Saving Seafood

Scientists: Maine coast could see more great white sharks

December 5, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — A great white shark detected in waters off Maine could be a sign that the big fish will become a more common sight in the years to come, say scientists who study sharks in New England.

White sharks are near the northern edge of their range along the Maine coast, though they are not commonly seen in the area. One of the sharks was spotted in the waters off Kennebunkport in the summer of 2016, sparking interest in finding out how many live off Maine.

University of New England marine scientist James Sulikowski has set out to answer that question, and he’s making his first findings public. Tracking devices discovered a different, 12-foot great white about 1.5 miles off of Old Orchard Beach in September of this year, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald

 

Massachusetts: The final blow for Cape Wind

December 4, 2017 — The proposed Nantucket Sound wind farm is no longer.

After more than 16 years, tens of millions of dollars spent and seemingly endless, at times deafening, debate, the announcement Friday that Cape Wind is officially dead came quietly by email.

“Cape Wind has confirmed to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has ceased development of its proposed offshore wind farm project in Nantucket Sound and has filed to terminate its offshore wind development lease that was issued in 2010,” according to a statement sent to the Times by Cape Wind vice president Dennis Duffy.

The project first proposed in 2001 and reviewed by dozens of local, state and federal agencies succumbed not under the weight of pressure from opponents or failure to clear any particular regulatory hurdle but rather from a combination of time and financial constraints that tightened and loosened over many years before constricting for good when utilities killed the contracts to buy power from the project’s 130 wind turbines in early January 2015.

Even after losing customers for its power, however, Cape Wind Associates LLC continued to shell out $88,278 to pay for a lease secured in 2010 covering 46 square miles of federal waters in the middle of the sound. That amount was a drop in the bucket compared to the more than $100 million the company had already spent on the project but whether it was what finally tipped the scales is unclear.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

It’s Over: Cape Wind Ends Controversial Project

December 4, 2017 — Cape Wind Associates announced today that it has ceased the development of its proposed offshore wind farm and is surrendering its federal lease for 46 square miles in Nantucket Sound, officially putting an end to a 16-year effort to build the controversial project.

“Cape Wind has confirmed to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management that it has ceased development of its proposed offshore wind farm project in Nantucket Sound and has filed to terminate its offshore wind development lease that was issued in 2010,” according to a statement emailed to the Times by Cape Wind vice president Dennis Duffy.

The project was dealt a major setback in January 2015, when Eversource and National Grid ended those contracts to buy power from the turbines, and again in 2016 when the state Energy Facilities Siting Board declined to extend permits for the project that had originally been issued in 2009.

Opponents had argued the project was a danger to navigation, marine life, birds and the local economy. Proponents argued it was necessary to help combat climate change, would create jobs and would launch the country’s offshore wind energy industry.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Fight Over New England Marine Monument Continues

November 27, 2017 — On April 26, President Donald Trump ordered a review of two dozen national monuments created or expanded since 1996, which includes the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts that was created in the last days of the Obama administration. The monument, the first of its kind in the Atlantic Ocean, bans fishing, and oil, gas and mineral exploration within its boundaries.

In September, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke recommended to Trump that the monument, located about 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod, be opened to commercial fishing. Zinke’s memo stated that instead of prohibiting commercial fishing, the government should allow it in the area under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which is the primary law governing the United States’ marine fisheries and meant to prevent overfishing and guarantee a safe source of seafood.

Conservationists opposed Zinke’s recommendation, while fishing groups supported it.

“They act like this area is all pristine and never touched,” said Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association President Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer of the current protections. “Lobstermen have been fishing in those areas for the last 50-plus years with no negative effect on the marine species.”

The association is one of a handful of commercial fishing groups in an ongoing lawsuit that claims the Antiquities Act of 1906 only allows the president to create or expand monuments on land, not in the marine environment as Obama did.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Massachusetts: Cape and Islands Lawmakers Join Fight to Protect Offshore Herring

November 27, 2017 — CHATHAM, Mass. — The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is receiving support from the Cape and Islands legislative delegation in protecting offshore herring for local fishermen.

Earlier this month, the lawmakers called on the New England Fishery Management Council to create a buffer zone off the coast of the Cape and Islands from large-scale mid-water herring trawlers.

Current regulations allow the trawlers to fish three miles offshore from Provincetown past the Islands.

“The delegation has taken up a position that we staked out at the Fishermen’s Alliance years ago that we need a buffer zone,” said John Pappalardo, the alliance CEO.

“In other words, a zone off the Cape and Islands where these vessels cannot come in and intensively harvest sea herring.”

The alliance would like a 50 mile buffer zone.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

Cape fishermen reap benefits of monitoring program

November 13, 2017 — CAPE COD, Mass. — With fleets on the West Coast and in Alaska, members of the East Coast swordfishing and herring fleets and 20 New England groundfishermen all using cameras to record their fishing, the technology is gaining ground as a fisheries management tool, including off Cape Cod.

This year, Cape fishermen — pioneers of the movement in New England — working with the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, along with members of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, are set to reap some unexpected benefits for their willingness to play guinea pig: greater access to Atlantic bluefin tuna, one of the most valuable fish in the sea.

This was the second year the fishing activity of Mike Russo and his crew was recorded by cameras as voluntary participants in a program to replace costly human fishery observers. Instead of occasionally carrying an observer — at-sea-monitors are only required on 16 percent of all groundfish trips — Russo and other local fishermen volunteered for electronic monitoring on 100 percent of their trips.

“It’s proving that we are responsible stewards of the ocean, that we are fishing in a responsible way within the laws set out for us,” said Nick Muto, who fishes out of Harwich and Chatham and carries three of the cameras on his vessel.

