Saving Seafood

New England Council Discusses Whiting, Enforcement, Dogfish, Herring, Ecosystem Management, and More at December Meeting

December 14, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council covered numerous issues during its December 4-6 meeting in Newport, RI. In addition to taking final action on Scallop Framework 30, Groundfish Framework 58, and the Clam Dredge Framework, the Council discussed a slate of other topics. Here are a few highlights.

WHITING: The Council took final action on Whiting Amendment 22, which was developed to consider limited access options for the small-mesh multispecies fishery. After reviewing all public comment and available analyses and considering a recommendation from its Whiting Committee, the Council selected the alternative called “status quo/no action.” As such, the whiting/small-mesh multispecies fishery will remain an open access fishery and no changes will be made to existing regulatory measures. More information, including summaries of public hearing comments, is available at December 3 Committee Meeting and December 4, 2018 Council Meeting Materials.

ENFORCEMENT: The Council adopted several consensus statements drafted by its Enforcement Committee. One of these pertained to use of the OMEGA Mesh Gauge® to measure fishing nets. The Coast Guard extensively tested the OMEGA gauge and concluded that it has notable benefits over the weight-and-spade tools currently being used to measure webbing. Coast Guard representatives provided a demonstration for Council members comparing the OMEGA gauge versus the weight-and-spade. The Council recommended that NOAA, under existing authority, adopt the OMEGA gauge to measure mesh size once the Enforcement Section of NOAA General Counsel determines that all legal requirements have been met.

Read the full release at the New England Fishery Management Council

 

DAVID H. WALLACE: Grateful for Jon Mitchell’s advocacy of clam industry

December 12, 2018 — I would like to publicly thank Mayor Jon Mitchell for attending Tuesday’s New England Fishery Management Council’s meeting to advocate on behalf of the clam industry and the 500 local families that depend upon it. Mayor Mitchell spoke fervently in favor of Alternative 2, citing the $10 million economic value of the industry to New Bedford’s working waterfront.

Mayor Mitchell has great respect for the commercial fishermen, processors, and other related supply chain businesses that generate incredible economic value throughout New Bedford and the greater northeast coast. He understands that all industry members are not only small business owners that provide jobs and wages to Greater New Bedford residents but are also stewards of the ocean with a belief in the long-term sustainability of its resources.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

JACK SPILLANE: A rogue agency gets set to shut down another New Bedford fishery

December 10, 2018 — Scott Lang has been around fisheries issues for a long time.

Both when he was mayor and afterwards.

In 2013, Lang helped organize the Center for Sustainable Fisheries as a grassroots lobbying group to try to make sure New Bedford fishermen were not totally forgotten by NOAA. He’s worked for the industry for a long time and seen a lot of arguments from both sides back-and-forth over the years.

But until last week, he said he had never seen NOAA make a decision to close a fishery with no science behind it. Not even questionable science, as for years NOAA has used for New England groundfishing limits in the opinion of many.

NOAA’s decision to close the Rose and Crown Zone and Zone D to surf clammers is based on anecdotal evidence related to UMass Dartmouth scientist Kevin Stokesbury’s research for the scallop industry, first done almost two decades ago.

The camera net device Stokesbury invented was for measuring scallop habitats but NOAA has used his science to measure clam beds. It’s not the same, Stokesbury told The Standard-Times. The images his survey produces are of the ocean floor about a kilometer apart and clammers often dredge in much shorter distances.

The clammers have offered to do surveys that will be more applicable to clam beds in the areas of Nantucket Shoals in question. They would need about three years to do that but they would have to keep fishing in the closed areas in order to pay for it.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New England Council Supports Surfclam, Mussel Fishery Access to Certain Areas Within Great South Channel HMA Plus Further Research

December 5, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has signed off on new measures that will allow surfclam fishermen to continue fishing within strictly defined boundaries inside the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area (HMA). Increased monitoring provisions will apply. Mussel fishermen also will be able to fish in the new areas. The measures are included in the Council’s Clam Dredge Framework, which is a trailing action to Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Amendment 2, often referred to as OHA2.

