Saving Seafood

Proposed closure of coral grounds in Gulf of Maine has lobster industry on edge

April 10, 2017 — Over the past 10 years, the issue of how to protect endangered whales from getting tangled in fishing gear has been a driving factor in how lobstermen configure their gear and how much money they have to spend to comply with regulations.

Now federal officials have cited the need to protect deep-sea corals in a proposal to close some areas to fishing — a proposal that, according to lobstermen, could pose a serious threat to how they ply their trade.

“The [potential] financial impact is huge,” Jim Dow, a Bass Harbor lobsterman and board member with Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Wednesday. “You’re talking a lot of the coast that is going to be affected by it.”

The discovery in 2014 of deep-sea corals in the gulf, near Mount Desert Rock and along the Outer Schoodic Ridges, has prompted the New England Fisheries Management Council to consider making those area off-limits to fishing vessels in order to protect the coral from damage. According to Maine Department of Marine Resources, fishermen from at least 15 harbors in Hancock and Washington counties could be affected by the proposed closure.

 But what has fishermen on edge the most about the concept is that regulators don’t know how much more coral has yet to be discovered in the gulf. They fear the proposed closure could set a precedent that would result in even more areas becoming off-limits to Maine’s $500 million lobster fishery, which is the biggest fishery in Maine and one of the most lucrative in the country.

“They could probably find coral along the entire coast of Maine, outside of 3 miles [in federal waters], if they start hunting for it,” David Cousens, a South Thomaston fishermen and president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told more than 100 fishermen last month at a meeting on the topic at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport.

Terry Stockwell, a senior DMR official who represents Maine on the council and other fishing regulatory entities, said the state has been lobbying the council to consider making an exception for the lobster trap fishery at the proposed closure sites in the gulf but so far without success. Traps are lowered and then raised from the bottom and so should cause less damage to coral than other types of gear such as scallop dredges, which are dragged along the bottom, according to Stockwell and others who support making lobster traps exempt.

“Twice I’ve gone down in flames,” Stockwell said of his efforts to date to get the council to agree to an exemption for lobster trap gear.

Further offshore in the Gulf of Maine, beyond the reach of the small boats that make up Maine’s lobster fishing fleet, the council also is proposing coral-related fishing closures in parts of the Jordan and Georges basins.

Outside the Gulf of Maine, roughly 100 to 200 nautical miles southeast of Cape Cod, are 20 underwater canyons at the edge of the continental shelf, where coral closures also could be enacted. Five of those canyons, along with four seamounts off the continental shelf, are part of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which former President Obama created last September and which is being challenged in federal court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Cape gray seal population estimated at up to 50K

April 7, 2017 — While the first day of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission’s annual meeting, held for the first time on Cape Cod, dealt with threats to a tiny Mexican porpoise and massive Arctic polar bears, Thursday’s sessions brought the focus home with a profoundly local subject: gray seals.

“These animals are reassuming their ecological roles,” said David Johnston, an assistant professor at Duke University. “And people freak out.”

Seals are back in force, with between 30,000 and 50,000 living in the waters of Southeastern Massachusetts, primarily on and around Cape Cod, according to a new estimate produced by Johnston to be published in an upcoming report. Feelings about their return, however, are decidedly mixed.

After seal hunts and bounties exterminated gray seals from New England by the mid to late 60s, few imagined they would come back, certainly not to the point where tens of thousands now inhabit the Cape and surrounding waters.

Fishermen complain about seals taking their catch, boats run into them, some question their effect on water quality or their potential to spread disease, and raise concerns about the threat of a rapidly expanding great white shark population, visiting Cape waters to dine on blubber.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

It’s a Boy! Right whale calves spotted in Cape Cod Bay

April 5, 2017 — On Monday, April 3, the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) right whale aerial survey team spotted a right whale mother and calf pair in the north end of Cape Cod Bay between Race Point and Marshfield. This sighting came just hours after researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center identified a different mother / calf pair observed in the Cape Cod Canal.  These are the first sightings of the new calves of the year in Gulf of Maine waters.

The male calf spotted by the CCS team is the offspring of a whale named Pediddle, a whale at least 39 years old that was first identified in 1978 and first seen in Cape Cod Bay in 1979. The new calf is Pediddle’s eighth documented by scientists; her last calf was born in 2009.

“During the sighting the mom was subsurface feeding while the calf was rolling and tail slapping,” said Alison Ogilvie, an aerial observer for the Center’s Right Whale Ecology Program. “Mom and calf looked very healthy considering they’ve just completed a more than 800 mile migration from the calving grounds off Georgia and Florida.”

The aerial survey team also observed and photographed 71 other individual right whales in Cape Cod Bay on Monday, the most seen so far this season.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

Proposed regulations irk lobstermen

March 23, 2017 — Bay State lobstermen fear that a new proposal — meant to save lobsters in warming southern New England waters — could hurt business by barring them from harvesting in prime summer months and putting tighter restrictions on the size of their catch.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will present a plan in New Bedford tonight on ways to maintain or increase the number of lobsters in waters from southern Massachusetts to Delaware.

“Over the last 15 years we’ve seen a decline in lobster abundance, and we think that’s by and large a response to warming ocean temperatures,” said Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

“That’s the challenge that we have — it’s trying to preserve lobster but doing it in a way that the industry can survive,” he added.

Yet Massachusetts lobstermen argue that their pots are full and don’t see what the fuss is all about.

“Southern New England as a whole is not doing very well, but where we are, it’s doing pretty well,” said lobsterman Jarrett Drake, who has lobstered out of New Bedford for more than 30 years.

The plan ropes in Massachusetts waters south of Cape Cod in with states like Rhode Island and as far away as New Jersey, where lobster populations are extremely low. It considers banning lobstering from July to September — peak tourist months for restaurants — as well as new restrictions on the size of lobsters fishermen can keep, and how long their traps can stay in the water.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: State Announces Over $105,000 for Seafood Marketing Projects

March 22, 2017 — The state has announced $105,500 in grants to seven marketing campaigns designed to increase awareness and demand for Massachusetts seafood products.

The grants were awarded through the Division of Marine Fisheries’ (DMF) Seafood Marketing Pilot Grant Program.

Seven organizations were awarded funding for projects to stimulate demand though education, promotion, and other strategies.

These organizations have experience and significant ties to the commercial fishing and seafood industries and communities, focus on different species and span geographical areas throughout the state.

Funding for this pilot grant program comes from commercial fishing and dealer permits through the Seafood Marketing Program.

The state launched the Massachusetts Seafood Marketing Program in August 2016 to increase awareness and demand for local seafood products. The program recently announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Farm to School Project to promote the consumption of local seafood in schools.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance has received $15,000 for two boat-to-plate recipe demonstration videos on dogfish and skate for social media.

“We got a grant that is specific to the fisheries that are very important to a group of Cape Cod fisherman and that is skate and dogfish,” said Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance spokeswoman Nancy Civetta.

Wellfleet SPAT got more than $20,000 for a pilot educational and tasting event in Boston to reacquire and increase market share for Wellfleet oysters and clams.

“Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance and Wellfleet SPAT do tremendous work to promote more sustainable fisheries and aquaculture management, scientific research, and community education,” said State Senator Julian Cyr. “I am encouraged that they have been selected to receive grants from the Seafood Marketing Program. These grants will go a long way in helping to promote and encourage the consumption of Massachusetts seafood products.”

“Skate, dogfish, and Wellfleet shellfish are all essential to the outer and lower cape economy. Scores of families count on the income generated by the sale of these delicious and sustainable caught and harvested products,” said State Representative Sarah Peake. “These grants to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance and to Wellfleet SPAT to raise awareness, market share, and by extension incomes to our fishing families are important and welcome.”

Read the full story at Cape Cod 

Cape fishermen push dogfish, skate at expo

March 21, 2017 — Chatham fishermen Charlie Dodge, Jamie Eldredge, and Greg Connors walked the crowded aisles of the Seafood Expo North America Monday, one of the largest seafood shows in the world, drawing more than 21,000 attendees and exhibitors over three days.

The men were there to meet wholesale fish buyers and distributors looking to market their catch: skates — a kite-shaped fish related to sharks — and dogfish, a small coastal shark.

Dogfish and skates may not be ready to join heavyweights like salmon and shrimp, but with help from the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, as well as federal and state grants to assist with marketing, they are slowly gaining a foothold in domestic markets.

“It would be way better if it stays within the country,” Dodge said of dogfish, which, like skates is largely exported to Europe and Asia, and fetch relatively low prices, with skates at 23 cents per pound on average in 2015 and dogfish fluctuating between 11 cents and 22 cents per pound. In 2015, cod, by comparison, averaged $1.90 per pound.

Not long ago Chatham was one of the top cod ports in the country, but that stock is considered to be at historically low levels and landings state-wide collapsed from 27.5 million pounds in 2001 to 2.9 million pounds in 2015. Both skates and dogfish are plentiful and considered sustainably managed by organizations like the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Marine Stewardship Council and Seafood Watch. That message — a local, sustainable and affordable fish — has helped convince institutional clients like the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Cape Cod may use high-tech balloon to spot great white sharks

March 20, 2017 — Researchers and public safety officials may soon have a new tool to track the growing great white shark populations off the coast of Cape Cod.

Shark researcher Greg Skomal, a scientist with the state’s Department of Marine Fisheries whose team recently completed a major study of the region’s shark populations, is considering launching a pilot program to use a high-tech balloon to spot sharks in the waters near Chatham, according to a report in the Cape Cod Times.

A Miami-based company, Altametry SmartBalloon, has developed a balloon with high-definition cameras, video streaming capability and specialized lens filters to peer under the ocean’s surface and alert officials to sharks that near the shoreline.

“I think it has great potential and I’m excited to be trying it,” Skomal told the Cape Cod Times.

Read the full story at Mass Live

More great white sharks appear to be visiting off Cape Cod

March 14, 2017 — Great white sharks are discovering what tourists have known for years: Cape Cod is a great place to spend the summer.

The latest data from a multiyear study of the ocean predators found that the number of sharks in waters off the vacation haven appears to be on the rise, said Greg Skomal, a senior scientist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and the state’s top shark expert.

But that’s no reason to cancel vacation. The sharks are after seals, not humans, and towns are using the information from the study to keep it that way.

“How long does it stay and where does it go are the questions we’re trying to answer,” Skomal said. “But for the towns, it’s a public safety issue.”

Researchers using a plane and boats spotted 147 individual great white sharks last summer. That was up slightly from 2015, but significantly more than the 80 individual sharks spotted in 2014, the first year of the study, funded by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

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

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