Saving Seafood

The science of sustainable seafood, explained

January 13, 2021 — The following was released by Sustainable Fisheries UW:

Commercial fishing is vital to global food production. Wild-caught fish contain every essential amino acid, require no land or freshwater, and are a renewable resource when managed sustainably. In addition to providing access to healthy, low-impact protein, the seafood industry is worth over a trillion dollars annually and employs 40 million people—ensuring its sustainability is vital to economies all over the world. We explain seafood industry regulations in our section on fishery management—but first, the fundamental key to understanding sustainable seafood is grasping the science of catching fish.

Fisheries are composed of fish stocks and the fishing fleet that catches them. A fish stock is simply a harvested population. It refers to one specific species in one particular place, like Gulf of Maine cod. A fishery is the intersection of a stock (or group of stocks) and the means of harvest. Fishing fleets can use several different methods to capture fish, each method describes the fishery and guides management.

A fishery is sustainable when the amount harvested does not compromise future harvests.

Fishery science is the process that answers that question, primarily through stock assessments. A stock assessment uses several different kinds of data to understand the health of a stock and determine how much can be fished. You can think of the data as the A,B,Cs of stock assessments – abundance, biology, and catch.

  • Abundance is how many fish are in the population; estimates of abundance are made based on samples that are gathered using various methods.
  • Sampling can also collect biological data such as: age and length from which we can estimate levels of natural mortality and fishing mortality. Together, these data help estimate the reproductive rate of a population, which in turn allows us to predict how many fish will be around next year.
    • During sampling, environmental data like temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen and other ecological variables are also collected.
  • Catch data are our historical records of how many or what weight of fish was caught during a calendar year or a fishing season.

Read the full release here

Fall Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey Wraps Up

January 7, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The COVID-19 pandemic and typical fall weather conditions were challenges, but the Cooperative Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey team and industry partners wrapped up a successful season in early November.

“Every single person on the bottom longline survey team worked incredibly hard to get the survey completed this fall,” said Anna Mercer, chief of the Cooperative Research Branch. “From building new software to installing new camera systems, from repeated COVID-19 testing to careful quarantining, from new work flows to new hardware, it was a true team effort.”

The survey targets groundfish at 45 stations across the Gulf of Maine using tub-trawl bottom longline gear. The survey plan focuses on rocky bottom habitat, where fish are difficult to sample with trawl gear.

New Data Collection System Used

This year’s survey is the first to use a new data collection system developed by the branch. This next generation of software and hardware significantly upgrades digital data collection and catch processing at sea.

A tablet-based application replaces paper logs for most data types, improves operational efficiency, consistency, and data quality control for recording catch data and biological samples. Digital scales, electronic fish measuring boards, and barcode scanners now wirelessly communicate with the tablets. This keeps the system compact and agile for use on small commercial fishing vessels.

Both vessels were also newly equipped with electronic monitoring cameras. Adding cameras provides a way to get detailed information on the condition of bait or fish on hooks as the vessel retrieves the gear. This “hook status” information gives analysts a measure of hook availability—how available the hook is to fish that the gear encounters—which will improve understanding of catch rates.

Read the full release here

Two new promotions seek to shore up Maine’s seafood industry

December 15, 2020 — Two new initiatives are underway to support Maine’s seafood industry through the downturn it has experienced this year.

The state has launched a promotion aimed at home cooks, who have been one of the bright spots for seafood sales this year.

And on Dec. 16, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland will hold “Split the Seafood Bill Day,” an initiative that will cover half the cost of meals that include seafood sourced from the Gulf of Maine at any of 20 participating restaurants for the first 200 diners.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources, with support from Gov. Janet Mills, launched the branding and promotion initiative last week with a $1 million investment from $20 million in CARES Act relief funds allocated for Maine’s commercial fishing and seafood industry.

The largest wholesale markets for Maine seafood traditionally include restaurants and food service. With those industries shut down or sharply curtailed, marketing shifted to retail sales aimed at home cooks.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Fall Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey Wraps Up

December 14, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The COVID-19 pandemic and typical fall weather conditions were challenges, but the Cooperative Gulf of Maine Bottom Longline Survey team and industry partners wrapped up a successful season in early November.

“Every single person on the bottom longline survey team worked incredibly hard to get the survey completed this fall,” said Anna Mercer, chief of the Cooperative Research Branch. “From building new software to installing new camera systems, from repeated COVID-19 testing to careful quarantining, from new work flows to new hardware, it was a true team effort.”

The survey targets groundfish at 45 stations across the Gulf of Maine using tub-trawl bottom longline gear. The survey plan focuses on rocky bottom habitat, where fish are difficult to sample with trawl gear.

