Saving Seafood

ALASKA: OVER HALF OF WINTER COMMERCIAL RED KING CRAB GHL HARVESTED

February 28, 2017 — The following has been released by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Division of Commercial Fisheries: 

Approximately 17,000 pounds (43%) remain of the winter red king crab open access commercial guideline harvest. Based on current catch rates, the open access guideline harvest level (GHL) should be entirely caught by sometime in early March. The red king crab GHL for the Norton Sound winter through the ice commercial fishery is 39,744 pounds.

Following the conclusion of the open access winter commercial fishery, the department will open a commercial fishery by emergency order (EO) to harvest the CDQ allocation of the 2017 GHL of 496,800 pounds of red king crab. By regulation, the CDQ is allocated 7.5% of the allowable commercial harvest. In 2017, this equates to 37,260 additional pounds that could be harvested this winter. The winter CDQ season will close when the CDQ allocation is harvested. However, it could also close earlier at the discretion of CDQ management by NSEDC, by EO by ADF&G, or as required by regulation on April 30. Any CDQ quota not taken during the winter can be taken during the summer red king crab commercial fishery.

Commercial fishing for CDQ crab is open to all residents 18 years or older of NSEDC’s fifteen member communities who qualify to obtain a CDQ gear permit card and who sign the 2017 NSEDC Norton Sound Red King Crab Fisherman’s Agreement and NSEDC Residency Verification forms. Interested fishermen should contact NSEDC at 443–2477 if they have questions about the process of becoming eligible to fish for CDQ red king crab.

To date, 55 commercial permit holders have registered with the department for the open access fishery. Permit holders are reminded that they need to register at the ADF&G office in Nome before crabbing. Crabbers fishing both open access and CDQ fisheries do not need to obtain separate pot tags for the CDQ fishery; however, they DO need to register with ADF&G for BOTH fisheries. Village residents can call the ADF&G office to register. Catcher-sellers must also register with the department before selling crab and must turn in any fish tickets every week to ADF&G.

Each permit holder is allowed to fish a total of 20 pots. If any pots are lost, permit holders can get replacement tags by filling out an affidavit at the Nome ADF&G office and reporting the lost tag numbers. No replacement tags will be issued without this information.

Permit holders must be present any time commercial pot gear is being operated, and can only be assisted by licensed crew members. Crewmembers cannot deploy or operate gear on their own. For further information please contact the Nome office at 907-443-5167 or 1-800-560-2271. Good Luck, Good Crabbing and Be Safe Out There!

Read the full release here

ALASKA: State cuts bring changes to Southeast commercial fisheries

February 24, 2017 — Commercial fisheries in Southeast Alaska have survived two years of state budget cuts but not without some changes.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Commercial Fisheries has cut some positions, ended some monitoring programs, and found some new funding sources.

When the state cuts are listed on a spread sheet, the individual amounts don’t seem that staggering – $20,000 here, $50,000 there.

But it totals about $1.75 million over the past two years.

The cuts include laying off a part-time front desk person in Petersburg, not replacing a retired analyst programmer and eliminating a position in the golden king crab fishery.

Lowell Fair, regional supervisor for Commercial Fisheries in Southeast, said none of the cuts were good but they were necessary.

He said the golden king crab job was an observer who would collect data on the crab in season.

Read the full story at KTOO Public Media

Crabbers: Blue crab moratorium will hurt workers, customers

February 21, 2017 — Beginning February 20, Louisiana will enact a first-ever, statewide closure of blue crab fisheries. The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says the crab stock is dangerously close to over-harvest and this break will give the population more time to grow.

The harvest restrictions are for immature blue female crabs, except those being held for processing of softshell crabs. According to the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission, the restrictions should help reduce the fishing pressure on the blue crab stock and encourage a stronger population when the ban ends March 21, 2017.

The statewide shutdown of the Louisiana crab fishery is new, and crabbers say holding the ban in the spring leaves many of them without work. Crabbers also argue it leaves customers without a Lenten favorite.

Crab will not be completely missing from local menus or markets. Crab from outside Louisiana will still be available, although crabbers said they predict the price for blue crab meat will increase and could come at a lower quality.

The 30-day closure of the commercial harvest and the use of crab traps will go into effect in 2017 and last through 2019.

Read the full story at WWLTV

MAINE: Legislature eyes lobster, crab laws

February 6, 2017 — Two Hancock County lawmakers have drafted several bills that would affect the lobster and crab fisheries should they reach the floor of the Maine Legislature.

State Rep. Brian Hubbell (D-Bar Harbor) has drafted a concept bill (LD 149) that proposes several ways to make changes to limited-entry lobster and crab zones.

“It is a laundry list of possible solutions to the grievances I’ve heard from fishermen in Zone B,” Hubbell said.

Tensions between commercial lobster license holders in lobster management zones B and C have been running high since last summer and flared in a dramatic fashion last fall with the report of a trap-cutting war that resulted in gear losses estimated at $350,000 or more by the Marine Patrol.

Those tensions stem from the fact that Zone C had been an open zone and lobstermen from there can fish up to 49-perecent of their traps in Zone B.

Some Zone B fishermen believe it’s unfair that Zone C lobstermen are using their second zone tags and crowding waters where entry is limited.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American. 

Maine legislature eyes lobster, crab laws

January 31, 2017 — Augusta, MAINE — Area lawmakers have drafted several bills that would affect lobster and crab fisheries should they reach the floor of the Maine Legislature.

State Rep. Brian Hubbell (D-Bar Harbor) has drafted a concept bill that proposes several ways to make changes to limited-entry lobster and crab zones

“It is a laundry list of possible solutions to the grievances I’ve heard from fisherman in Zone B,” said Hubbell.

Tensions between commercial lobster license holders in Lobster Management Zones B and C have been running high since last summer and flared in a dramatic fashion last fall with the report of a trap-cutting war that resulted in an estimated $350,000 loss of gear.

Those tensions stem from the fact that Zone C had been an open zone and lobstermen there can fish up to 49 percent of their traps in Zone B.

Some Zone B fishermen believe it’s unfair that Zone C lobstermen are using their second zone tags and crowding waters where entry is limited.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Warming Signs: Climate Change Means A Sea Change for Fishermen and Scientists

January 23, 2017 — Lobsters used to lurk in the waters of Long Island. But these days, New York fisherman have trouble finding any—while their peers 500 miles away in Maine are seeing bumper crops. Instead, the lobstermen of Long Island now catch more crabs and other shellfish—which, in turn, leaves crabbers further down the East Coast worried about the future of their own livelihoods.

Last week I wrote about how climate change is prompting a fish migration that will directly affect what’s served—or not served—for dinner. But these rapid marine changes won’t just affect our appetites; they also represent a sea change for the fisherman and communities that depend on the sea for jobs and income.

Fishing Regulations Struggle to Catch Up

Of course, catching new fish in your usual fishing haunt is trickier than just changing your bait. Regulations guide what you may catch and how much of it, usually state by state—and they aren’t changing as fast as the environment is. John A. Manderson, a research biologist at the NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), noted that sea creatures are moving north 10 times faster than their land-based animals.

“Our ideas of property rights and laws are purely land-based,” Manderson told The New York Times. “But the ocean is all about flux and turbulence and movement.”

To get around these increasingly obsolete laws, some fishermen are catching fish further north and then traveling to areas where it is legal to bring large quantities to shore. Such slippery adherence to regulations sparked mackerel wars in the North Sea back in 2010, and the dispute wasn’t settled for four years.

Furthermore, such an expensive round-about the law is not an option for everyone, especially those with smaller fishing operations.

Read the full story at Paste Magazine

Disaster Declared for West Coast Fisheries

January 23, 2017 — SEATTLE — Nine West Coast salmon and crab fisheries have been declared a disaster, allowing fishing communities to seek relief from the federal government.

Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker declared the disaster on Jan. 18.

Nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington suffered “sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass or loss of access due to unusual ocean and climate conditions,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

The fisheries include Gulf of Alaska pink salmon, California Dungeness and rock crab, and several tribal salmon fisheries in Washington.

