Saving Seafood

The Aging Oyster And Clam Hatchery That’s Behind A Multimillion-Dollar Industry

September 7, 2015 — As traditional fish stocks in New England continue to decline and the industry endures greater restrictions, fishermen have been creating a new line of work: They are becoming farmers — shellfish farmers.

The cultivation of oysters and clams has become big business in Massachusetts, especially on Cape Cod, but the one source for the state’s $25 million aquaculture industry almost shut its doors.

From Oyster Seeds The Size Of ‘Pepper,’ A Family Business Grew

Myron Taylor is out on Wellfleet Harbor. He’s 74 and has been been raising clams and oysters here since he was a kid.

“And back in the old time when we had to pick up all the oysters seeds on the beach, in order to get them to grow, and it took about four years to get an oyster to grow,” he says.

Those wild oyster seeds Taylor picked up off the beach years ago were juvenile oysters and clams that he would plant in nearby waters. But that traditional method for growing shellfish was very slow and often did not yield much product. So like most fishermen on the Cape, Taylor caught cod, flounder and other groundfish to earn a living.

In the late 1980s, when those stocks became scarce, Taylor turned to lobstering. It was around that time he heard about some scientists in Dennis who were harvesting tiny clam seeds and selling them to fishermen to grow.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at WBUR

JAN MARGESON: Disburse disaster aid to all active fishermen

September 3, 2015 — A typical small-boat fisherman from Cape Cod — or anywhere in the state for that matter — has more than navigating around the tides and the wind to contend with in today’s complicated regulatory world and in the face of a changing ocean. There’s crew to pay to sustain viable communities, gear and fuel to buy to support a coastal economy, and safety equipment to update to make sure they are prepared in any emergency.

Starting in October, these family fishermen will have to undertake a new added expense: paying for at-sea monitors who count the fish they harvest and those they have to throw back.

Until now, the federal government has paid for the services as part of a new management program it initiated to help bring back declining species of fish, such as our peninsula’s namesake cod. Now, it is turning it into an unfunded mandate, and Massachusetts’ fishermen could go out of business over it.

Profit margins in fishing are not high, and the federal government’s own report found that 59 percent of the state’s groundfishermen would go into the red if they had to pay for onboard monitors.

Read the full opinion piece at the Cape Cod Times

Cape Cod legislators urge Baker to spread relief funds across the fleet

September 2, 2015 — CHATHAM, Mass. – Legislators from the Cape and Islands urged Gov. Charlie Baker to reconsider his current proposal to allocate $6.6 million in federal fisheries disaster money to fishermen who had caught at least 20,000 pounds of groundfish — bottom-feeding fish like cod, haddock and flounder — in 2013 and 2014. Cape fishermen said it would benefit only a relative few boats; they had proposed that the state Division of Marine Fisheries use $4 million to pay for monitors who ride along on groundfish vessels and report on what fishermen catch and what they discard.

“It became apparent to us that that was not going to work,” said Claire Fitz-Gerald, manager of the Georges Bank Fixed Gear Sector, representing 24 boats, and headquartered in Chatham.

There was strong sentiment within the Massachusetts fleet for direct aid to fishermen, and Gov. Baker and the state’s congressional delegation sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and House and Senate appropriations committee chairmen claiming that federal requirements for fishermen to carry observers was an unfunded mandate and the federal government should pay for them, not fishermen. The letter also said paying for observer coverage was not the intent of Congress when it appropriated the federal fisheries disaster money.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

 

Local lawmakers fear Cape fishermen will lose out on disaster funds

September 2, 2015 — Many Cape Cod fishermen, operating under shrunken quotas for cod, have shifted their focus to catching other fish species such as dogfish, skate and monkfish.

But that business decision, some lawmakers worry, could be jeopardizing the fishermen’s ability to qualify for the last pot of federal disaster relief funding being dispersed by the Baker administration to help offset the hit to their livelihoods from declining fish populations.

The Division of Marine Fisheries, after issuing draft criteria for the dispersal of roughly $6.5 million in remaining federal fishery disaster aid, held public hearings this summer soliciting feedback on their proposal. Lawmakers from Cape Cod and the Islands are now urging the administration to reconsider the criteria that they say will exclude over 100 fishing boats that could soon be hit with the added cost of paying for at-sea monitors to police their catches.

“We on the Cape represent a group of fisherman who belong to a groundfish sector down here that the draft proposal as written, I’m not sure any of them would qualify for relief,” said Rep. Sarah Peake, a Provincetown Democrat.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

Lawmakers fear some fishermen may miss out on aid

September 2, 2015 — BOSTON — Steering a course opposite from the recommendations that came out of Gloucester for spending the last pot of federal fishing disaster funds, elected officials from Cape Cod are urging Gov. Charlie Baker to recast the landings criteria so the approximately $6.5 million will be spread among all 200 boats in the state’s groundfish fleet.

That position most certainly will not be embraced by the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition and the city of Gloucester, whose separate recommendations to the state Division of Marine Fisheries call for landing criteria that would send the disaster aid money to Massachusetts-based groundfishermen who landed at least 20,000 pounds of groundfish in any of the years 2012, 2013 and 2014 — levels that could exclude fishermen on Cape Cod who have scaled back from catching groundfish. 

The Cape Cod effort comes just as the process for determining how to distribute the so-called Bin 3 money is about to close, with the public hearings completed, the period for public comment elapsed, and the advisory group established by the state to help draft a distribution plan set to meet for the final time on Friday in New Bedford.

Why the change?

The last-minute attempt to recast the criteria flows from the decisions by many Cape Cod fishermen, operating under shrunken quotas for cod, to shift their focus to catching other species such as dogfish, skate and monkfish.

