Saving Seafood

Nova Scotia approves oil exploration lease next to Georges Bank, entrance to Gulf of Maine

December 1, 2015 — Norwegian energy giant Statoil has received approval to explore for oil in an area next to the Georges Bank and the entrance to the Gulf of Maine, raising environmental concerns on both sides of the border.

In a move opposed by fishermen, Canadian authorities have granted the company an exploratory lease for the area 225 miles southeast of Bar Harbor and bordering on the eastern flank of Georges Bank. Environmentalists fear drilling could leave the ecologically sensitive Gulf of Maine susceptible to a catastrophic oil spill.

It would be the closest that exploratory drilling has come to Maine since the early 1980s. Five wells were drilled on the U.S. side of Georges Bank in 1981 and 1982, before U.S. and Canadian moratoriums were put in place to protect the fishing grounds.

Final approval was granted Monday afternoon as a deadline passed for federal and provincial authorities to veto a Nov. 12 recommendation by the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board, an intergovernmental entity responsible for regulating petroleum activities near the province.

“We’re aware of concerns that exist, particularly from fisheries, about the effects of oil and gas activity,” said Kathleen Funke, the board’s spokeswoman. “Bidding on a license is a first step but doesn’t guarantee any work will take place in this underexplored area.”

Statoil has pledged to spend at least $82 million exploring the parcels under its six-year exclusive lease. The relatively small financial commitment suggests the company has no immediate plans to begin drilling, which is a much more expensive process that requires further approval. The company did not respond to interview requests.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Georges Bank drilling moratorium extended by Nova Scotia government

November 26, 2015 — The Nova Scotia government is extending the Georges Bank moratorium on oil and gas exploration and drilling.

The fishing bank has been off limits since 1988. This extends the protection until at least 2022. Ottawa passed a similar protection bill last June. Such exploration comes under the joint jurisdiction of the provinces and federal government.

BP and Chevron have drilling and exploration rights in the region, but will remain unable to use those leases.

Two parcels just outside the exclusion boundary and buffer zone have recently been granted to Statoil Canada Ltd., a Norwegian-based oil and gas company. It has promised to spend $82 million exploring the two properties.

Read the full story at CBC News

Fishing film to premier in New Bedford, Mass.

November 10, 2015 — The following was released by the Center for Sustainable Fisheries:

COUNTING FISH  

A film by Don Cuddy 

November, 22 at 1.30 p.m.

New Bedford Whaling Museum

New England groundfishermen are in trouble, with catch limits set so low that many boats remain tied to the dock. But the industry has little confidence in the NOAA survey that provides the raw data used for the stock assessment. Accurately counting fish populations in the ocean is a daunting task however and everyone agrees on the need for better science. SMAST researcher Kevin Stokesbury may have found a solution. By using underwater cameras to record fish passing through the open cod end of a net, SMAST survey tows can last for as long as two hours while allowing the fish to escape unharmed.

With very limited resources, Stokesbury and his team have been refining this technology on Georges Bank by conducting spring and fall surveys over the past three years; working in collaboration with the fishing industry which generously donates the boat, the grub and the fuel.

Don Cuddy, program director for the Center for Sustainable fisheries in New Bedford, joined the crew for the May 2015 survey and captured the experience on camera. Those eight days at sea produced more than seven hours of video footage that has now been distilled into a fifty-minute film, called, appropriately enough, ‘Counting Fish.’

 For a fascinating look into the world of marine research, join Cuddy, Stokesbury and the crew of the F/V Justice for the premier screening of ‘Counting Fish’ at the New Bedford whaling museum on Sunday, Nov.22 at 1.30 p.m.

Scientists: Warming Ocean Factor in Collapse of Cod Fishery

October 29, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — The rapid warming of waters off New England is a key factor in the collapse of the region’s cod fishery, and changes to the species’ management are needed to save one of America’s oldest industries, according to a report published Thursday in Science magazine.

Fishery managers say cod spawning in the Gulf of Maine — a key fishing area between Cape Cod and Canada that touches Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire — is only about 3 percent of sustainable levels, and participants in the fishery that dates to the Colonial era face dramatic quota cuts as a result.

The scientists behind the Science report say the warming of the Gulf of Maine, which accelerated from 2004 to 2013, reduced cod’s capacity to rebound from fishing pressure. The report gives credence to the idea — supported by advocacy groups, fishing managers and even some fishermen — that climate change has played a role in cod’s collapse.

The lead author of the study, Andrew Pershing of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, said the gulf is warming at a rate 99 percent faster than anywhere else in the world, and as a result, too many of the fish aren’t living past age 4 or 5. Cod can live to be older than 20.

“Every animal has a temperature range that they prefer. The Gulf of Maine, for cod, is really at the warm end of that,” Pershing said. “If you warm it, you push it somewhere that’s really uncomfortable.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

FISHTOWN LOCAL: Something smells fishy

October 12, 2015 — Okay, here we go again. Another behind-the-scenes effort has begun behind our backs, the way it happened before. The newest NOAA effort has begun toward creating a marine national monument in the Cashes Ledge area — about 80 miles east of Gloucester — as well as the deep sea coral and seamount area south of Georges Bank, traditional catch areas for our fishermen.

Former U.S. Sen. John Kerry, now secretary of state, has been quixotic and disturbingly vague on the issue, hinting that following the model of Maryland’s sanctuaries and in the Great Lakes, “We also have plans in the works, which we are pursuing for still another significant one in the Atlantic, where we don’t have the kind of presence that we want and should.” Kerry added that the Obama administration is working with senators “engaged in that particular area in order to make that happen.” Unfortunately, current senators Markey and Warren have stayed silent on the subject.

Meanwhile, concerned by what it regards as a lack of transparency and undue influence from conservationists, a House committee on Wednesday sought more answers from the Obama administration on potential plans to create a national marine monument off the coast of New England that would be fully off limits to fishing or sea-bed harvesting.

Read the full opinion piece by Fishtown Local’s Gordon Baird at the Gloucester Daily Times

UMass Dartmouth researchers developing open-source system for assessing fish movement

October 7, 2015 — UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) Associate Professor Geoffrey Cowles is leading a collaborative research effort to develop geolocation methodologies to improve understanding of fish movement patterns of Atlantic cod, yellowtail flounder, and monkfish. The project will focus on the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and includes researchers from SMAST, Northeastern University, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, along with the fishing industry.

Geolocation, which is the process of taking data recovered from a fish archival tag and coming up with the best estimate of positions between release and recapture, can provide insights into catchability and fishery interactions. Using this technique, the research team will be able to guide behavior-dependent aspects of the model parameterization, as well as interpret the geolocated tracks. Researchers will also employ their collective skills in computer programming, oceanographic modeling, statistical analysis, and fisheries biology to assist in furthering the development of technology to geolocate fish.

This study will also use data acquired from previous studies on each of the example species, which all have their own characteristic behaviors and were tagged in different areas of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank region. Most studies of fish movements have relied on fishery recaptures of conventional tags, which provide only the locations of release and recapture. Such tagging studies may bias perceptions of movement patterns.

Archival tags, which are attached to fish internally or externally to record temperature and pressure at regular intervals, enable estimations of fish location while at large. This type of information is often not fully utilized due to the technical difficulties of producing such movement histories via geolocation techniques.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard- Times

 

Georges Bank cod stock in grim shape

September 30, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — One of the two critical areas where New England fishermen search for cod may be in even worse shape than suspected.

Fishing managers already knew cod stocks in Georges Bank were thin, but new data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center say research boats caught less of the fish this past spring than in all but one spring season dating back to 1968.

A report from the center, given to The Associated Press on Tuesday, states that the boats caught about 3.3 pounds of cod each time the net went in and out of the water last spring, compared with more than three times that amount two years earlier. Those numbers were routinely more than 20 pounds per trip in the late 1980s.

The status of cod in Georges Bank, a broad swath of elevated sea floor off the Massachusetts coast, could motivate regulators to again lower catch quotas for the area. Quotas have plummeted from more than 4,800 metric tons in 2012 to less than 2,000 metric tons this year.

It’s more bad news for the faltering fishery, which generations of New England fishermen have relied upon to make a living. Regulators and marine scientists have said overfishing hit the stock hard and warming oceans could be making it worse.

“Is that coming as a surprise from anybody who knows what the water temperature is out there? No, it shouldn’t be,” said David Goethel, a New Hampshire-based fisherman. “These fish are declining because of climate change.”

Regulators say the Gulf of Maine, home of the other key cod fishing ground off New England, is also in dire shape — National Marine Fisheries Service scientists said last year the amount of cod spawning in the Gulf was estimated to be 3 percent to 4 percent of its target level.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Providence Journal

 

Officials: Key fishing area for Atlantic cod in dire shape

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — September 29, 2015 — One of the two critical areas where New England fishermen search for cod may be in even worse shape than suspected.

Fishing managers already knew Georges Bank’s cod were thin. New data from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center says research boats caught less of the fish per trip this past spring than all but one spring season dating back to 1968.

Georges Bank is a broad swath of elevated sea floor off of Massachusetts. The Gulf of Maine cod fishery is the other key cod ground and regulators say it is also in dire shape.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at My Fox Boston

Massachusetts: Gloucester joins fight against marine monument plan

September 18, 2015 — The City of Gloucester has joined fishing stakeholders opposing conservationist efforts to permanently restrict fishing access to Cashes Ledge and an area south of Georges Bank that includes three deep canyons and four seamounts to create the Atlantic seaboard’s first marine national monument.

In her letter read into the record Tuesday night at a NOAA-hosted town meeting in Providence to discuss the issue, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken stated the city’s objections to designate the deep sea canyons and seamounts — and Cashes Ledge — as a national monument.

“We have learned over the years to take a balanced perspective on issues, to make sure to have researched all the facts, and to include the public in our decisions,” Romeo Theken wrote. “It is from this perspective that I write in opposition to the Conservation Law Foundation-organized proposal for a national monument.”

Romeo Theken, as many other fishing stakeholders, decried the initiative by the CLF, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pew Charitable Trusts — which are imploring President Obama to use the federal Antiquities Act to unilaterally create the national monument —- as a blatant end-run around the existing fisheries management system and wholly unnecessary given the protections already in place.

“This CLF request undermines the democratic process established for fisheries management and replaces science with pure politics,” Romeo Theken wrote.

Romeo Theken’s letter parallels much of the opposition generated by the national monument proposal for an area that is about 100 miles southeast of Cape Cod and is home to some of the true wonders of the ocean, including seamounts and canyons that respectively rise and plunge thousands of feet from the ocean floor.

It also objected to a similar protective designation for Cashes Ledge, which sits about 80 miles east of Cape Ann.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Marine Matters: Beauty Beneath the Sea

September 2, 2015 — Most people when they hear the word “coral” think of shallow, turquoise water and colorful reefs populated by bright tropical fish. Now think again. In the cold and often dark Gulf of Maine, spectacular cold-water coral formations, some of which may be hundreds if not thousands of years old, are just now being mapped and explored.

Most cold-water corals lie in the very deep submarine canyons and seamounts along the edge of the continental shelf. Yet they also occur in deep areas of the Gulf that are closer to shore, such as Jordan Basin. Cold-water corals typically are soft corals with flexible skeletons, unlike the coral species that build tropical reefs. Fishermen have long been familiar with taller coral outcroppings, which they called “trees,” on Georges Bank and other shallow-water areas in the Gulf.

Since 2013 scientists funded through NOAA’s Deep Sea Coral Research and Technology Program have been conducting research cruises in the Gulf of Maine using remotely controlled underwater vehicles and multibeam sonar to identify cold-water coral communities. This year during a ten-day research cruise, scientists from the University of Maine, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and the Northeast Underwater Research, Technology and Education Center at the University of Connecticut looked at three areas: Outer Schoodic Ridge, the Mount Desert Rock area and the Georges Basin region.

Read the full story at The Free Press