Saving Seafood

Alaska’s $10 Million Cut to its Fisheries Budget Expected to Ripple Across the Commercial Industry

April 26, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The $10 million cut to Alaska’s fishery budget for the 2017 fiscal year is expected to have widespread ramifications for the state’s commercial industry.  Last year’s budget cuts resulted in 109 fishery projects getting axed. Now another 65 are on the cut list for the upcoming fiscal year that begins on July 1. The slimmer budget means resources are more limited for fishery stock surveys and scientific research in addition to other fishery management needs.  “With cuts of that magnitude, everything is on the table,” said Scott Kelley, director of the Commercial Fisheries Division at the Dept. of Fish and Game.

We ran an opinion piece from D.B. Pleschner, the Executive Director of the California Wetfish Producers, that points to the recent scientific evidence that suggests West Coast sardine stocks are actually rebuilding. Pleschner writes how recent recruitment reports show the fishery’s young fish stocks are trending very close to how they looked prior to the 2007 population peak.  She also discusses how these scientific findings have gained little attention from the media and NGOS, who have instead blamed overfishing and lack of management for the stock’s declines.

In other news, China added lobster, crab and coldwater shrimp imports to a list of E-commerce items that are eligible for expedited cross-border clearance and lower taxes. The list an effort by China to reduce the cross-border tax paid by consumers, and to close a loophole that allowed parcel shipments to avoid taxes when resold, for instance, when they are imported by wholesalers.

Vietnam expects a 12 percent hike in exported shrimp revenues to push its overall earnings in seafood shipments past $7 billion this year. Shrimp is on track to account for about half of this year’s earnings.

Finally, Vinh Hoan will debut a line of untreated, premium pangasius fillets to the market at its booth number 5-553 during the Seafood Expo Global in Brussels this week. “People today want more natural food options with minimal processing and our untreated Premium Pangasius fillets provide that along with a delicious dining experience,” said Nguyen Ngo Vi Tam, Vinh Hoan Sales and Marketing Director. “With Vinh Hoan’s long-established commitment to sustainable practices, it just makes sense we would lead the way with this untreated option.”

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

New York Times spotlights perils faced by Atlantic scallop fleet

April 18, 2016 – In an April 15 story, the New York Times described in detail the challenges faced at sea by members of the limited access scallop fleet. The story covered the rescue of the Carolina Queen III, which ran aground off the Rockaways Feb. 25, during a storm with waves cresting as high as 14 feet. The following is an excerpt from the story:

Scallop fishing may not conjure up the derring-do of those catching crabs in the icy waters of the Bering Strait or the exploits of long-line tuna fisherman chronicled on shows like “The Deadliest Catch.” But the most dangerous fishing grounds in America remain those off the Northeast Coast — more dangerous than the Bering Sea, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 people died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast.

The scallop industry had the second-highest rate of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100,000 workers. Among all workers in the United States over the same period, according to the C.D.C., there were four deaths per 100,000 workers. The size of the crew and the time at sea contribute to the dangers.

Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, said that since 2010, the number of vessels permitted to fish for scallops has been limited, and with fewer unregistered ships at sea, there have been fewer accidents.

The Atlantic sea scallop — Placopecten magellanicus — has been popular since the 1950s, when Norwegian immigrants first scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The supply could swing between scarcity and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms known as brown tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to destroy the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even after those tides passed, the industry almost did itself in by overfishing. Only after regulations were passed in the 1990s and the industry banded together with the scientific community to improve fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound.

Now, scalloping along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina is among the most lucrative fishing in the world. In 2014, the catch was estimated to be worth more than $424 million.

The industry operates under strict guidelines, many aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To fish some areas with known scallop beds, a permit is needed, and the haul is capped. Open-sea fishing, on the other hand, is restricted only by the annual 32-days-at-sea limit.

The clock is always ticking.

