Saving Seafood

Long-running plankton survey to resume this winter

October 28, 2020 — Scientists this winter will revive a long-running survey of plankton in the Gulf of Maine. Plankton, drifting microscopic sea organisms, are food for endangered North American right whales and other marine species. 

The Gulf of Maine plankton survey was originally performed from 1961–2017. It is returning under a new agreement between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Northeast Fisheries Science Center, the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, England, and the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.  

“Many marine species are shifting their distributions as ocean waters warm,” said Chris Melrose, a research oceanographer at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Narragansett, R.I. “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.” 

Melrose, who is NOAA representative on the agreement, said continuing the survey “is essential to understanding the impact of climate change to marine ecosystems.”  

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

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

October 23, 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

American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Finds GOM/GBK Stock Not Overfished nor Experiencing Overfishing & SNE Stock Significantly Depleted: Assessment Introduces Regime Shift Methodology to Address Changing Environmental Conditions

October 22, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The 2020 American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment presents contrasting results for the two American lobster stock units, with record high abundance and recruitment in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank stock (GOM/GBK) and record low abundance and recruitment in the Southern New England stock (SNE) in recent years. The GOM/GBK stock is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing. Conversely, the SNE stock is significantly depleted with poor prospects of recovery. Stock status was assessed using the University of Maine Stock Assessment Model for American Lobster (UMM, Chen et al. 2005), a statistical catch-at-length model that tracks the population of lobster by sex, size and season over time.

“On behalf of the American Lobster Board, I want to applaud the members of the Technical Committee and Stock Assessment Subcommittee for their exceptional work on the 2020 Benchmark Stock Assessment Report,” stated Board Chair Dan McKiernan from Massachusetts. “This assessment made a notable advancement in considering the impact of changing environmental conditions on lobster population dynamics.”

Extensive research has highlighted the influence of the environment on American lobster life history and population dynamics. Among the critical environmental variables, temperature stands out as the primary influence. Further, its range is experiencing changing environmental conditions at some of the fastest rates in the world. Therefore, considering these environmental influences is vital when assessing the lobster stocks and was a focal point of this stock assessment. Environmental data time series included water temperatures at several fixed monitoring stations throughout the lobster’s range, average water temperatures over large areas such as those sampled by fishery-independent surveys, oceanographic processes affecting the environment, and other environmental indicators such as lobster prey abundance.

Environmental time series were analyzed for regime shifts, which indicate a significant difference in the lobster’s environment and population dynamics from one time period to another. Regime shifts can change a stock’s productivity, impacting the stock’s level of recruitment and its ability to support different levels of catch. Temperature time series were also analyzed to quantify the effect of temperature on survey catchability of lobster and correct trends in abundance estimated from surveys by accounting for temperature-driven changes in catchability through time.

Read the full release here

Reminder: Midwater Trawl Herring Vessels May Only Fish Inside Groundfish Closed Areas on Trips That Carry an Observer

October 22, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Atlantic herring vessels may only fish with midwater trawl gear inside the following Groundfish Closed Areas when carrying an observer onboard the vessel:

  • Closed Area I North (February 1 – April 15)
  • Western Gulf of Maine Closure Area
  • Cashes Ledge Closure Area
  • Closed Area II

Because industry-funded monitoring has not yet been implemented in the herring fishery, vessels are currently unable to purchase optional industry-funded observer coverage in order to fish inside a Groundfish Closed Area.

Currently, a vessel may fish with midwater trawl gear inside a Groundfish Closed Area on a herring trip if the following criteria are met:

  1. If the vessel is assigned Northeast Fisheries Observer Program (NEFOP) coverage on the trip in the Pre-Trip Notification System, and
  2. If the vessel actually carries a NEFOP observer on the trip.

If the vessel is issued a coverage waiver for the trip for any reason, the vessel is not permitted to fish inside Groundfish Closed Areas during that trip. For complete information on notification and reporting requirements, please see Notification, Reporting, and Monitoring Requirements for the Atlantic Herring Fishery.

Read the full release here

Scientists Have Not Detected A Single Right Whale In The Bay Of Fundy This Year

October 15, 2020 — For the first time in four decades, marine scientists were unable to find any North Atlantic right whales in the Bay of Fundy this year.

“Always we would have a handful, even in recent years. So to have zero is certainly disturbing or frustrating,” says Amy Knowlton, a New England Aquarium whale researcher who has been tracking the endangered species from a base in Lubec every year since the early 1980s.

She says that for decades, anywhere from a 50-150 right whales showed up in the summer and fall to forage. The numbers started to drop off around 2010, as water temperatures in the Bay and Gulf of Maine began to rise at a rapid clip.

“It’s just a reflection of how the ocean is changing with climate change, and their food resource, plankton, they’re not blooming at the same time and in the same areas that they used to, so it’s a reflection that for them and for our oceans things are changing pretty dramatically,” Knowlton says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

NEFMC Gives Go Ahead for Amendment 21 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan

October 14, 2020 — Last week, the New England Fishery Management Council signed off on Amendment 21 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan.

The amendment includes new measures to “better manage total scallop removals from the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Management Area by all components of the fishery.” Along with expanding flexibility in the Limited Access General Category (LAGC) Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) fishery. The NEFMC noted that the amendment still needs NMFS/NOAA approval before it can be implemented.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Northeast shrimp: Surveys canceled over covid,
with no sign yet of recovery

October 13, 2020 — In Maine and New England, northern shrimp (Pandalus borealis) used to be a regional and seasonal staple. But, for seven consecutive years, the fishery has been shuttered. The last year there was a commercial season was in 2013, and at that time, dealers paid fishermen an average of $1.81 a pound.

Dustin Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator for the Atlantic States, says “the Gulf of Maine stock remains depleted, and as of yet, has not shown a positive response to the commercial fishing moratorium. Reducing fishing mortality has historically been fishery managers’ most effective tool in rebuilding a stock that has reached low levels of biomass.”

The moratorium on fishing in Maine is in place until 2021.

“They’re resilient,” says Maggie Hunter, Maine’s head shrimp biologist. “They’ve recovered from collapses before (early 1950s, late 1970s), but we’ve never documented one in the Gulf of Maine lasting this long before.”

A 2019 Gulf of Maine survey by the Northern Shrimp Technical Committee revealed indices of abundance, biomass and spawning stock biomass at new time-series lows, and recruitment the third-lowest in the time series (1984-2019). Warming waters, like those in the Gulf of Maine, are also detrimental to shrimp populations. 

A Maine-New Hampshire inshore survey, along with spring and summer shrimp surveys, were all canceled this year because of covid-19 concerns.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

GMRI awarded $1.27M to help Maine fisheries overcome climate challenges

October 9, 2020 — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute has been awarded $1.27 million in federal funding to help Maine fisheries and coastal communities in the fight against climate change.

Funding for the Portland-based nonprofit comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office. The new project is one of 79 to receive a total of $48.7 million in competitive awards, announced on Oct. 6.

“Every day, communities and businesses grapple with challenges due to climate variability and change,” said Wayne Higgins, director of the Climate Program Office, in a news release.

“From using machine learning to develop critical atmospheric datasets to creating an experimental system for rapidly assessing causes of extreme events, these new awards will expedite climate science discoveries and build the library of resilience solutions needed to protect all sectors of our economy and environment.”

Read the full story at MaineBiz

NEFMC Adopts Scallop Amendment 21 with Measures for NGOM, LAGC IFQ Fishery

October 8, 2020 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has signed off on Amendment 21 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan, which includes new measures to: (1) better manage total scallop removals from the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Management Area by all components of the fishery; and (2) expand NGOM Allocations Under Amendment 21: Once the NGOM allocation is determined, deductions are made off-the-top to support monitoring and research. Of what’s left, the first 800,000 pounds goes to the NGOM set-aside. Anything above 800,000 is shared as shown in the flowchart above. flexibility in the Limited Access General Category (LAGC) Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) fishery. The amendment still needs to be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS/NOAA Fisheries) before being implemented.

Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM)

Under Amendment 21, the Council will begin accounting for scallop biomass in the NGOM area in the same flowchart it uses to calculate the overfishing limit (OFL) and acceptable biological catch (ABC) for the rest of the resource. The NGOM annual catch limit also will be set consistent with how the rest of the fishery is managed, bringing the area more in line with the Georges Bank and Mid-Atlantic scallop fishery

Read the full release here

MAINE: In a Boothbay Harbor, scientists are tying lobstermen’s ropes in knots to protect whales

October 7, 2020 — A group of state researchers in Boothbay Harbor are testing how much force it takes to snap hundreds of pieces of rope apart as they try to identify knot combinations and configurations of fishing line that will help protect whales from life-threatening entanglements.

Since early 2019, the small group of scientists at the Maine Department of Marine Resources have been testing a variety of different types of rope knotted together by putting them under strain with an old hydraulic tensile testing machine. They do their work in a garage bay on the department’s property on McKown Point Road. They have gone through a couple hundred different combinations of used and new rope tied together in various knots, testing each combination 10 times to determine their breaking points. They expect to try more than 900 different configurations in all.

The idea is to come up with a way Maine lobstermen can affordably satisfy federal laws that prohibit fishing activity from harming protected marine species such as North Atlantic right whales, of which only 400 or so remain. Maine lobstermen have been awaiting a new set of federal rules aimed at preventing whale entanglements that would force them to change the gear they use for the third time in slightly more than a decade.

The Department of Marine Resources researchers are hoping to find rope configurations that fishermen can put together from their existing gear, saving them the expense and trouble of replacing all their gear in order to continue harvesting lobster from the Gulf of Maine, which last year generated $485 million in statewide fishing revenue.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News