instead jeopardizing decades of progress in ocean conservation. … [It]  would roll back decades of progress, leading us back down the path to oceans empty of fish and fishermen losing their livelihoods.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Public gets say on changes to herring rules

December 12, 2017 — Cape Cod’s small boat fishermen, both commercial and recreational, have been asking for protection from a fleet of large herring trawlers for more than a decade.

They may get an answer to their plea as early as June, when the New England Fishery Management Council will likely vote on whether to create buffer zones that prohibit fishing close to shore by these large vessels for part or all of the year.

The council’s potential actions are focused on midwater trawlers which tow large nets, sometimes between pairs of vessels, targeting huge schools of herring swimming midway between the bottom and surface. Back in 2007, the council prohibited midwater trawlers from fishing during the summer months along the coast north of Provincetown to Canada. But they allowed them to come within three miles of the Cape and states to the south.

Herring are considered a forage species, a vital link between the massive food source contained in the plankton they eat, and the protein needed by important commercial species like striped bass, cod and bluefin tuna that prey on them. But Cape and other East Coast fishermen have argued that the massive nets and large vessels used by the herring fleet are so efficient that cod, tuna and other species, with no herring to eat, do not come close enough to shore for the smaller vessels of the inshore fleet.

“Our guys are not fishing the way they did 12 years ago around the Cape because those fish aren’t there because the bait isn’t there,” said John Pappalardo, executive director of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance and a member of the fishery council. “We live in a migratory corridor here. We depend on the bait to be there.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times