Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Comments on Proposed Rule: Framework 58 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan

April 19, 2019 — The following was published by NOAA Fisheries: 

We are seeking public comment on an action that would revise catch limits for seven groundfish stocks for the 2019 fishing year (May 1, 2019 – April 30, 2020), including the three stocks managed jointly with Canada. These revised catch limits are based upon the results of stock assessments conducted in 2018.

For the commercial groundfish fishery, quotas are increasing for Georges Bank cod (+15%), Georges Bank haddock (+19%), witch flounder (+1%), and Georges Bank winter flounder (+6%), but are decreasing for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder (-50%), Gulf of Maine winter flounder (-1%), and Atlantic halibut (-3%).

Framework 58 would also:

  • Exempt vessels fishing exclusively in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Regulatory Area (i.e., in international waters) from the domestic groundfish fishery minimum fish sizes to allow them to better compete in the international frozen fish market.
  • Extend the temporary change to the scallop Accountability Measure implementation policy for the Georges Bank yellowtail flounder to provide the scallop fishery with the flexibility to adjust to current catch conditions while still providing an incentive to avoid yellowtail flounder.

In this proposed rule, we are also announcing:

  • Required adjustments to the 2019 quotas for Gulf of Maine cod because the quota was exceeded in 2017;
  • Proposed management measures for the common pool, the US/Canada Area, and special management programs for fishing year 2019;
  • A proposed extension of the annual deadline to submit applications to lease groundfish days-at-sea between vessels from March 1 to April 30 (the end of the fishing year); and
  • Changes to the regulations to clarify that vessels must report catch by statistical area when submitting catch reports through their vessel monitoring system.

Read the proposed rule as published in the Federal Register, and submit your comments through the online portal. You may also submit comments through regular mail to: Michael Pentony, Regional Administrator, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930

The comment period is open through May 6, 2019.

Questions?
Contact Allison Ferreira, Regional Office, at 978-281-9103

Science on your side: The trappings of fish fraud

April 18, 2019 — Seafood fraud and mislabeled seafood is a permanent topic in the sustainable fisheries space and has been driving the demands for product traceability. Since 2011, Oceana has led the discourse on fish fraud by publishing sixteen reports on the subject.

Oceana Canada’s 2018 report exposed some important shortcomings in the Canadian seafood system and offered constructive, achievable mandates for reducing seafood fraud domestically, but the study collected data from a biased sample and only presented results that supported a narrative of rampant fraudulence.

Oceana collects seafood samples at restaurants and retail outlets, DNA tests them, then matches the DNA results to government labeling guidelines. The sampling focused specifically on cod, halibut, snapper, tuna, salmon and sole because these species historically, “have the highest rates of species substitution.” This nonrandom sampling is consistent with previous seafood fraud studies from Oceana.

Of the 382 seafood samples tested in Canada, 168 (44 percent) were found to be mislabeled.

None of the red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus), yellowtail or butterfish tested was appropriately labeled. Tuna was mislabeled 41 percent of the time, halibut 34 percent, cod 32 percent and salmon 18 percent.

Fundamental to the interpretation of the Oceana Canada 2018 study’s results is the understanding that the samples were selected to find fraud, not to measure the actual extent of fraud across the entire seafood supply chain. Oceana disclosed this in the report. However the press release it issued for this report, and subsequent headlines from other news sources, such as “At least one quarter of the seafood you buy is a lie” from the site IFL Science, created a different narrative.

Aside from the sampling criticisms, the analysis of specific species was especially flawed.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NGO outcry as latest EU report shows little improvement in ending overfishing

April 12, 2019 — Environmental NGOs have decried a new European Commission report, claiming it shows species such as sardine, hake, and cod could suffer commercial extinctions in European waters in the short term.

The 2019 report by the Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee for Fisheries (STECF) led Oceana to state that overfishing is “plaguing EU seas”. Around 40% of Atlantic stocks and 87% of Mediterranean ones are found to be fished unsustainably, it said.

“As the 2020 deadline for ending overfishing is fast approaching, scientists confirm, with just months to go, the EU countries are still nowhere near reaching the legal obligation of the common fisheries policy (CFP).”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: North Pacific Council Restricts Motherships in Bering Sea Trawl Cod Fishery

April 8, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — In a final action that was described as “too fast” and “incomplete” by critics and “difficult and very tough” by members of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council, the panel reduced the number of vessels that can act as motherships in the Bering Sea trawl cod fishery to only two: the Seafreeze Alaska owned by United States Seafood and the Katie Ann owned by American Seafoods.

The move left several vessels locked out of providing mothership services, including at least four that have established histories of taking trawl cod deliveries for several years in both the Bering Sea and the Aleutian Islands.

The final action, expected to be implemented next year, was in response to a shift from shoreside to offshore deliveries of trawl-caught cod in recent years. In 2016, about three percent of the target cod fishery was delivered to offshore motherships. In 2017, that percentage grew to almost 13%, then last year was over 18%. In this year’s A season, the shortest season on record, about 29% of the BSAI trawl cod TAC was delivered offshore. The increased offshore deliveries at the expense of the shore-based plant deliveries was done during a time of decreasing catches.

This week’s action on restricting mothership operations for trawl cod was done in possibly record time for the council. From their first action on this issue in December of 2017 to yesterday’s final action was ten days short of just 16 months.

There is more on the Council’s plate for Bering Sea and Aleutian Island trawl cod. The ‘race for fish’ that has compressed season lengths for both the A season and B season to record periods — this year’s B season lasted one day — is prompting a restructuring that will be addressed at the Council’s meeting in Homer, AK in October. The Council will review a scoping paper at that meeting that will look at options for rationalizing the fishery.

Another critical issue is Amendment 113, recently vacated by court order, which created a 5,000 mt cod set aside for the Adak shoreplant. The rule is no longer in place and the Department of Commerce says they will not appeal. NOAA Fisheries will need to address the issues noted in the judge’s decision before Golden Harvest, the plant in Adak, will have the protection of a set aside.

The Council’s recent action was welcomed by Golden Harvest spokesman Steve Minor.

“In Adak, Golden Harvest has invested millions of dollars rebuilding and updating the plant, rehabilitated more than 40 community housing units, and as recently as December, committed to the State of Alaska to rebuild the outfall and build a new $6 million fish meal plant, not as a profitable investment but to address serious issues inherited form previous operators.

“All of these investments are now at risk because of the Groundfish Forum members’ efforts through the courts and this process to use the money, excess capacity, and leverage they gained under Amendment 80 to take Pacific cod away from Alaska’s coastal communities.

“We believe there are two mothership operations — and only two — which have participated both pre-2008 and on a continued, sustained basis in the Aleutian Islands, and we therefore support Alternative 2, Option 1, suboption 1.3 and Option 2.”

The motion was made by the state of Alaska’s council member Rachel Baker, Deputy Commissioner of Alaska Department of Fish and Game, and was passed by a 10-1 vote.

This story was originally published on Seafood News.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Reminder: Gulf of Maine Cod and Haddock Recreational Measures

April 4, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Recreational fishing measures from fishing year 2018 for the Gulf of Maine cod and haddock fishery remain in place until we develop and implement any changes in fishing year 2019.

The recreational Gulf of Maine haddock fishery reopens April 15, 2019:

  • Bag Limit: 12 fish
  • Minimum size: 17 inches

Gulf of Maine cod possession is prohibited.

The New England Fishery Management Council has recommended fishing year 2019 (May 1, 2019-April 30, 2020) recreational groundfish measures. We are currently developing the proposed rule. We do not expect to publish a final rule implementing any changes by May 1, 2019. Therefore, the 2018 regulations will remain in effect until they are replaced.

For more, read the permit holder letter posted on our website.

Alaska’s Bering Sea is the Focus of a New NOAA Effort to Accelerate Science Delivery to Fisheries Managers

March 29, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Bering Sea is home to some of the nation’s largest and most profitable commercial fisheries, including Alaskan pollock and Pacific cod. It’s also one of the fastest warming parts of the world, with fish stocks becoming increasingly vulnerable to marine heat waves, the loss of sea ice, low-oxygen waters, harmful algal blooms, and other conditions that stress species, ecosystems, and economies.

Environmental changes in this area are happening so rapidly that researchers are continuously seeking ways to deliver more timely and actionable information on changing ocean conditions to help resource managers, commercial and recreational fishermen, Alaska Native communities, and coastal communities prepare and respond.

For this reason, NOAA scientists selected the Bering Sea as a testbed for what they hope will be a new system that provides decision-makers with robust projections of ocean and fisheries conditions over short-term (daily or annual), medium-range (1–20 years), and long-run (10–50 years) scenarios, and then evaluates how different fishery management strategies might perform under those future conditions.

