Saving Seafood

Where have all the codfish in the Gulf of Maine gone?

July 30, 2021 — The “New World” was built on the codfish. In the 1600s, John Smith built a colony of fishermen on the Isles of Shoals off Strawberry Bank, New Hampshire.  According to his writings, the cod were so plentiful that you could walk across the water on their backs.

While this is obviously a huge exaggeration, there were a lot of cod.

Without means of refrigeration, salted fish was the best way to ship large amounts of protein to countries throughout the world without worry of spoilage. The colony of fishermen on the Isles of Shoals spent their days fishing, cutting and salting the cod for shipment to England.

What happened to the iconic New England cod?

The entire colonial economy in New England was built around this iconic fish. So much so that the weathervane atop the State House in Massachusetts is a golden codfish.

So, what has happened to the cod?  If you are a recreational fisherman, you know that you are allowed only one fish per day at certain times during the year. The commercial fishermen have all been given a personal quota for cod.  If they reach their quota, they need to purchase or lease more quota from someone who has extra. The price to “lease” these fish in order to catch them can be exorbitant.

To keep fishing for other fish, many of the commercial fishermen must pay more for leased cod than they can sell the actual fish for. Cod has become a commodity on the market being bought or hoarded by non-fishermen to make money off the backs of the active fishermen.

Read the full story at SeaCoast Online

Adak stakeholders protest denial of proposed cod allocation

July 22, 2021 — Stakeholders of an isolated Aleutians fish plant contend state appointees on the federal fisheries management board have ignored calls for help to keep more of the area’s large Pacific cod catch in Alaska despite a court order that shot down the first attempt to do so.

Representatives from Aleut Corp., which owns the fish processing plant in Adak through a subsidiary, and Peter Pan Seafood Co., have said they need to be able to rely on a foundational allocation of cod from federal fisheries to reopen the currently shuttered plant.

It’s believed a reliable allocation of roughly 5,000 metric tons of Pacific cod to the plants in Adak and Atka, where a plant is also currently closed, would provide a base volume of fish that would allow an operator to keep it open year-round with purchases in the state waters cod and other fisheries throughout the year.

Doing so could provide the ultra-remote community of approximately 300 residents with nearly 200 jobs during peak activity and several dozen steady positions if the plant were operated year-round, they estimate.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council that oversees the largely Seattle-based trawl cod fishery is in the process of reforming those allocations amidst other regulatory changes.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Saving the Seas: Smarter Hooks and Nets

July 15, 2021 — Last year, fish consumption reached a global annual average of 37.5 pounds per person. Meanwhile, cod and bluefin-tuna populations have collapsed, and animals ranging from whales to turtles have been added to the Endangered Species Act. Our voracious appetite isn’t the only problem. Fishermen catch a lot of things unintentionally, in what Tim Werner, director of the New England Aquarium’s Marine Conservation Engineering program, calls the “collateral damage” of commercial fishing: bycatch.

Compared with the more intractable problem of overfishing, technological solutions to bycatch abound. Bycatch ensnares coral, sponges, starfish, sharks, whales, turtles and even birds. It is “one of the more immediate threats that marine diversity faces,” Werner says. It has led to the assumed extinction of the Yangtze River dolphin, has nearly wiped out the Gulf of California’s vaquita porpoise (fewer than 200 remain), and threatens the survival of the North American right whale (400 remain) and the short-tailed albatross. A United Nations report estimates bycatch at 7.5 million tons a year, or 5 percent of the total commercial-fishing haul. Because most available data is self-reported, Werner says that the U.N.’s numbers “woefully underestimate” the problem. A more representative statistic, he says, comes from Gulf of Mexico shrimp fisheries, some of which dredge up to five pounds of bycatch for every pound of shrimp.

The good news is that compared with the more intractable problem of overfishing, technological solutions to reduce bycatch abound. Shrimp companies, for example, have begun using “turtle-excluding devices,” metal grates at the front of a trawl net that let the shrimp in and keep the turtles out. Fishermen who use long subsurface “gillnets” have begun to deter porpoises by equipping these nets with battery-powered acoustic “pingers.” In the best cases, pingers have reduced casualties from 25 porpoises per net to one. At Florida Atlantic University, associate professor Stephen Kajiura is trying to protect sharks by affixing rare-earth elements to the lines that fishermen use to catch tuna. The metals react with seawater to create an electromagnetic field that repels sharks (as well as skates and rays).

Read the full story at Popular Science

2021 Spring Gulf of Maine Cooperative Bottom Longline Survey Concludes

July 13, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Gulf of Maine Cooperative Bottom Longline Survey has been conducted from two commercial fishing boats each spring and fall since 2014 by the science center’s Cooperative Research Branch. At each station environmental conditions are collected by sensors and a baited longline (1 nautical mile in length) is set and retrieved. Scientists then remove catch from the line and weigh, measure, and collect biological samples from the fish that come onboard.

Spiny dogfish, cusk, and haddock were the largest components of the catch, consistent with what has been seen in earlier surveys. Other species commonly caught included thorny skate, Atlantic cod, barndoor skate, white hake, and red hake. This season we also caught 17 Atlantic wolffish and seven Atlantic halibut. Both species are considered “data-poor” in terms of stock assessments. Staff also observed multiple instances of porbeagle sharks eating fish off the line.

