Saving Seafood

Shuckin’ and thrivin’: Scallop futures in the Gulf of Maine

March 2, 2017 — The niche northern Gulf of Maine scallop fleet brought its territory back from the brink and now hopes to keep it that way.

New England’s small-boat scallopers are not just diving and dragging for their catch. They’re driving to change the way it’s managed.

“My biggest worry is that we just have a fishery to work on,” says Kristan Porter, 46, a scallop fisherman and advisory panel member from Cutler, Maine.

In Maine, the state scallop season opens in the early winter, on or around Dec. 1, and typically stays open through March. Just outside the three-mile line is the federal northern Gulf of Maine scallop fishery, which is managed by the New England Fishery Management Council and extends about halfway down the coast of Massachusetts. The territory is vast, but the productive areas are small compared to the prolific array of scallop grounds to the south.

“If we manage our fishery correctly here [in Maine state lines], then those scallops will work their way outside the 3-mile line,” says Porter, who drags for scallops on the 40-foot Brandon Jay.

The sector was established when the New England Fishery Management Council adopted Amendment 11 to the Atlantic sea scallop fishery management plan, effective June 1, 2008, initially creating two federal permits — IFQs and limited access days at sea.

“We had a bunch of people from Maine who didn’t qualify at all. So they created this northern Gulf of Maine permit,” says Mary Beth Tooley, at an at-large member of the council and the chairwoman of the scallop advisory panel.

In New England, the IFQ and days at sea (limited access) fleets historically fished Georges Bank and down to the Mid-Atlantic on scallop grounds that had been rebounding since 2004, with more areas being opened thanks to video mapping that showed they were burgeoning with biomass and healthy enough for a directed fishery. Since then, the New Bedford fleet’s lucrative landings have kept their home port at the top of the list of the nation’s ports by value.

At the time of the Amendment 11 adoption, the northern Gulf of Maine territory was not worth much. But those few fishermen with history in the area believed they might be able to bring it back with good stewardship. They asked for and were granted a low hard TAC of 70,000 pounds (compared with a fleetwide limit of about 40 million pounds) with a limit of 200 pounds a day and a 10-1/2-foot dredge.

“The people who have traditionally fished there, they want it to stay carefully managed,” says Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the New England council.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

How Smart Fishery Management Saved The Atlantic Sea Scallop

January 24, 2017 — Scallops taught the United States an important lesson in sustainability.

A smart fishery management plan was meant to relieve suffering cod and flounder populations, but it also prevented the Atlantic sea scallop market from fizzling out in the ’90s.

In 1991, New England fisheries yielded 37 million pounds of scallops. Scientists started to worry when scallop landings dropped to less than 10 million pounds in 1994.

Then, regulators closed three fisheries along the Georges Bank, an underwater plateau between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. They also temporarily stopped issuing new fishing licenses, and they rotated access to certain fishing grounds.

Read the full story and watch the video at Newsy

Fishing industry cautiously optimistic about potential haddock boom

January 23, 2017 — Exactly how many of the haddock that hatched in 2013 are still swimming off the coast of southern Nova Scotia is not certain, but researchers agree the numbers are potentially massive.

Biologist Monica Finley recently completed a population assessment for the southern Scotian Shelf and Bay of Fundy.

She estimates 264 million haddock were hatched there in 2013 and survived their first year, making it an “extraordinary” year-class.

“This 2013 year-class is five times higher than the next highest on record since 1985,” said Finley, who works at a Department of Fisheries and Oceans research facility in St. Andrews, N.B.

Her report predicts 100,000 metric tonnes of haddock will reach adulthood in 2017 and 2018.

Bring on the boom

On Georges Bank, the population is predicted to be even bigger, with Canadian and American scientists estimating the 2013 hatch at 1.3 billion fish.

This month, fish plants in southern Nova Scotia are starting to process their first catches of 2013 haddock, forerunners of what industry members hope is a boom for years to come.

“We’re seeing signs of it now, but we would expect to see the fish at the larger, more commercially harvestable sizes in a couple of years,” said Alain d’Entremont, chief operating officer at O’Neil Fisheries in Digby.

“We are taking a cautious path to that harvest.”

Read the full story at CBC News

Atlantic Herring Framework 5 and Amendment 8 Take Shape

November 17, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council today discussed two actions related to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan.

