February 2, 2016 (AP) — Interstate fishing regulators have decided to hold off on starting the process of crafting a plan to try to preserve the dwindling southern New England lobster stock.
A board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Tuesday to postpone authorizing a new management plan for the fishery. A plan could address issues such as trap reductions and closed seasons for lobster fishermen.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at Portland Press Herald
SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton – January 25, 2016 — Last week the media was full of a new round of global fishery disaster stories, prompted by an article in Nature Communications by Daniel Pauly & Dirk Zeller affiliated with the Sea Around Us project.
Pauly and Zeller state that FAO global fisheries data has underestimated prior catch, and that therefore if this is taken into account, the decline in fish catch from the peak in the late 1990’s is not 400,000 tons per year, but 1.2 million tons per year.
“Our results indicate that the decline is very strong and is not due to countries fishing less. It is due to countries having fished too much and having exhausted one fishery after another,” said Pauly to the Guardian newspaper. As a result, a new round of handwringing ensued about global overfishing.
But, the facts don’t support Pauly’s interpretation. Catch rates are simply not a suitable measure of fisheries abundance. In fact, declines in catch rates often are due to improvement in fisheries management, not declines in abundance.
Over at cfood, a number of scientists specifically rebutted the premise of Pauly’s article.
Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington says:
This paper tells us nothing fundamentally new about world catch, and absolutely nothing new about the status of fish stocks.
It has long been recognized that by-catch, illegal catch and artisanal catch were underrepresented in the FAO catch database, and that by-catch has declined dramatically.
What the authors claim, and the numerous media have taken up, is the cry that their results show that world fish stocks are in worse shape than we thought. This is absolutely wrong. We know that fish stocks are stable in some places, increasing in others and declining in yet others.
Most of the major fish stocks of the world, constituting 40% of the total catch are scientifically assessed using a mixture of data sources including data on the trends in abundance of the fish stocks, size and age data of the fish caught and other information as available. This paper really adds nothing to our understanding of these major fish stocks.
Another group of stocks, constituting about 20% of global catch, are assessed using expert knowledge by the FAO. These experts use their personal knowledge of these fish stocks to provide an assessment of their status. Estimating the historical unreported catch for these stocks adds nothing to our understanding of these stocks.
For many of the most important stocks that are not assessed by scientific organizations or by expert opinion, we often know a lot about their status. For example; abundance of fish throughout almost all of South and Southeast Asia has declined significantly. This is based on the catch per unit of fishing effort and the size of the individuals being caught. Estimating the amount of other unreported catches does not change our perspective on the status of these stocks.
In the remaining fisheries where we know little about their status, does the fact that catches have declined at a faster rate than reported in the FAO catch data tell us that global fisheries are in worse shape than we thought? The answer is not really. We would have to believe that the catch is a good index of the abundance.
Figure 1 of the Pauly and Zeller paper shows that a number of major fishing regions have not seen declines in catch in the last 10 years. These areas include the Mediterranean and Black Sea, the Eastern Central Atlantic, the Eastern Indian Ocean, the Northwest Pacific and the Western Indian Ocean. Does this mean that the stocks in these areas are in good shape, while areas that have seen significant declines in catch like the Northeast Atlantic, and the Northeast Pacific are in worse shape?
We know from scientific assessments that stocks in the Mediterranean and Eastern Central Atlantic are often heavily overfished – yet catches have not declined.
We know that stocks in the Northeast Pacific are abundant, stable and not overfished, and in the Northeast Atlantic are increasing in abundance. Yet their catch has declined.
Total catch, and declines in catch, are not a good index of the trends in fish stock abundance.
Michael Kaiser of Bangor University commented:
Catch and stock status are two distinct measurement tools for evaluating a fishery, and suggesting inconsistent catch data is a definitive gauge of fishery health is an unreasonable indictment of the stock assessment process. Pauly and Zeller surmise that declining catches since 1996 could be a sign of fishery collapse. While they do acknowledge management changes as another possible factor, the context is misleading and important management efforts are not represented. The moratorium on cod landings is a good example – zero cod landings in the Northwest Atlantic does not mean there are zero cod in the water. Such distinctions are not apparent in the analysis.
Also David Agnew, director of standards for the Marine Stewardship Council, said:
It is noteworthy that the peak of the industrial catches – in the late 1990s/early 2000s – coincidentally aligns with the start of the recovery of many well managed stocks. This point of recovery has been documented previously and particularly relates to the recovery of large numbers of stocks in the north Pacific, the north Atlantic and around Australia and New Zealand, and mostly to stocks that are assessed by analytical models. For stocks that need to begin recovery plans to achieve sustainability, this most often entails an overall reduction in fishing effort, which would be reflected in the reductions in catches seen here. So, one could attribute some of the decline in industrial catch in these regions to a correct management response to rebuild stocks to a sustainable status, although I have not directly analyzed the evidence for this. This is therefore a positive outcome worth reporting.
This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.
January 22, 2016 — WASHINGTON — It’s not easy counting fish. Just ask the people who have to do it.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries division is responsible for estimating the health and size of dozens of fish stocks in U.S. waters, measurements that help eight regional councils determine which fish commercial and recreational anglers are allowed to catch.
The accuracy of NOAA’s counts is at the heart of a national debate over whether to loosen current catch limits.
NOAA defends the data, obtained through a combination of sampling methods and statistical models. But recreational fishermen and their backers on Capitol Hill, who want to loosen the catch limits, claim they’re based on “flawed science.”
The debate comes as Congress considers reauthorization of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the law that governs management of federal fisheries.
Richard Merrick, NOAA’s chief fisheries scientist, believes the fish counts are “statistically robust” but acknowledges NOAA could do a better job explaining how it conducts the counts and building trust among stakeholders.
Merrick recently talked with USA TODAY about why NOAA’s counts are under attack and options for improving them.
January 21, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
The Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the New England Fishery Management Council are requesting proposals for projects that aim to improve the data and models used to manage New England groundfish, and that address one or more of the six research priorities developed during GMRI’s 2015 Fish Tank series of scoping meetings. A total of $30K is available to support an anticipated one or more projects. Proposals are due Friday, February 19th.
Attached is the full request for proposals. As stated in the attachment, please be aware that the submitting applicant must have attended one of the Fish Tank port meetings or the Taking Stock workshop (http://www.gmri.org/fishtank). However, other project team members need not have participated in the Fish Tank series.
Please contact GMRI Project Coordinator, Mary Hudson, at mhudson@gmri.org or 207-228-1666 with any questions.
January 21, 2016 — North Jersey anglers are a passionate bunch.
During the course of a year, I’m always getting questions about why certain things are done regarding everything from regulations to stocking. Folks aren’t shy about sharing what they think, especially when they have thoughts about what could be done better.
And while I enjoy listening, there’s a much better sounding board available. The best part is that this venue gives you a chance to really make a difference.
The state Division of Fish and Wildlife will be hosting another public forum to discuss freshwater fisheries research, management and recreational angling at 10 a.m. Jan. 30 at the Hackettstown State Fish Hatchery in Warren County.
These forums are aimed at improving communication with the angling public and to solicit public input in shaping freshwater fisheries in the future. These events are a perfect opportunity for all freshwater anglers to learn about the state’s existing programs and to share their views and recommendations.
This isn’t just a show. The goal is to make fishing in New Jersey the best it can be, and the people in charge are open to all ideas.
Read the full story at NewJersey.com
January 15, 2016 — HORNBROOK, Calif. — On a frigid morning in a small metal-sided building, a team of specialists prepared to orchestrate an elaborate breeding routine. The work would be wet and messy, so they wore waders. Their tools included egg trays and a rubber mallet, which they used to brain a fertile female coho salmon, now hanging dead on a hook.
Diana Chesney, a biologist, studied a piece of paper with a matrix of numbers, each one denoting a male salmon and potential match for the female coho.
“This is the bible,” she said of the matrix. “It’s what Carlos says.”
John Carlos Garza, a geneticist based a day’s drive south in Santa Cruz, has become a key figure in California’s effort to preserve its decimated salmon stocks. Using the latest genetic techniques, he and his team decide which individual fish should be bred together. At several major state conservation hatcheries, like the coho program here at Iron Gate, no two salmon are spawned until after Dr. Garza gives counsel — a “salmon mating service,” he jokingly calls it.
His painstaking work is the latest man-made solution to help fix a man-made problem that is about 150 years old: dams, logging, mining, farming, fishing and other industries have so fractured and polluted the river system that salmon can no longer migrate and thrive. In fact, today, owing to the battered habitat, virtually all salmon in California are raised in hatcheries.
Traditionally, the practice entailed killing fertile salmon and hand-mixing eggs and male milt, or sperm, then raising the offspring packed in containers or pools. When they were old enough to fend for themselves, they were released to rivers or sometimes trucked or ferried to release points to find the ocean on their own, a practice that gave them a necessary transition before they hit saltwater and a semblance of the quintessential salmon experience of migrating to the sea and back. To that end, they eventually swam back to hatcheries, where they became the next breeders in the cycle.
While hatcheries have helped propagate the species, they have also created new problems. The salmon they produce can be inbred and less hardy through domestication, hurting their chances for surviving and thriving in the wild.
Read the full story at The New York Times
January 12, 2016 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — Yogesh Girdhar wowed the room with a video of what looked like a small shoebox awkwardly paddling underwater.
