December 9, 2019 — NOAA Fisheries is working with fishermen across Cape Cod to see if the Atlantic halibut is showing signs of recovery in the Gulf of Maine as well as the New England region.
A three-part study is currently underway to see if the halibut population is rebuilding after the size of the fish shrunk over centuries.
The Northeast Fisheries Science Center is working with local fishermen to understand the life history, stock structure, and movement patterns of the Atlantic halibut.
December 6, 2019 — They have a name: Peter Pan scallops.
And why?
Because like the famous character, they won’t grow up.
But these scallops don’t live in Never Never Land. They reside in a place called Nantucket Lightship South, roughly 20 miles east and 60 miles south of the elbow of the Cape; take the Great South Channel (rather than the second star to the right), and straight on until morning.
Why won’t they grow up?
Scientists and fishermen have more than one theory, but most agree on a few factors:
These scallops, all born as part of the 2012 year class, settled in water much deeper than typical scallop grounds, around 35 fathoms (210 feet) down, which means that they might not be getting as much nutrient to feed on. Plus, the set that year was phenomenal; packing many animals close together might be another reason why they are stunted.
When researchers say “many animals,” they really mean it. In 2019 surveys, it appears that the biomass of scallops in this one area about 10 square miles (though the big concentration is in roughly four square miles), is more than 35,000 metric tons, a weight that doesn’t include shells, only the little round bodies we eat. That translates into more than three billion animals – with a ‘b’.
December 5, 2019 — As New England lobster harvesters struggle to keep up with the high cost of bait, due in large part to the short supply of Atlantic herring, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has issued further restrictions to protect the forage fish’s dwindling stocks.
As part of an amendment developed by the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) and approved Nov. 19 by NMFS, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, midwater trawling has been prohibited within 12 nautical miles of the coastline that runs from the US state of Maine to Rhode Island 20 miles off Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, reports The Vineyard Gazette, a Massachusetts newspaper.
The change will give the herring a “buffer zone” to migrate without being pressured by commercial vessels but also allowing them to be eaten by other fish, aiding the health of the overall ecosystem, Janice Plante, the NEFMC’s public affairs officer, is quoted as saying.
Local fishermen, boards of selectmen, state legislators and environmental groups have been pushing for stronger management of the midwater trawl herring fishery for more than 20 years, according to the newspaper.
December 4, 2019 — The inshore waters of the Gulf of Maine from Cape Cod to the Canadian border have been closed to herring fishing through the end of the year to prevent overharvesting.
Federal regulators cut this year’s catch limit for Atlantic herring based on last year’s stock assessment. Kirby Rootes-Murdy, with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, says regulations mandate that the fishery must be closed when 92% of the area catch limit has been harvested.
“There is a by-catch allowance, which is the non-directed fishery,” says Rootes-Murdy. “Two thousand pounds can be taken incidentally, but the directed fishery is closed.”
December 3, 2019 — NMFS approved the New England Fishery Management Council’s plan for a 12-mile offshore boundary for New England herring trawlers a few days before Thanksgiving, with a bump out to 20 miles off Cape Cod.
“The council recommended the midwater trawl restricted area to mitigate potential negative socioeconomic impacts on other user groups resulting from short duration, high volume herring removals by midwater trawl vessels,” NMFS Northeast regional administrator Michael Pentony wrote in a decision letter approving the New England council’s proposal.
“Because midwater trawl vessels are able to fish offshore, the council recommended prohibiting them from inshore waters to help ensure herring are available inshore for other users groups and predators of herring,” Pentony wrote.
The decision sets a 12-nautical mile exclusion zone for the trawlers from the Maine-Canada border south to territorial waters off Connecticut. The line jogs out 20 miles off Cape Cod.
November 26, 2019 — In 2002, when Peter Baker first voiced his opposition to the large herring trawlers towing even larger nets off the beaches of Cape Cod, he didn’t think it would take 17 years to get a ban on what he and others saw as a return to the industrialized fishing that had wiped out New England herring, mackerel and menhaden in the 1970s before the U.S. pushed the foreign fleet 200 miles offshore in 1976.
