Saving Seafood

RODA request pause in offshore wind development amid COVID-19 pandemic

April 15, 2020 — The Responsible Offshore Development Alliance – a lobbying group formed in January 2018 to represent the East Coast fishing industry in discussions over offshore wind energy development – has called for all a six-month pause in the regulatory process pertaining to offshore wind development in the Gulf of Maine due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The call for a delay came via a letter sent to governors of New England states, including Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, Janet Mills of Maine, and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. The letter was also sent to Walter Cruickshank, the acting director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The letter sites the importance of public participation in regulatory decisions, which is hampered by measures many states are taking to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Ocean Portal Could Be a Boon to Fishermen

April 14, 2020 — After looking at the Northeast Ocean Data Portal, a major energy company wanted to propose a wind farm in the Gulf of Maine in an area where they saw no documented fishing activity.

The Portal pulls together huge amounts of information on every conceivable ocean use, from cultural resources to marine transportation to fishing activity. The fishing data is robust and includes information from dockside reports and vessel tracking systems.

But then they called Annie Hawkins, executive director of Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, RODA. She suspected the area was hugely important to the lobster industry and was certainly used — a lot.

Current regulations don’t require lobstermen to have vessel tracking systems. Where they fish isn’t plugged into any standardized data collection, so it doesn’t show up on the Portal.

“That could have gone in the very wrong direction,” Hawkins said.

She is quick to add the portal does show an incredible amount, and has been useful in a number of instances.

But there are big gaps. When the portal was first being set up a decade or so ago, it was part of a larger “ocean planning” process from which many fishermen felt excluded, said Hawkins. That led to fishermen not providing insight, and a lot of relevant information wasn’t included.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

ASMFC Atlantic Herring Area 1A Days Out Meeting Scheduled for May 12

April 9, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Atlantic Herring Management Board members from the states of Maine, New Hampshire and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts will meet on May 12, 2020 from 10 a.m. to Noon, to discuss days out measures for the 2020 Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishing season. Days out measures can include specification of the number of consecutive landings days, weekly landings limits, and restrictions on at-sea transfers. This meeting will be held via webinar and conference call. The call and the webinar information are included below:

Atlantic Herring Days Out Meeting
May 12, 2020
10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Webinar link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6623839982257804812
Phone: 1-888-585-9008 followed by the Conference Room: 853-657-937

Federally-permitted Herring Category A vessels must declare into the Area 1A fishery at least 45 days prior to the start of the fishing season. Small-mesh bottom trawl vessels with a federal Herring Category C or D permit must declare into the Area 1A fishery by June 1, 2020. States will send additional correspondence regarding the notification procedure.

The 2020 Area 1A allowable catch limit (ACL) is 3,344 metric tons. In October 2019, the Board established the following allocations for the 2020 Area 1A ACL: 72.8% available from June 1 – September 30 and 27.2% available from October 1 – December 31. Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per day harvested from Area 1A until June 1, 2020.

Please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0723 or krootes-murdy@asmfc.org for more information.

The attached announcement can also be found at http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/AtlHerring_DaysOutMtgMemo_May2020.pdf and the draft agenda is available at http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/AtlHerringDaysOutAgenda_May2020.pdf.

University of New England Shares NSF Grant on Lobsters and Climate Change

April 7, 2020 — A study on how warming ocean water impacts the early life stages of lobster will bring together two undergraduate colleges, a premier research institution, and a state agency.

The University of New England applied for the $860,000 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and intends to share it with Hood College in Maryland, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, and the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

Read the full story at Seafood News

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

Warming Gulf of Maine waters may be stunting lobster growth

April 2, 2020 — The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of the world’s oceans. And the trend may be having an impact on Maine’s most valuable commercial fishery, if temperature affects lobster larvae and their success in growing to adulthood, scientists say.

The University of New England in Biddeford, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, the Maine Department of Marine Resources and Hood College in Frederick, Md., have received an $860,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study that impact.

“We’ll be studying how temperature influences how larvae settle, where they settle and how successfully they settle,” Markus Frederich, a UNE marine science professor helping to lead the project, said in a news release Tuesday. “The findings of this project will help us make more specific predictions of how many lobsters there will be in the Gulf of Maine in the future.”

Maine’s lobster catch was valued at $485.4 million last year, when Maine lobster harvesters landed 100.7 million pounds. It was a 17% decline compared with 2018, but landings still topped the 100-million-pound mark for the ninth year in a row.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

New online maps show East Coast fish species shifts

April 1, 2020 — A new series of interactive maps graphically portray long-term shifts in fish populations off the East Coast, as changing ocean temperatures push species like black sea bass northward.

Published through the online on the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Data Portal, the maps chart major change since the 1970s that have affected commercially and recreationally important finfish species living along the East Coast.

Using the free public-access portal at portal.midatlanticocean.org users can automatically animate or toggle through hundreds of maps representing fish distributions during the spring or fall seasons from the 1970s through 2019. The portal maintains 5,000 map layers that can superimpose data for commercial fishing hot spots, marine life habitats, zones being examined for offshore wind development and other ocean activities.

Many of the maps confirm trends seen by fishermen and biologists of species moving to waters further north and further offshore since the 1970s. Black sea bass have become a well-known example; once straying into southern New England waters, black sea bass have over the decades moved past Cape Cod to become established in the Gulf of Maine.

“Our analysis and the maps make no assumptions as to the factors causing these shifts,” said Chris Bruce, Global Information Systems manager at The Nature Conservancy in Virginia and a member of the portal technical team, in a statement. “However, there is no shortage of scientific research to refer to on how factors like climate change and increasing water temperatures are impacting marine habitats.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA Fisheries Announces Final Management Measures for the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery for the 2020 Fishing Year

March 30, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Framework 32 sets specifications for the scallop fishery for fishing year 2020, including days-at-sea, individual fishing quotas, sea scallop access area trips, and Northern Gulf of Maine management measures.

In addition, Framework 32:

  • Sets precautionary default 2021 specifications, in case we implement the next framework after the April 1, 2021 start of the 2021 fishing year.
  • Allocates effort into five rotational access areas (Mid-Atlantic, Nantucket Lightship-South-Deep, Nantucket Lightship-North, Closed Area I, and Closed Area II).
  • Allows allocation in Closed Area I to be landed from either Closed Area I or the Mid-Atlantic Access Area.
  • Extends the existing seasonal closure in Closed Area II by two additional weeks to reduce bycatch of Georges Bank yellowtail flounder and northern windowpane flounder.
  • Closes areas to fishing to protect small scallops and reduce bycatch of flatfish.
  • Modifies the one-for-one access area trip exchange requirements to accommodate different access area allocations.
  • Reduces the limited access general category portion of the Northern Gulf of Maine total allowable catch by 3,718 lb to account for an overage in fishing year 2018.

For more information, read the final rule as filed in the Federal Register, and the permit holder bulletins (Limited Access and Limited Access General Category) posted on our website.

Read the full release here

NOAA Fisheries Announces Adjustments to the Inseason Possession and Trip Limit Increases for the Common Pool Groundfish Fishery

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

Effective today, the common pool possession and trip limits for Georges Bank (GB) cod, Gulf of Maine (GOM) cod, GOM haddock, Cape Cod(CC)/GOM yellowtail flounder, American plaice, and witch flounder are increased, as summarized in the table below. These increases are in effect through the end of the fishing year on April 30, 2020.

For more details, please read the rule as filed in the Federal Register, and our permit holder bulletin.

Read the full release here