The amendment was implemented April 9, 2018 and prohibited the use of mobile bottom-tending gear within the HMA. However, the surfclam fishery was granted a one-year exemption to continue operating in all but the northeast corner of the area. This exemption expires April 9, 2019. If the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, NOAA Fisheries) approves and implements the Clam Dredge Framework, surfclam and mussel fishermen will be granted long-term exemptions under certain restrictions for the following subareas:

  • McBlair – Year round;
  • Zone AB – Year round; and
  • East Door/OldSouth – seasonally from May 1 through October 31.

In addition, the Habitat Plan Development Team (PDT) will work with industry to prioritize research needs for two other sub-areas:

  • Rose and Crown; and
  • Zone D.

Once prioritized research needs are identified for Rose and Crown and Zone D, the Council’s intent is that fishermen and researchers will work collaboratively toward obtaining exempted fishing permits for these sub-areas to better define where concentrations of surfclams can be harvested without disturbing sensitive habitat. The Council said this research potentially could lead to the development of additional exemptions in the future.

Read the full release at the New England Fishery Management Council

 

Vital surf clam harvesting grounds closed by New England Fishery Management Council

December 5, 2018 — Clamming captains, business-owners and attorneys huddled in the lobby of the Viking Hotel on Tuesday sharing disbelief and despair over a decision by the New England Fisheries Management Council that will close vital harvesting grounds.

“A lot of these guys are going to go out of business,” owner and president of Nantucket Sound Seafood LLC Al Rencurrel said. “Obviously the economic impact, they didn’t view that, did they?”

Heading into the meeting, the surf clam industry hoped for the approval of “Alternative 2,” which would continue an exemption in its fishing areas but would modify boundaries including seasonal areas. It also called for increased monitoring with 5-minute vessel monitoring system to locate where the vessels are fishing. The clam industry would also fund a research project that NOAA would undertake to examine the habitat.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishermen backing surf clammers in fight over harvest area

December 4, 2018 — Groundfish stakeholders are supporting the surf clam industry’s efforts to retain fishing rights in pockets of the Great South Channel of the Nantucket Shoals as long as the approved management policy does not prompt “mitigations or further habitat restrictions on the groundfish fishery.”

In a letter to the New England Fishery Management Council, and in a later interview, the executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition said the coalition has supported efforts by Gloucester-based Intershell and the rest of the Northeast surf clam industry to keep fishing rights off Nantucket as the final piece of the Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2.

On Tuesday, the New England Fishery Management Council, meeting in Newport, Rhode Island, is expected to decide whether one of the more lucrative fishing grounds for the surf clam fishery — 10 to 20 miles east and southeast of Nantucket — will remain open to surf clamming or restricted or closed as part of a protectionist effort to designate the full area as an essential fish habitat that would be off limits to surf clamming dredging gear.

“During the development of OHA 2, NSC supported the clam dredge industry’s need to preserve access to distinct areas within the larger habitat closure areas under consideration,” Jackie Odell, NSC executive director, wrote to council Chairman John Quinn. “NSC continues to support endeavors to identify areas within the Great South Channel HMA that balances the conservation objectives of OHA2 with the economic realities of the fishery in a manner that is both fair and equitable to the fisheries that already have been impacted under OHA 2.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Clam controversy: Prime area may be closed to save fish

November 29, 2018 —  In June, at the Intershell dock on Commercial Street, owners Monte and Yibing Gao Rome launched their new 55-foot surf clam boat, F/V Bing Bing, amid the hoopla and happiness associated with a new Gloucester boat going into the water.

The Bing Bing sitting pretty at the dock that day was the most recent, and perhaps most palpable, reflection of Intershell’s commitment to the surf clam fishery. The metal-hulled boat, built in Mississippi in 1977 and just off a 10-month retrofit, became the third surf clam boat in the Intershell fleet.

But on Tuesday, in a ballroom of the aptly named Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, Intershell and the other major surf clammers along the Northeast will find out if they still have a surf clam fishery to call home in the lucrative and historically rich Great South Channel of the Nantucket Shoals.

The New England Fishery Management Council, in a trailing action to its Omnibus 2 Essential Fish Habitat Amendment, will decide if a large swath of the current surf clam fishery, 10 to 20 miles east and southeast of Nantucket, will remain open to surf clamming or possibly be closed as part of a protectionist move to designate the full area as an essential fish habitat.

