Saving Seafood

Partnerships Improve the 2020 Atlantic Surfclam Stock Assessment

June 23, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Atlantic surfclams live at depths between 20 and 35 meters, with an optimal temperature range of 16 to 22o C. They are managed as one stock, with two biologically distinct areas. Surfclams in the northern area on Georges Bank are faster growing than southern surfclams, and the populations don’t mix.

Thirty years ago, southern surfclams grew faster than they do now, and lived in shallower waters. They were also bigger than the surfclams on Georges Bank. Now, these dynamics are reversed. Surfclams in the southern areas have moved to deeper waters, and grow more slowly, to a smaller maximum size. These population changes have been observed by fishermen, noted in their logbooks, and appear in research survey data.

In recent assessments, scientists treated the two areas separately, each with its own assessment model. This time, there is one model with two areas. Dan Hennen, lead surfclam assessment scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, developed this model. He collaborated closely with the surfclam industry and academic partners, like the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

Working together led to a two-area model, which better deals with the challenges of a population with changing dynamics. Understanding how growth is changing led to better diagnostic behavior in our model. This gives fisheries managers more confidence that it accurately reflects what is going on in the population.

Read the full release here

RHODE ISLAND: Virus puts freeze on demand for shellfish

April 3, 2020 — Jody King’s hands usually dry out from salt water after a day of work on Narragansett Bay, where he rakes quahogs for a living from the sandy bottom around Prudence Island.

Now, King’s hands dry out from using too much Purell.

His last day of steady quahogging was more than a week ago, when his dealer called to say he couldn’t buy any more clams. These days, King sits at home, waiting for a call to return to work.

With restaurants shuttered and fish markets in Boston, New York and other East Coast cities closed because of the spread of coronavirus, quahoggers like King have been left with no demand for their product.

“The bay is open, and I can’t go to work,” said King. “This is an absolute first.”

Andrade’s Catch in Bristol usually buys 4,000 to 6,000 clams a day from quahoggers, but after the wholesale business collapsed the shop could only move 1,000 pieces a day selling retail to locals.

“We could make it another month, a month and a half like this, but the fishermen are really at risk,” said Davy Andrade, a part-time owner of the shop. “It takes about $200 a day to run a boat and pay the bills and feed their family, and these guys are pulling in $100 a day if they’re lucky.”

Read the full story at the Warwick Beacon

NOAA Fisheries Announces Final 2020 Atlantic Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Commercial Fishery Specifications and Minimum Size Suspension for Atlantic Surfclams

February 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is implementing surfclam and ocean quahog quotas for the 2020 fishing year that we previously announced as projected on February 6, 2018. There have been no overages in 2019, and there is no new biological information, so we are now finalizing the 2020 quotas. The 2020 fishing year quotas will remain 3.4 million bushels for surfclams, 5.33 million bushels for ocean quahogs, and 100,000 Maine bushels for Maine ocean quahogs.

NOAA Fisheries is also suspending the minimum size requirement for surfclams. Discard, catch, and biological data show that 22 percent of 2019 coastwide landed surfclams had a shell length less than 4.75 inches, which is less than the 30 percent trigger for a minimum size requirement. This is closer to the trigger than in prior years. Vessels are encouraged to avoid areas with a lot of clams under 4.75 inches to reduce the chance of initiating the default minimum size in 2021.

For more details, read the final rule as published in the Federal Register today and the permit holder bulletin posted on our website.

NEFMC Reviews Great South Channel HMA Research Proposal; Receives Wind Updates

January 30, 2020 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council discussed several offshore wind and habitat-related issues during its late January meeting in Portsmouth, NH, including a proposed exempted fishing permit (EFP) for the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area (HMA) that would allow surfclam and mussel dredging within a defined portion of Rose & Crown – one of the HMA’s research-only areas.

The HMA was created through the Council’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2, which was implemented April 9, 2018. Surfclam dredge vessels were granted a one-year exemption to continue fishing in the area. The exemption expired April 9, 2019.

The Council developed a Clam Dredge Framework as a trailing action to the amendment to consider allowing the use of clam dredge gear and, subsequently, mussel dredge gear within the HMA if the gear could be used without harming sensitive habitat.

Read the full release here

Microplastics in vast majority of Oregon shellfish, study finds

November 13, 2019 — A Portland State University study found tiny pieces of plastic in the vast majority of razor clams and oysters sampled along the Oregon coast and noted that the primary source of contamination was from fibers used in synthetic textiles.

Those microscopic fibers can be shed by yoga pants, fleeces and other active wear made of synthetic textiles during a wash — up to 700,000 per load of laundry, according to the study, which was reported on Tuesday in The Oregonian/OregonLive. These fibers are in the wastewater from laundry machines that eventually winds up in the ocean, although some of the tiny plastic fibers could also come from derelict fishing gear, the newspaper said.

The shellfish in question were plucked from 15 sites, from Clatsop in the north to Gold Beach near the California border, in both the spring and summer of 2017. Of the roughly 300 shellfish analyzed, all but two contained at least some microplastics, Elise Granek, a PSU professor of environmental science and management, said.

The study was published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KOMO

Dangerous new hot zones are spreading around the world

September 12, 2019 — The day the yellow clams turned black is seared in Ramón Agüero’s memory.

It was the summer of 1994. A few days earlier, he had collected a generous haul, 20 buckets of the thin-shelled, cold-water clams, which burrow a foot deep into the sand along a 13-mile stretch of beach near Barra del Chuy, just south of the Brazilian border. Agüero had been digging up these clams since childhood, a livelihood passed on for generations along these shores.

But on this day, Agüero returned to find a disastrous sight: the beach covered in dead clams.

“Kilometer after kilometer, as far as our eyes could see. All of them dead, rotten, opened up,” remembered Agüero, now 70. “They were all black, and had a fetid odor.”

He wept at the sight.

The clam die-off was an alarming marker of a new climate era, an early sign of this coastline’s transformation. Scientists now suspect the event was linked to a gigantic blob of warm water extending from the Uruguayan coast far into the South Atlantic, a blob that has only gotten warmer in the years since.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

MAINE: After Last Year’s Poor Harvest, Mainers Work To Help Clam Fisheries Bounce Back

August 9th, 2019 — Last year Maine’s harvest of soft-shell clams was one of the worst in many decades, down to around 7 million pounds. That’s due in part to closures of polluted flats, and predation by the invasive green crab.

But harvesters and other observers say the fishery can bounce back — and new efforts to better protect the resource are emerging in more than a dozen coastal towns.

The Medomak River is Maine’s most prolific softshell clam fishery, and Glen Melvin has been picking them from the mudflats here, off and on, for more than four decades. Steering a beat-up aluminum outboard downstream from Waldoboro, Melvin sports a multi-colored bandana and mirrored sunglasses.

The boat flies past cove after cove, which in recent years have been frequently shut down to clamming because of pollution by fecal coliform.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio

Atlantic Capes Fisheries launches stuffed clams, scallops line aimed at millennials

July 23, 2019 — Atlantic Capes Fisheries is launching a line of frozen stuffed clams and scallops for retail and foodservice.

The Fall River, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based harvester, processor, and marketer of Marine Stewardship Council-certified scallops and North Atlantic seafood is launching the new value-added seafood items under the Galilean’s Kitchen brand.

First, it will roll out Galilean’s Kitchen New England Style Stuffed Clams in a nine-count package for retail and a 36-count pack for foodservice. Then, Galilean’s Kitchen will launch Stuffed Scallops and Gourmet Stuffed Clam Flights, in four flavors: Bacon & Cheddar, Thai Chili Lime, Mediterranean, and Portuguese-style.

While the Matlaw’s brand of stuffed clams has been on the market for years, “Galilean’s Kitchen products are a much higher quality than competition,” Steve Zevitas, vice president and sales manager at Atlantic Capes, told SeafoodSource. “We are targeting the millennials with the gourmet line of flavors, Stuffed Clam Flights.”

The New England Stuffed Clams are made from sweet and briny hand-shucked Atlantic surf clams, fleet-direct from Atlantic Capes’ boats, and mixed with onions, red bell peppers, garlic, and seasoning.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Mid-Atlantic Council to Hold Public Hearings for Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Excessive Shares Amendment

July 2, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council will hold four public hearings in August and September 2019 to solicit public input on the Draft Atlantic Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Excessive Shares Amendment. The Council is also soliciting written comments on the amendment through September 14, 2019.

The Excessive Shares Amendment considers a variety of approaches to ensure that no individual, corporation, or other entity acquires an excessive share of the Atlantic surfclam and ocean quahog individual transferrable quota (ITQ) privileges. In addition, this action includes measures to revise the process for specifying multi-year management measures, require periodic review of the excessive share cap level, and allow adjustments to be made under the frameworkable provisions of the FMP. Lastly, this action may also revise the management objectives for the Atlantic Surfclam and Ocean Quahog Fishery Management Plan.

Additional information is available at http://www.mafmc.org/actions/scoq-excessive-shares-amendment. A public hearing document will be posted no later than July 18.

Attend a Scoping Hearing

Public hearings will be held on the following dates:

  1. Thursday, August 1, 2019 at 6:30PM: The Grand Hotel. 1045 Beach Avenue, Cape May, NJ 08204; telephone: (609) 884-5611.
  2. Wednesday, August 7, 2019 at 6:30PM: Internet webinar. Connection information to be posted at http://www.mafmc.org/council-events/2019/scoq-excessive-shares-amendment-public-hearing-2 prior to the meeting.
  3. Monday, September 9, 2019 at 6:30PM: LaQuinta Inns & Suites, 300 S. Salisbury Blvd., Salisbury, MD 21801; telephone: (410) 546-4400.
  4. Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at 6:30PM: Radisson Hotel Providence Airport. 2081 Post Rd, Warwick, RI 02886; telephone: (401) 739-3000.

Submit Written Comments:

In addition to providing comments at any of the scoping hearings, you may submit written comments by 11:59 PM, Eastern Standard Time, on September 14, 2019. Written comments may be sent by any of the following methods:

Please include “SCOQ Excessive Shares Amendment Comments” in the subject line if using email or fax or on the outside of the envelope if submitting written comments.

Please direct any questions about the amendment to José Montañez, jmontanez@mafmc.org, (302) 526-5258.

Just Five Types of Fish Dominate our Fish Counters. It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way.

May 12, 2019 — Dozens of species of fish and shellfish are caught in New England’s waters. But only a handful show up in most seafood retailers. You can probably list them: cod, haddock, scallops, clams, lobster.

Now, it’s not just anecdotal. A citizen science initiative has found that five species dominate at New England seafood counters and that some of the species that are most common out in the ocean are the rarest in our markets.

That’s largely a reflection of our food tastes but it can have ecological – as well as economic – ramifications.

So, Eating with the Ecosystem – the group that ran the citizen science project – has also released a cookbook to help us enjoy a greater diversity of seafood. It’s called Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries.

Read the full story at WCAI