Saving Seafood

Technology Making Shark Sightings Off Cape Cod Waters More Accurate

July 19, 2022 — With all the shark activity off Cape Cod waters so far this season, its no wonder the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has added extra technology to make sightings even more accurate.

This past weekend alone, Cape Cod waters had 12 reported shark sightings from Provincetown to Chatham, some as close as 50 yards offshore. The newly updated Sharktivity App has been allowing beachgoers to report their sightings all summer, but new technology in the water is making things even more accurate.

Just recently MassWildife teamed up with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to install two acoustic receiver buoys off Wellfleet beaches. One floats offshore at  Newcomb Hollow and the other is at Lecount Hollow/Maguire Landing. ⁣⁣Both transmit extremely accurate data right to area beach staff.

Last summer several of these buoys were deployed by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy all across the Cape coastline, but the Wellfleet buoys seem to be new this season.

Perhaps it’s the growing amount of shark activity in the area that made these buoys necessary or the tracking devices already placed in white sharks showing researching this is a popular area. Whatever the reason, the buoys are now active, making Cape Cod beach visits much safer.

No word on where the next buoys might be deployed, but if more sharks swim along the SouthCoast (like last week’s Westport shark visit) perhaps we’ll have buoys in our neck of the woods before the summer is over.

The buoys’ technology is extremely helpful to lifeguards on shore since they can tell you when a tagged shark is swimming off the coast and where it might be headed. Beach staff can then use that date to fly the appropriate shark flag to let beachgoers know what is going on.

Read the full article at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: How foreign private equity hooked New England’s fishing industry

July 6, 2022 — Before dawn, Jerry Leeman churned through inky black waters, clutching the wheel of the fishing vessel Harmony.

The 85-foot trawler, deep green and speckled with rust, was returning from a grueling fishing trip deep into the Atlantic swells. Leeman and his crew of four had worked 10 consecutive days, 20 hours a day, to haul in more than 50,000 pounds of fish: pollock, haddock and ocean perch, a trio known as groundfish in the industry and as whitefish in the freezer aisle.

As sunrise broke over New Bedford harbor, the fish were offloaded in plastic crates onto the asphalt dock of Blue Harvest Fisheries, one of the largest fishing companies on the East Coast. About 390 million pounds of seafood move each year through New Bedford’s waterfront, the top-earning commercial fishing port in the nation.

Leeman and his crew are barely sharing in the bounty. On deck, Leeman held a one-page “settlement sheet,” the fishing industry’s version of a pay stub. Blue Harvest charges Leeman and his crew for fuel, gear, leasing of fishing rights, and maintenance on the company-owned vessel. Across six trips in the past 14 months, Leeman netted about 14 cents a pound, and the crew, about 7 cents each — a small fraction of the $2.28 per pound that a species like haddock typically fetches at auction.

“It’s a nickel-and-dime game,” said the 40-year-old Leeman, who wore a flannel shirt beneath foul weather gear and a necklace strung with a compass, a cross, and three pieces of jade — one piece for each of his three children. “Tell me how I can catch 50,000 pounds of fish yet I don’t know what my kids are going to have for dinner.”

Leeman’s lament is a familiar one in New Bedford, an industrial city tucked below Cape Cod on the south coast of Massachusetts. In recent years, the port of New Bedford has thrived, generating $11.1 billion in business revenue, jobs, taxes and personal income in 2018, according to one study. But a quiet shift is remaking the city and the industry that sustains it, realizing local fishermen’s deepest fears of losing control over their livelihood.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

Don’t endanger aquatic ecosystems in the name of solving climate change

June 20, 2022 — In New England, too, we are being told that jeopardizing fishery-supporting ecosystems is the price we must pay to solve climate change. Here, the argument is coming from offshore wind proponents, who are working hand-in-glove with the Biden administration to set a course to install 30 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity by 2030 — from a baseline of almost zero in just eight years — and 110 gigawatts by 2050, with most of the initial development taking place off New England and the mid-Atlantic and limited environmental review taking place prior to the issuance of leases.

What would this scale of development look like? With today’s technology, 110 gigawatts would be almost 8,500 turbines — 137 times the size of the Vineyard Wind facility planned for south of Cape Cod. It would mean near-continuous construction on the continental shelf for three decades. While no one knows what the ecological impacts of such construction might be (and that’s precisely our point), evidence suggests they may include alterations of the acoustic and sensory environment, electromagnetic fields, and current and wind patterns, affecting a variety of species whose survival depends on these aspects of the underwater world.

Offshore wind off New England and mining in the Bristol Bay watershed are linked by more than just spurious ultimatums invoking climate catastrophe as the inevitable consequence of keeping these wild places wild. It also happens that offshore wind, which requires hundreds of miles of electrical cables measuring up to 11 inches in diameter, is the most copper-intensive of all renewable energy technologies. Every mile of cable laid across the ocean floor will spur greater pressure to mine copper in precious, irreplaceable places like Bristol Bay.

Read the full op-ed at The Boston Globe

The surprising reasons we should cheer the return of great white sharks

June 14, 2022 — Nearly every summer for the past two decades, Erin Graeber of Braintree has traveled to Cape Cod with her family, often visiting local beaches for a swim. But in 2018, after 26-year-old Arthur Medici was killed by a great white shark off the coast of Wellfleet, Graeber decided her days of ocean swimming on the Cape were behind her. “The joy I get from being in the water is now overshadowed by the fear,” she says. “It’s not worth it.”

