Georges Bank Archives - Page 19 of 23

MAINE: Herring fishermen say fish quota concerns threaten lobster industry

July 6, 2016 — ROCKLAND, Maine — Maine’s huge lobster fishery could run into problems this year because fishermen might face a shortage of bait.

Herring are the primary bait for lobsters, but the people who catch the herring say they’re worried the quota for those fish could be used up too quickly. So the state is imposing new controls.

Herring fishermen say the problem is that herring are not being caught right now on Georges Bank off Massachusetts. That’s typically a prime spot for boats from Massachusetts and other states to pursue herring.

The fish were once the key to a significant Maine sardine canning industry. But the last cannery closed several years ago, and herring are now used for bait and for some animal feed.

Federal regulators have imposed a quota of 19,4 thousand metric tons of herring for the season that runs through September. However, because of the scarcity of fish on Georges Bank, the large out-of-state boats have started coming to Maine to fish.

Owners and operators of the smaller Maine boats that fish closer to shore say they’re worried the summer herring quota will be caught too quickly. Herring fishermen say if the quota is used up they won’t have bait to sell to lobstermen, at a time when the lobster fishing is heating up.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources met with herring fishermen Tuesday afternoon to outline a new plan to limit the number of days they can fish and how many fish they can catch. The state hopes that will stretch the fishery out until late August or September, and make sure there is a consistent supply of lobster bait.

Read the full story at NBC Portland

MAINE: Bait shortage could impact lobster industry

July 5, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine regulators are considering intervening to help fix a bait shortage that threatens to affect its signature lobster fishing industry.

Lobstermen typically use herring for bait, and regulators and members of the fishing industry say there’s a shortage of them. The shortage is happening at the time of year when lobster catches usually start to pick up — and just as New England’s high tourist season is arriving.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources met Tuesday afternoon to discuss what role it can play. Meredith Mendelson, the deputy commissioner of the department, tells The Associated Press that it anticipates passing rules at a later date based on Tuesday’s discussion.

The problem is that not enough herring are being caught on Georges Bank, a key fishing area off Massachusetts, members of the fishing industry said. That means there could be heavy pressure on the inshore herring fishery, and they say fishermen could reach their quota for that area before the summer is out.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

NOAA Fisheries Releases Draft Northeast Climate Science Action Plan

June 22, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries is seeking comments on a draft plan to help guide our approach to increase the production, delivery, and use of climate-related information and to reduce impacts and increase resilience of fish stocks, fishing-dependent communities, and protected species. As part of its efforts to increase the production, delivery, and use of climate-related information, NOAA Fisheries has released a draft climate science action plan for the U.S. Northeast. It outlines a strategy and specific actions for increasing understanding of, preparing for, and responding to climate change effects on the region’s ocean species — including marine and anadromous fish, invertebrates, marine mammals, sea turtles and seabirds — and the people that depend on them.

The draft action plan was developed to meet the growing demand for information to better prepare for and respond to climate-related impacts. Ultimately, this information will be used to develop science-based strategies to sustain our marine resources and human communities that depend on them during this time of changing climate. Each NOAA Fisheries’ region will have a climate science action plan that helps implement the NOAA Fisheries Climate Science Strategy.

“Our science center is studying how climate variability is affecting fishery species and marine communities in the region,” said Bill Karp, Director of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “Warming oceans, rising seas, and ocean acidification are affecting marine life and also disrupting fisheries and local economies. We hope this plan will help us provide the kind of information needed to support actions that will ensure sustainable fisheries and coastal communities in this time of great change.”

The Northeast region includes waters that extend from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to the western end of the Scotian Shelf, the Mid-Atlantic Bight, Southern New England, Georges Bank, and the Gulf of Maine. These waters are among the fastest warming in the world’s oceans, a result of both human-caused climate change and natural climate variability. Fish, shellfish, marine mammal, and sea turtle populations are already responding to this changing environment, which is also affecting habitats that these species use, predator-prey relationships, and competition in the ecosystem. Human communities that depend on the function and health of this ecosystem are also feeling the effects.

