Saving Seafood

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

Regulators to Discuss Localized Depletion of Herring

November 16, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. – The New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Newport, Rhode Island tomorrow and an organization that supports local fishermen will push for a buffer zone to move midwater trawlers further off shore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking to move the large herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat coastal fisheries.

The management council will discuss ways to address “localized depletion” in the herring fishery, which is a key source of food for whales and larger fish.

“Our concern is that they are depleting the forage species that we need for tuna, stripers, cod, haddock, dogfish, the whales – all of that stuff is the food chain and they are sucking up the lower end of it,” said Bruce Peters, an Orleans fisherman from the vessel Marilyn S.

Current regulations allow for the midwater trawlers to fish beyond three miles from shore from Provincetown past the Islands.

A vessel tracking program showed about a half dozen trawlers about three or four miles off the Coast of Orleans and Eastham along the back side of the Cape earlier this week.

“They have huge boats. They can go to Georges Bank. They can go offshore. They can fish herring pretty much anywhere,” Peters said. “Our small-boat fleets are 30 to 40-foot boats. We don’t have the luxury of being to go way, way offshore like that.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

25 years ago, the crew of the Andrea Gail was lost in the ‘perfect storm’

October 31st, 2016 — At the heart of Gloucester, America’s oldest seaport, visitors will find an eight-foot-tall bronze fisherman at the wheel of his ship.

Engraved at the base of the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial are the names of more than 3,000 residents who were lost at sea and the following words: “They that go down to the sea in ships, 1623-1923.” Twenty-five years ago, one ship in particular gained national fame when it was lost during the “perfect storm” of 1991.

The “storm with no name” claimed the lives of six fishermen and the captain and crew of the Andrea Gail, a disaster that was later chronicled in Sebastian Junger’s bestselling book and a film starring George Clooney.

The storm left a trail of destruction from Nova Scotia to Florida, killing 13 people and causing close to $500 million in damage as it lashed the coast from Oct. 26 through Nov. 1 of that year.

Winds upwards of 70 mph “tossed [boats] like beach toys [in] the surf,” The Boston Globe reported on October 31, 1991. A small Marshfield home was even lifted from its foundation, floating in the water and endangering moored boats.

“At 3 o’clock Wednesday my mother was upset because there was salt water on her lawn,” a Chatham resident told the Globe. “At 6 o’clock there was no lawn and she was worried there’d be no house. Our house escaped by some miracle.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

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

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

UPDATE: Coast Guard Recovers Body of Missing Fisherman off Nantucket

June 20, 2016 — The following was released by the U.S. Coast Guard:

BOSTON — Coast Guard rescue crews located and recovered the body of a missing fisherman from the 42-foot boat No Regrets Monday at approximately 1 p.m. near Nantucket.

The search lasted nearly 4 hours and included a 47-foot Motor Lifeboat crew and 29-foot rescue boat crew from Station Brant Point, a 42-foot rescue boat crew from Station Chatham, an Air Station Cape Cod HC-144 Ocean Sentry crew and an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew. Other agencies involved in the search included the Massachusetts State Police, Harwich Regional Dive Team, Nantucket Harbormaster, Chatham Harbormaster, Chatham Fire Department Dive Team, and three good Samaritans.

“Our thoughts go out to the family of the victim and the entire fishing community who is affected by this tragedy,” said Cmdr. Marcus Gherardi, Chief of Response for Coast Guard Sector Southeastern New England. “Anytime we are not able to accomplish our goal of saving lives, we are deeply saddened as we also take it to heart.”

Read the release at the U.S. Coast Guard Newsroom

Rep. Bill Keating to file bill to resolve dispute between Chatham and feds

June 17, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — U.S. Rep. William Keating, D-Mass., has agreed to file legislation that town officials hope will end a dispute over who owns and manages the ocean off the Nantucket Sound side of Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

“We think, once and for all, it will put to bed any contention about the boundary issue and we can continue as we have for over a hundred years to manage that area,” Chatham Selectman Seth Taylor said Wednesday after he and town manager Jill Goldsmith left a meeting with Keating and his staff.

When it released its draft management plan for the refuge in April 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service claimed it owned more than 717 acres of beach on the Atlantic side that the town believed it owned instead. Service officials also argued the refuge includes waters that fall within what it considers its western boundary.

The Fish & Wildlife Service and the town were able to agree on most of the disputed portions of the management plan. They settled on a boundary on the Atlantic side that returned much of the 717 acres to the town; the service decided to allow almost all of the fishing activities it had originally claimed were detrimental to the protection of shorebirds and wildlife.

But the two sides couldn’t find common ground on the western boundary.

The town and the state contended the legal documents that took the property in 1944 to establish the refuge, and a subsequent wilderness declaration in the 1970s, defined the boundary as the mean low water mark. Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey threatened litigation, arguing the refuge never controlled anything below the mean low water mark.

Read the full story in the Cape Cod Times

Regulation Change May Keep Cape Scallop Fishermen in Local Waters

May 9, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Local small boat scallop fishermen will be able to fish an area of local waters that has been closed since 2014.

The New England Fishery Management Council has changed regulations to allow for scallop fishing in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area which is about 65 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Council scientists have assured there will not be any conservation concerns from allowing limited amounts of fishing.

“They decided it doesn’t warrant an entire opening for the whole fleet,” said Bob Keese, a scallop fisherman out of Chatham on the F/V Beggar’s Banquet. “But there are plenty of scallops out there right now to warrant an opening for a small-boat fleet.”

The reopening of the Lightship area will also allow for the depleted near shore waters a chance to replenish, Keese said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Video shows a horde of seals off Chatham

April 13, 2016 — A Norwell man has taken stunning video of the horde of seals that has taken up residence on Monomoy Island, the seal haven off Chatham at the outer elbow of Cape Cod.

Aaron Knight filmed his flight off the Massachusetts coast Sunday. He said he’s been watching the seals there in the past few years, and he’s never seen so many.

“They used to be in harems and small chunks dotted down the beach, but this year … it’s just astonishing,” he said. “It’s an infinite forever stretch of seals.”

The video has gotten nearly 200,000 views and more than 2,700 shares on Facebook, Knight said.

See the video and the rest of the story at the Boston Globe

Cape Cod fishermen anticipated cod collapse

March 25, 2016 — Dogfish Neck? Cape Skate? Pollock Peninsula?

Can this still be Cape Cod without the cod? There still is cod, and they’re still being caught, but the stocks have collapsed and that was further underlined this week when a Georges Bank quota cut of 62 percent to 762 metric tons was proposed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Management Council on Monday. That follows an earlier massive cut during the last three-year management period – totaling a 95-percent reduction over the last four years.

Outer Cape fishermen are ahead of the curve – most have already abandoned cod.

“We experienced the lack of cod first. It’s been a long time so several years ago our fishermen transferred to other fish. A lot fish for monkfish, skate, dogfish so the cod rules don’t impact them” explained Claire Fitz-Gerald, Policy Analyst for the Chatham based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

As recently as 2003 Chatham fishermen brought in 1,053,290 pounds of cod to Chatham Fish Pier while the dogfish catch was 224,589 pounds in 2004 (there was no record for 2003). Now those numbers are flipped. In 2012 just 113,406 pounds of cod were landed at Chatham’s Pier, while 936,563 pounds of dogfish, 64,191 pounds of pollock, 287,753 pounds of skate were brought in.

Read the full story at The Cape Codder