Saving Seafood

Fisheries panel, after failed last try, agrees on increase in menhaden harvest

October 28th, 2016 — After failing two months ago to come up with a 2017 quota for commercial harvests of menhaden, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission this week finally settled on a number: 200,000 metric tons, a 6.45 percent increase from this year.

The commission struggled for 3-1/2 hours at its meeting in Alexandria in August to set next year’s quota, with a half-dozen proposals for various limits failing to win enough votes. On Wednesday in Bar Harbor, Maine, the commission’s menhaden management board settled on a number much quicker.

Still, the new limit was criticized by environmental groups, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Chris Moore, the foundation’s senior scientist in Virginia, said in a prepared statement that the fish – a staple in the diets of numerous marine creatures, from striped bass to whales – are “not abundant throughout their geographic range.”

Moore said that keeping the quota unchanged for the small, bony, oily fish “would have helped ensure a healthier menhaden population for all users.”

In most of the states from Maine to Florida under the commission’s watch, menhaden are harvested for bait.

Virginia is the exception. It’s the center of East Coast harvests, with next year’s quota allotting the state nearly 169,000 of the 200,000-ton limit. The overwhelming majority of Virginia’s catches will go to a plant in Reedville on the Northern Neck, where they’ll be reduced into products ranging from fish oil pills to cattle-feed supplements.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star

Chesapeake Bay Foundation Shamefully Fundraises off of Inaccurate Menhaden Claims

October 28, 2016 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:

A September 27 fundraising email from Rob Beach, the Director of Community Building and Digital Media at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, misrepresented accepted scientific conclusions about the health of the menhaden stock in the Chesapeake Bay in order to gain funding for the organization.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation repeatedly described menhaden in the Bay as being “under threat from industrial fishing.” The most recent science on Atlantic menhaden shows that this is wrong.

In 2012, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which manages Atlantic menhaden, released the species’ latest updated stock assessment. Due to problems with the assessment model, the assessment suggested the menhaden stock was being overfished, a conclusion that has subsequently been found to be incorrect. As a result of this flawed assessment, the ASMFC slashed the annual menhaden catch by 20% as a precautionary measure.

Between 2012 and 2015, the menhaden stock assessment model was thoroughly reevaluated and updated with new tools and information that was previously unavailable. Consequently, when the 2015 benchmark stock assessment was released, it had reached a far different conclusion. It found that menhaden are neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing. This is a pattern that held for decades: in the assessment’s analysis, menhaden have not been overfished for nearly a half-century. Furthermore, the assessment found fishing mortality to be at an all-time low. This is especially significant, as it means that the impact of the commercial menhaden fishery is at its lowest point, and that regulators are already successfully managing the fishery.

In an effort to purposely mislead, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation claims that increasing the menhaden quota would change that reality. The science tells a different story. Recently, the ASMFC ran a comprehensive series of simulations to test the potential impact of various quota raises. The Commission concluded that raising the quota as high as 40% has a 0% chance of leading to overfishing.

Chesapeake Bay Foundation staff regularly attends meetings of the ASMFC; in fact, the group’s Director of Fisheries, Bill Goldsborough, has served in various roles with the ASMFC for nearly 25 years. It is shameful this fundraising campaign knowingly perpetuates misconceptions and inaccuracies about the health of a significant Bay fishery. It is using false fear to spur contributions.

Fearmongering for financial gain should be beneath the dignity of an organization that claims to be dedicated to “science-based solutions.”

About the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition
The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition is a collective of menhaden fishermen, related businesses, and supporting industries. Comprised of over 30 businesses along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the menhaden industry to ensure that members of the public, media, and government are informed of important issues, events, and facts about the fishery.

Long slog ahead for new attempt to move shad past Conowingo, other dams

June 15, 2016 — Leon Senft remembers a time when he and other fishermen lined the shore of the Susquehanna River below the Conowingo Dam and hooked American shad almost as fast as they could cast their lines in the churning water.

