Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Shrimp lovers lining up for local catch

March 2, 2017 — Joe Jurek knew his catch would be popular. He just didn’t know how popular.

Jurek, a Gloucester-based groundfisherman who specializes in yellow-tail flounder on most fishing days, now holds the rarified position as the only Massachusetts fisherman allowed to fish for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine.

His tenure as shrimper-in-residence will last only two more weeks, much to the dismay of local northern shrimp lovers — including Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken — who literally have trooped down to the dock with buckets to try to buy the cold-water delicacies. The local shrimp have disappeared from seafood retail shops in the last four years the shrimp fishery has been closed.

“Once people found out about it, it was like a bunch of seagulls,” said Romeo Theken, who along with a couple other dozen friends put in an order for about 230 pounds of the small, sweet shrimp. “Now people know the process, that they have to sign in at the auction and buy it through a seafood dealer.”

Jurek said he’s averaging 350 to 400 pounds of the shrimp per fishing day, which he lands at the Cape Ann Seafood Exchange at an average off-the-boat price of about $6.50 a pound.

Jurek, owner and skipper of the 42-foot FV Mystique Lady, is the lone Massachusetts participant in the eight-week Gulf of Maine winter shrimp sampling program. The study also includes eight trawlers from Maine and one from New Hampshire.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Groundfish Monitoring Scoping Hearings

February 21, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has scheduled a series of public scoping hearings from Maine to Connecticut to solicit ideas for potentially changing the region’s groundfish monitoring and reporting system. The purpose of this initiative is to improve reliability and accountability of the monitoring program since successful management of the fishery depends on accurate and timely catch reporting.

The changes are being considered under Amendment 23 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan. The Council is encouraging fishermen and other stakeholders to participate in this very early stage of the amendment development process.

“The Council, fishermen, and the public recognize the groundfish monitoring program needs improvement,” said Council Executive Director Tom Nies. “This is the first and best opportunity for people to suggest ways to create a program that will give the accurate, reliable information needed to manage this fishery.”

At present, two types of at-sea observers are used in the groundfish fishery: (1)Federally funded Northeast Fishery Observer Program (NEFOP) observers who follow the Standardized Bycatch Reporting Methodology (SBRM) and implement federal programs; and (2) At-sea monitors who are responsible for groundfish sector monitoring. As of May 1, at-sea monitors will be fully funded by industry.

Amendment 23 will not impact NEFOP or SBRM coverage. However, the amendment could modify or even remove the at-sea monitoring program if an alternative holistic monitoring and reporting program is developed and implemented for the groundfish fishery.

As part of Amendment 23, the Council also may consider changes to the way landings information is provided by both dealers and vessel operators and how it is assigned to stock areas.

Read the full release here

Seafood issues on tap for SWAMC meeting

February 10, 2017 — Fisheries marketing, policy issues and a legislative update are on the agenda for the second day of the annual Southwest Alaska Municipal Conference’s annual summit and membership meeting March 2-3 in Anchorage.

A fisheries policy panel moderated by the McDowell Group will include Gunnar Knapp, a fisheries economist with the University of Alaska Anchorage; Chris Oliver, executive director of the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council; Julie Bonney, executive director of the Alaska Groundfish Data Bank; and a representative of the Aleutians East Borough.

Reports on Alaska’s community development quota entities will be delivered by Larry Cotter, executive director of the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association; and Norm Van Vactor, president and chief executive officer of the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp.

Read the full story at The Cordova Times

Lawsuit over fishing monitors to reach Court of Appeals soon

February 11, 2017 — A New England fishermen’s group suing the federal government over the cost of at-sea monitoring is scheduled to present oral arguments before the federal Court of Appeals in March.

The monitors are workers who collect data that help the government craft fishing regulations. The government shifted the cost of paying for monitors to fishermen last year.

A group led by New Hampshire fisherman David Goethel sued the government over the rule change. The fishermen lost in federal district court and appealed. Attorneys say the arguments are set to take place March 7.

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

NMFS Temporarily Closes “A” Season Pollock Fishing in Gulf of Alaska Area 610

February 6, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — National Marine Fisheries Service has issued a temporary rule prohibiting directed fishing for Pollock in Statistical Area 610 in the Gulf of Alaska for the A season.

The action is necessary to prevent exceeding the A season allowance of the 2017 total allowable catch of pollock for Statistical Area 610, NMFS said in the rule published on Jan. 31 in the Federal Register.

NMFS manages the groundfish fishery in the Gulf exclusive economic zone under the Fishery Management Plan for Groundfish of the Gulf of Alaska prepared by the North Pacific Fishery Management Council under the authority of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act.

The A season allowance of the 2017 total allowable catch of Pollock for Area 610 of the GOA is 2,232 metric tons, as established by the final 2016 and 2017 harvest specifications for groundfish in the GOA.

After NMFS’ regional administrator determined that the A season allowance for that TAC would soon be reached, NMFS moved to prohibit additional directed fishing for Pollock there during the A season.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

Montauk Fishermen Worry About Impacts From Proposed Wind Farm

January 31, 2017 — A 12-to-15-turbine wind farm still will have to navigate a long and arduous regulatory approval process before it can be constructed in the waters between Montauk and Nantucket.

One of the hurdles it will have to clear will be convincing regulators that it will not have a negative impact on marine life in the area the wind farm will inhabit, or on the fishermen who draw their livelihoods from the seas surrounding it.

In the still-fledgling world of offshore wind-generated energy in the United States, commercial fishermen have emerged as the leading doubters of the overall benefits of this particular method of creating renewable energy.

Last fall, a consortium of commercial fishing interests sued, unsuccessfully, to halt a federal lease of hundreds of square miles of ocean floor in the New York Bight. The legal action claimed that the construction of hundreds of wind turbines in the area could restrict access to commercial fishermen and interfere with important fish migration patterns.

Read the full story at 27east.com

ALASKA: Strong harvests, more oversight marked 2016 groundfish fisheries

January 23, 2017 — Last year was a good year overall for groundfish fisheries in the region.

With a few standout harvests and favorable proposals with the Board of Fisheries, managers are feeling optimistic heading into the new year.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game oversees several groundfish fisheries within the Cook Inlet Management Area, which extends outside of Kachemak Bay to the north Gulf coast.

“These fisheries include Pacific cod, sablefish, a directed pelagic shelf rockfish fishery, lingcod, and a small commissioner’s permit Pollock fishery,” said Jan Rumble, Fish and Game area groundfish management biologist.

Pacific cod stood out in 2016 as it was open all year long for pot and jig gear in either a parallel or state waters fishery, Rumble said.

Despite the extended opening, the state waters fishery only reached 83 percent of its guideline harvest level, or GHL.

Read the full story at KTOO

Maine fishermen say there’s plenty of cod. Scientists might give them the chance to prove it.

January 16, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — Seeking to end a long-running disagreement about exactly how many cod are left in the Gulf of Maine, federal scientists plan to outfit commercial fishermen with equipment used to establish groundfish quotas.

The fishermen tend to argue that there are more cod than the government realizes; therefore, the number they may legally catch should be higher. Government scientists counter that fishermen’s natural tendency to fish where they are most likely to catch large numbers leads them to overestimate the cod population in the entire Gulf of Maine.

By next year, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center hopes to begin outfitting commercial boats with surveying equipment and paying fishermen to pull in catches that will supplement the regular trawl surveys conducted by government scientists, according to Russell Brown, who heads the center’s population dynamics branch. The gathered data will be fed into the complex process used to set catch quotas.

It’s a collaboration that Brown hopes will give regulators a more detailed picture of the fish population and build trust among fishermen, who in turn see it as an opportunity to show the scientists what’s really going on.

For years, fishermen and scientists have clashed over how to properly estimate fish populations and set the catch quotas that rule the livelihoods of Maine fishermen. Fishermen suggest that scientists are missing fish and setting the quotas too low, while scientists say fishermen are missing the big picture. But both groups believe collaboration would be a positive step toward better protecting Maine’s fishing industry and environment, even as ocean waters warm.

“It’s really perplexing that you’ve got a set of federal scientists who are sampling the ocean methodically and coming up with a very different picture than the fishermen about what’s going on out in the Gulf of Maine,” Jonathan Labaree of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute said.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Despite recent tweaks, New England fishermen want more changes in law

January 13, 2017 — Despite tweaks to fishing guidelines in 2016 aimed at increasing regulatory flexibility, some New England groundfishermen and recreational fishermen still support a move to amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act, sources told Undercurrent News.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA’s) recently made changes to a guideline known National Standard One (NS1), but there will still likely be a push from east coast fishermen to amend the Magnuson-Stevens Act as Republican president-elect Donald Trump takes office.

The effort intends to bring more “flexibility” to fishery management, sources told Undercurrent News. 

In October of 2016 NOAA made changes to NS1, which aims to prevent overfishing while achieving the optimum yield from each fishery.

Changes were first proposed in January 2015, and the final rule passed in October 2016 giving regional councils more latitude to set catch limits, a change that was opposed by environmental groups.

Call for flexibility 

Fishermen, particularly on the US east coast, have been critical for several years of what they say are rigid timelines that give regulators ten years to rebuild stocks deemed overfished.

Some sources told Undercurrent that the lack of flexibility sometimes forces regulators to severely — and some say, unnecessarily — cut quotas when fisheries are nearing the 10-year mark. If a fishery has shown improvement and is nearing its goal, they claim, it makes no difference in the long run whether they reach that goal in the allotted ten years or sooner.

“I think that it’s possible that those new guidelines acted as a relief valve for that pressure. I don’t know that you’re going to get as much pressure to create flexibility in the act that you would get two years ago,” Shannon Carroll of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council told Undercurrent.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

NOAA seeks comment on groundfish permitting rule

December 27, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would limit the number of permits and the amount of groundfish allocation one individual or entity could own in the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery.

According to NOAA Fisheries, the rule is designed “to promote diversity in the groundfish fishery and enhance sector management” by preventing excessive consolidation in the fishery by capping the number of limited access permits and the amount of a sector’s annual catch entitlement any one entity may own.

The final proposed rule, which the NEFMC submitted to NOAA in August, would limit any ownership entity from possessing more than 5 percent of all limited access groundfish permits in the fishery.

Currently, there are approximately 1,373 limited access permits operating in the fishery, so a 5 percent cap would limit any single ownership entity to owning approximately 69 permits.

“As of May 1, 2014, the most permits held by any entity is 55,” NOAA Fisheries said in the publication of the proposed rule. “Therefore, if approved, this alternative is unlikely to restrict any entity.”

The New England Fishery Management Council began work on the rule, also known as Amendment 18, in 2011.

“Subsequently, the stock status for many groundfish stocks declined and the associated annual catch limits were significantly reduced,” according to NOAA Fisheries’ summary of the proposed rule that was published Tuesday in the Federal Register. “As a result, some groundfish fishermen were concerned that implementing an accumulation limit could be problematic if it reduced flexibility and prevented them from obtaining additional quota necessary to maintain viable fishing operations.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times