If designated as a full essential fish habitat, the whole Great South Channel would be closed to surf clammers and their hydraulic water-pressure dredging gear, as it already has been to all other types of mobile, bottom tending gear.

The clammers initially got a one-year extension to continue fishing when the council designated the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area. That exemption is set to expire April 9, 2019.

“The Nantucket Shoals are one of the premium, large-scale harvest areas on the East Coast and not an essential fish habitat,” Monte Rome said Wednesday as workers buzzed around the the sprawling Intershell facility in the Blackburn Industrial Park. “We’ve been going to habitat committee meetings and plan development meetings for months and they have constantly revealed that right now there is not anywhere near enough data to make a decision on whether this is an essential fish habitat. They say it might be. We say there is essentially no fish habitat within the area where we have fished for surf clams for the past 30 years.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Could Oysters Ease Trade Tensions With U.S.? European Leaders Hope So

November 14, 2018 — BRUSSELS — The United States and Europe may one day put aside their differences on trade, eliminate tariffs on industrial goods and work together to rein in their common economic adversary, China.

But for Cecilia Malmstrom, the European trade commissioner, the most urgent task is to produce quick results, however humble, that will keep an impatient President Trump from imposing even more drastic penalties on European imports than the tariffs his administration has already levied.

So when Ms. Malmstrom meets in Washington on Wednesday with her American counterpart, Robert E. Lighthizer, she will count it as a substantial victory if she can lower the barriers hindering one bit of trans-Atlantic commerce: oysters.

The United States and Europe have long banned the importing of each other’s shellfish. But a deal to ease trade on that front has been in the works for several years and could be dressed up by both sides as a success that helps smooth relations with the White House.

Shellfish may seem like an odd focus for negotiators, but exports from the United States are worth about $1.7 billion a year. And international trade in clams, mussels, oysters and scallops — all of which are shipped live by air — is growing.

The emphasis on mollusks also illustrates a strategy that officials in Brussels hope will prevent Mr. Trump from acting on a threat to impose steep tariffs on European cars, a potentially devastating blow to the European economy.

Read the full story at The New York Times

 

Key US Shellfish Quotas Will Remain the Same Next Year

November 8, 2018 — A couple of the most significant fisheries for shellfish on the East Coast will have the same catch quotas next year.

Fishermen harvest surf clams and ocean quahogs from the Atlantic Ocean every year for use in chowders, fried clam dinners and other popular seafood dishes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the quota for the two species will be unchanged in the new fishing year that begins on Jan. 1.

The quota will be 5.33 million bushels for ocean quahogs and 3.4 million bushels for surf clams. The quota for Maine ocean quahogs will be limited to 100,000 Maine bushels, which is also the same as the current year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Atlantic surf clam stocks continue to shift up the coast

November 7, 2018 — The surf clam fishery — typically centered from the Mid-Atlantic states to northern New Jersey — continues to shift northward. Over time, the distribution shows increased landings in southern New England and Georges Bank. Southern New England and Long Island are productive for ocean quahogs.

Quota for both fisheries has been the same for 15 years, and set at levels higher than demand since the mid-2000s. Fishermen, for the past decade, have come shy of reaching quota, harvesting between 86 percent in 2008 down to 64 percent in 2017.

“The industry has asked the council to maintain the quotas at those levels due to anticipated market demand,” said José Montañez, fishery management specialist with the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The 2018 commercial quota for surf clams is 3.4 million bushels. For ocean quahog, Maine quota is set at 100,000 bushels and other states have a quota of 5.33 million bushels. As of late September, 44 percent of the surf clam quota and 36 percent of the quahog quota had been harvested, on pace with previous years.

Average ex-vessel price was $13.90 per bushel in 2017. The total ex-vessel value of 2017’s federal surf clam harvest hit about $31 million, the same as in 2016. In 2017, $23 million worth of ocean quahogs were recorded. It appears that 2018 values will look similar.

Bekah Angoff, of the boutique Boston-based Pangea Shellfish ships surf clams to consumers throughout U.S. and Canada. The wholesale cost is $2.50-$3 per pound, with seasonal variation, and one clam/pound including shell and meat.

Read the full story at National Fisherman