  • Amendment 8: The Council looked over the draft goals and agenda for its second Atlantic Herring Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) Workshop (see blue box). MSE incorporates more public input and technical analyses upfront before alternatives are selected. The approach is being used to establish an acceptable biological catch (ABC) control rule for the Atlantic herring fishery under Amendment 8 that: (1) may explicitly account for herring’s role in the ecosystem; and (2) deals with biological and ecological requirements of the herring resource itself. The amendment also contains a set of still- evolving alternatives to address potential localized depletion and user conflicts in the herring fishery.
  • Framework Adjustment 5: The Council received an overview of the range of alternatives under consideration to modify the Georges Bank haddock accountability measures (AMs) that apply to the herring midwater trawl fishery. The Herring Plan Development Team will conduct additional analyses on the alternatives, and the Council is scheduled to take final action during its January meeting

The herring/haddock issue is being addressed through two channels – one groundfish action and one herring action.

The Council voted yesterday to increase the herring midwater trawl fishery’s Georges Bank haddock sub-annual catch limit (sub-ACL) from 1% to 1.5% through Framework 56 to the groundfish plan.

Herring Framework 5, on the other hand, is the vehicle being used to potentially modify the AMs to help keep the midwater trawl herring fishery from exceeding the haddock sub-ACL. The range of alternatives includes two options for implementing a “proactive” AM closure in addition to maintaining the existing “reactive” AM closure.

The reactive AM requires a shutdown of all green and red areas in the charts below to directed herring midwater trawl fishing – for the remainder of the groundfish fishing year – once the haddock sub-ACL is caught. Framework 5 proposes a proactive approach that would prevent midwater trawl fishing in Closed Areas I and II – either with or without a 15-nautical-mile buffer around the red areas – under three possible seasons: (a) a year-round proactive closure; (b) a May-October proactive closure; or (c) a June-August proactive closure.

The premise is that a seasonal proactive closure of Closed Areas I and II would help keep the midwater trawl fishery within its Georges Bank haddock sub-ACL and prevent a closure of the entire green/red area, which defines the reactive Georges Bank Haddock AM Area. In 2015, the reactive AM was triggered, and the whole AM area was closed to herring midwater trawling from Oct. 22, 2015 through April 30, 2016.

Framework 5 contains other alternatives, including one to seasonally split the Georges Bank haddock sub- ACL so that 80% of the quota is released on May 1 and then 20% is released on Nov. 1 to support a winter herring/mackerel fishery. Copies of the draft alternatives and other herring materials can be found at: http://www.nefmc.org/library/atlantic-herring-committee-november-2016.

The Bycatch That Gives You a Haddock

November 4, 2016 — Starting in October, the federal government began a pilot project to test electronic monitoring on midwater herring trawlers fishing in “groundfish closed” areas off the coast of New England, two of which are in the rich spawning grounds on the continental shelf known as Georges Bank. The yearlong project will help regulators decide whether cameras can replace people as observers to regulate herring trawlers’ catch of haddock.

But before the study is finished, the New England Fishery Management Council will be working to loosen the rules on how much haddock herring trawlers can catch.

Since 2011, government observers have been required on any trips trawlers make to those areas, as part of a program to limit incidental catch, often called “bycatch,” of untargeted fish species. In the case of herring fishing, the biggest bycatch concern on Georges Bank has been haddock, a species on the rebound after the groundfish collapses of the mid-1990s.

But the monitoring program has been expensive. A recent amendment to all Northeast fisheries plans required the industry to assist in funding its overseers, increasing pressure to bring down costs.

Federal regulators believe electronic monitoring could be the answer.

“This year we’ll get really good (human) observer coverage — 440 sea days — so we’re going to compare what the observer sees and what the camera sees,” said Daniel Luers, a monitoring expert at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries office of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “The contractors will watch all the videos, and then NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) will watch to confirm that what the contractors have seen correlates with the observers.”

What they’re looking for are “discard” events, where fishermen dump unwanted fish back into the sea — rather than reporting the bycatch and facing fishing closures.

Read the full story at Eco RI News

Bait crisis is over, but Maine lobstermen are still feeling the pinch

October 21st, 2016 — The lobster bait crisis that plagued New England this summer is finally over, now that fishermen have begun to catch herring off Georges Bank.

But the price of lobstermen’s favorite bait fish, which rose dramatically when the offshore fleet wasn’t landing enough herring to refill empty bait freezers, has remained high through the end of peak lobster season, typically August through late October. Although there’s been no appreciable effect on consumer prices, lobstermen agree the shortage hurt their bottom line.