“We really had a bonanza there for a while,” recalled Senft, 85, who’s been angling for the big migratory fish longer than most people are alive. “It was not unusual to catch 50–100 a day. My personal best was 175.”

That catch-and-release heyday for Senft was maybe 20 years ago, when American shad appeared to be on the rebound from a severe decline in their springtime spawning runs. Optimism abounded, as a big new fishlift hoisted more and more of them over the 94-foot dam on their way upriver to reproduce.

But the rebound went off the rails. Although the number of American shad getting a lift over Conowingo rose steadily for a decade, it then dropped and kept dropping.

Now, after years of study and negotiations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Exelon Corp., Conowingo’s owner, have come up with a new plan for rebuilding the Susquehanna’s runs of American shad and river herring — related species that are even more depleted. In a press release announcing the deal in April, a federal wildlife official called it “a victory for everyone who lives or recreates on the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.”

But those close to the situation are still cautious. Given the discouraging track record so far, they say, bringing these fish back will take a sustained effort for decades — if it can be done at all.

“I was around when we did this last time, 25 years ago,” said Bill Goldsborough, senior fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “We thought that was going to do a lot more than it did.”

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Journal

Horseshoe crabs crawl back

June 6, 2016 — Every spring, John Rodenhausen looks forward to seeing a few horseshoe crabs on the beach at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s headquarters outside Annapolis.

This year, Rodenhausen said, thousands of the prehistoric-looking creatures, which resemble spiders more than crabs, were mating on the Annapolis beach in late May. As is their wont, the smaller males attached to the larger female, sometimes four to five at a time — one large carapace surrounded by smaller ones, like points on a star.

“It blew us all away,” said Rodenhausen, the foundation’s Maryland development director. “You’ll always see a few, and you might see a dozen, but we saw thousands. And it wasn’t even a full moon.”

Citizens and scientists are documenting large numbers of the spike-tailed, helmet-shelled creatures on Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay beaches. The uptick could be a sign that once-unpopular management restrictions are working and could help secure a future for the Atlantic Limulus polyphemus, long prized for what it could do for other species instead of for its own virtues.

The eggs that female horseshoe crabs lay on beaches feed large quantities of shorebirds, which can double their weight in two weeks of feasting, helping them to fly halfway around the world. Their copper-rich, blue blood can save human lives; scientists use a chemical found only in the species’ blood to test for bacteria and identify potentially lethal contaminations in intravenous medications. For decades, companies took the animals to grind into fertilizer and raise food. Fishermen backed their trucks up to crab-rich beaches and took what they wanted to use as bait in the conch and eel fisheries.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal 

MARYLAND: Oyster study bill advances despite watermen objections

April 5, 2016 — State fisheries managers use science-backed information to determine how many striped bass, blue crabs and menhaden can be caught each season without damaging the overall health of each species.

But not the Chesapeake Bay’s oysters.

A bill passed by the Maryland Senate and pending before the House would require University of Maryland scientists to establish harvest limits that ensure a sustainable catch for years to come. Representatives of the seafood industry are branding the measure as costly and unnecessary.

The bill’s supporters, however, say Maryland’s oyster population is being overfished, pointing to estimates that it is 1 percent of its historic size.

“We’ve learned the hard way that nature, especially with these oysters, is not inexhaustible,” said Bill Goldsborough, a fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “So this attitude, this disregard for science, led to the depletion of this valuable resource and the unstable boom-and-bust pattern of fishery that we see today.”

Maryland’s oyster haul plummeted from an all-time high of 15 million bushels in the 1880s to 26,000 bushels in 2004. After surpassing 100,000 for several years, the total harvest rocketed above 300,000 in 2013 and 2014. Researchers attribute the jump to hearty reproduction in 2010 and 2012.

The size of oyster catch this season, which officially ended Thursday, is expected to be lower again, reflecting poorer reproduction in subsequent years.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now