Saving Seafood

Here’s What 99 Wind Turbines Will Look Like Off the Jersey Shore

September 3, 2020 — Massive turbines, with blades as long as football fields, will one day spin in the Atlantic Ocean off the Jersey Shore.

The first wind farm off New Jersey is expected to begin generating clean energy by 2024, according to Ørsted, the Danish company that received New Jersey’s initial permit for an 1,100-megawatt project last year. It will generate enough electricity to power 500,000 homes.

The company has released a first look at what the farm’s 99 turbines will look like from the beaches of Atlantic City and Stone Harbor once they are up and running. The “virtual reality tour” also provides a view from one of the turbines, which will be roughly 15 miles out to sea and in an area off southern New Jersey between Cape May and Atlantic City.

Read the full story at NBC 4

Jersey’s Commercial Fishing Industry Struggles to Stay Afloat

June 16, 2020 — Sam Martin has never had to deal with a housing crisis. Now, thanks to the pandemic, he’s got a big one. Ordinarily, when the oysters he raises along the Delaware Bay shoreline outgrow their bags and cages, he ships them to market and starts over again. But with “virtually all our sales coming from restaurants,” and the restaurant industry on hold, Martin’s oysters have nowhere to go.

“It’s a big bottleneck,” he says.

Atlantic Cape Fisheries, of which Martin is chief operating officer, is a large commercial fishery as well as New Jersey’s largest producer of farmed oysters. Based in Port Norris, about 20 miles northwest of Cape May, its oyster operation has “doubled in size each of the last three years,” Martin says. “Last year we sold 2.5 million oysters, and we planned to sell 5 million this year, but sales so far are down about 80 percent compared to last year.”

Lodged in the water in their bags and cages, the oysters continue to grow. But once they exceed the ideal raw-bar size of about 3 1/2 inches, they lose as much as 60 percent of their value and wind up in the commodity breading-and-frying market. This month, the company will make a difficult decision. To free up bags and racks for future crops, it may have to dump its unsold, now-oversize oysters into the bay.

Three counties away, the Barnegat Oyster Collective is facing similar straits on the Atlantic coastline. Before the pandemic, “tens of thousands of people were eating our oysters in restaurants,” says CEO Scott Lennox. But since the collective was selling to distributors, “we didn’t know who they were. So we had to completely pivot and turn ourselves into an e-commerce company. We created the party pack. You get two dozen chilled oysters in a foam box with gel packs, a free oyster knife with instructions, and free shipping. And we do a Saturday Instagram shucking demo.”

Read the full story at New Jersey Monthly

NEW JERSEY: Feeding with Fish Through a Crisis

May 8, 2020 — Fresh and frozen seafood has been leaving Lund’s Fisheries Inc., in Cape May, despite an initial slowdown from COVID-19 restrictions closing many restaurants and other food establishments.

The company received federal funding to help offset expenses during the pandemic and has been able to keep its five facilities operating.

“I can’t say we’ve been necessarily profitable during this time,” said Wayne Reichle, president and owner, “but it was important to us that our employees and their families knew they could depend on us during this time. “The federal funding will help offset costs such as labor, leases and other expenses.”

No employees were laid off as a result of the virus, according to Reichle. There are 150 employees between their facilities in Cape May and Bridgeton. They have two facilities on the West Coast and another was recently added in Bedford, MA.

The virus and restrictions occurred during, what Reichle called, their “transition period,” when the winter fishing season ends and the summer fish and scallop season begins.

Read the full story at the Cape May County Herald

Alabama shipyard is a go-to for East Coast scallopers

May 6, 2020 — Jemison Marine & Shipbuilding of Bayou La Batre, Ala., recently delivered the scallop boat Patriarch, the fourth new fishing vessel built by Jemison for Tom McNulty Sr. of T&S Fisheries out of Cape May, N.J.

The double-dredge permit F/V Patriarch is the latest of the four boats at 80′ x 27′ x 13′ and holds 50,000 pounds of payload in its insulated ice hold. In comparison, McNulty’s boat Pride and Joy, also built by Jemison, holds 25,000 pounds.

“You can fit twice as much in the Patriarch as in the Pride & Joy,” said McNulty. “We have just started working the new boat, and it is outstanding.”

McNulty said he has had two different crews work the Patriarch on seven closed trips and 15 open bottom day trips. “The crews cannot say enough about how comfortable the boat is.”

Patriarch was designed by naval architect Travis Carver of Sterling Marine in Gulf Breeze, Fla., with the aid of McNulty’s son Tom McNulty Jr.

“Tom Jr. played a big part in the design of the boat,” says his dad. “He provided a great deal of input into the design of the deck and fish hold.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Cape May Fishermen, Processor Sues NOAA’s At-Sea Monitoring Rule

February 21, 2020 — Cause of Action Institute, on behalf of six trawlers and a processor based in Cape May, NJ, filed a lawsuit yesterday against Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and NOAA Fisheries to block a new rule forcing them to pay for third-party “at-sea monitors.”