A 2016 report by The Nature Conservancy showed that in 2015, 92 percent of videos were good enough for technicians to get catch and discard data and weight and length estimates, up from 23 percent in 2013, as crews and researchers learned to work with the system. Christopher McGuire, marine program manager for the conservancy, expects the development of video recognition software that will automate data gathering is imminent and will greatly reduce the cost of electronic monitoring.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

Doreen Leggett: Open up scallopers’ fishing grounds

November 10, 2017 — There is $300 million worth of mature scallops in waters off the Cape that virtually everyone agrees should be harvested. But that potential economic boon to local fishermen may never materialize.

“Before long, they are just going to die,” said Beau Gribbin, a Provincetown scalloper, explaining that the shellfish only live for about 10 years.

Gribbin was in Washington, D.C. last month working to make sure that doesn’t happen. He joined fellow scalloper Tom Reilly from Chatham, and staff from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, advocating for approval of the so-called Omnibus Habitat Amendment.

The amendment would open up several areas that have been closed to scallopers, including Area 1, part of George’s Bank, and the nearby Nantucket Lighship area, while also creating stronger protections for other crucial areas where groundfish spawn. (These areas were closed in 1994 to protect essential fish habitat.)

He said his arguments were well received on Capitol Hill, but it is still unclear what will happen. Gribbin is already worrying about the unpalatable alternative of having to travel down South next season to make sure his business remains solvent.

In years past, he and many of the two dozen or so scallop captains across the Cape have worked out of Delaware and Maryland to make their quotas. Scallopers have invested greatly in the fishery; they own quota and not using it would mean payments lost and increasing debt.

Read the full story at the Harwich Wicked Local 

 

Aquatic limbo

November 5, 2017 — Fourteen years is a long time.

Consider, in 14 years children go from being unable to do much more than eat, sleep and relieve themselves to walking, talking, and giving serious consideration to driving a car.

Fourteen years is also the length of time of three-and-a-half presidential terms; more than long enough to change the direction of an entire country and the fates of hundreds of millions of people.

Fourteen years is also an interminably long time to wait if your livelihood is at stake. And yet, it took the New England Fisheries Management Council 14 years to develop regulations regarding the protection of fishing habitats. That, in and of itself, would not be so bad; after all, one would hope that those involved would take the time necessary to get the science right on an issue where so much is at stake.

But it has now been two years since those regulations were passed, and there is little indication that they are any closer to being implemented.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Cape Cod fishermen have high hopes for halibut

November 2, 2017 — CHATHAM, Mass. — On the U.S. side of the border Atlantic halibut are listed as a species of concern by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and fishermen are limited to one fish per trip.

Less than a half a day’s steam to the east, the same fish is the poster child for sustainable fishery management and generates between $100 million and $200 million a year for Canadian fishermen.

It’s a divergence shrouded in mystery as deep as the ocean on either side of the Hague Line, the boundary that separates the two nations out to the 200 mile limit of their exclusive economic zones. The target date to rebuild the U.S. Atlantic halibut stock to healthy levels is 2056, nearly 40 years in the future.

But Cape Cod fishermen believe the future may be happening now. They have been seeing more halibut in recent years and believe the science is wrong.

“Yes, we’re seeing more halibut, continuously,” said Jason Amaru, the captain and owner of the Chatham-based trawler Joanne A III. “The population seems to be recovering.”

Last year, the Nature Conservancy received a $270,000 federal grant to work with fishermen, scientists from NOAA, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada, and the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance to place satellite tags on halibut and take biological samples.

Grant money pays for Amaru to attach the tracking devices, which cost more than $3,000 each. He also takes biological samples: the ear bones that determine age, gonads that tell the stage of sexual maturity, the heart for genetic analysis, and documents where the fish was caught, its weight and length.

“Four years ago, we were talking to fishermen. They said they were seeing more halibut than ever before. It used to be like seeing a unicorn, one a year, then once a month, now every day,” said Christopher McGuire, marine program director for The Nature Conservancy in Massachusetts, who spearheaded the drive for research money after listening to Cape fishermen. “We see that one fish a day being landed by a lot of fishermen.”

McGuire said he hopes the new data will show whether a resurgent Canadian halibut population is repopulating U.S. waters, or whether the U.S. fish are experiencing their own population boom.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times  

 

Under threat of lawsuit, Maine lobstermen say Canada is failing to protect right whales

November 1, 2017 — A record number of right whale killings this summer has put environmental groups on the offensive, potentially leading to stricter regulations for Maine lobstermen, even as most of the animals turn up dead in Canadian waters.

A group of environmental organizations has notified federal officials they intend to sue if regulatory agencies fail to better protect the endangered species, following what’s believed to be one of the deadliest summers for North Atlantic right whales in centuries.

Maine lobstermen fear that a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service could result in more costly restrictions on how they fish, even though none of the 16 right whale deaths have been directly linked to the American lobster fishery. Twelve of the whale deaths occurred in Canada’s Gulf of St. Lawrence, where that country’s snow crab fishery has been cited by experts as a likely factor in several of the deaths.

The remaining four were found off Cape Cod.

With this year’s deaths, the total population of North Atlantic right whales is estimated at fewer than 450.

Early this month, the four environmental organizations sent a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Chris Oliver, head of the federal fisheries service, saying that federal regulators are violating the Endangered Species Act by not doing more to protect North Atlantic right whales. The groups specifically called on regulators to determine whether additional restrictions should be placed on the American lobster fishery in order to prevent whales from getting entangled in lobster gear.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News