Saving Seafood

Fishery managers set deadline on rockfish rebuild

October 27, 2021 — At its 2021 Annual Meeting last week, the Atlantic Striped Bass Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) took a positive step toward rebuilding our beloved rockfish stock from its currently depleted condition.

The move came in response to news from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (MD DNR) that its 2021 Juvenile Striped Bass Index was 3.2, well below the annual average of 11.4 for the third consecutive year. In fact, it
has been below average for ten of the past 16 years. Virginia’s index of 6.30 was closer to, but still below, its long-term average of 7.77.

Concern about rockfish has been building for at least five years, and ASMFC’s Striped Bass Board initiated development of a new amendment (number 7, but the first since 2003) to the fishery management plan last winter. The Board’s May meeting sketched out six priorities for the Commission’s Plan Development Team to build into the amendment. The team submitted its draft for Board approval at last week’s meeting.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

 

Maryland oyster industry hoping for rebound as new season begins

October 26, 2021 — This time last year, Jason Wilford was preparing to bring his farm-grown oysters to a Thanksgiving pop-up sale in Easton.

Events like that one were something of a lifeline for Wilford, a newcomer to the industry. With the coronavirus pandemic raging as the weather grew colder in the fall of 2020, many seafood restaurants were closed or offered only carryout. There was practically nowhere for his first batch of hand-raised oysters to go.

Experts say covid-19 depressed demand for oysters, in part because shucking them wasn’t popular among diners looking for quick to-go meals. That sank prices for harvesters on the Chesapeake Bay.

This year, aquaculture farmers such as Wilford and those in the rest of the oyster industry — watermen, seafood restaurants and distributors — are hoping for a rebound in demand.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Virginia’s striped bass forecast looks stable as juvenile numbers hold steady

October 20, 2021 — Juvenile striped bass numbers are holding steady in Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay tributaries, the latest annual survey by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found.

But a parallel survey in Maryland waters showed below-average numbers.

The surveys look at striped bass that hatched in the spring and that will be large enough to catch, legally, in three to four years.

Preliminary results of the Virginia survey showed an average of 6.3 fish for each haul of a seine net in the James, York and Rappahannock rivers. These young striped bass usually measure between 1.5 and 4 inches. That’s the 9th consecutive year of average or above average results, VIMS said.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at the Daily Press

 

Maryland Striped Bass Survey Below Average for 3rd Year

October 19, 2021 — Maryland’s juvenile striped bass survey finds rockfish reproduction is below average for the third year in a row, continuing a worrisome trend. Virginia’s survey, meanwhile, shows a nine-year streak of average or above-average reproduction.

Both states conduct surveys of young-of-year striped bass to track reproductive success of the Bay’s treasured fish. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reports an index of 3.2 in the 2021 survey, which remains well below the long-term average of 11.4.

DNR is optimistic, saying in a press release, “The coastal striped bass population has decreased in size, but is still capable of strong reproduction with the right environmental conditions. Variable spawning success is a well-known characteristic of the species.”

They do acknowledge that the below-average numbers “are a concern”. In 2019 the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) determined the striped bass species was being overfished, and set new limits for East Coast states to follow. Still, some environmental groups and even anglers feel that states like Maryland should be doing more.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

 

Biologists use trucks to help shad reach spawning ground

September 23, 2021 — The long-running effort to get American shad back to their historic spawning grounds this year enlisted a tool that had been abandoned two decades ago: trucks.

With operation of the multi-million dollar fish lifts halted at Conowingo Dam, biologists resorted to capturing shad below the dam and trucking them upstream before releasing the fish back into the Susquehanna River to continue their spawning migration.

By the time the trucks stopped running on June 5, they hauled more than 6,300 shad upstream. That’s a fraction of the number that swam upriver during historic shad runs, but it’s the most that got past the first three dams on the river in more than a decade.

And it wouldn’t have happened without the trucks. Fish lifts at the 94-foot-high dam have not operated for two years because of concerns that invasive species such as northern snakeheads and blue catfish were moving upstream through the fish lifts, too.

“From a shad perspective, we feel like in the short term it is best to get as many to the spawning grounds as we can,” said Sheila Eyler, who coordinates fish restoration efforts on the Susquehanna for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

American shad definitely needed the helping hand.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

 

$14.7 Million NOAA Marine Debris Grant Includes Mid-Atlantic Projects

September 13, 2021 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is tackling the growing issue of marine debris, funding cleanup and research projects nationwide. A $7.3 million grant is matched to a total of $14.7 million—which will make 25 different projects possible, including some in the Bay region.

Of the funding, about $1.4 million will support five marine debris research projects, including one in Maryland and one in Delaware. The grantees will “investigate and identify the critical input pathways for marine debris introduction into the coastal zone,” NOAA says.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

 

New regulations credited for decrease in striped bass harvest

August 20, 2021 — Striped bass catches were down along the Atlantic coast last year, an early sign that tough regulations imposed across 15 states are helping the species recover from years of overfishing.

A new report from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission estimates that in 2020 nearly 5.1 million striped bass were “removed,” a figure that includes commercial and recreational catches as well as those that likely died after being caught and released.

The harvest count has fluctuated widely through the years, from a low of 1.1 million in 1990 to a high of 10.9 million in 2006.

In 2019, the Atlantic States commission, which manages estuary and near-shore fisheries from Maine to Florida, mandated that each state cut its commercial quotas by 18% compared with 2017 levels, and it limited recreational fisherman to taking home one fish per day.

Read the full story at The Bay Journal

Maryland is awarding $3.4 million in relief funds to seafood industry

August 10, 2021 — Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources on Monday, Aug. 9 opened a grant application process for the commercial seafood and aquaculture industry, with plans to distribute a total of $3.4 million in direct payments to businesses and operations in the sector this fall.

The application portal is available via Maryland Onestop: onestop.md.gov. The deadline to apply is Aug. 27.

DNR will award the money to commercial, for hire, aquaculture and seafood processing businesses and operations that can show in the application that they have suffered a loss of greater than 35% in generated revenue because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The grant money comes through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, passed by the U.S. Congress in late 2020 for economic assistance to Americans during the pandemic.

In a statement, Gov. Larry Hogan said he was “proud” to invest in the seafood industry, which is particularly vibrant on the Eastern Shore where many of the watermen work and seafood plants and operations are located.

Read the full story at My Eastern Shore

Speeding ships in the Chesapeake Bay endanger rare right whales, environmentalists report

August 9, 2021 — Most ships moving through the Chesapeake Bay don’t slow down as required to protect the endangered North Atlantic right whale, environmentalists said in a new report.

About 64% of vessels in the area don’t comply with speed rules designed to allow boat drivers to see and veer around the whales susceptible to strikes — sometimes going up to four times the required speed, according to the report released recently by conservation nonprofit Oceana. Cargo ships were the worst offenders.

There are fewer than 400 North Atlantic right whales left, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, making them one of the most endangered marine mammals on the planet.

They were named for being the “right whale” to kill during the whaling era, said Whitney Webber, Oceana’s campaign director. They were easy to pursue and their thick layer of blubber — used for oil — kept them afloat after killing, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Are striped bass doomed? Some conservationists are worried.

July 26, 2021 — Fish, particularly species known as both sporting fish and table fare like the striped bass, need to be managed, collectively, among the states where they are sought. There’s often tinkering year to year, a tidelike give-and-take of state regulations — such as rules governing how many fish one person can keep — to appease recreational anglers, charter boat captains and commercial fishermen. That tinkering extends to other species of fish the striped bass eat. In some places, like the Chesapeake, Cape Cod and Montauk, at the eastern tip of Long Island, striped bass are intertwined with both the economy and the culture.

Stripers Forever believes the time for tinkering is over when it comes to striped bass. The call for a 10-year moratorium is an alarm meant to wake up anyone who believes the stock is healthy, says Mike Spinney, a member of the national board of Stripers Forever. “Immediately after we made that suggestion, the conversation changed,” Spinney, a Massachusetts resident, told me. “We got lambasted by some, but we received positive reception from others. The fact that people are debating whether this is the right approach is a plus for us. Why do we have to wait for a collapse to take action that is necessary now?”

Most of the Atlantic’s striped bass spawn in the Chesapeake Bay and its many tributaries each spring, and juveniles often stay there for years before heading into open ocean. Counting fish is not easy, obviously, and extrapolations are made based on the size of large breeding females known as cows. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which oversees management of the species for the Eastern states, has deemed the striped bass “overfished,” based on a 2018 assessment. The commission also found the striped bass’s mortality rate was high, meaning too many fish that are caught and released are not surviving.

“The stock is declining, and we’ve been seeing that in the stock assessments,” says Toni Kerns, the ASMFC’s fisheries policy director. As a result, the commission told states they needed to reduce the overall “removals” of the fish from the water, whether they are taken for food or accidentally killed. Lowering removals is often done in myriad ways, including instituting open and closed seasons, regulating the size of fish that can be kept and requiring the use of specific hooks aimed at reducing mortality. In Maryland, in June, each fisherman on Motovidlak’s boat was allowed to keep two striped bass between 19 and 28 inches. Everyone caught two legal fish, and plenty of smaller ones were thrown back. Occasionally, small dead stripers floated past the Dawn Marie and other boats.

Read the full story at The Washington Post