Saving Seafood

Don Cuddy: SMAST codfish counting innovation looks promising

February 20, 2018 — Last December the New England Fishery Management Council voted to increase the amount of cod available to commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Maine by 39 percent for the 2018 fishing year.

This is welcome news. New England fishermen have endured some lean years since 2013 when the cod quota was slashed by 78 percent after new data incorporated into the 2011 assessment indicated that the stock was lower than previously estimated — obviously a great deal lower.

Estimating how many codfish might be out there at any given time is the greatest challenge facing fishery managers and the numbers have been the subject of much controversy, with fishermen continually decrying the “best available science” as inadequate.

The quest for better fisheries data has been receiving invaluable assistance from SMAST here in New Bedford.

UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology has developed a groundfish sampling survey using video technology. A deep sea camera, with lights, is mounted inside the net on a commercial fishing vessel and provides a live feed to the wheelhouse while towing. At the same time, four GoPro cameras in the net capture and record images of every fish passing through. The cod end of the net is left open, allowing the fish to swim away unscathed — a huge bonus — and without the necessity to haul the net back, a much larger area can be swept on each tow. During the survey, a small number of tows were also made with the net closed to verify the video data.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Alaska: Bering Sea Trawl Cod Fishery May Have Been Shortest Ever, as High Prices Attract Effort

February 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Bering Sea federal trawl cod fishery closed in what may be record time on Feb. 11, just 22 days after the Jan. 20 opener, according to National Marine Fisheries Service Biologist Krista Milani in Unalaska/Dutch Harbor.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the shortest ever,” and certainly for as long as she’s had the job going back to 2009.

While the Bering Sea cod quota is down 20 percent from last year, Milani said other factors are at play. She pointed out that in a previous year, with an almost identical quota, the season remained open for about six weeks, ending the second week of March in 2010.

This year, the A season Bering Sea cod trawl quota is 24,768 metric tons, and in 2010 it was 24,640 mt.

“The bigger thing is the price is good, and there’s a lot of interest in it,” Milani said.

“I think there’s a lot of reasons,” including fishermen feeling a need to build catch histories to qualify for future Pacific cod fishing rights, if a rationalization program is adopted for cod in the Bering Sea, she said.

“I think there’s some fear it could go to limited access,” Milani said.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Program is now considering a plan to restrict the number of boats eligible to fish for cod in the Bering Sea.

The fish council floated ideas to limit catcher vessel participation in the Bering Sea cod fishery, including controversial catch shares or individual fishing quotas, during a December meeting in Anchorage.

IFQs are not among alternatives the council is considering. The purpose and need statement, approved unanimously, includes limiting trawling to vessels actually fishing cod in various years between 2010 and 2017.

This would create a limited entry program within a limited entry program. Bering Sea cod fishing is already limited to boats with licenses. Some of those boats don’t usually participate, but can when prices are high or stocks are low in their usual fisheries.

Brent Paine, the executive director of United Catcher Boats, said something needs to be done to regulate fishing in the congested “Cod Alley.” He accurately predicted a three-week season in 2018 in the area offshore of Unimak Island.

“This is the last unrationalized fishery in the eastern Bering Sea,” Paine said. “If you don’t do anything, we’re all going to be losers.”

While Paine said the NPFMC’s present majority is unsympathetic to rationalization, calling it the “R word,” he said that may change in the future.

Rationalization opponents see IFQs as privatization adding another barrier to entry into the fishing world, while supporters call it a reward for investment with benefits including substantial retirement income.

Milani said Tuesday it was still too early to say how many trawlers participated, as there were vessels still delivering cod to processing companies, and perhaps some trawlers delivering loaded nets to offshore motherships. The last count had 55 in the federal cod fishery, compared to 57 last year, she said, expecting this year’s final count will be higher.

The number of boats is hard to track in-season, as many go back and forth between cod, pollock and other fisheries, although there are some that only fish cod, Milani said.

The depressed cod stocks in the Gulf of Alaska probably also contributed to this year’s fast pace, she said. Gulf cod stocks are way down, far worse than the smaller decline in the Bering Sea, an 80 per percent decline from last year.

Earlier in the season, Milani said the number of Gulf boats coming into the federal Bering Sea cod fishery was smaller than expected.

The Gulf cod crash appears to be having a greater impact in the state cod fishery, with 32 small boats registered on Tuesday, up from 24 last year in the Dutch Harbor Subdistrict. The state waters fishery is limited to boats 58 feet or shorter fishing within three miles of shore and using only pot gear.

The Dutch Harbor Subdistrict total catch on Monday was 11.4 million pounds caught in pots from a total quota of 28.4 million pounds. The pot cod fishery is expected to continue for another 14 to 16 days, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game Biologist Asia Beder in Unalaska.

In the Aleutian Islands Subdistrict state waters fishery, with a quota of 12.8 million pounds, Beder couldn’t release precise total catch numbers because of confidentiality rules when there’s fewer than three processors. She said the fleet has caught somewhere between 25 and 50 percent. There’s only one processor, in Adak, Golden Harvest — formerly Premier Harvest, she said. And she could also say there were eight small boats fishing cod in the Aleutian subdistrict, all in the Adak section.

In the Aleutians, cod boats are allowed up to 60 feet in with various gear types, although longliners are limited to 58 feet.

In Bering Sea crab fisheries, the 50 boats dropping pots for opilio snow crab had made 134 landings for 10.9 million pounds or 58 percent of the total quota. The cumulative catch per unit of effort for the season is an average of 161 crab per pot, according to shellfish biologist Ethan Nichols of ADF&G in Unalaska.

In the Western Bering Sea Tanner fishery, 28 vessels had made 66 landings for 2.1 million pounds, with the quota nearly wrapped up at 85 percent.

In the Eastern Aleutian District, two small boats harvesting bairdi Tanner had landed over 75 percent of the total quota of 35,000 pounds, Nichols said.

The EAD is open this year only in the Makushin and Skan Bay area, and that’s where the Tanners are from that sell for $10 each by local fisherman Roger Rowland at the Carl E. Moses Boat Harbor in Unalaska.

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

 

NOAA to end SIMP “informed consent” period in April

February 16, 2018 — The date when the United States will begin enforcing full compliance with a program designed to prevent illegally fished and counterfeit products has been set as 7 April, according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The Seafood Import Monitoring Program officially took effect on 1 January, nearly 13 months after officials revealed its regulations that required importers to keep records on selected products. However, officials opted to begin the program with an “informed compliance” phase, choosing to allow shipments with missing or misconfigured data.

“NOAA Fisheries has observed an encouraging and steadily increasing rate of compliance with SIMP filings,” the agency said in a statement.

SIMP requires importers to maintain records for Atlantic cod, blue crab, dolphinfish, grouper, king crab, Pacific cod, red snapper, sea cucumber, sharks, swordfish, and tunas detailing how they were caught or harvested and tracking the products until they reach the U.S.

In January 2017, the National Fisheries Institute and a group of seafood companies sued the government, claiming SIMP violated federal law. However, a federal judge in August ruled against the plaintiffs, saying Congress gave the authority to agencies to issue regulations.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the NFI said that programs like SIMP experience “growing pains” and that the industry will look for opportunities to help NOAA handle such issues as the April deadline draws closer.

“NFI members will work to ensure they are prepared for full implementation of SIMP,” said Gavin Gibbons, the NFI’s vice president of communications.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

A new study looks at why Pacific Cod stocks are crashing in the Gulf of Alaska

February 14, 2018 — A new study in Kodiak will hopefully shed some light on what Pacific cod go through when they’re young.

“We don’t know how they do in the winter. Where they are. What they are eating. What their energetic requirements are.”

One of the leaders of the project, Mike Litzow is a researcher for the University of Alaska Fairbanks based in Kodiak.

He said the recent crash in the Pacific cod population in the Gulf of Alaska was a wake-up call that there’s a lot to be learned about the early life stages of Pacific cod.

A few years ago a body of warm water settled in the gulf and it may have made it difficult for juvenile cod to survive.

“The operating hypothesis right now is that you can warm the temperatures up and they’ll survive if there’s enough food, but there wasn’t enough food to meet those requirements.”

The National Marine Fisheries Service, according to Litzow, recently found that the Pacific cod population had dropped by about 60 percent since 2015.

The North Pacific Fisheries Pacific Council reduced the amount of Pacific cod that can be caught by commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Alaska by about 80 percent because of the crash.

The decrease in cod will be hard for Kodiak fisherman because Pacific Cod is one of the bigger fisheries in the region.

Litzow thinks Kodiak will have to face the possibility that more fishery disasters could be in its future because of climate change.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Why are Pacific Cod Stocks Crashing?

February 13, 2018 — “The status of Pacific cod is probably the biggest fishery issue facing Kodiak right now, with the quota cut 80 percent for 2018,” said Mike Litzow, a University of Alaska Fairbanks associate professor at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center.

Pacific cod stocks have collapsed, possibly because recruitment (production of young fish to enter the population) has been very low during a recent string of incredibly warm years in the Gulf of Alaska, he said.

Scientists don’t know why cod stocks are shrinking. The leading hypothesis is that warmer temperatures increase the metabolic rates of young cod, and their food sources don’t supply enough energy.

