Saving Seafood

Late-term Obama, GOP clash over monuments

September 6, 2016 — President Obama likely isn’t finished using his authority to unilaterally protect land and water as national monuments.

Environmentalists are hoping that Obama will continue his string of monument designations in his final months in office, following the footsteps of many of his predecessors who used the end of their presidencies for major land protections.

Conservationists hope Obama will set aside a massive area in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Cod, a large swath of land in Utah that American Indian tribes believe to be sacred, an area upstream of the Grand Canyon that’s been eyed for uranium mining and a mountain range near El Paso, Texas, among other locations.

With Congress gridlocked and unable to pass major legislation regarding public lands, greens, Democrats and local advocates near the proposed monuments are calling on Obama to keep bypassing Congress to protect land and water areas.

But nearly every proposal to protect an area from various types of harm and development carries opposition from some locals and industries whose activities could be curtailed or stopped.

Republicans also want to stop Obama and repeal the 1906 Antiquities Act, which the president has used to protect lands.

They say Obama is stretching the law with his monument designations to take unilateral action when Congress will not help, like he has on immigration and climate change.

Read the full story at The Hill

Strange visitor from the South (a manatee) is spotted off Cape Cod

August 30, 2016 — To the thousands upon thousands of seals that populate isolated beaches, and the frenzy of great white sharks that have frightened swimmers, now add another creature of the sea: an oddly graceful, roughly 8-foot-long manatee that has probably arrived from Florida to join the throngs of tourists enjoying the warm waters off Cape Cod.

Since mid-August, wildlife experts have documented at least a half-dozen sightings of the transient manatee they believe slowly swam up the East Coast to feed on local vegetation.

He or she still appears intent on taking in popular spots along the Cape, like any vacationer. The issue it faces is one of time: When the water temperatures drop, its chances of survival do, too.

Bill Pouliot and his son, Brayden, saw the wayward manatee while fishing on Bridge Street in Chatham Sunday. When the buoyant gray object came into view, they couldn’t believe its size.

“It was gi-normous,” said the elder Pouliot, mashing together the words “giant” and “enormous” to best describe the girth of the unexpected guest.

At first, both father and son thought the rotund animal spotted foraging on sea grass was a seal that wandered off from its beachy haunts.

But as they further examined the marine creature lazily floating nearby, they concluded it was something else entirely.

“It was just sort of going down to the bottom to eat, and then coming back up, perhaps sunbathing,” Pouliot said.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Mussels Disappearing From New England Waters, Scientists Say

August 29, 2016 — New England is running out of mussels.

The Gulf of Maine’s once strong population of wild blue mussels is disappearing, scientists say. A study led by marine ecologists at the University of California at Irvine found the numbers along the gulf coastline have declined by more than 60 percent over the last 40 years.

Once covering as much as two-thirds of the gulf’s intertidal zone, mussels now cover less than 15 percent.

“It would be like losing a forest,” said biologist Cascade Sorte, who with her colleagues at the university conducted the study and recently published their findings in the Global Change Biology journal.

The Gulf of Maine stretches from Cape Cod to Canada and is a key marine environment and important to commercial fishing. Blue mussels are used in seafood dishes and worth millions to the economy of some New England states, but are also important in moving bacteria and toxins out of the water.

“It’s so disheartening to see it (the loss) in our marine habitats. We’re losing the habitats they create,” she said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Fishermen Seek Buffer From Herring Trawlers

August 29, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Cape Cod fishermen may be on their way to some relief from sharing inshore fishing grounds with mid-water herring trawling, a practice they say is threatening their livelihoods. But a persistent lack of data on the impact of the trawls may hamper efforts to regulate them.

On Aug. 17, the Herring Oversight Committee of the New England Fisheries Management Council voted to send the council two options for establishing a buffer zone prohibiting mid-water trawling off Cape Cod. The zone would extend either 12 miles or 35 miles from shore — significantly farther than the 6-mile zone proposed by the herring industry and closer than the 50-mile mark sought by environmental groups. The council will consider the options when it meets in September.

Fishermen have been complaining for years about the industrial-sized ships landing on the back side of Cape Cod, scooping up millions of pounds of herring and leaving, they say, a temporary ocean “bio-desert” in their wake.

In 2015, the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance collected hundreds of comments and individual letters from fisherman about the phenomenon called “localized depletion” — defined as “when harvesting takes more fish than can be replaced locally or through fish migrating into the catch area within a given time period.”

Read the full story at ecoRI News

CFRF Black Sea Bass Research Fleet

August 24, 2016 — The following was released by the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation:

On September 1st., the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF), in partnership with the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management (RI DEM), will launch a one-year pilot project to develop a cost-effective method to collect critically needed fishery dependent data on black sea bass (Centropristis striata) in the Southern New England and Mid-Atlantic Bight region. The project will be approached collaboratively by a team of commercial and recreational fishermen and fisheries scientists and managers, and will involve eight months of black sea bass catch and discard characterization from Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. The Black Sea Bass Research Fleet will involve eight fishing vessels from a variety of gear types, including trawl, lobster/crab trap, gillnet, and hook and line, in collecting biological black sea bass data as part of routine fishing practices. Participant fishermen will use a specialized tablet app to efficiently and accurately record biological information about black sea bass catch and bycatch throughout the year. The results from the proposed project will help to fill existing data gaps for the northern Atlantic black sea bass, which is an essential first step in developing a management plan that reflects the current state of the black sea bass resource.