Read the full release here

NEFMC Receives Cod Stock Structure and Groundfish ABC Control Rule Updates; Initiates Framework 63

June 28, 2021 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council covered three groundfish topics during its June 22-24, 2021 meeting that all addressed this year’s management priorities for Northeast multispecies. The Council:

  • Received an update on work being done to evaluate alternative acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rules for groundfish, also referred to as harvest control rules;
  • Initiated Framework Adjustment 63 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan, which includes specifications and management measures for fishing years 2022 to 2024; and
  • Received a progress report on a two-part series of workshops related to Atlantic cod stock structure.

Read the full release here

ALASKA: Council’s Swift Action on BSAI Cod Shuts Down Efforts to Restore Adak’s Seafood Economy

June 24, 2021 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved quickly to adopt a preliminary preferred alternative (PPA) to rationalize the last major race for fish in the Bering Sea/Aleutian Islands — trawl-caught Pacific cod — which also relegated Adak’s state-of-the-art seafood plant to the bottom of the pile in terms of access to the resource.

“I am announcing today that, based on the Council’s preliminary preferred alternative in the CV [catcher-vessel] trawl package, Peter Pan Seafood Company is suspending all further work in Adak,” said Steve Minor, Manager of Business Development for Peter Pan, on the day after the Council approved the motion.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Oregon fishing families face climate change impacts

June 7, 2021 — For four generations Kevin and Taunette Dixon’s families have followed the rhythm of the sea: Harvesting groundfish, such as cod and pollock, early in the year. Pink shrimp beginning in April, sometimes followed by albacore in the fall. Then, Dungeness crab, Oregon’s biggest and most lucrative fishery, just in time to bring in holiday cash.

It’s been the same for fishing families up and down the Oregon Coast.

But the ocean is changing, and with it, life in tight-knit coastal communities.

For the past six years, Oregon’s traditional Dec. 1 Dungeness opening has been significantly delayed because elevated domoic acid levels make the crab unsafe to eat.

The toxin comes from harmful algal blooms caused by marine heatwaves, which are increasing in frequency and intensity.

The warming planet can actually fill the catch with poison.

And this is only one effect of climate change.

Oregon now has a regular “hypoxia season,” when ocean oxygen levels near the sea floor plummet and some sea life flees the region or dies.

In 2017, a huge hypoxia event occurred off Washington. The next year it extended into Oregon, resulting in almost no halibut caught. Over the next two years, Oregon commercial crabbers reported pulling up pot after pot of dead, suffocated crabs.

Read the full story from the Salem Statesman Journal at USA Today

2021 Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Workshops

May 25, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The New Hampshire Sea Grant, New England Fishery Management Council, and NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center will be hosting a series of workshops on Atlantic cod from June 1-July 1.

This four-part series will focus on the science driving the decision to split Atlantic cod stocks into five distinct biological stocks, instead of the two that are currently managed. Stemming from the 2020 report by the Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Working Group, this series will focus on the current science and management approaches to this fishery.

Presentations by technical experts will be followed by an open public discussion ensuring information is available to best inform the cod stock assessment process. There will be a follow-up series on the management implications of this split.

Registration is required to participate.

Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Workshops Scheduled for June, July 2021

May 21, 2021 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The biological stock structure of Atlantic cod and its implications for science and management will be discussed during two different rounds of public workshops. The first series, which begins on June 1, 2021, will cover the science aspects, while a second series, to be held later this year, will cover the management side.

An Atlantic Cod Stock Structure Working Group was formed in early 2018 to inventory and summarize all relevant peer-reviewed information about the stock structure of Atlantic cod in U.S. and adjacent waters.

Atlantic cod currently is managed as two stocks – Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank. However, the working group concluded in its 2020 report that the population of Atlantic cod in New England waters consists of five distinct biological stocks as follows:

  1. Georges Bank;
  2. Southern New England;
  3. Western Gulf of Maine and Cape Cod winter spawners;
  4. Western Gulf of Maine spring spawners that overlap spatially with the Western Gulf of Maine and Cape Cod winter spawner stock; and
  5. Eastern Gulf of Maine

Read the full release here

MASSACHUSETTS: Scituate fishermen push to keep catch local

April 21, 2021 — Cod brought in by a Scituate fisherman doesn’t stay in town for long; it is loaded onto a truck and taken to New Bedford, cut into filets, trucked to the Boston Fish Pier and sold to the highest bidder, shipped to a retailer or restaurant and becomes dinner for someone hundreds of miles from where it was brought to shore.

It is far from the simple sea-to-table fishing industry that once thrived on the South Shore, but has since been overshadowed by a global marketplace that locals say they can’t compete with.

Now, the few remaining federally-permitted fishermen in Scituate are hoping to turn back the clock by partnering with a fish peddler to have fish caught by local fishermen processed and sold within a one-mile radius of the Scituate town pier. The fishermen say the system will reduce their shipping costs, reduce wholesale prices for local restaurants and bolster the economy of a harbor that has largely shifted away from the fishing industry.

“The fish coming out of Scituate Harbor is the best around, but it all goes to New Bedford and Boston, none of it stays here,” Phil Lynch, one of the four remaining federally-permitted fishermen in Scituate, said. “We’re hoping something like this here in town will work for us.”

Read the full story at Wicked Local