Saving Seafood

Georges Bank cod stock in grim shape

September 30, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the two critical areas where New England fishermen search for cod may be in even worse shape than suspected.

Fishing managers already knew cod stocks in Georges Bank were thin, but new data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center say research boats caught less of the fish this past spring than in all but one spring season dating back to 1968.

A report from the center, given to The Associated Press on Tuesday, states that the boats caught about 3.3 pounds of cod each time the net went in and out of the water last spring, compared with more than three times that amount two years earlier. Those numbers were routinely more than 20 pounds per trip in the late 1980s.

The status of cod in Georges Bank, a broad swath of elevated sea floor off the Massachusetts coast, could motivate regulators to again lower catch quotas for the area. Quotas have plummeted from more than 4,800 metric tons in 2012 to less than 2,000 metric tons this year.

It’s more bad news for the faltering fishery, which generations of New England fishermen have relied upon to make a living. Regulators and marine scientists have said overfishing hit the stock hard and warming oceans could be making it worse.

“Is that coming as a surprise from anybody who knows what the water temperature is out there? No, it shouldn’t be,” said David Goethel, a New Hampshire-based fisherman. “These fish are declining because of climate change.”

Regulators say the Gulf of Maine, home of the other key cod fishing ground off New England, is also in dire shape — National Marine Fisheries Service scientists said last year the amount of cod spawning in the Gulf was estimated to be 3 percent to 4 percent of its target level.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Providence Journal

 

Cape Cod fleet hopes for financial aid

September 29, 2015 — The big “bin” of cash, doled out by Congress in September 2012, when they declared the New England groundfish fishery a disaster, is about to be emptied of the last nickels and dimes.

It wasn’t a hurricane or brutal snowstorm that caused the disaster, it was a lack of cod. Quotas for the Cape’s namesake fish were slashed 80 percent in the Gulf of Maine and 61 percent for Georges Bank.

A total of $32.8 million was set aside for the New England fishery, with $11 million reserved for future use and $14.6 million sent to Massachusetts for distribution.

“The first round was money distributed by the federal government to permit holders who caught 5,000 pounds of ground fish in either 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013,” explained Claire Fitzgerald, policy analyst for the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fisherman’s Alliance.
In round one (or bin one) $6.3 million of Massachusetts’ share of the award was parceled out to 194 ground fish permit holders who qualified; $32,463 apiece. Unfortunately, in the case of the Fisheries Alliance, less than half of the two dozen boats in their Fixed Gear Sector qualified.

Read the full story from The Cape Codder

Officials: Key fishing area for Atlantic cod in dire shape

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — September 29, 2015 — One of the two critical areas where New England fishermen search for cod may be in even worse shape than suspected.

Fishing managers already knew Georges Bank’s cod were thin. New data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center says research boats caught less of the fish per trip this past spring than all but one spring season dating back to 1968.

Georges Bank is a broad swath of elevated sea floor off of Massachusetts. The Gulf of Maine cod fishery is the other key cod ground and regulators say it is also in dire shape.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at My Fox Boston

It’s complicated: the relationship between humans and cod

September 17, 2015 — Our relationship with cod hasn’t always been plain sailing, and a new project led by a researcher at Trinity College Dublin wants to bring that history into focus.

Prof Poul Holm has secured a prestigious €2.5 million grant from the European Research Council to build a database of information, ranging from the DNA of fish remains excavated from human settlements to the details of ship and monastic logs and even restaurant menus. Why? To figure out how cod fisheries shaped human diets and practices in centuries past.

As a co-founder of the international Census of Marine Life’s History of Marine Animals Project (now the Oceans Past Initiative), Holm is no stranger to combining marine history and science, and he draws on an eclectic mix of data sources. “Anything that will tell us about what used to live in the sea is of interest,” he says.

Data sources include findings from archaeological excavations about what fish people ate. “[You can] dig into kitchen middens or the waste dumps and simply identify what types of fish are there, how many, what would be the calorific value and how it was cooked,” says Holm, who is professor of environmental history at Trinity. “And now we have DNA analysis too, which can tell us where that fish originally came from.”

Read the full story from The Irish Times

NOAA Fisheries Announces Increase in Common Pool Gulf of Maine Cod Possession and Trip Limits

September 15, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries announces an increase to the trip and possession limit for Gulf of Maine cod for common pool vessels.

We had reduced possession and trip limits to zero on June 15, 2015, to prevent the common pool from exceeding its Trimester 1 quota. To date, the common pool fishery has harvested approximately 31% of its annual quota for Gulf of Maine cod.

Through this action, we are increasing the possession and trip limit from zero to 25 pounds per trip for the remainder of the fishing year, though April 30, 2016.

This new limit goes into effect with publication in the Federal Register on Wednesday, September 16.

Read the rule as filed in the Federal Register today, and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.

Questions? Contact Jennifer Goebel, Regional Office, at 978-281-6175 or Jennifer.Goebel@noaa.gov.

 

NORWAY: Oil spill dispersants do not increase cod exposure to toxins

September 9, 2015 — NORWAY — A recent study found that using dispersants moderately decreased the number of cod eggs and larvae affected by spills off the Norwegian coast.

Oil spills at sea can be catastrophic events, with oil and discharged toxins, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, threatening marine wildlife and coastlines, damaging healthy ecosystems and harming livelihoods, reports Science for Environment Policy.

Efforts to stop widespread damage from oil spills typically involve burning or collecting surface spills, or using dispersants. Dispersants are chemicals that help to break up the oil into smaller droplets, reducing or preventing the ascent of oil droplets from seabed spills, enhancing the mixing of the oil into the water column and making it easier for naturally occurring bacteria to break it down.