The CFRF will be soliciting applications from fishing vessels based in Rhode Island to participate in the Black Sea Bass Research Fleet in September 2016. More information about the project, including application materials, will be available on the CFRF website here.

The CFRF looks forward to getting the Black Sea Bass Research Fleet up and running!

$240K grant supports leatherback sea turtle study

August 18, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has awarded the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries $240,398 to study leatherback sea turtles off Cape Cod in areas considered to be dense with fishing gear, according to NOAA.

The work is expected to provide critical animal behavior and habitat data needed to develop fishing gear that would help address significant leatherback entanglement problems in Massachusetts, according to a statement from NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Thanks for all the fish!

August 16, 2016 — It can sometimes be difficult, depending on the choppiness of the waves, for pilot Wayne Davis to spot from his two-seater plane the dark silhouettes of great white sharks swimming off the coast of Chatham during research expeditions with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy.

But there was no missing a giant school of fish this week as he flew near the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

The conservancy, a non-profit based on Cape Cod, shared a photo Friday taken by Davis from his Citabria earlier in the week of what looks to be hundreds — if not thousands — of menhaden, or forage fish.

The fish are gathered together not far from a lurking great white, forming a shape like a pinpoint on a Google map. The collection of fish creates a striking black dot in the middle of the blue-green Cape waters as though a shadow were cast over the sea.

The conservancy’s nearby boat is dwarfed by the mass of menhaden, which can live to be 12 years old and are known to swim in large schools close to the water’s surface during the spring, summer, and fall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

NOAA Establishes Marine Mammal Bycatch Criteria for U.S. Imports

August 16, 2016 — WASHINGTON – Nations that export fish and fish products into the U.S. will now have to meet the same standards for protecting marine mammals that American fishermen follow.

NOAA Fisheries published its final ruling last week which forces trade partners to show that killing or injuring marine mammals incidental to fishing or bycatch in their export fisheries do not exceed U.S. standards.

“Fishing gear entanglements or accidental catch is a global threat to marine mammal populations,” said Eileen Sobeck, the assistant NOAA administrator for fisheries. “Establishing these bycatch criteria mark a significant step forward in the global conservation of marine mammals.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Is Dogfish the New Cod in New England?

August 15, 2016 — On a wind-tossed autumn morning off the Cape Cod coast, the aft deck of Doug Feeney’s 36-foot fishing boat, the Noah, is buried beneath a squirming, slimy, shin-deep layer of sharks.

The Noah’s hauler growls under the weight of the 300-hook long line emerging from the froth-tipped Atlantic. The reek of gasoline mingles with salt. A procession of small gray sharks, each pierced neatly through the jaw by a steel hook, materializes from the depths. Feeney, a lean fisherman whose goatee and hoop earrings lend him a vaguely piratical mien, yanks the sharks from the line with the steady rhythm of an assembly-line worker. A drained cup of coffee perches on the dashboard; James Taylor warbles on the radio.

“Twenty-five years ago we’d catch 10,000 pounds of these things every day,” Feeney shouts over the roar of the engines and “Fire and Rain.” “We’d just throw ’em back over the side.”

Like many Chatham fishermen, Feeney is a jack-of-all-trades. He gillnets monkfish in early spring, he trolls for bluefin tuna in late fall. But no species occupies more of his energy than the spiny dogfish, the dachshund-size shark now piling up on the Noah’s deck. Though the word “shark” conjures visions of the toothsome great white, spiny dogfish, the most common shark in the world, bears little resemblance to Jaws. For starters, it rarely grows more than 4 feet long. White freckles dot its slate-colored back and its green eyes glow with an eerie feline light. Stroked head to tail, its skin is almost velvety to the touch.

What Squalus acanthias lacks in fierceness, it makes up for in abundance. From Florida to Maine, populations are flourishing, so much so that the annual quota—the total weight that fishermen are allowed to catch—has increased every year from 2008 to 2015, cresting at a whopping 50 million pounds before dipping to 40 million this year. Such bounty stands in stark contrast to the grim status of Massachusetts’ most iconic fish, the cod, so depleted that quotas have sunk below a meager one million pounds. With the cod industry in a state of collapse, dogfish represent perhaps the best hope for struggling local fishermen. “These guys have been through so many cuts,” says Tobey Curtis, a fisheries policy analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “When we have success, we want to be able to pay them back.”

Read the full story at Boston Magazine

New rules require fish imports to meet U.S. standards

August 12, 2016 — Nations selling seafood to the U.S. must maintain higher standards for protecting whales, dolphins and other marine mammals, according to new regulations announced Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Other countries will be required to meet standards equal to what is required of U.S. fishermen under the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, NOAA Fisheries officials said, a change local fishermen groups applauded.

“It’s fantastic,” Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance CEO John Pappalardo said.

While the U.S. has some of the most conservation-minded fisheries laws in the world, American fishermen are selling in a global marketplace, Pappalardo said.

The cost of domestic regulations to U.S. fishermen cuts into their competitive edge, he said.

“It costs more money to produce that fish,” he said.

Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association members find it difficult to compete with fishermen from other countries because of gear modifications and fishing ground closures required under U.S. law, said Beth Casoni, executive director for the organization.

The association has about 1,800 members from Maine to New Jersey who fish lobster, scallop, conch, groundfish and more.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times