The plaintiffs claim that NOAA Fisheries and the Department of Commerce violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA) when designing and implementing the final rule.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Efforts with scallops and oysters paying off in NJ

August 19, 2019 — Fisheries management has provided a model for how people can adjust their impact on the natural world to benefit themselves and the environment. Scallops have made New Jersey a leader in East Coast seafood landings, with Cape May the region’s No. 2 port behind New Bedford, Connecticut. And oysters, while slowly growing into a robust and lucrative industry, now also promise to clean coastal waters and help reduce flooding.

Years of federal fisheries managers allowing Atlantic sea scallops to thrive by limiting their harvest have yielded an abundance of this shellfish delicacy.

New data shows their harvest last year reached more than 58 million pounds, the highest since 2011 and the fifth highest since record keeping began in 1945.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Opponents of offshore drilling at New Jersey Shore are breathing sigh of relief

May 13, 2019 — The federal government has stopped pushing for offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to Florida. And that’s good news for critics of the plan in South Jersey.

The Secretary of the Interior announced recently that plans to allow offshore drilling of oil and gas were postponed indefinitely. Opponents of seismic testing in South Jersey are relieved but say it’s not over yet.

“It’s very good news,” said Vicki Clark, president of the Cape May Chamber of Commerce. “But unless they say it is permanently abandoned, we still feel as though we have to continue to, continue on with our education about why this is not something we want to have anywhere along the Atlantic.”

Read the full story at KYW

US squid catchers turn to innovation, MSC in push to boost consumption

May 13, 2019 — The US’ two largest squid catchers and suppliers are taking a similar tack when it comes to plans to boost consumption of their species: product innovation at home targeted at millennials, and the recent Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of their fisheries to open up new markets, particularly in Europe.

The companies –Narragansett, Rhode Island-based The Town Dock and Cape May, New Jersey-based Lund’s Fisheries — recently teamed up to receive MSC approval for the US Northwest northern shortfin squid (Illex Illecebrosus) fishery. This comes nearly a year after obtaining the MSC’s stamp for the US Northeast longfin inshore squid (Loligo pealeii) bottom trawl fishery last year, the world’s first MSC certification for a squid species. The two firms also catch California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) and harvest or procure a wide range of other squid and fish species.

Americans don’t consume a lot of squids — in 2015, the average US consumer ate around four ounces per year, roughly equivalent to a serving of fried calamari rings. That’s where the opportunity lies, Jeff Reichle, Lund’s president, told Undercurrent News.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

PRESS OF ATLANTIC CITY: Abundant menhaden draw whales and endless dispute over its fishery

April 28, 2019 — Jeff Stewart, the longtime captain of the Cape May Whale Watcher, recalled last seeing whales in Delaware Bay off Cape May County in 1990. Now, as then, the whales follow and prey on bigger schools of menhaden — a footlong fish used for fish-oil supplements, aquaculture feed and bait.

Seeing whales closer to shore is one benefit of the renewed abundance of menhaden, also called mossbunker or just bunker for short. Another is jobs in the menhaden fishery, which used to have operations in Cape May and Monmouth counties. More menhaden theoretically also helps the whales, striped bass, ospreys, dolphins and such that eat them.

This success story began in 2013, when the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission set its first catch limits for menhaden in the waters from Maine to Florida. The fish has done so well since then that the quotas have been raised every year, to 216,000 metric tons.

In December, one of the leading certification bodies for the Marine Stewardship Council recommended that the Atlantic menhaden fishery be certified as sustainable. SAI Global said the fishery scored 83 for sustainability of the stock, 86 for minimizing environmental impacts, and 92 for effective fisheries management — each higher than the average score of 80 required for sustainability certification.

A sustainable and growing menhaden fishery, though, isn’t enough for some. Since at least 1888, when the Rod and Reel Association claimed commercial menhaden boats were taking fish better left as food for species they liked to catch and eat, people have fought over the best use for menhaden.

In the fall of 2017, a coalition of environmental and sport fishing interests, partly led by a unit of the Pew Charitable Trusts, successfully lobbied the fisheries commission to switch to a unique new management approach for a fishery, one based on estimates of how the menhaden population affects other fish and wildlife that prey upon it.

Read the full opinion piece at the Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: Whales in the bay? It’s rare, but happening thanks to a surge in these fish off Cape May

April 9, 2019 — Jeff Stewart clearly remembers one of the last times humpback whales descended on the Delaware Bay.

It was 1990 and there was an abundance of bunker in the waters, a type of forage fish that whales eat that are also called menhaden, said Stewart, captain of the Cape May Whale Watcher.

Those same conditions are bringing the cetaceans to the bays from Town Bank to Cape May Point yet again, he said.

Marine biologists say a combination of warming waters and an increasing bunker population in the south is bringing more of the fish to New Jersey’s coast — and in turn luring whales to bay habitats they normally don’t swim in.

“There’s a ton of (bunker) right now. I’d definitely say it’s above average, to see it this early and in these quantities,” Stewart said.

Typically, the whales are found 20 miles offshore in the ocean, Stewart said, but last week, one of his captains spotted a humpback whale in the bay about 1½ miles off Cape May’s coast. Another was found in the bay Sunday morning about 100 yards out.

The tour agency, founded in 1993, started taking people out to sea again for the season last month. Stewart said more bottlenose dolphins are also in the waters as a result of increased bunker.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City