The use of dispersants has been controversial, particularly as earlier types were sometimes more environmentally damaging than the oil itself. Newer types of dispersants though are considered less toxic to the environment and are useful in preventing oil slicks travelling to sensitive areas, such as fish spawning grounds or places where there are stationary organisms, like mussels, which cannot escape.

Fish eggs and larvae are highly sensitive to oil toxins, especially polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Using dispersants to break up surface slicks increases the concentration of total PAHs (TPAHs) in the water column where the cod eggs and larvae are found, which may increase the toxic effects of an oil spill.

Read the full story at FIS

Cod bones from Mary Rose reveal globalised fish trade in Tudor England

September 9, 2015 — New stable isotope and ancient DNA analysis of the bones of stored cod provisions recovered from the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose, which sank off the coast of southern England in 1545, has revealed that the fish in the ship’s stores had been caught in surprisingly distant waters: the northern North Sea and the fishing grounds of Iceland – despite England having well developed local fisheries by the 16th century.

Test results from one of the sample bones has led archaeologists to suspect that some of the stored cod came from as far away as Newfoundland in eastern Canada.

The research team say that the findings show how naval provisioning played an important role in the early expansion of the fish trade overseas, and how that expansion helped fuel the growth of the English navy. Commercial exploitation of fish and the growth of naval sea power were “mutually reinforcing aspects of globalisation” in Renaissance Europe, they say.

“The findings contribute to the idea that the demand for preserved fish was exceeding the supply that local English and Irish fisheries were able to provide in order to feed growing – and increasingly urban – populations. We know from these bones that one of the sources of demand was naval provisions,” said Dr James Barrett, from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the University of Cambridge.

“The existence and development of globalised fisheries was one of the things that made the growth of the navy possible. The navy was a key mechanism of maritime expansion, while at the same time being sustained by that expansion. The story of the cod trade is a microcosm of globalisation during this pivotal period that marked the beginning of an organised English navy, which would go on to become the Royal Navy,” he said.

Read the full story from the University of Cambridge

 

Historical Arctic Logbooks Provide Insights into Past Diets and Climatic Responses of Cod

September 7, 2015 — UK fisheries survey logbooks from the 1930s to 1950s have been digitised for the first time, revealing how cod responded to changing temperatures in the last century.

Scientists at the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas) and the University of Exeter found that at the time, the warm seas experienced around Norway benefitted the cod, similar to the conditions there today.

Most cod eaten by the UK comes from northern seas including the Barents Sea around Norway, because the stocks there at the moment are at record highs. Cod stocks were also big in the middle of the last century, and this new research, published in PLOS ONE, reveals that the environmental conditions at the time contributed to the change. Cod diet data reveals that their food preferences each year, between capelin, herring, crustaceans and cod cannibalism, were also affected by their environment.

Cefas holds many records from historical survey cruises, many of them in the form of paper log books. A recent programme of work concentrated on cataloguing and digitising these documents, where possible, to ensure that they are not lost and can be made freely available. More of Cefas’ data, with the exception of data owned by industry, will continue to be made available over this year.

Read the full story here

 

Local lawmakers fear Cape fishermen will lose out on disaster funds

September 2, 2015 — Many Cape Cod fishermen, operating under shrunken quotas for cod, have shifted their focus to catching other fish species such as dogfish, skate and monkfish.

But that business decision, some lawmakers worry, could be jeopardizing the fishermen’s ability to qualify for the last pot of federal disaster relief funding being dispersed by the Baker administration to help offset the hit to their livelihoods from declining fish populations.

The Division of Marine Fisheries, after issuing draft criteria for the dispersal of roughly $6.5 million in remaining federal fishery disaster aid, held public hearings this summer soliciting feedback on their proposal. Lawmakers from Cape Cod and the Islands are now urging the administration to reconsider the criteria that they say will exclude over 100 fishing boats that could soon be hit with the added cost of paying for at-sea monitors to police their catches.

“We on the Cape represent a group of fisherman who belong to a groundfish sector down here that the draft proposal as written, I’m not sure any of them would qualify for relief,” said Rep. Sarah Peake, a Provincetown Democrat.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

Norway, Russia find peace in cod

August 27, 2015 — Some Norwegian research institutes are experiencing problems in cross-border research activities with Russia, among them the Norwegian Polar Institute’s polar bear count this year. However, fishing cooperation between the two countries is proceeding this year.

The two countries have together managed the rich fish stocks in the Barents Sea for almost half a century. Now, they again engage in their annual joint marine research expedition.

Political tensions between Moscow and Oslo appear not to affect the decades-long fisheries management cooperation between the countries. The Norwegian-Russian cooperation proceeds as planned, the Norwegian Marine Research Institute underlines to BarentsObserver.

Earlier in August, the Norwegian research vessel “Johan Hjort” set off from the port of Tromsø to start the collection of marine data in the Barents Sea. It was set to be joined by another three vessels, two Norwegian and one Russian.

“The difficult political situation does not much affect us”, Knut Sunnanå says to BarentsObserver. “We continue our research as before and our cooperation with [Russian partner] Pinro is not disturbed by the situation,” he adds.

As previously reported, other research institutes are currently experiencing problems in cross-border research activities with Russia, among them the Norwegian Polar Institute’spolar bear count this year.

The four ships will over the next weeks crosscross the Barents Sea to get a status update of stocks and the marine ecosystem. The data collected will be of key importance for the two countries’ setting of regional fisheries quotas.

Read the full story at the Arctic Newswire