But that business decision, some lawmakers worry, could be jeopardizing the fishermen’s ability to qualify for the last pot of federal disaster relief funding being dispersed by the Baker administration to help offset the hit to their livelihoods from declining fish populations.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Cape Cod’s great white sharks head closer to shore

August 31, 2015 — July and the first week of August are often thought of as the dog days of summer, but if last year and this year are any indication, August and September could become the shark days of summer.

On Monday, researchers encountered 23 great white sharks from Chatham to Orleans, including three off Nauset Beach. The burgeoning population of sharks visiting the Cape has prompted local officials to rethink how they protect the swimming public from a potentially dangerous encounter.

While video footage of each shark seen Monday will still have to be analyzed to make sure they are 23 unique sharks and not repeats, it continues a trend in recent weeks, with 17 new sharks identified in one day three weeks ago and 19 in one day a week and a half ago.

More disturbing to beach managers is a pattern in recent weeks of great white sharks cruising in shallow water at swimming beaches along the coastline of the Outer Cape, prompting the temporary closing of some of the region’s most popular beaches.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

Conservation groups eye protection for Cashes Ledge

August 31, 2015 — National groups this week plan to call for sprawling areas in off Cape Ann, Cape Cod and Rhode Island to be declared the first “marine national monument” on the Eastern Seaboard.

A January 2009 presidential proclamation established three Pacific Marine National Monuments — the Marianas Trench, Pacific Remote Islands and Rose Atoll, which is on the Samoan archipelago 2,500 miles south of Hawaii and is the southernmost point belonging to the United States.

Now the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and partners such as the National Geographic Society, Pew Charitable Trusts and the Natural Resources Defense Council are seeking protections for the Cashes Ledge Closed Area, about 80 miles due east of Gloucester in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts off Cape Cod — areas CLF describes as “deep sea treasures.”

A CLF official told the News Service on Monday that the Cashes Ledge area covers 530 square nautical miles in the Gulf of Maine, and the New England Canyons and Seamounts encompasses 4,117 square nautical miles, for a total of 4,647 square nautical miles of protected areas.

The designation, according to CLF press secretary Josh Block, “ensures that this area remains permanently protected from harmful commercial extraction, such as oil and gas drilling, commercial fishing and other resource exploration activities.”

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

New England fishermen say federal money needed for monitors

August 25, 2015 — Federal fisheries regulators want fishermen to pay to have somebody watch what they catch and what they throw back.

And, while Gov. Charlie Baker told federal officials last week that they should foot the bill, local fishermen are hoping the state will reconsider and use its share of federal disaster money to pay for the observers required on commercial fishing trips.

The extra eyes on deck cost $710 daily, and fishermen say that hits smaller vessels especially hard.

“What small business can afford to be $710 in the hole before they even open their doors?” Chatham fisherman John Our said.

Expenses are already high for fuel, crews, bait and gear, fishermen say. Haddock, though plentiful, are too far offshore for them to catch, and their traditional species of choice, cod, have disappeared from local waters, mired at historically low population levels.

Cape boats now have to travel farther to catch monkfish, or land skates and dogfish from local waters at just a fraction of the price of cod.

A typical skate trip, at 35 cents per pound and grossing $1,100, would be left with less than $400 to split between the boat and crew, said Chatham fisherman Jan Margeson.

“We don’t gross enough money to afford this,” said Margeson, who proposed allocating federal disaster money to fishermen who actually carried observers.

The fleet will pay an estimated $10,000 per vessel annually to cover the cost of the observers, but its fishermen catch very little of the groundfish species that are in trouble, Our said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

‘The Long Haul’ looks at the future of Cape Cod fishing

August 23, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN, MA — Eight years ago, Pedro Verde, captain of the dragger F/V Blue Ocean, stood on MacMillan Pier and blasted scientists and fisheries regulators for allowing him to fish only 52 days the previous year. He was talking to Sean Corcoran, a reporter at public radio station WCAI who was investigating the decline of the Provincetown dragger fishery.

“We catch tons and tons of the dogfish here,” Verde told Corcoran. “So the guys close up the dogfish for 17 years. Endangered species. The guys don’t even know what they are talking about.”

Eight years later, the dogfish fishery is not just open but is booming, and it is a sustainable local species of whitefish, though you will be unlikely to find it in many local markets or on local tables.

The complex issues surrounding the decline of the Cape Cod fishing industry, the tensions between fishermen and regulators, changing people’s attitudes about which fish they want to eat, and the future of fishing here were the subjects of a gathering at the Provincetown Public Library last week. Corcoran, now news director at WCAI, and Heather Goldstone, the station’s science editor, presented some of the findings of a series of reports broadcast over the last two years.

Read the full story at the Provincetown Banner

There’s no cod from Cape Cod in local markets

August 1, 2015 — EASTHAM, MA —  Step out of the hot, sunny day into the cool, fresh-smelling interior of Mac’s Seafood in Eastham and you’ll find a showcase full of glistening fish and shellfish nestled in a thick bed of ice chips.

Bluefish, summer flounder, cod and striped bass fillets, bluefin tuna, halibut and swordfish steaks, monkfish tails, bright pink slabs of salmon, shucked Atlantic sea scallops and whole squid, plus clams, oysters and mussels in their shells. There are plenty of choices.

But company co-owner Alex Hay doesn’t hesitate to say that his customers won’t find Cape Cod codfish in his fish market – or in any other fish market in the area.

Cod has slipped almost entirely out of reach for local fishermen over the last decade as stocks have contracted due to overfishing and environmental changes and quotas have been reduced to near nothing.

Read the full story at The Washington Times