“Unlike other modeling approaches, we not only look at how climate change affects the marine environment but also the people who rely on it,” said Kirstin Holsman, who along with Anne Hollowed, has co-led a team of more than two dozen researchers from NOAA Fisheries, NOAA Research, the University of Washington, and other partner agencies in this effort. “Fisheries managers and affected communities across the United States. are interested in the impacts and opportunities that are associated with changing oceans. It is our hope that this strategy will help them achieve their immediate needs and long-term sustainability goals.”

Read the full release here

MSC research counters findings of other mislabeling studies

March 26, 2019 — A new Marine Stewardship Council study has found mislabeling of its certified seafood is lower than the average of several other recent studies, which claim to have detected seafood mislabeling rates as high as 30 percent.

MSC’s expansive analysis of 1,402 MSC-certified fish products from 18 countries found that fewer than 1 percent of MSC-labeled seafood products were mislabeled.

The results were published in the journal Current Biology.

“There is widespread concern over the vulnerability of seafood supply chains to deliberate species mislabelling and fraud. In the past, this has included some of the most loved species such as cod being substituted by farmed catfish, which can seriously undermine consumer trust and efforts to maintain sustainable fisheries,” the lead of author of the paper, the MSC’s Jaco Barendse, said in an MSC press release.

The MSC’s ecolabeling and Chain of Custody program is an effective deterrent for systematic and deliberate species substitution and fraud, the organization said.

In the new study, the largest and most comprehensive assessment of MSC-labeled products, MSC worked with laboratories of the TRACE Wildlife Forensics Network and SASA’s (Science and Advice for Scottish Agriculture) Wildlife DNA Forensic unit to employ DNA barcoding.

Of the 1,402 seafood products tested, 1,389 were labeled correctly and 13 (0.92 percent) were not. Mislabeled products were found in fresh and frozen pre-packed products and in restaurants, mainly in Western Europe, with one case in the U.S. All cases of mislabeling were identified in whitefish (such as cod, hake, and hoki) and flatfish products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US judge rules cod quota set-asides for Alaskan cities are unlawful

March 25, 2019 — Washington, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kelly ruled March 21 that the North Pacific Council’s Amendment 113 (A113) to the Bering Sea Groundfish Fisheries Management Plan does not comply with Magnuson-Stevens Act (MSA) requirements.

The amendment, adopted in 2016, provided 5,000 metric tons of Pacific cod as a set-aside for processing facilities located west of 170 degrees longitude. It named the specific cities of Adak and Atka in the US state of Alaska and the plants located there as the plants that would benefit from this set-aside.

Shortly after the amendment was adopted in late 2016, the Groundfish Forum, United Catcher Boats and other groups who rely on cod, flatfish, and other groundfish in the Bering Sea, filed a complaint challenging the rule, based on five separate claims for relief.

They contended first, that the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) didn’t have the authority to “allocate shore-based processing privileges” and overstepped its authority with this amendment.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Cod Fishermen Upend Carveout for Alaskan Villages

March 22, 2019 — A federal judge cut the line Thursday on the government’s effort to promote sustainable cod-processing operations in a pair of Alaskan fishing villages.

Unveiled in 2016, the new scheme carved out a portion of the Pacific cod fishery off the coast of the Aleutian Islands to be used exclusively each year by vessels that planned to process their catch onshore rather than at sea.

Pacific cod, in contrast to the much-suffering Atlantic cod, is one of the most abundant and lucrative species of groundfish harvested in the region.

Without government intervention, however, the National Marine Fishery Service argued that the Aleutian fishing communities of Adak and Atka would catch less and less cod, and struggle to compete as centers for fish processing.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

MAINE: Cod fishery plummets to least valuable year since 1960s

March 18, 2019 — Maine’s cod fishery, once one of the most lucrative in the Northeast, has declined to the point that it had its least valuable year in more than a half-century in 2018.

The state’s industry harvesting the fish-and-chips staple goes back centuries, and it once brought millions of pounds of the fish to land year after year. But data from the state Department of Marine Resources indicate the state’s cod was worth just over $200,000 at the docks last year — less than the median price of a single-family home in Maine.

That’s the lowest number since 1967, and a fraction of the $2 million to $16 million worth of cod fishermen routinely brought to land in Maine in the 1980s and ’90s. The volume of last year’s catch was also the second-lowest in recorded history, barely edging out last year at about 89,000 pounds.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New Haven Register