Graeber is not alone. Last summer, a school of striped bass was enough to send me and every other swimmer at a beach near Portland, Maine, scrambling to shore. Admittedly, stripers bear little resemblance to gray seals, the favorite prey of great white sharks (often called “white sharks” by scientists), but after a shark attack in nearby Harpswell killed 63-year-old Julie Dimperio Holowach in 2020, we weren’t taking any chances.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

 

New federal regulations on lobster fishing in effect, aimed at protecting endangered whale species

June 9, 2022 — Statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show less than 350 endangered North Atlantic Right Whales still exist. The new regulations that went into effect for fishermen on May 1 aim to help those numbers increase.

Besides closures – which dictate specific areas in federal and state waters where fishermen cannot fish during certain times of the year due to whale activity – it also includes the need for using weak rope that breaks on contact.

Fishermen also have to mark gear so if it does get wrapped around a whale, it can be identified.

“This is actually weak rope, but I actually have to have a one-foot green mark on it,” Rob Martin said. Martin has been lobster fishing in these waters off Cape Cod in Massachusetts for more than four decades.

He said changing the rope and following the new regulations takes time.

“It’s a lot of man-hours to do,” Martin said.

Read the full story at ABC 7 Denver

Trawler critics aim to appeal court’s herring decision

April 6, 2022 — Gulf of Maine fishermen are looking to appeal a federal judge’s reversal of an exclusion zone that keeps herring mid-water trawlers 12 miles offshore.

The March 4 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, reversing the 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.

In November 2019 the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a measure by the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.

The Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, representing trawl operators, brought their appeal soon after to the federal court, arguing the New England council’s science advisors could not identify adverse impacts, and that trawling critics brought more influence to bear on the council and NMFS.

In his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept put forth by those in opposition to the mid-water trawlers has not been adequately defined by NMFS, leading him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishing Industry to Get COVID Relief Funding

March 21, 2022 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture Seafood Processors Pandemic Response and Safety Block Grant Program is awarding $1.1 million in federal funding for Massachusetts seafood processors and wholesale dealers for expenses related to COVID-19.

Reimbursement will be administered through the Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Marine Fisheries and will cover costs such as workplace safety measures, transportation, retrofitting facilities, and worker housing.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

Mid-water trawlers see win in challenge to Northeast herring exclusion zone

March 15, 2022 — A federal court ruling could reopen some Northeast waters to mid-water herring trawlers, after a 2019 rule change that shut them out of a broad swath of the nearshore Atlantic from Long Island to the Canadian border.

U.S. District Court Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled Marcg 4 in favor of a lawsuit brought by the Sustainable Fisheries Coalition, a trade group representing companies that fish for herring and mackerel. In November 2019 NMFS approved a measure from the New England Fishery Management Council to create an exclusion zone for mid-water trawling 12 miles offshore – with a bump out to 20 miles east of Cape Cod.

It was a culmination of two decades of debate over the impact of mid-water trawling, and complaints from other fishermen that it caused “localized depletion” of forage fish, disrupting ecosystems and their seasonal access to groundfish, tuna and other species.

“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 2019 in a decision letter approving the New England council’s proposal.

But in his opinion Judge Sorokin wrote that the “localized depletion” concept has not been adequately defined by the agency. That led him to decide the exclusion zone decision violated National Standard 4 of the Magnuson-Steven Fishery Management and Conservation Act.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NEFMC Initiates Action for HAPC in Southern New England; Discusses Great South Channel Habitat Management Area

February 18, 2022 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council will be developing a Habitat Area of Particular Concern (HAPC) in Southern New England to place additional conservation focus on Council-managed species that rely on essential fish habitat (EFH) within this area, which is south of Cape Cod.

During its February 1-3, 2022 webinar meeting, the Council initiated a framework adjustment to pursue the new HAPC. It also:

  • Discussed the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area (HMA) and the clam industry’s request for additional access to the HMA beyond the current three exemption areas;
  • Received a summary of the white paper titled “Habitat Management Considerations for the Northern Edge of Georges Bank,” which will help inform future discussions if the Council decides to consider habitat management changes on the Northern Edge as a work priority down the road;
  • Received an update on offshore wind activities in the Greater Atlantic Region (see presentation);
  • Was informed that the Council was finalizing its comment letter on the Amitié Subsea Cable project, which runs between Massachusetts and France and the United Kingdom; and
  • Agreed to submit a comment letter on the Running Tide Technology project, which proposes to grow kelp on the northwestern portion of Fippennies Ledge in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full release from the NEFMC

Federal lawmakers want to save the North Atlantic right whale

February 18, 2022 — One of New England’s most critically endangered species is getting some love from federal legislators.

On Thursday, Congressional Democrats introduced a bill focused on saving the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale. The legislation, introduced by Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, would start a new grant program, making $15 million available each year for the next decade to projects that can reduce the risks of entanglement in fishing gear and vessel strikes.

North Atlantic right whales live almost exclusively along the eastern coasts of the United States and Canada. Many spend time in late winter and early spring feeding in Cape Cod Bay.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe