Saving Seafood

ASMFC American Lobster Board Approves 5% Increase in Egg Production for the Southern New England Lobster Stock

May 11, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Management Board approved moving forward with the goal of increasing egg production for the Southern New England (SNE) stock of American lobster by 5%. This increase in egg production can be achieved through a suite of management tools including gauge size changes, trap reductions, and seasonal closures. The recreational fishery is only subject to changes in the gauge size should any be proposed. In making its decision, the Board took into consideration the extensive public comment, which overwhelmingly supported status quo, and the fact that stock declines are largely a result of climatic changes, including increasing water temperatures over the last 15 years.

The next step in the process will be for the Lobster Conservation Management Teams (LCMTs) in Areas 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 to develop area-specific proposals on how to achieve the 5% increase in egg production.  As established through Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for American Lobster, LCMTs are composed of lobster industry members who are charged with recommending area-specific measures for Board consideration and approval. The LCMT proposals will be submitted for Technical Committee review in June and Board consideration in August. Once area-specific measures have been approved, the Board will consider final approval of Addendum XXV.

In its deliberation on the SNE lobster stock, the Board discussed the need to consider changes to the current management goals and reference points, noting changes in the marine environment may limit the ability to rebuild the stock to levels seen in the 1990s. The Board will continue to discuss these issues, particularly as the Commission’s Climate Change Work Group develops recommendations regarding the management of stocks impacted by changing climate conditions.

Decades of trawl surveys help Bering Sea climate change research

May 9, 2017 — There’s a new tool to help scientists and others interested in monitoring how Bering Sea fisheries respond to a changing climate.

Biologist Steve Barbeaux of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center has created hundreds of graphics mapping where 22 species of fish spend their time during different life stages.

The data comes from annual trawl surveys dating back to 1984, but Barbeaux says that information was hard to analyze as a whole.

“To understand the true impacts of climate change we have to look across all of these life stages to get a true picture of what’s going on,” Barbeaux said. “It potentially could be beneficial at one stage of life, but harmful at another stage of it’s life.”

Barbeaux started small — looking at greenland turbot, a species that is greatly impacted by temperature changes. When the fish develop from larvae to juveniles, they depend on a cold pool in the Bering Sea. But without it:

“You get high natural mortality,” Barbeaux said. “So for [the greenland turbot] the impact really is at that settlement stage. Versus pollock where that impact has more potentially to do with their midlife stage.”

Read the full story at KTOO

Get used to paying $20-plus for a lobster roll

May 8, 2017 — The market price for a lobster roll at Red’s Eats is $26.50, the highest it’s been in 79 years.

Yet tourists in line at the iconic lobster hut on the Sheepscot River this week didn’t blink. They came for a taste of Maine and were willing to pay for the experience. And they did, handsomely.

“The quantity and quality is well worth it,” said Jan Braida polishing off a roll with her husband Tony. The day before, these vacationing Ohioans spent $23.95 on a lobster roll in Kittery and say sampling Maine’s famed sandwich is the reason they are here.

The sky-high price of fresh lobster meat this spring sent a jolt through lobster roll purveyors such as Red’s and mobile eatery Bite into Maine in Greater Portland.

Deborah Gagnon, owner of Red’s Eats, is paying $45 a pound for fresh lobster meat. Other vendors have been quoted more than $50 for picked knuckles, tails and claws.

“When I was opening in April and heard the price, I was like ‘ohhhh, somebody hold me up,’” said Gagnon, whose signature overstuffed rolls deliver more than a typical lobster’s worth of meat. Despite the increase, she’s not prepared to skimp. “No matter how high the lobster price is, I have to have it. Visitors all over the world come here. If we don’t have it, it’s like ‘what the heck?,’” she said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

New rules for lobstering in southern New England up for vote

May 8, 2017 — New restrictions on lobster fishing are up for a vote early next week as regulators try to slow the loss of the valuable crustaceans from southern New England waters.

Scientists have said populations of lobsters off of Connecticut, Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts have declined as waters have warmed. A board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to vote on new management measures Monday and Tuesday.

Fishing managers are considering tools like trap reductions, changes to the legal harvesting size of lobsters and seasonal closures to try to preserve the population. Some lobster fishermen have opposed the possibility of new measures, saying such a move would kill off what remains of a once-vibrant fishery.

“Any further reductions in traps would be hard to accommodate, given that there are so few fishermen left in (southern) Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

Most U.S. lobster is brought to shore in Maine, on New England’s north end, and Canada’s fishery also contributes a lot of lobster to American markets. Maine has had record high catches in recent years, and the price of lobsters to fishermen and consumers has been high, too. The U.S. lobster fishery was worth more than $620 million at the docks in 2015, a record, and Maine had a record year in 2016.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Concord Monitor

Maine’s future depends on immediate action on climate change

May 3, 2017 — On Saturday, more than 2,000 Mainers marched to the State House in Augusta to demand action on climate change at both the state and federal levels. They made a compelling case that the future of the state is riding on the actions governments at all levels take right now to address the global threat.

“I have been a lobster fisherman out of Friendship Harbor for over 30 years. During that time I’ve seen firsthand the impacts of climate change to not only the Gulf of Maine, but also to our evolving fisheries, and to the coastal communities that depend upon them,” said Richard Nelson, speaking at the rally. “The Gulf of Maine, long battling ocean warming, now also faces off with climate change’s ugly stepsister: ocean acidification. Acidic waters make it more difficult for shellfish to produce their shells, and makes lobsters more vulnerable to prey and have less energies for reproduction. These changes will affect the oceans and the fishing communities that rely on them.”

The event was one of many People’s Climate Marches held across the country over the weekend in protest of the environmental policies of the Trump administration and to demand action to address carbon pollution and climate change.

Read the full story at the Maine Beacon

No shrimp today: Maine’s waters are warming and it’s costing fishermen money

April 20, 2017 — David Goethel wishes he could retire.

At 63, he’s been fishing off the Gulf of Maine for over 34 years. Shrimp used to be plentiful there. Back in 2000, Goethel remembers seeing 100 commercial boats out in the harbor. Now, he’s just one of a handful of local fisherman struggling to make a living.

“There was life on the docks, there were people working,” lifelong fisherman Arnold Gamage, 64, agrees. “Now, it looks like a ghost town.”

Maine’s fishing industry has been declining for years due to factors like overfishing and increased regulation, but there’s another culprit eating away at profits: Maine’s ocean waters are warming — and it’s killing northern shrimp.

Goethel, Gamage and other fishermen used to look forward to shrimping as a way to augment their income in the cold New England winters.

“Now, I see a lot of those same people, they’ve got 4-wheel trucks and they’re trying to plow snow to take in some kind of income,” Goethel says.

Regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission banned commercial shrimping in 2014. The goal was to give northern shrimp a chance to repopulate. While the ban has helped, regulators are still worried about the species’ survival.

Read the full story at WGNO

Climate change a character in Discovery’s ‘Deadliest Catch’

April 12, 2017 — Climate change is one of the main characters in the new season of “Deadliest Catch,” with the crab fishermen in one of Discovery’s most enduring and popular shows forced to deal with a sudden warming of the Bering Sea that chases their prey into deeper, more dangerous water.

That leads the adventure series into its own uncharted waters. The show’s 13th season debuts Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET.

“It’s a big risk for us to discuss climate change because so many people can think that it’s a political issue when really it isn’t, particularly in the context of the fishing fleet,” said R. Decker Watson, Jr., one of the show’s executive producers.

The waters off Alaska that provide the livelihood for the show’s real-life stars warmed by a dramatic 4 degrees in one year. The cold water-loving crab is depleted in the traditional fishing areas, so some of the boats strike out for new territory that is more dangerous because of fiercer storms and is further from rescue workers if something goes wrong, he said.

In fact, the new season documents one vessel lost at sea. It was not one of the crews regularly featured in the series, but all of the regulars knew who was involved, he said.

The developments offer an opportunity to educate an audience that might be less familiar about climate change. The median age of a “Deadliest Catch” viewer is 50 and the show skews 60 percent male which, judging by the results of the last election, might include its share of climate change skeptics. Yet Discovery isn’t interested in preaching; the series is more interested in documenting what is happening, not in explaining why.

There are no scientists aboard the fishing boats, and the show’s main purpose is to follow the lives of the crew, said Rich Ross, Discovery president.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

What Antarctic Killer Whales Can Teach Humans About Climate Change

April 11, 2017 — They stood on the top bridge of the cruise ship National Geographic Explorer, peering through binoculars at the vast icy Weddell Sea. It was a summer afternoon in February in Antarctica, the air a balmy 32-or-so degrees Fahrenheit, and John Durban and Holly Fearnbach, biologists with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, had spotted killer whales in the distance.

