Saving Seafood

Skate liver oil could boost fishing industry

March 13, 2017 — Two engineers showed up at the Chatham Fish Pier a few winters ago and struck up a conversation with some fishermen who were unloading their catch.

Steve Daly and Bill Hannabach asked for some of the fish because they were doing research for a new business venture. The fishermen obliged and the men took home totes with a variety of species.

“You have two rubes from out of town. They could have easily said get out of here,” said Daly with a grin. “They didn’t know what we were doing. We could have been making fertilizer, we could have been making pottery.”

This week Daly and Hannabach were once again at a Cape Cod dock, this time at Saquatucket Harbor in Harwich, with some of the same fishermen they had met when they first began experimenting with everything from monkfish to dogfish. But now they had with them the results of their foray into the fishing industry, their first product, MassOMEGA: New England’s Wild Fish Oil, set to be launched today and almost totally made from winter skate brought in by local fishermen.

“We have taken some of Nick’s skates, basically pulled the oil out and purified it,” said Daly, standing beside Nick Muto and his 40-foot boat the Dawn T.

Muto had just come in with his crew after close to 30 hours at sea with a hold full of skate.

“It is truly an amazing fish oil. It’s better than cod liver oil. Skates have such a high level of omega-3s. Tuna is a close second, but after that it drops off significantly,” Daly said.

Muto, as many fishermen do, keeps the wings of the skate to sell, but usually throws the bodies, or racks, overboard. But after fellow fisherman Doug Feeney introduced him to Daly and Hannabach, Muto carved up the skate bodies and gave the businessmen a big bag of livers.

The fishermen knew that capitalizing on an under-utilized fish in a sustainable way was important to the small boat fishery as well as the economic health of the wider community. They also knew that fishermen were busy fishing and running a business and lacked outside investment to launch new products.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Cod officials push for Sea Grant program’s survival

March 10, 2017 — Judith McDowell and Bob Rheault were both drawn to Washington this week for the same reason: They wanted to salvage a threatened federal program that plays a key role in Cape Cod’s marine-dependent industries.

McDowell, the director of the Woods Hole Sea Grant program, and Rheault, the executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association, were hoping to save the national Sea Grant program from elimination. The Washington Post reported last week that the program’s $73 million budget is part of a proposed 18 percent cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

McDowell said she couldn’t comment on a budget cut she said hadn’t been officially released but was leaked to news organizations. But Rheault, who was making the rounds of congressional offices this week, was highly critical of the proposal to scrap Sea Grant, calling it a “job killer.”

His time in D.C. revealed there might be a chance the program, which President Lyndon Johnson created in 1966, could be saved, Rheault said.

“Most of the people in government who looked at Sea Grant realize it was a tremendous investment for the money,” Rheault said. “The impact (Sea Grant) has on local jobs, food production … it’s hard to say anything bad about it.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Small-Boat Fishing Groups Make Pleas to New Congress

March 7, 2017 — Local fishermen were in Washington, D.C. earlier this month to present their issues and concerns to the new Congress.

Cape Codders and other fishermen from across the nation with the Fishing Communities Coalition make the trip whenever a large number new representatives or senators are elected.

Cape Cod Fisherman’s Alliance CEO John Pappalardo was among those who visited over 30 Congressional offices.

He said that securing funding for fisheries management, managing a sustainable industry, and providing a clearer financial path for new fishermen to join the career path were among the top talking points.

“Fisheries have been a bi-partisan issue, and I would expect that when we and other industry groups make the case for how important the jobs and the protein these fishermen provide are, it’ll be a pretty easy sell,” Pappalardo said.

He also said that there was some discussion over converting many of the species caught for export into a domestic product.

The importance of building on the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was also touched on, he said.

Pappalardo said he advocated for the National Young Fishermen’s Development Program, an initiative which would tackle the increasingly high cost of entry and limited growth opportunities young men and women face in the career path.

The trip took place before the announcement of a potential federal budget cut to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Pappalardo said he and his colleagues will keep an eye on that.

Read the full story at Capecod.com

Study specifies benefits of shellfish in Cape water quality plans

February 7, 2017 — Why spend millions of dollars if you don’t have to?

Mashpee is turning to one of the oldest wastewater cleanup technologies on earth – the nitrogen removal systems in oysters and clams – to reduce the cost of federally mandated wastewater cleanup. Orleans, Falmouth, Barnstable, Dennis, Yarmouth, Wellfleet and Edgartown are also either using or considering shellfish for water quality improvement.

But, until recently, towns had to use estimates of how much nitrogen the bivalves actually removed from the water. Now, a study released last month in the online journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, is providing more specific information on the effectiveness of the shellfish-based strategy. As part of the study, Barnstable County, Woods Hole Sea Grant, and University of Massachusetts School of Marine Science and Technology researchers gathered both farmed and wild shellfish from around the Cape and analyzed shells and meats to determine how much nitrogen each contained.

“The study was really done to help local municipalities who are approaching this idea that shellfish might be used for remediation,” said Woods Hole Sea Grant agent Joshua Reitsma, the study’s lead author. “It provides values for that where people were using data from elsewhere, like the Chesapeake.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Fishermen to Discuss Herring Buffer Zone in Plymouth

February 6, 2017 — A New England Fishery Management Council committee will meet Tuesday in Plymouth to discuss the progress being made to move midwater herring trawlers further offshore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance and local fishermen are looking for regulations which would move the herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat fishing fleet.

“It’s something that we’ve done up in the Gulf of Maine, prohibited these vessels from fishing at certain times of the year so that other fisheries can have a shot or a crack at fishing,” said John Pappalardo, the CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. “And we are trying to do something similar down here.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Right whales return to Cape Cod Bay

January 24, 2017 — Two rare and critically endangered North Atlantic right whales were spotted in Cape Cod Bay, the first of the year seen in the area, according to the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

The center’s research vessel Shearwater spotted the two whales in the bay five miles south of Provincetown Harbor on Jan. 17. On Thursday, center officials say they saw five right whales in the same area.

There are only an estimated 524 right whales in the world, according to the center. They come to the bay every winter due to the high concentrations of microscopic zooplankton there, which is a food source for the whales.

The whales’ presence in the bay warrants caution, according to the center.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fisherman goes in water off Provincetown pier

January 9, 2017 — PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — A fisherman was taken to Cape Cod Hospital on Saturday night after he went overboard at MacMillan Pier, according to Provincetown police and the Coast Guard.

At around 9:30 p.m., a 47-foot Coast Guard lifeboat crew along with the Provincetown harbormaster and officers from the Provincetown police and fire departments responded after the fishing vessel Resolute sent out a mayday call about a crew member who had fallen overboard near the pier, according to the Coast Guard.

The Resolute’s crew threw the man a life ring with a strobe attached to it, according to the Coast Guard, but they were unable to bring him out of the water.

The harbormaster located the fisherman thanks to the strobe, and the Coast Guard was able to use the harbormaster’s boat to navigate closer to the man and pull him from the water, which was about 39 degrees at the time, according to the Coast Guard. The man was treated for possible hypothermia, police said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Lobstermen brace for third year of fishing ban

January 9, 2017 — It’s a classic New England scene, colorful lobster traps stacked up along a dock.

But for fishermen in South Shore lobster ports, those grounded traps are a symbol of hard times ahead.

A ban that keeps most of their gear out of the water for the winter is entering its third year, despite arguments that it causes them unfair economic hardship.

“If it made sense, that would be one thing,” Irvine Nash, a lobsterman for 48 years, said as he stood on a dock in Green Harbor. “But it don’t,” he said.

Behind him, fishermen were pulling traps out of the water and loading them on trucks. They will sit empty in yards and garages until May, when the government lifts the ban.

Under a recent rule from the National Marine Fisheries Service, all traps from outer Cape Cod to Cape Cod Bay and parts of Massachusetts Bay must be out of the water by Feb. 1. That’s an area just under 3,000 square nautical miles.

The federal agency first imposed the ban in 2015, to decrease the likelihood of endangered North Atlantic right whales, which come to Cape Cod Bay every winter, from entangling themselves in lobster lines.

There are now only about 520 right whales left, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, up from about 300 in the 1990s.

Read the full story at the Marshfield Mariner

Would You Eat This Fish? A Shark Called Dogfish Makes A Tasty Taco

January 9, 2017 — If you’ve never laid eyes on a dogfish — or tasted one — you’re not alone.

Yep, it’s in the shark family. (See those telltale fins?) And fisherman Jamie Eldredge is now making a living catching dogfish off the shores of Cape Cod, Mass.

When populations of cod — the Cape’s namesake fish — became too scarce, Eldredge wanted to keep fishing. That’s when he turned to dogfish — and it’s turned out to be a good option. The day I went out with him, Eldredge caught close to 6,000 lbs. (Check out the video above.)

“It’s one of the most plentiful fish we have on the East Coast right now,” Brian Marder, owner of Marder Trawling Inc., told us. Fishermen in Chatham, Mass., caught about 6 million pounds of dogfish last year.

So, who’s eating all this dogfish? Not Americans. “99 percent of it” is shipped out, Marder says.

The British use dogfish to make fish and chips. The French use it in stews and soups. Italians import it, too. The Europeans are eating it up. But Americans haven’t developed a taste for it. At least, not yet.

The story of the dogfish is typical of the seafood swap. “The majority of the seafood we catch in our U.S. fisheries doesn’t stay here,” explains Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, who leads the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

And while we export most of what is caught off U.S. shores, what do Americans eat? Imported fish. About “90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U.S. is actually caught or farm-raised overseas,” Kemmerly says.

To sustainable seafood advocates, this swap doesn’t make much sense. “We’re kind of missing out on the bounty we actually have here,” Kemmerly says.

And, it’s not just dogfish.

The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a campaign called Eat These Fish to tell the story of a whole slew of plentiful fish caught off our shores. The group is trumpeting the conservation success of U.S. fisheries. Some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction through a system of quotas and collaboration between fishermen, conservationists and regulators. They point to fish such as Acadian Redfish and Pacific Ocean Perch.

Read the full story at the University of Houston

Fisheries officials seek count of booming seal population

December 19, 2016 — NANTUCKET, Mass. — Fisheries officials in Massachusetts are seeking a head count of the booming seal population that’s drawn great white sharks to Cape Cod waters in greater numbers.

The Cape Cod Times reported earlier this month that state Division of Marine Fisheries Director David Pierce said determining the size of the gray seal population size is “extremely important” for ecosystem management in New England at the recent Nantucket Seal Symposium.

But National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials warned the count could cost as much as $500,000.

New England fishermen have been calling for a seal population count for years to gauge its impact on cod, haddock, flounder, striped bass and other important species.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times