Saving Seafood

Vote coming on rules about removal of dogfish fins

July 28, 2016 — OLD LYME, Conn. — Interstate fishing regulators will vote on changes to rules that govern removal of fins from some coastal sharks by fishermen.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is considering an amendment that would allow fishermen to bring smooth dogfish to land with fins removed as long as their total retained catch is at least 25 percent smooth dogfish.

Current rules say fishermen can bring ashore as many dogfish with fins removed as they choose. The vote is scheduled for Tuesday.

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

Whales popping up in Long Island Sound for second year

July 26, 2016 — NORWALK, Conn. — For the second year in a row, whales have been spotted in the Long Island Sound, with sightings all the way in near Fairfield County. But why?

According to Joe Schnierlein, with the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, “They’re here for food. This is a smorgasbord for them.”

He’s referring to a fish called menhaden, also known as buffers.

“Right now, the entire western end of the Sound is loaded with them,” Schnierlein explained.

Read and watch the full story at FOX 61

Endangered Atlantic sturgeon find a new nursery in the Connecticut River

July 20, 2016 — OLD LYME, Conn. — Though facing extinction after 70 million years of existence, Atlantic sturgeon apparently aren’t done looking for new ways to adapt and survive.

“They’re really amazing fish,” Isaac Wirgin, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Medicine at New York University’s School of Medicine, said Monday. “This was really an unexpected result.”

The result he was referring to was the outcome of genetic tests he completed last fall on tissue samples from some 6-inch, 1-year-old Atlantic sturgeon caught in the lower Connecticut River in 2014.

Tom Savoy, a fisheries biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection who’s been researching Atlantic sturgeon in Long Island Sound for more than 20 years, caught the small fish while sampling with nets in the river for a related species — the short-nosed sturgeon — and knew right away he’d found something unique.

Based on their size, they had to have been born in the river.

“Prior to that, we assumed the breeding population had been extirpated in Connecticut,” said Savoy, who works out of DEEP’s Marine Headquarters on Ferry Road.

“But the great news is, evidently they are spawning in the Connecticut River,” he said. “Now, because they’re a federally protected species, the state is obligated to learn more. We need to know where they are, and how many there are.”

The ancient species, which supplied the caviar that became one of the first exports from the colonies, was declared a federally endangered species in 2012.

Living up to 70 years and growing up to 400 pounds, adult Atlantic sturgeon were popular fish for Native Americans and the European settlers who came after them.

“By the 1800s, about 75 percent of the stocks on the East Coast were wiped out,” Savoy said.

Since receiving endangered species status, more researchers have been looking for — and finding — Atlantic sturgeon in rivers and estuaries along the Atlantic coast, with the Hudson River population standing out as the most robust, Wirgin said.

Read the full story at The Day

Vessel rescues 19 fishermen from burning boat off Bermuda

June 30, 2016 — HARTFORD, Conn. — A plume of black smoke alerted the crew of a cargo vessel to possible distress. As they pulled closer in the Atlantic Ocean, they found a fishing boat engulfed in flames and the sailors in the water.

The ship, K. Coral, hoisted 17 fishermen aboard. Two others drifted away while clinging to a makeshift raft made from fishing buoys. Lookouts searched for several hours, through nightfall and heavy wind and rain, before the crew pulled them both to safety as well.

The ship arrived this week to unload steel in New Haven, Connecticut, where a delegation from the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday honored the captain and crew for carrying out the rescue last week 900 miles southeast of Bermuda.

Park Hyog Soo, the South Korean captain of the Panama-flagged K. Coral, said in Wednesday an email to The Associated Press that the entire effort felt like something out of a movie.

“Until now I, and my crew, still can’t believe that we had rescued 19 people,” he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WRCB

New England Officials Dispute Proposed EU Lobster Ban

June 27, 2016 — With struggling fisheries in Connecticut facing warmer waters and competition with other states, across the pond a potential U.S. lobster ban could add additional complications for New England.

The Swedish government has requested that the species Homarus americanus (the American lobster) be listed as invasive. Over the last eight years, 32 lobsters have been found in Swedish waters. Some say the crustaceans pose a threat to the smaller European lobster. The invasive label would effectively bar imports throughout the European Union. Government organizations and fisheries alike are fighting back.

