Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Omar the shark back in Chatham

June 27, 2017 — An 11-foot great white shark known to researchers as Omar has returned to Cape Cod just in time for the summer season, according to local shark watchers.

Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries scientist Gregory Skomal and his team of researchers tracked the tagged shark from their boat off the coast of Chatham early yesterday morning.

“It’s exciting,” Skomal said. “It’s like seeing somewhat of an old friend.”

As the Herald reported yesterday, 147 great white sharks were confirmed in Cape Cod waters last summer, and Skomal predicts at least that many will return this season. The sharks are largely drawn to the abundant grey seal population that lives off the Cape’s eastern seaboard.

Omar has a history in Cape waters. According to the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy, biologist John Chisholm first identified the great white in 2015. Skomal tagged the animal when he returned last summer, allowing his team to detect when Omar swims near one of their research receivers.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Cape Cod Warned of Shark Boom

June 26, 2017 — A great white shark population boom is underway off Cape Cod, with as many as 150 expected in local waters this summer — and first responders are training to keep an eye out for the massive predators and deal with their traumatic bites.

“They have multiplied in numbers exponentially since I became chief,” said Orleans fire Chief Anthony Pike, who has led Orleans Fire and Rescue for the past three years. “Great white sharks comprise about 30 percent of my daily work right now, and I never, ever thought that would be a thing.”

Massachusetts Marine Fisheries scientist Gregory Skomal and others began studying the regional population of white sharks in 2014, when they counted 68 great whites. Last summer, that number was 147.

Skomal says 40 percent of the 141 sharks his research team tracked in 2015 returned to Cape waters in 2016. According to the Atlantic Shark Conservancy, there have already been eight confirmed great white sightings this month. Great whites typically patrol to the cool ocean waters off Chatham and other Cape towns between July and October, and Skomal — who has been with Marine Fisheries for 30 years — said the number of shark sightings has jumped over the past decade.

“For my first 20 years we never talked about sharks,” Skomal said.

Great whites travel to the Cape to prey on the area’s large population of gray seals. The last fatal shark attack in Massachusetts was in 1937, and if one of the animals does bite a human, Skomal said it’s most likely a case of “mistaken identity.”

“You know, biting the person thinking that it might be a normal prey item like a seal. Typically, the shark won’t eat the person,” Skomal said. “As a result, though, white sharks have very big jaws and sharp teeth, and cause traumatic injuries, and those kinds of traumatic injuries could lead to fatality.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

Concerns aired about marine monument

June 21, 2017 — Editor’s Note:

Fishing groups have widely criticized the Obama Administration’s marine monument designation process as opaque, and argued that administration officials did not adequately address concerns raised. Conversely, in this Cape Cod Times article, Priscilla Brooks, Vice President and Director of Ocean Conservation at the Conservation Law Foundation, claimed that the Obama administration adequately took fishermen’s concerns into account before designating the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

Ms. Brooks said this was evidenced by the administration’s decision to reduce the size of the monument by 60 percent from the original proposal.

However, there was never an official Atlantic marine monument proposal from the Obama administration. Fishermen, elected officials, regulators, and concerned shoreside businesses were not apprised of the specifics of the Obama Administration’s monument plan until the final shape of it was shared just days and hours before it was announced.

The environmental community, including the Conservation Law Foundation, provided a proposal to the Administration, which officials referred to at times in meetings, but always with the caveat that the environmentalist proposal was not an official Administration proposal. At no time before the announcement was imminent did the commercial fishing community have any idea of what action the Administration might take.

It is possible that Ms. Brooks was stating that the monument eventually proposed by the Obama Administration was reduced by 60 percent from the plan that CLF and other environmental groups proposed. Commercial fishermen were apprehensive about the relationship between the Administration and the environmental community with due cause, since in 2015 environmental activists attempted to push a monument designation through the Administration in secret before the Our Ocean conference in Chile.

Ms. Brooks also claimed that “there was a robust public process.”

In the lead-up to the 2016 monument designation, there was one public meeting in Rhode Island where fishermen were allowed just 2 minutes to talk.

There were a number of subsequent meetings in fishing ports, and in the White House complex. But those who attended those meeting largely felt their views were being ignored. In fact, many of them participated in the recent meeting with new Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke.

In July 2016, Eric Reid, General Manager at Seafreeze, who participated in both regional and White House meetings wrote, “No one in the Obama administration’s Council on Environmental Quality has put forward an actual, concrete proposal of what an Atlantic monument might look like.” He added, “The uncertain and opaque nature of the process that has so far surrounded the potential marine monument has left fishermen with no idea as to what areas and which fisheries will be affected, nor which activities will be prohibited.”

BOSTON — Fishing groups from around New England met with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Friday to air complaints about former President Barack Obama’s designation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument last year.

The monument, the first marine national monument in U.S. Atlantic waters, protects about 4,000 square miles of ocean 150 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Fishermen say the protected area in which fishing is prohibited hurts their business and places an undue burden on an already heavily regulated industry. But scientists say the area, which is home to hundreds of species of marine life and fragile coral, is an important natural resource that must be protected.

In his proclamation creating the marine monument, Obama prohibited fossil fuel or mineral exploration, all commercial fishing, and other activities that could disturb the sea floor. Scientific research is allowed with a permit. Commercial red crab and lobster fishermen have to phase out their operations within the monument area over the next seven years.

During their meeting with Zinke at Legal Sea Foods on Boston Harbor, fishermen and industry representatives asked the secretary to consider dissolving the monument or changing the regulations within its boundaries and complained about the way it was originally designated.

“As an American, this brought me to tears at my desk,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “No one should have the power to sign people out of work.”

Some commercial fishermen said they felt the former administration did not take their concerns into account before designating the monument.

“Even though we were allowed minimal — and that’s an understatement — input, we received mostly lip service,” said Eric Reid, general manager of Seafreeze Shoreside in Narragansett, Rhode Island. “Small businesses like me that need stability to grow their business and invest in America are at risk. We can make America and commercial fishing great again.”

But Priscilla Brooks, vice president and director of ocean conservation at the Conservation Law Foundation, said the former administration did take fishermen’s concerns into account. Obama reduced the size of the original proposed monument by 60 percent and allowed lobster and crab fishermen a seven-year grace period to continue fishing there.

“There was a robust public process,” she said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Sharing memories of their favorite fisherman: Dad

June 18, 2017 — For many on the Cape and beyond, Father’s Day is a time for children to take a break from their busy lives to visit their dad. Father-son fishing duo John and Mark Shakliks will be taking a break from work, but they already see each other daily. In fact, they are each other’s only colleagues.

John is the captain of the charter fishing boat Luau based out Rock Harbor. His son Mark is his only crew member. “It works great,” said John when asked about how they work together. “You couldn’t get a better combo of guys.”

They will celebrate Father’s Day together today, as in the past, marking another year in their family’s three — soon to be four — generations of fishing on the Cape.

John and Mark Shakliks fish primarily for bass and bluefish aboard the Luau. “I almost don’t need to tell (Mark) anything. We’ve been doing it together for so long” said John. “We’re like a well-oiled machine. Me and my father were the same way.”

John Shakliks began fishing with his father, also John, when he was 8. He took a break in 1966 at 19 to join the Navy, and then got his own fishing license in 1969. John taught his son Mark, as well as his other children, how to fish.

“It’s the best working relationship I’ve ever had,” said Mark, who also has worked as a carpenter. “Twenty-seven years and he still teaches me new things.”

Mark says he plans to take his 7-year-old son fishing on the boat soon too. “He’s already caught fish,” Mark said.

Mark will take over the Luau from John, as John did from his father. Mark says he’s looking forward to running the boat himself when John finally retires, but not the end of their working relationship. What’s the most valuable lesson he’ll take from his father? “Patience,” he said. “Some times are harder than others, that’s why we call it fishing.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Changing perceptions about ‘under-loved’ species

June 16, 2017 — Rick Francolini took a poached skate wing caprese on toast from the server’s tray at Big Dog’s Barbecue at the Orleans Bowling Center.

“I’m a big skate fan,” he said. Francolini lived in Paris 25 years ago and it was considered a delicacy there. He’ll dust skate wings with corn meal, sauté it, then finish with a lemon caper pan sauce.

“It’s like a white fish. Very good tasting,” Francolini said.

But in the U.S., particularly in the Northeast where cod is god, other species like the skate and dogfish that Cape fishermen catch, are slighted.

Changing perceptions about what they describe as “under-loved” species is central to the marketing blitz put on the by Cape what the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, thanks to a $200,000 Saltonstall-Kennedy grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Cod has vanished thanks to climate change, overfishing, and other unknown factors. Chatham was once one of the country’s top cod ports. Located on the doorstep of Georges Bank, New England’s fish locker, whose abundance once seemed limitless, the region’s fishermen hauled in 27.5 million pounds in 2001, but saw that plummet to 2.9 million by 2015.

Cod didn’t even make the top 10 list of fish and shellfish landed by Cape fishermen in 2016, but dogfish was at the top with nearly 11.7 million pounds landed, and skates number three at 7.1 million pounds. But these do not have the star power of cod and restaurants and fish markets pay high prices for cod imported from the West Coast or Europe. The U.S. imports around 90 percent of the seafood it consumes, but dogfish and skates are mainly exported to Europe and Asia where there is demand.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Interior secretary visits Mass. to review marine monument

June 19, 2017 — Editor’s Note: At the request of the Department of the Interior, Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities helped facilitate a meeting between Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and over 20 representatives of the commercial fishing industry. The meeting also included staff members from the offices of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI):

Capping off a four-day New England tour, US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke visited Boston Friday to meet with local scientists and fishermen in his review of the East Coast’s only — and highly controversial — marine monument.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, located approximately 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, covers more than 4,000 square miles. It includes three underwater canyons and four seamounts — mountains rising from the ocean floor —housing dozens of deep-sea corals and several species of endangered whales.

Former president Barack Obama proclaimed the area the country’s first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean in September 2016. The Antiquities Act, signed into law in 1906 by national parks champion Theodore Roosevelt, grants presidents unilateral authority to establish national monuments on federal land.

But now, under President Trump, the fate of the underwater zone is in doubt.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review all national monuments designated over the past 21 years, calling the practice of using executive authority to designate such monuments an “abusive practice.”

Zinke met with scientists from the New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts marine monument’s superintendent from the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the morning, before heading to a roundtable with local fishermen.

“Right now, I’m in the information collection stage, so everything is on the table,” Zinke said.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Sharks should be happy about new Google Earth survey of seal populations

June 14, 2017 — Gray seals are booming. They’ve flocked to coastal Massachusetts, where hunters once killed the animals wholesale — a dead seal’s nose could fetch a $5 reward in the 1960s.

Twenty years ago, there were about 2,000 seals near Cape Cod and Nantucket. A new estimate, published Wednesday in the journal Bioscience, suggests there are now as many as 50,000.

‘‘We should be celebrating the recovery of gray seals as a conservation success,’’ said David Johnston, an author of the study and marine biologist at Duke University .

Where seals go, sharks often follow. Great white sightings in Cape Cod increased from 80 in 2014 to 147 in 2016. Johnston said the shark spike may be linked to the seals. ‘‘One of our tagged animals was killed by a white shark,’’ he said.

Maine and Massachusetts once placed bounties on seals because fishermen feared they would gobble up valuable fish such as cod. (There is little evidence that seals actually compete with fishermen, Johnston said.) The century-long bounty hunt claimed up to 135,000 animals.

The seals bounced back after 1972’s Marine Mammal Protection Act outlawed the killings. ‘‘I’m a firm believer if you just stop doing bad things to wildlife they will recover,’’ Johnston said. The seals’ recovery raised a question infrequently asked in conservation: What happens after success?

‘‘We haven’t done a great job of preparing people,’’ he said, ‘‘that they would be back again.’’

Part of that means quantifying the success. In 2011, a National Marine Fisheries Service aerial survey estimated 15,000 seals swam in southeastern Massachusetts waters.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

At U.N., Brett Tolley Touts Small-Scale Fisheries

June 14, 2017 — Fisheries activist Brett Tolley of Chatham has told many people about the plight of small-scale fishermen like his father, who left the industry because he couldn’t compete with big corporate interests. Last week, he told that story to world leaders in a special forum at the United Nations in New York.

A proud member of a fourth-generation fishing family, Tolley works as a community organizer and policy advocate for the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, which lobbies for healthy fisheries and fishing communities. Last week, at the invitation of the Slow Food International Network, Tolley testified as part of a panel at the U.N. Ocean Conference.

In contrast with fast food, Slow Food represents traditional and regional cuisine from local plants, livestock and seafood.

“It’s good, clean and fair food for all,” Tolley said. The movement was born around the same time as the agricultural crisis in the 1980s, acknowledging that high-volume, low-cost industrial farms were destroying small family farms and the communities they supported.

“The industrial food system is not working,” Tolley said. Mega-farms not only cause social problems, but they don’t actually achieve the goal of providing healthier food for the masses, he added. Intense industrial farming can also leave tracts of land unusable because of pesticides and other environmental threats. With small-scale farmers, “they inherently care about the health of the land,” Tolley said. The parallels between agriculture and commercial fishing are clear, with small-scale day boat fishermen battling against large corporations to stay profitable.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Chronicle

Fishing group wants people to eat more dogfish, skates

June 1, 2017 — A Cape Cod commercial fishing group is promoting an effort to get more consumers to eat locally caught dogfish and skates in restaurants.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is supporting “Pier to Plate” by working with more than 20 restaurants and markets on Cape Cod to get dogfish and skates to customers.

The alliance says commercial harvest of the two fish is high, but nearly all of the catch goes to Europe and Asia. Spiny dogfish are caught from Maine to North Carolina on the East Coast, and the catch grew from less than 4 million pounds in 2005 to nearly 19 million pounds in 2015.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Fishermen hoping to reel in Obama-era conservation

May 31, 2017 — New England fishermen are looking for a seat at the table as the Trump administration mulls whether to make any adjustments to an Obama-era marine monument off Cape Cod that has drawn criticism for the potential impact on the fishing industry.

“The monument was put in place with probably less than full input by the fisheries’ people,” New England Fishery Management Council Chairman Dr. John Quinn said. “In reviewing it, we should be included in this process.”

Quinn is one of eight signatories of a letter drafted earlier this month and sent to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur L. Ross Jr. asking the Trump administration to consult with the nation’s eight regional fishery management councils before taking any action.

Trump signed an executive order last month calling for a review of national monument designations made under the Antiquities Act since Jan. 1, 1996. The order, dated May 1, calls for an interim report to the president within 45 days and a final report within 120 days.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, created by former President Barack Obama last September, protects an area roughly the size of Connecticut 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald