Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Harvesting the haul

January 4, 2018 — After a steep drop in 2016, seafood harvesting employment rebounded in 2017, growing 8.3 percent and hitting a record of 8,509 average monthly jobs in the state of Alaska.

The employment growth was widespread, covering most species and regions, which was a departure from previous years when certain fisheries’ or regions’ growth tended to offset losses elsewhere.

The 8.3 percent growth for seafood harvesting in 2017 was the largest in percent terms among Alaska industries. Health care, which has been marked by strong job growth for decades and has been one of the few industries to grow throughout the state recession, grew by just 2.3 percent.

Summer and fall brought impressive growth in harvesting jobs after a weak start to the year. Most of the year’s growth came during the summer. July has always been the seafood harvesting peak, and in 2017 it went up by another 634 jobs, bringing the July total to 24,459.

The biggest jumps came on the edges of the summer, however. June, September, and October each gained more than 1,000 jobs from 2016’s levels. June’s employment grew the most, up 1,877 jobs from June 2016.

The year’s few losses came in the early months. January, February and March levels were all down from the year before. Those months are more important for crab fisheries than other species, which is why crab harvesting was one of the few fisheries that lost jobs in 2017.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: SouthCoast Woman of the Year: Canastra’s drive helping keep groundfishing alive

December 31, 2018 — Among the grizzled lifelong fishermen sat six-year-old Cassie Canastra. She staked claim to the seat toward the right side of the second table in the small room where thousands of pounds of fish were auctioned off each day. Her spot faced the television and was the closest to the sweets brought by her father, Raymond.

Her pastry of choice: Malasadas.

“She knew I was going to go to the Portuguese bakery before work. She wanted that,” Ray said with a loud chuckle. “That’s the truth.”

The malasadas certainly didn’t deter her from begging her parents to wake hours before sunrise to arrive at the Buyers and Sellers Exchange seafood auction for 4:30 a.m.

Her father and uncle Richie both have fishing running through their blood. The gene was passed down to Cassie.

Read the full story at New Bedford Standard-Times

Quotas set for Alaska groundfish, plus Southeast rockfish opener

December 21, 2018 — Cod catches will decline next year in both the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea, while catches for pollock could be up in the Bering Sea and down in the gulf. The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set the 2019 quotas this month for more than two dozen fisheries in federal waters.

The Bering Sea pollock quota got a 2.4 percent increase to nearly 1.4 million metric tons, or more than 3 billion pounds.

Bering Sea cod TACs were cut 11.5 percent to just over 366 million pounds (166,475 mt).

In the gulf, pollock totals will be down 15 percent to 311 million pounds, a drop of 55 million pounds from this year.

Gulf of Alaska cod quota will again take a dip to just over 27 million pounds — down 5.6 percent.

Meanwhile, boats are still out on the water throughout the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea hauling up final catches of various groundfish for the year.

The 4 million-pound red king crab fishery at Bristol Bay is a wrap, but crabbers are still tapping away at the 2.4 million-pound Bering Sea Tanner crab quota. Snow crab is open, but fishing typically gets going in mid-January.

Divers are picking up the last 35,000 pounds of sea cucumbers in parts of Southeast Alaska. About 170 divers competed for a 1.7 million-pound sea cucumber quota this year; diving also continues for more than 700,000 pounds of giant geoduck clams.

Southeast trollers are still out on the water targeting winter king salmon.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: $63.5K to help reshape Gloucester’s fish industry

December 20, 2018 — When the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund was established in 2007, the Gloucester fleet already had transitioned away from its sizeable offshore groundfish fleet to a largely inshore fleet dependent on cod and other groundfish species in the Gulf of Maine.

More than a decade later, the demise of the Gloucester inshore fleet continues, fueled by regulation, environmental restrictions and the simple demographics of an aging and declining workforce.

“The aging-out of the fleet and attrition have really taken a toll,” said Vito Giacalone, GFCPF executive director. “We’ve now experienced two generations of fishermen who saw no value in continuing to fish.”

The seascape has changed dramatically and now the GFCPF, best known as a source for preserving and leasing permit privileges to Gloucester fishing vessels, is looking toward the future and its role in helping reshape the Gloucester fishing community.

The non-profit organization, with the assistance of U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, became one of seven organizations in the country this week to receive fisheries innovation grants from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

New England Council Discusses Whiting, Enforcement, Dogfish, Herring, Ecosystem Management, and More at December Meeting

December 14, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council covered numerous issues during its December 4-6 meeting in Newport, RI. In addition to taking final action on Scallop Framework 30, Groundfish Framework 58, and the Clam Dredge Framework, the Council discussed a slate of other topics. Here are a few highlights.

WHITING: The Council took final action on Whiting Amendment 22, which was developed to consider limited access options for the small-mesh multispecies fishery. After reviewing all public comment and available analyses and considering a recommendation from its Whiting Committee, the Council selected the alternative called “status quo/no action.” As such, the whiting/small-mesh multispecies fishery will remain an open access fishery and no changes will be made to existing regulatory measures. More information, including summaries of public hearing comments, is available at December 3 Committee Meeting and December 4, 2018 Council Meeting Materials.

ENFORCEMENT: The Council adopted several consensus statements drafted by its Enforcement Committee. One of these pertained to use of the OMEGA Mesh Gauge® to measure fishing nets. The Coast Guard extensively tested the OMEGA gauge and concluded that it has notable benefits over the weight-and-spade tools currently being used to measure webbing. Coast Guard representatives provided a demonstration for Council members comparing the OMEGA gauge versus the weight-and-spade. The Council recommended that NOAA, under existing authority, adopt the OMEGA gauge to measure mesh size once the Enforcement Section of NOAA General Counsel determines that all legal requirements have been met.

Read the full release at the New England Fishery Management Council

 

Catch limits increase for key West Coast groundfish species

December 12, 2018 — Federal officials said Tuesday they are increasing catch limits for several species of West Coast groundfish that were severely depleted more than a dozen years ago in a crisis that posed a threat to the commercial and sports fishing industries.

Limits for yelloweye rockfish will more than double, while substantial increases will be allowed for California scorpionfish, bocaccio and Pacific Ocean perch, the National Marine Fisheries Service said.

Those species have recovered enough to allow for the greatest expansion of a West Coast fishery in years. The formal announcement of the revised catch limits will be published Wednesday and the changes go into effect on Jan. 1, the first day of the new fishing season.

Fishing income in California, Oregon and Washington could increase $60 million because of the changes, with the potential for 900 new jobs and at least 200,000 more angler trips a year, according to a preliminary report.

“It’ll actually allow us to fish,” said Tom Marking, a recreational fisherman from Eureka, California.

“Right now, there are a lot of places you just avoid because they’re known as yelloweye hot spots. You just stay away from them. If they allow us to go to 30 fathoms or 40 fathoms or all depths, it’ll allow the fleet to spread out.”

Between 1999 and 2002, nine West Coast groundfish stocks were declared overfished as surveys documented declining numbers.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

Blob 2.0 is bad sign for Gulf of Alaska groundfish

December 11, 2018 — Fish heavily impacted by a three-year marine heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska may be headed for round two. Commonly referred to as the blob, warmer waters between 2014 and 2017 were blamed for a dramatic decline in Pacific cod and are thought to have negatively impacted other species such as pollock.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council set catch limits for several groundfish species in the Gulf of Alaska Thursday afternoon. Before members set those limits, Stephani Zador with the Alaska Fisheries Science Center updated the council on the latest trends in the Gulf.

“Importantly, starting in September, we are officially in another heatwave in the Gulf of Alaska,” she explained.

Pacific cod populations in the Gulf plummeted as their food source decreased during the blob, but after waters returned to somewhat normal temperatures in 2017, Zador said cod body conditions improved.

“All the groundfish in our survey that we sampled, except for cod, had poor body condition. So, they were skinnier per length than average,” Zador said. “That was a sign we saw consistently through the heatwave and indicates that cod were able to pop back up.”

The council slashed the total allowable catch by 80 percent last year and lowered it slightly again this year in order to allow the species to rebound. Pacific cod populations in the Gulf are expected to stabilize in the coming years, but another marine heatwave, or blob 2.0, could hamper any progress.

Pollock have also suffered poor recruitment in recent years, but Zador said larva abundance was above average in 2017. However, much like cod, another heatwave is not a good sign.

Read the full story at KBBI

JACK SPILLANE: A rogue agency gets set to shut down another New Bedford fishery

December 10, 2018 — Scott Lang has been around fisheries issues for a long time.

Both when he was mayor and afterwards.

In 2013, Lang helped organize the Center for Sustainable Fisheries as a grassroots lobbying group to try to make sure New Bedford fishermen were not totally forgotten by NOAA. He’s worked for the industry for a long time and seen a lot of arguments from both sides back-and-forth over the years.

But until last week, he said he had never seen NOAA make a decision to close a fishery with no science behind it. Not even questionable science, as for years NOAA has used for New England groundfishing limits in the opinion of many.

NOAA’s decision to close the Rose and Crown Zone and Zone D to surf clammers is based on anecdotal evidence related to UMass Dartmouth scientist Kevin Stokesbury’s research for the scallop industry, first done almost two decades ago.

The camera net device Stokesbury invented was for measuring scallop habitats but NOAA has used his science to measure clam beds. It’s not the same, Stokesbury told The Standard-Times. The images his survey produces are of the ocean floor about a kilometer apart and clammers often dredge in much shorter distances.

The clammers have offered to do surveys that will be more applicable to clam beds in the areas of Nantucket Shoals in question. They would need about three years to do that but they would have to keep fishing in the closed areas in order to pay for it.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishing quotas for cod, haddock to get a boost next year

December 10, 2018 — Commercial fishermen will be able to catch a little bit more cod and haddock off New England next year.

Fishermen seek the valuable groundfish species and others off the East Coast, with most coming to land in New England states. The New England Fishery Management Council has approved new catch limits for several species for the fishing year that begins May 1.

The largest catch limit will be for Georges Bank haddock. It’ll increase by almost 20 percent to more than 117 million pounds (53 million kilograms).

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WTNH

NEFMC Approves Groundfish Framework 58

December 7, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has approved Framework Adjustment 58 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The framework will be submitted to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, NOAA Fisheries) for review and implementation. The target implementation date is May 1, which is the start of the 2019 groundfish fishing year. In short, the framework includes the following components:

  • Revised and/or new rebuilding programs for several groundfish stocks, including: (a) Georges Bank winter flounder; (b) Southern New England/Mid-Atlantic yellowtail flounder; (c) witch flounder; (d) Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank Northern windowpane flounder; and (e) ocean pout;
  • Revised annual catch limit specifications (see tables at right and next page);
  • 2019 U.S./Canada total allowable catches (TACs) for three shared groundfish stocks on Georges Bank;
  • An exemption for vessels fishing in Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) waters from U.S. commercial minimum sizes in the Council’s Northeast Multispecies FMP; and
  • An extension of the temporary change that’s currently in place for the scallop fishery’s trigger for Georges Bank yellowtail flounder accountability measures (AMs). Under this extension, the scallop fishery’s AM would be triggered only if scallopers exceed both their own sub-ACL for yellowtail flounder and if the total ACL for this stock is exceeded.

Read the full release here