Saving Seafood

Maine lobster industry nets $2 million for research

September 3, 2020 — For the second straight year, $2 million has been awarded for lobster research in the Gulf of Maine. Four of the nine NOAA Sea Grant projects will be conducted by Maine organizations, totaling $559,181 in funding for Maine-based research projects.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, announced the Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative funding on Thursday, saying, “This critical federal funding will build on their efforts to support the health of Maine’s lobster fishery and help ensure its continued success.”

The $2 million will support Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank American lobster research priorities, which is aimed at understanding how environmental changes are affecting American lobster in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Feds: White hake, winter flounder overfished

July 30, 2020 — Gulf of Maine white hake, Georges Bank winter flounder and Atlantic Coast bluefish have been added to a list of fish stocks considered “overfishered,” according to a federal government report.

The report, released Tuesday, also said that the list of fish stocks subject to overfishing in the U.S. fell to an all-time low in 2019.

The National Marine Fisheries Service tracks the health of species that U.S. fishermen seek for commercial and recreational fishing. The agency places stocks on its overfishing list when the rate of catch is too big.

The agency determined that only 22 of 321 fishing stocks were subject to overfishing last year, the agency said on Tuesday. Fish stocks are sub-populations of fish species that typically live in a geographic area.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Lobsters, sea scallops are moving out of southern New England

July 13, 2020 — Researchers have projected significant changes in the habitat of commercially important American lobster and sea scallops along the Northeast continental shelf. They used a suite of models to estimate how species will react as waters warm. The researchers suggest that American lobster will move further offshore and sea scallops will shift to the north in the coming decades.

The study’s findings were published recently in Diversity and Distributions. They pose fishery management challenges as the changes can move stocks into and out of fixed management areas. Habitats within current management areas will also experience changes — some will show species increases, others decreases, and others will experience no change.

“Changes in stock distribution affect where fish and shellfish can be caught and who has access to them over time,” said Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist in the Ecosystems Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study. “American lobster and sea scallop are two of the most economically valuable single-species fisheries in the entire United States. They are also important to the economic and cultural well-being of coastal communities in the Northeast. Any changes to their distribution and abundance will have major impacts.”

Saba and colleagues used a group of species distribution models and a high-resolution global climate model. They projected the possible impact of climate change on suitable habitat for the two species in the large Northeast continental shelf marine ecosystem. This ecosystem includes waters of the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, the Mid-Atlantic Bight, and southern New England.

Read the full story at EcoRI

Can New England’s cod fishing industry survive?

July 6, 2020 — It’s said cod were once so plentiful in New England they would throw themselves into a boat. It’s said you could walk across their backs to shore.

Gloucester, Massachusetts, grew up around cod. The waterfront teemed with boats and fishermen, heaps of fish thrashing in wire baskets. Boats were inherited from fathers and shipyards boasted of operating since 1684. As late as the 1980s, the cod were so abundant and large (30-50lb each) that the fishermen still brought in big hauls. Cod remains the state fish of Massachusetts.

Today, you’re unlikely to find fresh Atlantic cod in any American food shop. The vast majority of the cod for sale is frozen, shipped in from Norway or Iceland. New England’s cod population has been diminished by new fishing technology, too many boats and foreign vessels, and poor management decisions. Both major stocks of North Atlantic cod in US waters – the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank cod – are overfished. With the climate crisis warming waters and disrupting cod spawning behaviour and food sources, many scientists wonder if the stocks will survive at all.

In Gloucester, that has meant regulation to protect the stocks – including catch limits, monitoring and no-fishing zones. These have placed a burden on fishermen, many of whom dispute the scientific data, creating tension between some scientists and fishermen and threatening the identity of person and place in a town where culture and economy were, for centuries, intertwined around cod.

Read the full story at The Guardian

Partnerships Improve the 2020 Atlantic Surfclam Stock Assessment

June 23, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Atlantic surfclams live at depths between 20 and 35 meters, with an optimal temperature range of 16 to 22o C. They are managed as one stock, with two biologically distinct areas. Surfclams in the northern area on Georges Bank are faster growing than southern surfclams, and the populations don’t mix.

Thirty years ago, southern surfclams grew faster than they do now, and lived in shallower waters. They were also bigger than the surfclams on Georges Bank. Now, these dynamics are reversed. Surfclams in the southern areas have moved to deeper waters, and grow more slowly, to a smaller maximum size. These population changes have been observed by fishermen, noted in their logbooks, and appear in research survey data.

In recent assessments, scientists treated the two areas separately, each with its own assessment model. This time, there is one model with two areas. Dan Hennen, lead surfclam assessment scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, developed this model. He collaborated closely with the surfclam industry and academic partners, like the Science Center for Marine Fisheries, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.

Working together led to a two-area model, which better deals with the challenges of a population with changing dynamics. Understanding how growth is changing led to better diagnostic behavior in our model. This gives fisheries managers more confidence that it accurately reflects what is going on in the population.

Read the full release here

NEFMC deep-sea coral amendment provides sweeping habitat protections

June 19, 2020 — A new amendment from the New England Fishery Management Council, which has been approved by NOAA Fisheries, will provide “sweeping protections” for deep-sea corals in areas off the New England coast, including the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.

The new amendment, the Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment, is expected to take effect this summer and applies to two regions in the Gulf of Maine and the Continental Slope area south of Georges Bank. The area protecting the Continental Slope area includes 82 percent of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, begins at a depth of 600 meters, and extends to the 200-mile exclusive economic zone limit.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Atlantic Herring: NEFMC Receives Progress Report on Two Framework Adjustments

April 28, 2020 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council received a progress report during its April 14-15, 2020 webinar meeting on two framework adjustments to the Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan. Here’s what’s in the works.

Framework Adjustment 7 – This framework is being developed to protect Atlantic herring spawning on Georges Bank. Here’s the discussion document. During this meeting, the Council voted to clarify that:

  • The goal of this action is to “develop measures to protect spawning adults of Atlantic herring and/or Atlantic herring egg mats to increase overall herring biomass”; and
  • The objective is to “consider similar measures as in Area 1A – the inshore Gulf of Maine – for other spawning components of this resource,” namely on Georges Bank and Nantucket Shoals.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) and the Council collaboratively manage the Area 1A fishery. The Council is discussing the role of state versus federal herring management with the Commission.

Read the full release here

NOAA Fisheries Allocates Annual Catch Entitlements for Fishing Year 2020

April 27, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is allocating annual catch entitlements (ACE) to sectors for fishing year 2020, based on catch limits set by Framework 57 and 58, which will allow previously approved sectors to operate in fishing year 2020. These allocations will be updated once Framework 59 is finalized. We are also announcing default allocations for Eastern Georges Bank cod and haddock to prevent impacts to industry resulting from delays in finalizing Framework 59, which will also update these allocations. We are also changing the Redfish Exemption Area and gear stowage requirements for vessels fishing under the redfish exemption.

Read the interim final rule as published in the Federal Register.  You may also submit comments through the online portal.  Copies of each sector’s operations plan and contract are available online.

The comment period is open through May 27, 2020.

Read the full release here

New State of the Ecosystem Reports Document “Big Picture” Around Fishing

April 7, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Two newly issued reports provide a snapshot of the Northeast U.S. Shelf Ecosystem. They look at everything from phytoplankton production at the bottom of the food web to the fishery harvests at the top. One report focuses on Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine the other on the waters of the Mid-Atlantic Bight. These are the three major regions within the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem.

These annual reports are part of a larger, ongoing NOAA-wide initiative. It provides a consistent national approach to managing ecosystems that is flexible enough to accommodate regional needs. This Integrated Ecosystem Assessment approach is intended to help resource managers integrate physical, biological, economic, and social components of ecosystems into their decision-making. This will help them to balance trade-offs and determine which approaches are more likely to achieve their desired goals. The 2020 State of the Ecosystem Reports inform the New England and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Councils.

“This approach has helped give the council structure with specific steps to define what our management goals and objectives are, figure out how we can address them, and understand what that means for areas such as economics,” said Brandon Muffley, a fishery management specialist at the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The State of the Ecosystem reports were produced by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, with additional collaborators from academic research institutions, non-profit organizations, and state agencies.

Read the full release here

NOAA Fisheries Announces Transfer of Georges Bank and Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic Yellowtail Flounder Quota from Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery to Groundfish Fishery

April 2, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

We are transferring unused quota of Georges Bank and Southern New England/Mid Atlantic yellowtail flounder from the Atlantic sea scallop fishery to the commercial groundfish fishery.

If we expect the scallop fishery to catch less than 90 percent of its Georges Bank or Southern New England/Mid Atlantic yellowtail flounder quota, we are authorized to reduce the scallop fishery quota for these yellowtail flounder stocks to the amount projected to be caught, and increase the groundfish fishery quota by the same amount. This adjustment helps achieve optimum yield for both fisheries, while still protecting from an overage of the annual catch limits.

Based on the current projections, the scallop fishery is expected to catch 13 percent of its allocation of Southern New England/Mid Atlantic yellowtail flounder quota, and 11 percent of its Georges Bank yellowtail allocation.

Effective today, we are transferring 13.1 mt of Southern New England/Mid Atlantic yellowtail flounder from the scallop fishery to the groundfish fishery, and 15.2 mt of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder through the end of the 2019 fishing year (April 30, 2020).

For more information, read the rule as filed today in the Federal Register.