“We get so few days to go out, we have to find every efficiency to maximize our days at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a boat called the Rigulus, is part of the tight-knit scalloping community.

In preparation for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the crew would have spent days getting ready, buying $3,000 in groceries, loading more than 20,000 pounds of ice and prepping the equipment on the twin-dredge vessel.

The vessel steamed north from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to reach the coast off New Jersey, where the crew would probably have started fishing. Then the work would begin.

It is pretty standard for a crew to work eight hours on and take four hours off, but in reality it often is more like nine hours on and three off. If you are a good sleeper, you are lucky to get two hours’ shut-eye before heading back on deck.

The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops dredge for about 50 minutes and are then hauled up, their catch dumped on deck before the tows are reset and plunged back into the water, a process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

While the dredge did its work, the crew on duty on the Carolina Queen sorted through the muddy mix of rocks and sand and other flotsam on the ship’s deck, looking for the wavy round shells of the scallops.

“The biggest danger is handling the gear on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is very heavy gear on a pitching deck, and you get a lot of injured feet, injured hands.”

Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they must be shucked by hand.

The crew spends hours opening the shells and slicing out the abductor muscle of the mollusks — the fat, tasty morsel that winds up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, where a plate of sea scallops à la plancha costs as much as $33.

A single boat can haul 4,000 pounds in a day.

Read the full story at the New York Times

VIRGINIA: Rediscovering a taste for Chesapeake scallops

April 18, 2016 — The Croxton cousins want to do for the Chesapeake Bay scallop what they helped do for its oyster: bring it back from the brink with bivalve farming and some savvy marketing.

That was the idea behind an event last night where the co-owners of Rappahannock Oyster Co. offered an early taste of the Bay scallops they hope to grow into a new commercial product. After successfully cultivating a small crop of the scallops, which take up to six months to become bite-size, Ryan and Travis Croxton hope to begin selling the shellfish at their four restaurants and elsewhere in the fall.

“They’ve been extinct (in the Bay) since 1933,” Travis Croxton said at the event. “We just found that out a couple years ago and thought—we love scallops, we love the Chesapeake Bay, let’s reintroduce them.”

The work they heard about was that of scientists at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who have been quietly restoring a small Bay scallops population at their Gloucester Point facility since the late 1990s.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Chesapeake Blue Crab Population Grows 35 Percent

April 14, 2016 — The results of a survey of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population suggest a good summer for local crabs.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources says its annual dredge survey in Maryland and Virginia shows there are more than 550 million blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay, the fourth highest level in two decades.

That number is a 35 percent increase in the crab population compared with last year, which was a 38 percent increase over 2014’s results.

See the full story at NBC Washington

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

Maryland Wants to Take shells for oyster project from prime fishing reef

MARYLAND – March 22, 2016 — Seeking to counter a shortage of oyster habitat in the Chesapeake Bay, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources is renewing a controversial bid to dredge old shells that have built up over centuries from an ancient reef southeast of Baltimore. Reviving a plan abandoned in 2009, the DNR has applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for a permit to take 5 million bushels of shells from Man-O-War shoal just beyond the mouth of the Patapsco River. Ultimately, though, the state wants to barge away 30 million bushels, or about a third of the 456-acre reef.

The shells are needed to replace or augment oyster reefs worn down by harvesting and buried under an accumulation of silt, the DNR said. State officials said they would use much of the dredged shell in future large-scale, restoration projects. Some would also go to help the public fishery, though and to assist oyster farmers growing bivalves on leased plots of the Bay and its tributaries.

But the DNR’s request is drawing flak from conservationists, fishermen and even some watermen who might benefit.

Read the full story at ODU Magazine.

MARYLAND: New seafood industry group lobbies against oyster project

MARYLAND – March 22, 2016 –A new group has emerged to speak for the seafood industry in contentious Chesapeake Bay fisheries issues, and it’s already being heard in Maryland on oyster restoration.