What Girdhar, a post-doctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, called a “curious robot” had none of the cachet of the sleek autonomously operated torpedoes, high-tech miniaturized laboratories, or parasite-zapping lasers that had already been displayed at a conference held Monday at the institution’s Quissett Campus to explore the role of robots and automation in aquaculture.
But his clumsy looking creation filled a need in the minds of many at the conference. As it paddled along, its software played the favorite childhood learning game — one of these things is not like the others — picking out a small coral head sticking up from the sand and zeroing in on it. The program, Girdhar said, would help a free-swimming vehicle, patrolling inside a fish cage far out to sea, recognize and investigate anomalies such as dead fish, a hole in the net, even evidence of disease. It could then notify its owners that something was wrong, prompting additional investigation.
It’s the kind of innovation conference organizers hope will make offshore aquaculture more cost effective.
“Open-ocean aquaculture is a high-cost way of producing fish that hasn’t really taken hold yet,” said Hauke Kite-Powell, a WHOI researcher in marine policy. “The challenge is to make it cost-competitive with near-shore aquaculture.”
With the world population projected to climb from 7 billion in 2011 to 9 billion by 2040, the demand for food, especially protein, will also soar. A diminishing water supply, droughts and less arable land are squeezing agriculture and land-based meat production.
Unfortunately, the one resource people once believed was limitless, wild fish, has proven to be all too finite. Mismanagement, overfishing, climate change and other factors have depleted fish stocks worldwide.
December 31, 2015 — Twenty-six fishermen, fish markets and industry groups have again sued the US government alleging that regulators are allowing recreational fisherman to deplete scarce red snapper stocks in the Gulf of Mexico.
The lawsuit, filed against commerce secretary Penny Pritzker, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) comes in the wake previous litigation that has seen the commercial fishing industry succeed in challenging regulators’ red snapper management policies.
Previously, courts ruled that regulators did not have enough enforcement measures in place to ensure that recreational fishermen did not exceed their total allowable catch (TAC) of red snapper, a species under strict management because it is considered to be “overfished.”
The lack of adequate controls on recreational fishing violated provisions of the Magnuson-Stevens Act and prompted regulators to develop new measures for recreational fishing. However, in the lawsuit filed Dec. 28, commercial fishermen argue that a new regulatory proposal to “reallocate” a portion of future red snapper TAC from recreational to commercial use violates existing federal law.
Read the full story at Undercurrent News
December 22, 2015 — In a commentary published by CFOOD, Dr. Ray Hilborn, Professor at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington and author of the book Overfishing: What Everyone Needs to Know, addresses claims made by a recent NPR story that global fish stocks are in decline. According to Dr. Hilborn,the opposite is true for many important global fisheries: stocks in Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan are actually increasing, while stocks in Australia and parts of Canada remain stable.
Fish Stocks Are Declining Worldwide, And Climate Change Is On The Hook.
This is the title of a recent NPR posting — again perpetuating a myth that most fish stocks are declining.
Let’s look at the basic question: are fish stocks declining? We know a lot about the status of fish stocks in some parts of the world, and very little about the trends in others. We have good data for most developed countries and the major high seas tuna fisheries. These data are assembled and compiled in the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment database, available to the public at www.ramlegacy.org. This database contains trends in abundance for fish stocks comprising about 40% of the global fish catch and includes the majority of stocks from Europe, North America, Japan, Russia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Major fisheries of the world that are not in the data base are primarily in S. and SE Asia.
December 14, 2015 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The Maine scallop fishing season opened on Dec. 1 and, less than two weeks later, Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher closed it down in large areas of Downeast waters.
Last week, DMR announced that, as of Sunday, scallop fishing in Gouldsboro and Dyer bays in Hancock County and Wohoa Bay, the Jonesport Reach and the department’s Inner Machias Rotational Area, all in Washington County, are done for this season. According to DMR, Keliher shut the fishery down in those areas “in order to protect Maine’s scallop resource due to the risk of unusual damage and imminent depletion.”
At a meeting in Ellsworth just days before the season opened, DMR Resource Coordinator Trisha Cheney warned that scallop populations throughout the state were extremely low. While the department agreed to industry requests to set the fishing season (except in Cobscook Bay) at 70 days, Cheney said, it was likely that fishing in some areas would be closed after only a few days of fishing.
The closure was announced after just seven days of fishing. (In most areas, fishing is allowed only four days per week, Monday through Thursday.)
With the scallop resource still in poor condition, DMR is worried that continued harvesting in the closed areas could deplete the stock in those locales beyond its ability to recover.
“Continued harvesting may damage sublegal scallops that could be caught during subsequent fishing seasons, as well as reducing the broodstock essential to a recovery,” the department wrote in an explanation of the adoption of the emergency closure rule.