Saving Seafood

Herring Fishing To Be Limited Off New England For Months

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.”

Read the full story at Maine Public

NMFS approves 20-mile herring trawl buffer zone off Cape Cod

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 decision culminates a two-decade battle over midwater trawling in the Gulf of Maine, and complaints that it causes localized depletion of herring and other fish that disrupts ecosystems and fishermen’s access to cod, haddock 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 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.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTES: Cape fishermen celebrate new trawling restrictions

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.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Owner of New Bedford vessel capsized off Martha’s Vineyard fears 3 crew members perished

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.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MARY NEWTON LIMA: Impact of offshore wind on fisheries unknown

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.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Group Discusses Potential Gear Restrictions At North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium

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.

Read the full story at Maine Public

Marine Animal Deaths Attributed to Low Oxygen Levels

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.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Researchers Report Spike in Ocean Sunfish Strandings

November 8, 2019 — Marine researchers are reporting a spike in sunfish strandings this fall as waters continue to cool off Cape Cod.

Ocean sunfish, also known as mola mola, is one of the heaviest known bony fishes in the world. Adult sunfish typically weight between 550 and 2,200 pounds.

It is a unique shape and resembles a fish head with a tail and has a mainly flat body.

As the sunfish are migrating south to warmer waters they can get trapped and cold stunned, mainly in Cape Cod Bay, similar to what happens with sea turtles.

Marine biologist Carol “Krill” Carson, the president of the New England Coastal Wildlife Alliance, said sunfish strandings average between 20 and 40 per season, and there have been 135 carcasses documented this year.

“This year is our busiest season and we have exceeded all previous seasons already,” Carson said. “The stranding season hasn’t even ended.”

The sunfish stranding season typically runs from mid-August through the end of December.

“It’s been a really bad season for ocean sunfish,” Carson said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Right whale named Snake Eyes died due to entanglement

November 7, 2019 — The probable cause of the death of a North Atlantic right whale found in September off Long Island is entanglement in fishing gear, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The 40-year-old male whale, known as No. 1226 and named “Snake Eyes,” died after being seen alive in July and August in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In September, researchers performed a necropsy at Jones Beach State Park to determine the cause of death.

Critically endangered right whales — which spend late winter and early spring in Cape Cod Bay and nearby waters — are experiencing what is called an unusual mortality event along the Atlantic coast, given the high number of deaths since 2017, which currently stand at 30, according to NOAA.

There are currently about 400 right whales remaining.

“His death is testament to a couple of important issues,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, who directs Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Plymouth. First, the habitats of right whales have shifted both in the United States and Canada and government managers who protect the animals must also shift the areas being managed, Asmutis-Silvia said. Second, fixed gear fisheries, such as commercial lobstering, are an unintentional but lethal threat to the species’ survival, and the faster gear modifications can be implemented the more likely it is that the species and fisheries can both thrive, she said.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Global Warming Is Already Destroying New England’s Fisheries

November 5, 2019 — To wake up in the Northeastern United States—as California blazes and Japan digs itself out of typhoon damage—is to experience an uneasy gratitude for all that is not burning, battered or underwater. Seven years out from Superstorm Sandy, we know not to get cocky, but there’s a relief in being able to worry about work and more pedestrian finances instead of evacuation plans, or ordering the right kind of smoke mask. It’s a small luxury in climate-didn’t-come-for-me-today compartmentalization.

But deep down, we know better. And if the national discussion hasn’t moved to climate change in the Northeast yet, it soon will. The effects are already profound—they just happen to be underwater.

Fourth-generation fisherman Al Cottone holds no illusions of being spared climate impacts in 2019.  He captains one of the 15 fishing boats still active in the waters around Gloucester, Massachusetts. Not a decade ago, there were 50. To fish in the Gulf of Maine—the ocean inlet spanning from Cape Cod up to the southern tip of Nova Scotia—is to navigate one of the fastest-warming bodies of water on the planet. “It’s not something you see with your naked eye,” Cottone told me. “But fish are definitely reacting differently, and I’m attributing it to climate change. We’re seeing them in deeper water—they’re trying to get the right temperature at depth.”

Read the full story at The New Republic