There’s a sticking point—there’s not enough data to test the theory. Studies of fish ecology and population dynamics in Alaska are overwhelmingly conducted in the summer. Almost nothing is known about wintertime ecology of juvenile Pacific cod.

To help provide answers, Litzow and fisheries oceanographer Alisa Abookire embarked on a pilot study this month to collect information about habitat use, diet and energetics of juvenile cod.

They are sampling the fish with a beach seine and taking ocean water data aboard a semi-enclosed 22 foot skiff. To stay warm they wear insulated paddling suits.

Litzow and Abookire are collaborating with scientists at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, Ore., who have been studying juvenile cod in Kodiak over the last 12 years. The pilot study is funded by the Ocean Phoenix Fund through the University of Alaska Foundation.

Read the full story at Alaska Native News

 

One Square Mile in Massachusetts: While Scallops Soar, Groundfishing Struggles In New Bedford

February 9, 2018 — The Port of New Bedford is often touted as the most lucrative in North America. That’s thanks mainly to the popularity, and apparent abundance, of scallops. But the success of scallops may be masking hard times for other parts of the fishing industry.

Pat Kavanagh owns three fishing boats in New Bedford. Two for catching groundfish like cod, haddock and flounder. The other is a scallop boat. Right now, that’s his moneymaker.

“As far as groundfishing, groundfishing’s been tough for the last twenty years,” said Kavanagh.

He’s tight lipped about how much he actually makes from the three boats each year.

“But I can say it’s a damn good thing we’ve got a scalloper,” said Kavanagh.

Like many fishermen, Kavanagh got into this business through family, working on his father’s boat. But since the 1980s regulations have tamped down on fisheries, and it’s become harder to get a start in the business. Groundfish prices have fallen, and Kavanagh says buyers are looking elsewhere for product.

“The world has gotten smaller with airplanes and flying fish around,” said Kavanagh. “So we’re competing with the world and there’s some pretty cheap fish out there and there’s actually some pretty good fish.”

The fleet has dwindled, and in the last year, New Bedford suffered another major blow. Carlos Rafael, the owner of a local groundfishing fleer pleaded guilty to falsifying his catch. He’s now serving a four-year prison sentence. His fleet sits impounded at the docks. Federal regulators have suspended his boats from fishing.

Whether you worked with Rafael or not, the shrinking fleet has put strain on other businesses, including Levin Marine across the harbor in Fairhaven, which makes netting for groundfishing.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

 

New England Council waits on Massachusetts for new cod, haddock limits

February 8, 2018 — It’s always good to have a plan. Sometimes it’s even better to have a backup plan.

The New England Fishery Management Council has one of each for its recommendations to NOAA Fisheries on recreational Gulf of Maine cod and haddock bag limits for the 2018 fishing season.

Now the council is waiting on the Massachusetts’ Division of Marine Fisheries before it decides which recommendation to forward to federal fishery regulators.

In late January, the council voted to recommend NOAA Fisheries implement a “status quo” management policy for 2018 Gulf of Maine cod and haddock that would prohibit possession of any cod by recreational fishermen.

The recommendation, which was supported by the council’s recreational advisory panel and its groundfish committee, also set a 12-fish bag limit and 17-inch minimum size for haddock in federal waters and two seasonal closures — March 1 to April 14 and Sept. 17 to Oct. 31.

But here is the rub:

Last year, the state DMF implemented a policy that allowed private recreational anglers to keep one cod from each fishing trip in state waters and those recreational landings must be accounted for in determining whether federal regulators are able to hit their overall mortality targets and catch limits.

Too many cod grabbed in out of state waters could push the fishery past those targets.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Recreational cod fishing to stay shut down in Gulf of Maine

February 2, 2018 — Fishing managers are recommending that cod remain off limits to recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Maine.

Cod were once harvested in colossal numbers from New England waters, but the population has collapsed in the Gulf of Maine and elsewhere. The New England Fishery Management Council is calling on the federal government to maintain a year-round ban on possession of Gulf of Maine cod by recreational fishermen.

Commercial fishermen are still allowed to catch cod in the Gulf of Maine, though quotas for the fish are so low that many try to avoid the fish altogether. Cod are widely used to make fish and chips.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Greenwich Time

 

NEFMC Recommends 2018 Recreational Measures for Cod/Haddock and Revised Charter/Party Control Date

February 1, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council yesterday asked the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to take three actions related to the recreational groundfish fishery, covering both the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank.