Last week, the efforts of local fishermen, boards of selectmen, voters, environmental groups and state legislators who spoke out against the midwater trawl herring fishery finally paid off with a federal restriction on large herring vessels fishing within 12 miles of the coast from the Canadian border to Connecticut, and within 20 miles of shore along the Outer Cape coastline south to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.
“This is the culmination of a decade and a half of hard work,” said Baker, who is the director of marine conservation work in New England and Atlantic Canada for the Pew Charitable Trusts.
November 25, 2019 — The owner of a scalloping vessel that capsized and sank in choppy seas southwest of Martha’s Vineyard on Sunday afternoon said the single fisherman found in a lifeboat a few hours after a distress signal was sent is in the hospital.
“The other three fishermen are presumed lost,” Luis Martins, owner of the fishing vessel Leonardo, said Monday morning. “That’s all I can say.”
He declined to provide any names of the crew members.
Coast Guard crews from Air Station Cape Cod were continuing the search for the three missing fishermen Monday morning, with the 87-foot cutter Cobia and 270-foot cutter Escanaba scouring the waters off Martha’s Vineyard while a Jayhawk helicopter searched from the air.
November 18, 2019 — I write in response to “Economic, environmental benefits power offshore wind” (My View, Nov. 5). Offshore wind is an exciting, viable and potentially productive source of electricity. But building these wind farms may significantly affect the existing blue economy, and the job numbers the authors cite are misleadingly high.
Fishing is an integral part of the blue economy, but the planned offshore wind development will affect over 100,000 acres of ocean currently used by fishermen to sustain the very industry the authors applaud. Once the Rhode Island/Massachusetts wind energy area is fully built out, an area of roughly 1,418 square miles – vastly larger than Cape Cod – will be covered in turbines roughly a mile apart. How this will affect fisheries is unknown. Many commercial fishermen in Europe will not, or cannot, fish within the farms because of safety hazards and the potential damage to or loss of gear.
Additionally, the full baseline studies that are desperately needed to examine the impacts on the ocean environment and the fishing industry are neither being presented by the developers nor required by the federal government. Placing hundreds of turbines in the ocean floor will no doubt change the ecology of the area and could either chase away commercially important species or make it so fishermen can no longer catch the species they’ve relied on for generations.
What’s really upsetting is the authors are misrepresenting the number of jobs coming to Massachusetts. The authors state “nearly 10,000 jobs will be created during the construction phase” of Vineyard Wind and the next three wind farms to be built. This sounds like nearly 10,000 permanent jobs are coming to Cape Cod and the South Coast. This is not the case. While the authors don’t identify the “recent report” they cite, the 2018 Massachusetts Offshore Wind Workforce Assessment estimated a range of 6,878 and 9,852 job-years (not jobs) would be created during the construction phase (which includes the design and permitting, not just construction). Let’s break this down.
November 15, 2019 — An international group of scientists, conservationists, fisheries managers and others are gathered in Portland this week for the annual meeting of what’s called the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.
Federal regulators told the group that they are looking at a wide slate of measures to protect the endangered whales from entanglement in fishing gear. Some measures include reductions in the amount of lobster-trap rope allowed in the water and in the strength of that rope. The feds say they are also considering having a part of Cape Cod Bay that is now closed February to April closed to endlines but open to ropeless gear in the future.
November 13, 2019 — Fishermen in Cape Cod Bay recently discovered a large number of dead animals in their traps, including lobsters, flounders, and eels.
After an investigation conducted by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, it was determined they died due to low levels of oxygen at the ocean’s floor, otherwise known as hypoxia.
Beth Casoni, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said that the warm water temperatures over the summer as well as the current state of Cape Cod Bay lead to the deaths.
“This area in the Cape Cod Bay has very low current flow, so it was the perfect storm for something like this to happen,” she said.
Cold water in the bay gets trapped at the bottom of the ocean underneath layers of warmer water, causing oxygen to wane.