Saving Seafood

Experts Say Wasteful Fishing Regulations Not Keeping Pace With Climate Change

September 6, 2015 — Hundreds of thousands of pounds of valuable fish caught off Connecticut’s coast are thrown overboard every year, and 80 percent of them are dead by the time they hit the water, experts say.

Commercial fishermen, environmentalists and state officials say a prime reason for such a stunning waste of a natural resource is an out-of-date federal regulatory system that hasn’t kept up with the realities of a changing climate and shifting fish populations.

“It’s just a wholly unjustifiable practice,” said Peter Auster, a senior research scientist at Mystic Aquarium. “This waste … is pervasive in the way we’re managing fishing.”

“The whole construct of the [regulatory] system needs to be questioned,” said Curt Johnson, executive director of the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and Save the Sound.

The problem is that federal fishing regulations are designed to protect fish species based on where they used to be most plentiful. Some of those fish populations have now shifted their range north as a result of global warming, but federal fishing quotas haven’t changed. As a result, Connecticut fishermen are saddled with low, out-of-date quotas, forcing them to throw back huge amounts of certain species, even though those fish have become plentiful off New England.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

 

Using Science to Save Bay Scallops

August 13, 2015 — MILFORD, Conn.—Five-month-old bay scallops, each roughly the size of a quarter, fluttered through the murky water like miniature UFOs.

“You see them swimming?” said Sheila Stiles, a geneticist at the Milford Laboratory, where hundreds of scallops are being raised in aquaculture tanks with water pumped in from Long Island Sound.

The population of bay scallops, a smaller relative of sea scallops, has been dwindling in U.S. waters for decades. The Milford Laboratory is trying to bring them back by breeding the shellfish that are most likely to survive and reproduce in the wild.

“What we are trying to do is rebuild or restore the populations and using genetic approaches,” said Gary Wikfors, biotechnology branch chief at the lab, which is part of the federal Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

 

CONNECTICUT: Shellfish industry, state regulators seek common ground with new panel

July 12, 2015 — HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Connecticut’s shellfish industry that sees state regulators as heavy-handed is backing an advisory council established by the legislature to seek common ground.

With demand strong for oysters and other shellfish, the industry and state officials have a shared goal to make sure Connecticut capitalizes on the lucrative agricultural niche. A key task of the Aquaculture Advisory Council will be to develop a plan to expand the shellfish industry.

It also will recommend procedures to make available maps with the names of shellfish bed leaseholders and review health and safety standards related to the industry — a matter that was pushed to the forefront two years ago by a temporary shutdown over tainted shellfish.

The group will include representatives of the industry, a habitat conservation organization, a marine studies expert and a local official from a shoreline community on western Long Island Sound where the state’s largest shellfish businesses operate. The 13-member council will be appointed by the governor and Democratic and Republican leaders of the legislature.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Elkhart Truth