Read the full release here

Lobster stock levels remain high in Gulf of Maine, but future issues cause concern

December 4, 2020 — When it comes to availability of their catch, the “now” looks solid for local commercial lobster fishermen, based on findings reported in the 2020 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment. The assessment reported the stock at “record high abundance levels” in the Gulf of Maine. The good news continued: “Stock projections conducted as part of the assessment suggested a low probability of abundance declining below the abundance target over the next 10 years.” The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery now accounts for 90 percent of U.S. lobster landings, and, overall, landings increased fivefold in Maine from 1982 to when they peaked in 2016.

The outlook for southern New England remained poor, with a depleted fishery and no signs of resurgence. The research was conducted by several organizations, including the Department of Marine Resources, Gulf of Maine Research Institute and the University of Maine’s Sea Grant program and Lobster Institute. The assessment, released in October, was based on surveys conducted from 2016 through 2018.

However, once the research turns to the number of juvenile lobster settling on the sea floor, the future looks more uncertain.

“There’s this really puzzling disconnect between the surging numbers of lobsters we’ve been seeing over the past decade and the decline in larval settlement that we’ve seen,” said Richard Wahle, director of The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine’s booming seal population concerns local fishermen, biologists

November 19, 2020 — There’s a lot of debate recently about the seal population in New England, specifically off the coast of Maine.

Once nearly extinct, experts are now seeing a rapid increase in the number of seals in the Gulf of Maine due to decades of legal protection.

Biologists say there are three points to consider: While the increase in harbor seals is creating a healthier ecosystem for the gulf of Maine, it’s also creating problems for local lobstermen who say they’re a threat to their livelihoods, and it’s drawing new and potentially dangerous fish into our waters at a rate the state has never seen before.

“Here we have a pretty big population of seals,” Rusty Court, who’s been lobstering off the coast of Monhegan and Boothbay Harbor for 50 years, said.

Read the full story at WGME

Herring Fishery to Slow Down for Rest of 2020

November 11, 2020 — The New England herring fishery is slowing down for the rest of the year because fishermen are approaching their quota for the fish.

Fishermen will be unable to fish for or possess more than 2,000 pounds of herring per trip in the inshore Gulf of Maine until Dec. 31, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has ruled. The rules went into effect on Wednesday.

Herring are the subject of a large fishery on the East Coast, but the industry has struggled in recent years due to a decline in population. Fishermen caught less than 25 million pounds of the fish last year after catching more than 96 million pounds during the previous year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Long-Running Plankton Survey to Resume in the Gulf of Maine

November 10, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

A new agreement between NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will allow a plankton survey to resume. The survey was originally conducted across the Gulf of Maine from 1961 to 2017.

NOAA Fisheries is providing funding for the survey through the NOAA Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region, hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The Marine Biological Association manages merchant vessel-based plankton surveys around the world. The association will run and maintain the resumed Gulf of Maine survey through 2024 under this agreement.

“Continuing a long-term time series like the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey is essential to understanding the impact of climate change to marine ecosystems,” said Chris Melrose, a research oceanographer at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode Island and NOAA representative on the agreement.

“Many marine species are shifting their distributions as ocean waters warm,” explained Melrose. “Because plankton are an important food source for many species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale, knowing about changes in the plankton helps us to understand other changes we see in the ecosystem.”

Read the full release here

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobster Stocks Found in Steep Decline, With Future in Doubt

October 30, 2020 — Southern New England lobster stocks, once robust, have declined to record lows in recent years according to scientists and regulators, jeopardizing the future of a storied fishery even as Vineyard lobstermen continue to report strong seasons on the water.

In a benchmark assessment released late last week, an interstate regulatory agency found that lobster populations in southern New England are “significantly depleted,” reaching their lowest levels on record and threatening the lobster industry from the southern Cape through Long Island Sound.

But some Vineyard lobstermen said that despite the decreasing abundance in the entire southern New England region — which stretches from south of New York to Monomoy and Nantucket — their catch around the Island remains healthy.

And interestingly, just as lobster populations have declined in more southern waters in recent years, scientists have seen a historic boom in the Gulf of Maine, where lobster abundance and fishery performance have reached record highs, according to the report. The Vineyard sits just south of the halfway point between the two American lobster stock units, which are divided by geography and small differences in the biology of the crustaceans.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Gulf of Maine Research Institute launches new aquaculture knowledge portal

October 29, 2020 — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) has announced the launch of a new online portal, “The Maine Aquaculturist,” designed to help aquaculture operations in the U.S. state of Maine access resources in the state.

The new portal was created in response to the growing number of aquaculture operations that are either already in business or are planning to establish locations in the state, according to GMRI. In the past few years, companies including Whole Oceans, Nordic Aquafarms, The Kingfish Company, Aquabanq, and American Aquafarms have all announced proposals for either land-based or net-pen aquaculture operations in various locations throughout the state. Those primarily finfish operations are additions onto the existing – and growing – shellfish aquaculture operations in the state, farming oysters in locations up and down the coast.

Read the full story at Seafood Source