David Simpson, director of marine fisheries at the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said it will likely effect Connecticut lobster companies as well. Simpson also questioned the motives of the bans because of the low number of American lobsters found abroad.

“This clearly seems economically motivated, which is a shame,” Simpson said. “They’re using the guy from their environmental protection for economic protection.”

Read the full story at WNPR

Long Island Sound Fishing Entangled In Conflicting Multi-State Regulations

June 22, 2016 — WESTBROOK, Conn. — There’s a joke among Connecticut anglers that the first thing you really need for a Long Island Sound fishing trip is a lawyer: Catching the wrong fish at the wrong time in the wrong waters could land you in a tangle of legal trouble.

Let’s say you were fishing in the Sound in early June, believing you were in Connecticut waters where the black bass season began on May 1. If you hooked a good one but had drifted over the mid-Sound state line into New York’s jurisdiction, you’d have been in violation. New York’s black bass season doesn’t start until June 27.

“You move 100 feet this way, and you could be over the line,” Jack Conway Jr., a longtime Connecticut fisherman who has frequently served on state and regional fishing regulatory panels, explained last week.

Conway and his 81-year-old father, Jack Conway Sr., had just returned from a successful black sea bass fishing trip into the Sound with Bill Kokis, owner of Westbrook’s Marshview Marina.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

Connecticut Congressional Members Call For Federal Probe Into “Unfair” Commercial Fishing Quotas

June 15, 2016 — Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation are stepping up the pressure to reform federal rules for this state’s commercial fishermen, calling Tuesday for a U.S. Commerce Department investigation into “unfair quotas.”

U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy and U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2, demanded that the department’s inspector general investigate a quota system they said disadvantages Connecticut fishing operators and is putting them under “extreme economic hardship.”

Connecticut’s delegation and those from other New England states have frequently criticized the existing federal quota system.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

Monkfish Money to Allow Study of the New England Fishery

June 13, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government says two projects designed to improve the future of the monkfish fishery will receive more than $3.7 million in grants.

The grants are going to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and Cornell University Cooperative Extension.

The monkfish fishery was worth more than $18 million in 2014. It is based in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Fishermen also land monkfish in other states including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network

Northward Movement of New England Lobsters Putting Strain on Industry, Trade Group Says

June 6, 2016 — One of Southern New England’s most iconic sea creatures is being displaced by a warming planet.

A trade group says rising ocean temperatures has been putting a strain on lobster fisheries in Southern New England, including Southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.

According to a report from the National Observer, the Lobstermen’s Association of Massachusetts revealed that lobsters are moving further north, seeking habitats in colder waters.

“This is a real concern for us,” Beth Casoni, executive director of the Lobstermen’s Association of Massachusetts told weather.com in a phone interview.

Megan Ware, Lobster Fishery Management Plan Coordinator at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, explained to weather.com that the number of adult lobsters in Southern New England —south of Cape Cod— has plummeted to “roughly 10 million.”

Read the full story at The Weather Channel 

New England lobsters swim to Canada, bringing jobs with them

June 2, 2016 — Warming waters from climate change off the Atlantic coast are driving lobsters further north than ever before, disrupting fisheries and – for some – perhaps changing a way of life forever.

While the southern New England lobster fishery has all but collapsed, fishers in Maine, Prince Edward Island and even further north are benefiting from the crustaceans’ movement.

“I’ve seen enough of the charts to say the water’s warming, and if that’s climate change, it’s happening. It is happening,” says Beth Casoni, executive director of the Lobstermen’s Association of Massachusetts.

Casoni estimates some 30 fishers still trap lobster in southern New England, down from hundreds previously. The impacted areas include Southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.

At the same time the lobster fishing in Maine and north has exploded. Maine is seeing historically high landings now, roughly five times higher than it was back in the 1980s and ‘90s.

It’s a similar story in P.E.I., where lobster landings have gone from a low of 17.6 million pounds in 1997 to a high of 29.7 million pounds in 2014.

Read the full story at the National Observer