“Earlier this year, when prices were at their highest, I paid $170 for a barrel of herring and I usually pay about $110 for that same barrel,” said Jeff Putnam, a lobsterman out of Chebeague Island. “Like a lot of guys, I like to fish herring, but with prices like that, I turned to pogeys, but then pogey prices went up, too. Overall, I would say my bait costs are up 15 percent this year.”

Putnam has fared better than other lobstermen, especially those who fish out of the more isolated wharves or island communities and always have had a harder time securing a steady and affordable source of fresh bait. Prices vary from wharf to wharf, and the impact of bait costs varies from one boat to the next. Terry Savage Sr., who fishes out of the Cranberry Isles Fishermen’s Co-Op, said his bait costs have almost doubled this year,

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

Lobster fishermen face a monumental problem

October 3, 2016 — NEWPORT, R.I. — The Newport-based fishing vessel Freedom has been Marc Ducharme’s home away from home since it was built in 1984.

And for the better part of those 32 years, Ducharme, the boat’s captain, and his crews of four to five men have spent their time pulling lobster traps from the waters around three underwater canyons near the edge of the continental shelf, about 125 miles southeast of Nantucket. The crew makes 25-30 runs a year — each lasting about a week — to the lucrative lobster grounds formally referred to as the Northeast Canyons on George’s Bank.

Each trip nets them about 6,000 pounds of lobster, Ducharme said Wednesday, standing in the cockpit of the 72-foot-long vessel docked at the Newport state fishing pier.

“I’ve probably spent more time out there in those canyons than I have on land,” Ducharme said, pointing to the fishing area on a nautical chart.

The time he spends in the 25-mile area where his 1,800 lobster pots are located is growing short, and not just because, at 58 years old, Ducharme is nearing retirement from his sea-faring livelihood.

Using executive authority established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Barrack Obama on Sept. 15 designated a 4,900-square- mile area the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. That area includes the sea canyons, where Ducharme plies his trade. The designation will eventually prohibit all commercial fishing there.

In a last-minute compromise, the Obama administration reduced the proposed size of the monument site and granted a seven-year exemption for lobster and red crab fishermen in the monument area.

Even though he is likely to retire before then, Ducharme is not happy about the eventual ban.

“This is exclusively where I fish, because it’s good,” said Ducharme, who added he catches more than 150,000 lobsters a year. “This (area) has been my life. It’s how I earned my living, how I supported my family. I’m more against the way they went about this.”

Read the full story at the Newport Daily News

Work Continues on Coral Amendment, Clam Dredge Framework

September 23, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council today clarified the range of fishing gear restrictions that will be analyzed under its Deep-Sea Coral Amendment. The Council is considering alternatives to restrict (1) trawl and dredge gear only; or (2) all fixed and mobile bottom-tending gears in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank coral zones. Previously, the Council had not taken a position on how to address the lobster and Jonah crab fisheries, which are not managed by the Council under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act but rather by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

In a move that eliminated this ambiguity, the Council asked for additional analyses from its Habitat Plan Development Team (PDT) about the potential economic and biological impacts of restricting lobster and crab traps in coral zones. The Council then added an alternative to the amendment to potentially exempt these trap fisheries from bottom- tending gear restrictions.

Updated NOAA Fisheries policy guidance, which states that restrictions in coral zones ”may apply to … state-regulated fishing that is authorized in the Exclusive Economic Zone,” enabled the Council to take this step.

On Sept. 15, President Obama designated the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which overlaps portions of the Council’s Coral Amendment. The Council considered – but ultimately postponed to November – a motion to remove canyons and seamounts that fall within the monument’s boundaries from further consideration in the Coral Amendment.

The Council first wanted additional information from NOAA Fisheries about how regulations related to the monument designation will be developed and implemented, as well as additional analyses from the PDT, before taking action.

The deep-sea canyon zones in the Council’s amendment that fall completely or partially within the monument boundaries are Oceanographer, Gilbert, Lydonia, Filebottom, Chebacco, and Heel Tapper. The overlapping seamount zones are Physalia, Bear, Retriever, and Mytilus. The monument also includes portions of the depth-based, broad zone proposals.

In addition, the Council approved:

Boundary adjustments to the Central Jordan Basin coral zone in the Gulf of Maine based on updated information from the PDT; and

Adding a 600-meter depth-based broad zone to be considered alongside the other broad coral protection contour zones of 300, 400, and 500 meters that currently are under analysis.

Several workshops, meetings, and public hearings will be held prior to the Council taking any final action on this issue or other Coral Amendment issues.

After fine-tuning several details, the New England Council in early September resubmitted Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2 (OHA2) to the the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) for approval. The Council and GARFO expect the amendment will be implemented next spring.

Implementation will trigger a one-year exemption for the surfclam/ocean quahog clam dredge fishery from a prohibition on fishing in the Great South Channel and Georges Shoal Habitat Management Areas (HMAs) identified in the map below.

At industry’s request, the Council initiated a framework adjustment to OHA2 to consider development of a longer-term access program so clam fishermen could continue working in both areas beyond the one-year exemption. The Council now is in the process of identifying areas within both HMAs that provide suitable bottom for clam fishing but minimize adverse fishing impacts on habitat to the extent practical. The Council’s ultimate goal is to balance conservation and industry needs.

See the full release at the NEFMC

New England Fishery Management Council Reviews Sea Scallop Survey Findings and FW 28 Status

September 23, 2016 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

Council Reviews Sea Scallop Survey Findings and FW 28 Status

In preparation for developing new specifications for the Atlantic sea scallop fishery, the New England Fishery Management Council today received a broad overview of 2016 scallop survey results. These results will guide the Council, Scallop Committee, Scallop Plan Development Team (PDT), and industry in formulating 2017 fishing year days-at-sea and access area trip allocations for limited access vessels, as well as individual fishing quotas for limited access general category boats. Default specifications for 2018 also will be developed.

In short, here are some of the key survey findings:

  • Total biomass is at a very high level and expected to increase as a result of growth from previous large year classes.
  • Survey results did not show signs of good incoming recruitment on Georges Bank or in the Mid-Atlantic.
  • The vast majority of the current high biomass is located either in closed areas or scallop access areas.

The surveys also came across an unprecedented number of densely concentrated, “slow growing” scallops in the southern portion of the Nantucket Lightship area in deep water. Many of these age-four scallops had only reached a size normally achieved by age two. The PDT said that “growth potential” for these animals may be limited given their depth.

In another development, large concentrations of starfish, a known predator of scallops, were observed in the shallow portion of the Habitat Area of Particular Concern on the Northern Edge. Surveys also found Didemnum, an invasive tunicate, covering the gravel in this shallow area. These tunicates may be interfering with scallop seed settlement.

The following institutions contributed to the 2016 scallop survey:

  • The Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) conducted dredge surveys in the Mid-Atlantic, Nantucket Lightship, and Closed Area II and surrounding bottom;
  • The School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST) at the University of Massachusetts – Dartmouth conducted intensive Closed Area I and Nantucket Lightship drop camera surveys;
  • The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with Lund’s Fisheries conducted a HabCam Version 4 survey on the Northern Edge of Georges Bank;
  • Arnie’s Fisheries conducted an intensive Elephant Trunk survey with HabCam 3;
  • The Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) conducted the federal Georges Bank dredge survey plus Mid-Atlantic and Georges Bank HabCam 4 surveys; and
  • The Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR) and University of Maine conducted a Northern Gulf of Maine dredge survey (map at right).

The 2017 specifications and 2018 default measures will be part of Framework Adjustment 28 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan, which is still under development and scheduled for final action at the Council’s Nov. 15-17 meeting in Newport, Rhode Island. The full range of specifications will include: (a) acceptable biological catches (ABCs), annual catch limits (ACLs), days-at-sea, and access area allocations for both limited access (LA) and limited access general category (LAGC) vessels; (b) a hard total allowable catch (TAC) for the Northern Gulf of Maine Management Area; (c) a target TAC for the LAGC incidental catch; and (d) set-aside amounts for the scallop observer and research set-aside programs.

The framework also contains: (1) a measure to potentially restrict the possession of shell stock inshore of the days-at-sea demarcation line north of 42° 20’ N; (2) measures to apply spatial management to fisheries specifications (ACL flowchart); and (3) measures to modify the Closed Area I Scallop Access Area boundary to be consistent with potential changes to habitat and groundfish mortality closed areas as outlined in the Omnibus Habitat Amendment, which is under review by the National Marine Fisheries Service’s (NMFS) Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office.

See the full release at the NEFMC

US, Canada broker agreement to share dwindling cod fishing

September 21, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — The United States and Canada have brokered a deal to share what’s left of the dwindling North American cod fishing business in the Atlantic next year.

Both countries fish for cod, an important food fish that has declined in population following overfishing and warming ocean temperatures. The two fisheries overlap in the eastern reaches of Georges Bank, an important fishing area located off of New England.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Times