“With water in the Gulf of Maine warming at a significant pace, understanding how environmental changes are affecting our species is critical to planning for a sustainable fisheries future,” said John Bullard, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region. NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center collects, analyzes and provides scientific information necessary to fulfill the agency’s mission to sustain marine species in watersheds, estuaries and the coastal ocean. The NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Regional Office ensures effective science-based management of these resources to achieve the same goals. The Northeast Regional Climate Action Plan focuses on present climate variability and future climate change in this large marine ecosystem.

“This plan builds on the work already underway in the region to address climate change,” said Jon Hare, of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and lead author of the plan. “For instance, we’ve been leaders in long-term monitoring needed to explain change, linking stock assessment and climate models, and working toward an ecosystem-based understanding of sub-regions like Georges Bank. We are also providing biannual and annual state-of-the-ecosystem reports to federal fishery managers to support their efforts to implement fishery management in a more holistic way, accounting for ecosystem factors as well as the biology of the fish.”

The core elements of the Northeast Regional Action Plan include developing new multispecies models that incorporate environmental terms such as temperature and ocean acidification, conducting work to better understand how climate change is forcing change in species distribution and habitat use, initiating a Northeast Climate Science Strategy Steering Group, cooperative research with the fishing industry, and integrating social science into ecosystem assessments in order to better account for human dimensions.

Designed to increase the production, delivery, and use of climate-related information, the plan will guide efforts to provide timely information to managers to reduce impacts and increase resilience of fisheries, protected species and coastal communities.

If you have questions about the plan, please contact jon.hare@noaa.gov. Written comments can be submitted via email to nmfs.gar.nerap@noaa.gov by July 29, 2016.

See the release at NOAA

40 years of change: For fishing industry, the spring of 1976 was the start of a new era

June 20, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story published Saturday by the New Bedford Standard-Times:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — When you talk about fishing here in New Bedford, you have to start with the whaling era — and the lessons learned.

For decades, the pursuit of whaling chugged along without any dramatic changes. The ships, the equipment, the culture remained essentially the same for years, feeding countless families, lining countless pockets … until the bonanza ran out and the industry collapsed in the early part of the 20th century, never to be revived.

The fishing industry, both local and national, might have fallen into that same trap, but 40 years ago the U.S. government changed the game, adopting the most sweeping changes in the laws governing fisheries that reverberates to this day.

On April 13, 1976, the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act was passed and immediately accomplished two major goals.

One, it set into motion a new and unique scheme of regulation to rebuild dwindling fish stocks, a system dramatically different than anything else the government had tried until 1976.

Two, it expelled foreign fishing vessels from fishing inside a 200-mile limit from America’s shoreline.

It isn’t talked about much today, but until 1976 the capacity of the foreign fleet exceeded the Americans, sending huge factory ships into fertile places like Georges Bank to virtually vacuum the fish into the hold and freeze it on the spot, allowing the ships to stay for weeks at a time. “There were West Germans, Poles, Russians, East Germans,” recalled former fisherman James Kendall, now a seafood consultant.

In 1975, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported there were 133 foreign fishing vessels fishing on Georges Bank. The Magnuson-Stevens Act ended that decisively.

Since 1976, much has changed. The unions, which once represented the fishermen and the workers in the fish houses, virtually disappeared from the waterfront. The venerable fish auction at the Wharfinger Building on City Pier 3 is now a museum piece, since the brokers years ago put down their chalkboards and picked up computer screens. Today it has evolved into a computerized display auction elsewhere on the waterfront, with complete transparency and documentation, and bidders located across the nation.

What else has changed?

For lack of a better term, everything.

Where, oh where has our groundfish fleet gone?

At the BASE New Bedford Seafood Display Auction, co-owner Richard Canastra called up data of groundfish sales in recent years that demonstrate a dropoff of more than 30 percent in the last few years alone.

Today there are some days that don’t warrant conducting the auction at all. “Sometimes it’s like a candy store,” he said. “Five pounds of this and three pounds of that.”

Much of the blame for the shrinking of the groundfish fleet, particularly in New Bedford and Gloucester, is laid at the feet of the catch shares and sector management introduced in 2010 by NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. It dispensed with most of the old days-at-sea system, which had reduced the annual days at sea to 50, down from around 225, that the boats once had available to them.

The term “sectors” was unfamiliar to the industry when NOAA announced their arrival in 2010. Essentially they are cooperatives, in which individual boats are grouped together along with their catch allocations, and the sector manager manages them as efficiently as he or she can.

This was predicted to cause a consolidation of the industry into the bigger players as the smaller ones weren’t getting enough quota to make it profitable to fish.

For some boat owners, the problem was that the catch shares were determined by the history of the boats but the practice of shack left no paper trail, no formal record, so catch shares were reduced in many cases.

Dr. Brian Rothschild, dean emeritus of the UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and a critic of NOAA, noted that many boat owners found that they can “own it and lease it out and obtain money in windfall profits” without even going fishing.

Oh, those pesky environmentalists!

It was “not right from the beginning that NOAA has enforced this,” Rothschild said. “On top of that, NOAA enforcement didn’t come from a desire to make good public policy but because it came under the influence of organizations like the Environmental Defense Fund,” he said.

Catch shares and sector management have, however, withstood legal challenges in federal court, because of a legal doctrine named Chevron, in which government institutions are allowed to interpret laws such as Magnuson any way they wish unless the departures from congressional intent are egregious.

Rothschild is among those who believe that sector management under Magnuson has been ignoring key provisions of the act, notably the socio-economic impact evaluation and the instruction to use the best available science. That has largely excluded scientists outside of NOAA itself.

Outside scientists have occasionally run rings around NOAA. For example, SMAST’s Dr. Kevin Stokesbury’s invention of a camera apparatus to quite literally count the scallops on the seabed individually has revolutionized scallop management, opened the door to a treasure trove of healthy scallops, and made New Bedford the No. 1 fishing port in the nation.

But NOAA now employs its own camera apparatus. It conducts regular surveys of fish populations and that has been a very sore point at times in recent years.

This is a departure from the days before Magnuson, when fishermen were issued permits for various species and were left largely on their own to discover how many fish were in the ocean, which were already dwindling at the time.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Co-owner: New Bedford fish auction could see periodic closures over next month

May 24, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The fish auction that’s been a daily institution on the city’s waterfront for decades could see periodic closures over the next month or so, as a co-owner said Monday that this year’s significant cut to the cod quota is keeping many boats tied to the docks, rather than bringing in fish.

Richard Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City Seafood Display Auction since 1994, said Monday morning that in his view, “there won’t be” fish auctions on some days between now and July 4, when he expects commercial fishing activity to pick up again.

“There’s not many fishermen fishing anymore,” Canastra said as he stood outside the auction building on Hassey Street. “A lot of the boats are just tied up — they’re not going to fish. Why would they fish if there’s only so much (allowable) cod?”

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in conjunction with the New England Fishery Management Council, instituted a 62-percent reduction in the allowable catch for Georges Bank cod this year, in quotas that took effect May 1.

Former New Bedford Mayor John Bullard, now regional administrator for NOAA fisheries, has said the new regulations create “about a 95 percent cut” since 2012 in catch limits for Georges Bank cod, a key species for New Bedford’s fishing industry.

Government documents detailing the quotas say they’re, “intended to help prevent overfishing, rebuild overfished stocks, achieve optimum yield” and ensure that fishery management is based on the best data available.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Woods Hole Researchers ‘Listen’ to the Ocean Floor

May 23, 2016 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — Listening to the noise of the deep sea.

That’s the intent as researchers with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, recently placed a handful of recording devices along the ocean floor from George’s Bank to New Jersey to listen to the sounds of whales, dolphins and other marine life.

It’s part of a national effort to establish a network to monitor long term changes in ocean noise.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Cape scallop fishermen cash in on grounds closer to home

May 23, 2016 — HARWICH PORT, Mass. — The scalloping was pretty poor north of Provincetown last month for the crew of Aidan’s Pride; they towed their dredge for hours just to get a hundred pounds.

So the Wellfleet scallop vessel, owned by Aidan Lapierre and captained by Sean Gray, was heading south to Maryland about three weeks ago, hoping for a more bountiful harvest, when it broke an outrigger in rough water transiting the Cape Cod Canal.

It turned out to be a fortunate break, as the delay lasted just long enough that they were still around when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries office in Gloucester approved a plan May 3 to open a scallop-rich spot around 70 miles southeast of Saquatucket Harbor where Aidan’s Pride was tied up Thursday.

Catches in near-shore areas petered out over the past few years for members of what is known as the general category scallop fleet, smaller vessels around 40 feet in length that are only allowed to land 600 pounds of scallop meats a day. They were not able to harvest their allotted quota and petitioned NOAA and the New England Fishery Management Council to open a portion of the so-called Nantucket Lightship closed area exclusively to them because their vessels are not suited to the long trip to prime scalloping grounds on Georges Bank. In addition, the profits from the relatively small amount of scallops they were allowed to catch would quickly be eaten up by fuel costs.

Their only alternative: head south to the Mid-Atlantic.

But a window of opportunity opened after scientific surveys of the Nantucket Lightship area showed there weren’t enough mature scallops available to open it this year. Members of what is known as the limited access fleet — vessels 80 to more than 100 feet long which harvest as much as 17,000 pounds a day and are responsible for 95 percent of the scallop catch — wanted it kept closed to everyone.

“We chose not to go in there because the science said it wasn’t ready,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the Fisheries Survival Fund, which has many of the limited access fleet as members.

“We wanted the scallops to be larger, to get the maximum yield,” he said.

Since 2001, scallops have been managed under a rotational scheme much like letting a field lie fallow. Sampling is done to determine whether an area has enough large scallops to be opened to fishing. Areas with a lot of seed or immature scallops remain closed until they grow large enough for harvest.

It’s an approach that works but allowing someone into an area before it’s ready violates that management principle, Minkiewicz said. Scallopers faced with only being able to land 600 pounds would likely sort through the catch, discarding smaller animals in favor of the large ones that fetched higher prices, he said.

“They’re human,” he said. “We don’t blame them for it, but they will kill a lot more scallops than 300,000 pounds.”

Kevin Stokesbury, principal investigator at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s sea scallop research program, is also opposed to letting general category boats into the Lightship area, saying the dredge would likely kill a lot of small scallops. Surveys and studies by UMass Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology showed a small amount of growth actually doubled the amount of meat available. He agreed with Minkiewicz’s argument that killing off large numbers of young scallops, even if limited by a relatively small quota, could significantly affect future harvests in the area.

“While 300,000 pounds of harvest is not a lot compared to the biomass there, how many small scallops will you have to sort through to get to the few large ones?” he said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

ASMFC Urges President to Minimize Potential Economic Harm from Atlantic Marine Monument Designation

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Saving Seafood) – May 4, 2016 – The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has taken a formal position on the possibility of a Presidential proclamation of an Atlantic Marine Monument.

The Obama administration, at the urging of major environmental groups, is considering creating a National Monument in the New England Canyons and Seamounts region via the Antiquities Act. Few specifics have been released about what the monument would look like, but it could have significant negative impacts on fishermen in the affected areas.

The ASMFC’s Interstate Fisheries Management Program (ISFMP) Policy Board unanimously (with three abstentions) approved a resolution today drawing a line in the ocean (see map), in close proximity to the Atlantic canyons and seamounts off of Georges Banks, and urging that the creation of a monument only take place in a region seaward of that line. The ASMFC resolution urges that management of waters under Federal control from the coastline to that line be managed under the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The resolution states:

That it is the preference of ASMFC that the current New England Fishery Management Council coral management process continue without a Presidential proclamation on the issue;
That should the President decide to designate a deep-water marine monument off the New England coast prior to the end of his Presidency, it should be limited to the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management of the objects to be protected, as required by the Antiquities Act;
That the area be limited to depths greater than approximately 900 meters and encompass any or all of the region seaward of the line (see map) out to the outer limit of the EEZ;
That only bottom tending fishing effort be prohibited in the area and that all other mid-water/surface fishing methods (recreational and commercial) be allowed to continue to use the area;
That the public and affected user groups be allowed to review and comment on any specific proposal prior to its implementation.

The motion was initially crafted by members of the ASMFC Rhode Island Delegation, in consultation with other regional fisheries organizations. ASMFC’s Lobster Board, where the resolution originated, gave its unanimous approval to the proposal at its meeting on Monday.

In a letter this week to the ASMFC American Lobster Management Board requesting guidance on the monument issue, Board Chairman David Borden wrote about the potential consequences a monument would have for commercial and recreational fisheries in the area.

“The economic impacts of a potential Monument designation would undoubtedly be significant depending on where the boundaries are set. These economic impacts would be felt coast wide as the fishing fleets working in and around the canyons hail from ports across New England and the Mid-Atlantic.”

Specifically highlighted are the potential impacts on the offshore lobster and crab fisheries, which would be hurt by the prohibition on fishing in the monument area, or by being displaced into nearby fishing grounds. Lobster and Jonah crab revenue from Southern New England are estimated at $38 million per year. A monument designation could also hurt the lobster stock by pushing fishermen from areas where lobster is abundant into areas where lobster is more depleted. Concerns were also voiced about potential negative impacts of the proposal on whales and protected species.

Additionally, many of the States represented on ASMFC have major interests in finfish, pelagic longline, squid, and red crab fisheries, or have large recreational fisheries. “All of these fisheries could be directly affected by a closure or indirectly affected by a redirection of effort.”

According to ASMFC Chairman Doug Grout the ASMFC leadership plans to meet with representatives of CEQ next week to discuss ways to mitigate impacts on commercial and recreational fisheries.

About the ASMFC
In the early 1940s, recognizing that they could accomplish far more through cooperation rather than individual effort, the Atlantic coast states came together to form the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. An Interstate Compact, ratified by the states and approved by the U.S. Congress in 1942, acknowledged the necessity of the states joining forces to manage their shared migratory fishery resources and affirmed the states’ commitment to cooperative stewardship in promoting and protecting Atlantic coastal fishery resources.

Read a letter from ASMFC Lobster Board Chairman David Borden to the ASMFC Lobster Board

Read a letter from Blue Water Fishermen’s Association Executive Director Terri Lei Beideman to the White House

NOAA reduces monitoring requirements, sets groundfish catch limits in Northeast US

May 4, 2016 — At-sea monitoring requirements for Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels have been lowered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), bringing relief to fishermen who have been forced to absorb its cost due to a recent policy change.

In the same ruling, NOAA also set quotas for 2016 to 2018 covering 20 groundfish stocks, including decreasing the quota for Georges Bank cod to a level that will be “devastating” to the Northeast groundfishing fleet, according to one fisherman.

NOAA’s final rules, known as Framework 55, were filed Monday, 2 May and went into immediate effect to coincide with the beginning of the 2016 fishing season. Commercial groundfish operators will only be required to pay for monitors on 10 percent of their trips, whereas previously they had been expected to pay for them on 20 percent of their trips. The Northeast Fisheries Observer Program will pay for an additional four percent of the monitoring, pushing monitoring requirements to 14 percent of groundfish fishing trips taken by commercial vessels.

NOAA cited standards that required it to minimize costs and adverse economic impacts, while maintaining sound scientific practices to ensure sustainable fishing levels, as a reason for the lowering of the requirements.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Feds expected to weigh remapping of regional fishing areas

April 29, 2016 — Federal consideration of a remapping of off-limits fishing areas is expected to cross a hurdle in the next couple of months, according to a fishing advocacy group.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of the group Saving Seafood, said the National Marine Fisheries Service will likely begin a process of formally considering the plan in May or June. He said the plan was advanced last year by the New England Fisheries Management Council.

The move would increase from about 40,000 to 42,000 the amount of square miles in the Georges Bank area that would be off-limits to fishing gear boats use on the seafloor, according to Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney who represents clients in the Atlantic scallop fleet.

Vanasse and Minkiewicz told the News Service the adjustments stemmed from 10 years of deliberations and more than 100 meetings where compromise was reached between different fisheries and other groups.

In addition to scallop boats, Georges Bank is fished by the groundfishing fleet, which uses trawlers to catch cod, flounder and other species.

The plan would also do away with restrictions on large areas that cycle between being open to trawling and closed, known as mortality closures, according to Vanasse.

Read the full story in the Cape Ann Beacon