First, the Council voted to recommend that NMFS – also called NOAA Fisheries – implement “status quo” management measures for Gulf of Maine cod and Gulf of Maine haddock for fishing year 2018, unless the Commonwealth of Massachusetts continues to allow private recreational anglers to retain one Gulf of Maine cod per trip in fishing year 2018. The status quo measures, which were supported by the Council’s Recreational Advisory Panel and Groundfish Committee, are:

  • Gulf of Maine cod – zero possession year-round; and
  • Gulf of Maine haddock – a 12-fish bag limit, 17 inch minimum size, a March 1 through April 14 haddock closed season, and a September 17 through October 31 haddock closed season.

If Massachusetts does not prohibit possession of Gulf of Maine cod by private anglers, then the Council recommends that NMFS implement split measures for the recreational fishery as follows.

  • Gulf of Maine cod:
    • o zero possession year round;
  • Gulf of Maine haddock:
    • o For Hire Fleet – a 10-fish bag limit, 17 inch minimum size, and two haddock closed seasons: (a) March 1-April 14, and (b) September 17-October 31. o Private Anglers – a 12-fish bag limit, 17 inch minimum size, and three haddock closed seasons: (a) March 1-April 14; (b) May 1-31; and (c) September 17- October 31.

Second, for Georges Bank cod, the Council voted to recommend that NMFS implement a 10-fish bag limit for private, charter, and party boat anglers with an increase in the minimum size from 22 inches up to 24 inches.

In addition, at its December 2017 meeting, the Council finalized Framework Adjustment 57 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, which contains a temporary administrative measure to allow NMFS’s Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator to adjust the recreational measures for Georges Bank cod for fishing years 2018 and 2019.

Framework 57 includes annual catch limits (ACLs) for the 2018 groundfish fishing year, which begins May 1. If approved by NMFS, the sub-ACLs for the recreational fishery will be:

  • Gulf of Maine cod – 220 metric tons (mt); and
  • Gulf of Maine haddock – 3,358 mt.

The limiting factor in the recreational fishery is the cod sub-ACL. Analyses indicate that recreational fishermen will not come near harvesting the full Gulf of Maine haddock sub-ACL. The overwhelming challenge in this fishery is catching haddock while avoiding cod.

The Council makes recommendations to NMFS about recreational measures, but NMFS makes the final determination.

Charter/Party Fishery Control Date

Third, the Council requested that NMFS publish a revised control date for the charter/party groundfish fishery. The current control date is March 30, 2006. The new control date will be the actual day NMFS publishes a notice in the Federal Register, which may not occur for several weeks.

The Council agreed that it was important to “refresh” the control date, which will make it a more useful marker in determining activity in the fishery.

During its December meeting, the Council agreed to investigate whether limited entry should be adopted for the charter/party fishery. This item is one of the Council’s multi-year groundfish priorities. Given this intent, the Council supported asking NMFS to publish a new control date.

Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23 – Fishery Dependent Data Working Group

The Council received a quick progress report on Groundfish Monitoring Amendment 23. The Groundfish Committee is expected to present a range of potential alternatives at the April Council meeting. The amendment is aimed at improving monitoring of both landings and discards in the commercial fishery.

The Council also received a brief update on the Executive Committee’s recommendations for convening a Fishery Dependent Data Working Group. The group’s charge is to discuss how fishery dependent data can be used to inform stock abundance. The Council agreed in December that establishing a working group would be a 2018 groundfish priority.

During its January 26 meeting, the Executive Committee determined that the group would consist of six scientists, two industry members, and two Council or NMFS staff members. Of the six scientists:

  • Two will come from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center;
  • Two others will be nominated by the science center; and
  • Two will be nominated by the New England Council.

To view the release in its entirety click here.

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Legislation would take striped bass off the menu

January 22, 2018 — NORTH EASTHAM, Mass. — The sacred cod hangs over the heads of legislators in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, but on Mac’s Seafood website it’s a striped bass.

The fish is held by an employee staring into the camera, its houndstooth flanks glistening, mouth open, looking as if you could drop it back into the sea and it would be off, chasing mackerel and herring through the surf.

“There’s a large demand for it in season. That is the fish people come in to buy — not cod, but striped bass,” said Jason Putrell, assistant manager at Mac’s Market and Kitchen in North Eastham.

With the inshore stocks of many of the bread-and-butter staples like cod and flounders fished out, striped bass is one species that restaurants and fish markets can offer that is guaranteed to be freshly caught and local.

But two bills currently before the state Legislature would take striped bass out of display cases and off menus forever as they seek to end the commercial fishery in Massachusetts. Both bills have the same language, one on the House side presented by state Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, and one in the Senate from former Sen. James Timilty, D-Walpole, who retired in 2017.

These bills ban the commercial sale and harvesting of striped bass except for commercial fishermen who can demonstrate they averaged more than 1,000 pounds a year in landings for the preceding five years. But those would be phased out when the permit-holders either die or stop fishing. The permits couldn’t be transferred or sold.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the New Bedford Standard-Times