Read the full story at Courthouse News

Fisheries disasters declared for 9 species on United States West Coast

January 19, 2017 — The United States Secretary of Commerce declared nine salmon and crab fisheries in Alaska, California and Washington as fisheries disasters on Wednesday, 18 January, opening federal coffers for relief assistance.

Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker announced each of the fisheries covered by the decision had “experienced sudden and unexpected large decreases in fish stock biomass due to unusual ocean and climate conditions.”

The newly designated fisheries disasters are:

In Alaska:
• Gulf of Alaska pink salmon fisheries (2016)

In California:
• California Dungeness and rock crab fishery (2015-2016)
• Yurok Tribe Klamath River Chinook salmon fishery (2016)

In Washington:
• Fraser River Makah Tribe and Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe sockeye salmon fisheries (2014)
• Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay non-treaty coho salmon fishery (2015)
• Nisqually Indian Tribe, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe, Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe, and Squaxin Island Tribe South Puget Sound salmon fisheries (2015)
• Quinault Indian Nation Grays Harbor and Queets River coho salmon fishery (2015)
• Quileute Tribe Dungeness crab fishery (2015-2016)
• Ocean salmon troll fishery (2016)

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Acidic ocean could soon cost us lots of crabs

January 18, 2017 — Dungeness crab fisheries on the West Coast—valued at about $220 million annually—may face a strong downturn over the next 50 years.

The acidification of the ocean expected as seawater absorbs increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will reverberate through the West Coast’s marine food web in unexpected ways, say researchers.

Dungeness crabs, for example, will likely suffer as their food sources decline. But pteropods and copepods, tiny marine organisms with shells that are vulnerable to acidification, will likely experience only a slight overall decline because they are prolific enough to offset much of the impact, finds the study published in Global Change Biology.

Marine mammals and seabirds are less likely to be affected by ocean acidification, the study found.

“What stands out is that some groups you’d expect to do poorly don’t necessarily do so badly—that’s probably the most important takeaway here,” says Kristin Marshall, lead author of the study who pursued the research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center. “This is a testament in part to the system’s resilience to these projected impacts. That’s sort of the silver lining of what we found.”

Read the full story at Futurity

Derelict pots killing 3.3 million crabs annually in the Chesapeake Bay

December 28, 2016 — When Virginia closed its winter dredge fishery in 2008, waterman Clay Justis turned his attention from catching crabs that season to collecting the gear that captures them.

He was one of several watermen hired under a program that taught them to use sonar to find and remove lost and abandoned fishing gear, primarily crab pots, littering the bottom of the Bay.

“As a waterman, I knew there was stuff on the bottom, but when I turned the machine on, I was like, ‘Wow!’” said Justis, who fishes out of Accomack on the Eastern Shore.

Out of sight in the Bay’s often murky water, crab pots lay scattered all over the bottom, the sonar showed — along with other fishing gear such as gill nets, and all manner of trash, even a laundry machine.

But the so-called “ghost pots” are a special concern because the wire mesh cages with openings to draw crabs in but not let them out can continue to catch — and kill — crabs and fish for years. They are taking a bite out of both the crab populations and the wallets of watermen. More often than not, Justis noted, the derelict pots he pulled up had something in them. “You’ve got fish, you’ve got crabs, you’ve got ducks. All kinds of things,” he said. But, he added, “most of the time, they are dead.”

Concern about delict crab pots in the Bay has been growing for a decade, and a new report for the first time attempts to estimate their Baywide impact. It found that more than 145,000 pots litter the bottom of the Bay — a number the report authors consider to be conservative.

Each year, the report estimated that those pots kill about 3.3 million crabs, 3.5 million white perch, 3.6 million Atlantic croaker, and smaller numbers of other species, including ducks, diamondback terrapins and striped bass.

The number of crabs killed amounts to 4.5 percent of the 2014 Baywide harvest, the report said. Nor is the problem limited to the Bay. Studies have found similar problems with fisheries that use “trap” devices to catch crabs and lobsters globally.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal