May 14, 2020 — In March, the closure of most U.S. restaurants just as the blue crab season in Virginia and Maryland was getting started had retailers, processors, and watermen afraid that the bottom would drop out of the market.
Initial reports in local media indicated that pricing was off, in some cases, as much as 30 percent, and the fear was that the fishery would be in dire straits.
April 22, 2020 — Larry Collins is a big, gregarious man with tobacco-stained teeth, a salty tongue, and the commanding presence of a sea captain. For 40 years he has earned his living as a commercial fisherman, slinging wild-caught seafood from a bustling warehouse on Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Collins loves his profession; it has put enough money in his pocket to raise kids, buy a home, and save up for retirement in one of the most expensive cities in America. Sitting in his cramped office, with the smell of fresh fish wafting in from the docks, he talked about the days when more than 4,000 boats would head out from California’s ports each season and ply the waters of the Pacific Coast, trapping crabs and netting huge runs of Chinook salmon.
“I will give you the best salmon year in my whole career. It was 1988. We caught 1.4 million salmon in California, and another 800,000 escaped up the river,” he said with obvious nostalgia.
That era, though, is long gone. These days, the local fishing industry is a withered remnant of its former self. In 2018 “we caught maybe 175,000 salmon, and 80,000 went up the river,” Collins told me. “Fifty-three boats delivered 50 percent of what was caught.” While some salmon seasons have been much better than others, such as the robust 2019 season, “the fishery has probably been reduced to 5 or 10 percent of what it used to be.” Cut off from their ancestral breeding grounds by enormous dams, preyed on by invasive species, and deprived of the freshwater flows that are crucial to sustaining their populations, the salmon have suffered long-term decline and face an increasingly grim future.
April 20, 2020 — A new program is targeting the thousands of abandoned crab traps that litter Louisiana’s coastal waterways.
Louisiana Sea Grant, a coastal advocacy and research group based at LSU, has received a $40,000 federal grant to lead the project. The money comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Louisiana leads the nation in the number of commercial blue crab fishermen, with more than 2,500 license holders who have no limit on the number of traps they can operate, Louisiana Sea Grant says in a news release. Some commercial crabbers run as many as 800 to 2,000 traps each.
In addition, Louisiana has more than 6,600 licensed recreational crab fishermen who can operate 10 traps each.
Between commercial and recreational crabbers, there can be more than 66,000 traps in the water, the group says.
“On average, 130 traps per crabber are lost each year due to storms, accidents and intentional abandonment,” Sea Grant says. “The result is in an estimated 11 million crabs lost to ghost fishing by derelict traps. Other fish, such as red drum, black drum and summer flounder also can get stuck in the traps.
April 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries is setting the 2020 Atlantic deep-sea red crab fishery quota, including a 2,000-mt annual catch limit and total allowable landings limit, as recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council.
This rule includes two regulatory updates:
Read the final rule as filed in the Federal Register and supporting documents on the Council’s website.
March 19, 2020 — Border crossing between Canada and the U.S. will be closed for non-essential travels in an effort by both countries to slow the spread of Covid-19. The movement of goods and supplies between the two countries, as well as Canadians and Americans who cross the border daily for essential work-related matters will still be able to do so.
This new development was announced Wednesday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“Our governments recognize that it is critical that we preserve supply chains between both countries. These supply chains ensure that food, fuel and life saving medicines reach people on both sides of the border,” Trudeau said, as he addressed reporters from outside his home in Ottawa where he has been self-isolating after his wife tested positive of Covid-19.
February 21, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
In 2018, U.S. fishermen landed 9.4 billion pounds of fish valued at $5.6 billion at ports around the nation—consistently high figures on par with recent years, which bring economic benefits up and down the seafood supply chain.
According to the Fisheries of the United States report, which is compiled by NOAA using data and analysis not immediately available at the same end of a fishing year, U.S. highest value species groups in 2018 included lobster ($684 million), crabs ($645 million), salmon ($598 million), scallops ($541 million), and shrimp ($496 million).
Dutch Harbor in Alaska, and New Bedford in Massachusetts, continue to dominate the list of top ports driven by landings of pollock for Alaska (the nation’s largest commercial fishery) and top-valued sea scallops in Massachusetts.
New Bedford brought in $431 million in 2018, up from $390 million in 2017, making it the top port by value in the country for the 19th straight year. Other top ports by value in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region include Cape May/Wildwood, NJ ($66 million), Point Judith, RI ($64 million), Stonington, ME ($60 million), Hampton Roads Area, VA ($55 million), and Gloucester, MA ($53 million).
Top ports by landings in the New England/Mid-Atlantic region are Reedville, VA (353 million pounds), New Bedford, MA (114 million pounds), Cape May/Wildwood, NJ (102 million pounds), Gloucester, MA (59 million pounds), Point Judith, RI (48 million pounds), and Portland, ME (46 million pounds).
February 20, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries is proposing specifications for the 2020 Atlantic deep-sea red crab fishery, including an annual catch limit and total allowable landings limit. We are also proposing projected quotas for 2021-2023.
The New England Fishery Management Council recommended increasing the red crab fishery quota 12.7 percent to 2,000 metric tons for fishing years 2020-2023. Landings from 2013-2018 were below this quota, but have been increasing.
This rule proposes two regulatory updates:
Read the proposed rule as published in the Federal Register and supporting documents on the Council’s website.
The comment period is open through March 6.
You may submit comments, identified by NOAA-NMFS-2020-0007, by either one of the following methods:
February 4, 2020 — On the heels of a new report indicating whale entanglements from buoyed ropes from crab traps could worsen in Monterey Bay, a Marina company has a technology that can eliminate the need for any entangling lines.
A study released last week by a researcher from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that conditions that have caused a marked increase in humpback whale entanglements are likely to get worse because of climate change.
The reasons can be complicated but essentially humpbacks are being pushed toward crab lines in search of food that isn’t available in their normal feeding areas.
Traditional crab traps lie on the ocean floor and are connected to identifiable buoys with roping. When a whale swims under the buoy it can get caught up in that roping and suffer severe trauma such as deep cuts.
January 27, 2020 — U.S. Customs and Border Protection has seized 3,700 live mitten crabs – sent under false manifests – shipped from China and Hong Kong to individuals and businesses in the United States over the past four months.
The crabs were sent in 51 separate shipments through the port of Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.A., and weighed in at around 3,400 pounds, according to a CBP press release. Mitten crab is considered to be an invasive species that can have a “disastrous impact on native habitats,” according to CBP.
November 6, 2019 — The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is often held up as the poster child for ocean pollution. And while the collection of trash collecting in the Pacific Ocean certainly deserves attention, researchers at the University of Delaware are concerned about a smaller source of pollution, much smaller.
Through its marine debris program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is giving the university a $325,000 grant to study the impact of microplastics on blue crab populations near the Delaware Bay. Microplastics are defined as pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in length, or smaller than a pencil eraser. According to NOAA, some microplastics are microbeads, fibers or pellets that come from cosmetics or personal care products, for instance. They can also come from larger pieces of plastic that split apart and break down after exposure to the sun.
It’s estimated that there’s about five trillion tons of marine debris in our oceans and plastics are 90% of that, said UD College of Earth, Ocean and Environment Dean Estella Atekwana. “This grant is really timely so we can advance our understanding of what plastics do to our marine ecosystems,” she said.