The only question was, were these the Type B2’s, with their gorgeous gray-and-white coloring and their culinary fondness for Gentoo penguins—one of only three kinds of killer whales found in the Antarctic Peninsula? Or another type of killer whale unique to these cold deep waters? From miles away it was hard to tell. The rest of us spectators on the ship, far from our native habitats of Texas, England, and Kenya, gazed out at the ice floes and the foggy horizon splashed with blue, wondering too.

The scientists were on board thanks to a grant from the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic (LEX-NG) Fund. The fund aspires to protect the ocean’s last pristine areas through research, conservation, education, and community-development projects in the company’s far-flung destinations.

For Durban and Fearnbach, who are based in sunny La Jolla, California, the fund has buoyed their research in Antarctica. While they also study orca and humpback whale populations in the Pacific Northwest, the North Atlantic and Alaska, on these trips they’ve been able to observe killer whales in perhaps the most inaccessible place on the planet. Since 2011, the scientists have made several voyages a year to the frozen continent on the Explorer, using the ice-cutting, refurbished Norwegian ferry to follow the whales.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

Sushi stress: Fishermen not catching many baby eels

April 11, 2017 — The chilly rivers of Maine are causing trouble in the world of sushi.

The state’s brief, annual season for baby eels is off to a slow start because of a cold spring that has prevented the fish from running in rivers.

The baby eels, called elvers, are an important piece of the worldwide sushi supply chain. They’re sold to Asian aquaculture companies — sometimes for more than $2,000 per pound — that raise them to maturity and use them as food.

“Everything is slow,” said state Rep. Henry Bear, who represents members of the Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians who fish for elvers. “But we’re hopeful.”

Maine has the only significant fishery for elvers in the country, and fishermen are limited to a quota of a little less than 10,000 pounds (4,500 kilograms) per year.

The season started March 22, and state records say fishermen have only caught about 1,050 pounds (475 kilograms), so far. They have until June 7 to try to catch the entire allotment, which means they are well behind pace.

The average temperature for March in the Portland area this year was 28.8 degrees. The normal average is 33.5 degrees.

Fishermen said they are confident the season will pick up, as some warm weather is forecast for Monday and the rest of the week in southern Maine. Fishermen catch the elvers in rivers and streams with nets, and sell them to dealers. So far, they’re selling for $1,487 per pound at docks, state records say.

Elvers are a major fishery in Maine, and fishermen’s ability to reach quota fluctuates year to year. They reached quota in 2014, fell far short in 2015, and just about reached it last year. Early spring weather, which can be hard to predict in Maine, has emerged as a deciding factor in whether fishermen will reach quota.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Is this year’s bluefish run a sign of climate change?

April 10, 2017 — It’s been about a month now since an unprecedented run of bluefish started bringing smiles to the faces of local anglers, and the bait and tackle shop owners selling them gear.

“I’ve been in business here for 23 years, and I’ve never seen a spring run of bluefish like this,” said Joe Morris at Lewes Harbour Marina. “I keep thinking tomorrow they will be gone, but they’re still here. A boat went off the point of Cape Henlopen yesterday and caught them.” That was Tuesday this week.

Morris said this year’s run of bluefish has been great for the tackle business. “They’ll eat everything, so we’ve been selling lots of steel leaders [to combat the sharp teeth and strong jaws of the blues], spoons, bucktails … and other guys have been wading the flats out by the fishing pier, and they’re using flies and poppers.” Not only have the blues been numerous and steady, this year’s run is also notable because they have gone way up into Indian River and Bay as well as into the shallow waters inside Cape Henlopen and on up the Broadkill River. “They follow the menhaden, and then they start eating anything else that’s available.” Morris has been cleaning lots of bluefish and talks to others who do the same. They’re finding menhaden in the bellies of the blues as well as small trout, perch and shad.

And while everyone who likes to fish is happy with the run, many are asking the same question: Why this year like never before?

The most frequent fingers point toward an abundance of menhaden – known locally as bunker – moving up the beach and into the mouth of Delaware Bay.

Read the full story at the Cape Gazette