The Delmarva Fisheries Association formed last year with the stated intent of bringing together watermen, restaurant owners, packing houses, oyster farmers and boat captains.

Capt. Robert Newberry, the association’s president and founder, used to oyster in the Upper Bay and is now a charter boat captain and a hunting guide. He said he wanted to form a group that would unite the seafood industry.

One of their first priorities, he said, was getting Maryland’s governor to take a closer look at the oyster reef construction project in the Tred Avon, which is part of an effort to restore bivalves in three of the state’s tributaries that will cost tens of millions of dollars. All three have been designated sanctuaries, off-limits to commercial harvesting.

See the full story at the Bay Journal

Chesapeake Bay Nothing Like Caribbean

February 14, 2016 — In his letter, “Menhaden are critical for bay restoration,” Tscharner D. Watkins III begins with a protracted discussion of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem before resorting to hyperbole. Referring to the menhaden, he states “these filter feeders kept our waters clear, much like the waters in the Caribbean.”

The Chesapeake Bay is a tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean — which is also fed by more than 150 streams and rivers within its watershed, emanating from six states and the District of Columbia. Thus it contains the same saline waters of the Atlantic, but has not borne within the past (nor does it continue to bear) any resemblance to the more pristine waters of the Caribbean Sea.

The marine dead zones are hypoxic waters which are so depleted of oxygen that they are unable to support life, resulting oftentimes in massive fish kills. The oxygen-robbing algal blooms which are symptomatic of the hypoxia are caused by the problematic runoff of residential, agricultural and industrial effluent throughout the watershed. Therefore, the menhaden are ill-affected by the disruption in the marine food chain, but should not necessarily be regarded as the root cause of the hypoxia.

Read the full letter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch

Omega Protein Upholds ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’, Avoids Fishing Near Virginia Beach

January 29, 2016 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:

In July of last year, Menhaden Fisheries Coalition member Omega Protein met with recreational fishermen from the Virginia Beach area to discuss and resolve potential issues arising from menhaden fishing in the area. At the summer meeting, the two groups reached an informal agreement, whereby Omega Protein would not fish within three miles of shore of an area extending from Cape Henry Lighthouse to the Sandbridge fishing pier, some of Virginia Beach’s most popular tourist areas (See the image below, taken from this WAVY report).

 

Since then, Omega Protein has kept its promise to avoid these areas. The images below are maps of menhaden fishing activity in the Virginia Beach area, provided by the Beaufort Laboratory of NOAA’s National Marine Fishing Service.

Press accounts in December 2015 referenced sightings of Omega Protein vessels fishing offshore in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel in Virginia Beach as evidence that the agreement was violated. In fact, any sightings of fishing vessels in that locale would have been outside the agreed-upon area, and well within legally regulated fishing zones.
The image on the left shows fishing activity through July 2015, before the agreement was reached. The image on the right shows activity from the end of July through remainder of the 2015 fishing season. Since the agreement was entered into, there has been no menhaden fishing in the Virginia Beach three-mile buffer zone; all menhaden fishing activity in southern Virginia has taken place outside of the agreed-upon off-limits area. As shown in these maps, Omega Protein vessels adhered to the “Gentlemen’s agreement” for the remainder of the fishing season.

Removal of derelict fishing gear has major economic impact

January 22, 2016— A new study by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science shows that removal of derelict fishing gear could generate millions of dollars in extra harvest value for commercial fisheries worldwide.

The study focused on a 6-year, collaborative program to remove derelict crab pots from Chesapeake Bay, showing that the effort generated more than $20 million in harvest value for area watermen.

Extending their methodology to estimate the economic benefits of removing derelict crab pots and lobster traps on a global basis, the researchers showed that removal of even 10% of derelict pots and traps from major crustacean fisheries—the percentage of the Bay’s derelict pots they estimate were removed by the VIMS program—could increase landings by 293,929 metric tons, at a value of $831 million annually.

Read the full story at Phys.org