Saving Seafood

NOAA Concludes 2019 Northeast Fall Ecosystem Monitoring

December 5, 2019 — NOAA Fisheries has wrapped up its 2019 Northeast fall ecosystem monitoring survey.

Researchers aboard the NOAA vessel Gordon Gunter sampled 117 stations along the U.S. East Coast.

Data collected during the cruise helps researchers understand and predict seasonal and yearly changes in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean ecosystem and its fisheries.

Due to weather conditions about 75 percent of the cruise objectives were accomplished, including complete coverage of the Mid-Atlantic and Southern New England regions, and 97 percent of Georges Bank.

There was reduced coverage in the northern survey area, including just 22 percent in the Gulf of Maine and no coverage of the Scotian Shelf.

Long-term sampling on the cruise includes the use of “bongo” net tows. The fine-mesh nets are attached to side-by-side aluminum rings. The nets get their name for resembling bongo drums when deployed.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Webinar to discuss state of northern shrimp in US Gulf of Maine

December 3, 2019 — A panel within the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is scheduled to hold a two-hour webinar beginning at 1 p.m. on Friday (Dec. 6) to discuss the state of northern shrimp in the New England region of the US, the Associated Press reports.

The shrimp fishery has been shut down since 2013, and is in the middle of a moratorium that is scheduled to last until 2021, the wire service noted. The webinar is expected to deliver a stock assessment but not recommend any drastic changes, because the shrimp population is still suffering, a problem blamed in particular on warming Gulf of Maine waters.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Studies: Warming waters, local conditions contribute to Maine’s lobster stock changes

December 3, 2019 — Two new studies published by University of Maine scientists point to the role of a warming ocean and local oceanographic differences in the rise and fall of lobster populations along the coast from southern New England to Atlantic Canada.

Maine’s lobster catch was valued at $484.5 million last year, according to the state Department of Marine Resources. It is the state’s largest fishery by far, accounting for 76% of the $637 million fishing industry — making the findings that much more significant.

One study suggests the Gulf of Maine lobster fishery may be entering a period of decline, as a  “cresting wave” of lobster abundance heads northward in response to the region’s changing climate.

Published in the scientific journal “Ecological Applications,” the study was led by Noah Oppenheim, who completed his research as a UMaine graduate student in 2016, with co-authors Richard Wahle, Damian Brady and Andrew Goode from UMaine’s School of Marine Sciences, and Andrew Pershing from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Panel to discuss future of New England shrimp business

December 2, 2019 — A regulatory panel that oversees New England’s shrimp fishing industry is scheduled to meet to discuss the industry’s future, which looks bleak.

The New England shrimp fishery, based mostly in Maine, has been shut down since 2013, and is in the middle of a fishing moratorium that is scheduled to last until 2021. The regulatory panel, which is an arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, is slated to meet Friday and could alter the terms of the shutdown.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Lobster Catch Headed for Decline, Not Crash, Scientists Say

December 2, 2019 — A pair of studies by Maine-based scientists suggest the U.S. lobster industry is headed for a period of decline, but likely not a crash.

Lobster fishermen have brought in record hauls this decade, a period in which Maine catches that previously rarely topped 70 million pounds (32 million kilograms) have routinely soared above 120 million pounds (54 million kilograms). The new studies, both published with University of Maine scientists as lead authors, show a fishery in which warming waters off Maine have changed the dynamics of the lobster population.

Noah Oppenheim, author of one of the studies, said his model projects the lobster catch in the Gulf of Maine “will return to previous historical levels.” That means tens of millions fewer pounds of lobster per year, but still enough lobsters to support a robust business and supply hungry seafood lovers.

Oppenheim and colleagues base their opinion on a finding that temperature and the number of young lobsters populating shallow coastal areas allow scientists to predict what lobster catches will look like in four to six years. They published their study in the scientific journal Ecological Applications.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Council to set quota for groundfish stocks

November 27, 2019 — The nadir for fishing for Gulf of Maine cod arrived in 2014, when NOAA Fisheries slashed quota by 77% and implemented emergency area closures that particularly singed the Gloucester small-boat, day fleet.

Nine days later, the New England Fishery Management Council cut cod quota by another 75 percent for the 2015 fishing season and the decline and fall of Gulf of Maine cod was on.

The closures and withering cuts added fuel to the debate over the precision of the science federal fishery regulators use to count fish and highlighted the cavernous divide between what National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries scientists say their science reflects and what fishermen say they see on the water.

In some ways, those battles still are being fought. Groundfishermen continue to say they see far more cod in their time on the water than is remotely represented in NOAA Fisheries’ science and modeling — both of which they still find suspect.

And, said longtime fisherman Joe Orlando, cod remains the most important linchpin stock in the groundfishery.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Study documents ‘chronic social disruption’ plaguing New England fishing communities

November 22, 2019 — Years of fishery failures and tightening restrictions on the Gulf of Maine groundfish fleet have put severe psychological strain on fishermen and chronic disruption to the social fabric of New England fishing communities, according to a team of academic researchers.

Drawing on six years of surveys and interviews, the team based at Northeastern University in Massachusetts “found that psychological distress and social disruption were pervasive throughout New England fishing communities,” the authors wrote in their paper in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences.

“For instance, our results indicate that 62 percent of captains self-reported severe or moderate psychological distress one year after the crisis began, and these patterns have persisted for five years,” the report states.

Among its conclusions, the report strongly recommends more monitoring and managing of social effects and “human well-being” beyond economic analysis, to moderate the adverse effects on communities of fisheries disruptions like the long-running New England groundfish struggle.

“This particular fishing fleet has been through so much pain,” said Steven Scyphers, an assistant professor of marine and environmental studies at Northeastern and lead author of the study report.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Warming waters spell more bad news for Maine’s shrimpers

November 21, 2019 — New England shrimp are still in bad shape despite a fishing shutdown that is unlikely to end soon, new data show.

The region’s shrimp fishing industry, long based mostly in Maine, has been shut down since 2013 because of concerns about the health of the population. Recent surveys off Maine and New Hampshire say signs are still poor, scientists with the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said.

A big part of the problem is that the shrimp thrive in cold water and the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most of the world’s oceans. The mean average summer sea bottom temperature was about 42 degrees Fahrenheit from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, and it rose to 45 degrees this year, said Dustin Colson Leaning, a fishery management plan coordinator for the Atlantic States.

That small difference makes it harder for young shrimp to thrive and join the population, he said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

Summer survey shows shrimp not rebuilding

November 20, 2019 — A year ago, fishery regulators that manage northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine closed the fishery for the 2019 season because the imperiled stock remained a prisoner to its own meager abundance and unrelenting inability to improve biomass and recruitment.

The closure — the sixth since the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission’s initial shuttering following the 2013 season — was not a surprise. What was surprising was that the commission opted to forgo a single-season closure and instead closed the northern shrimp, or Pandalus borealis, fishery for three seasons ending in 2021.

Things were that bad. Apparently, they haven’t gotten any better in the past year.

The commission’s northern shrimp section is set to convene Dec. 6 via webinar to discuss the 2019 data update to its benchmark stock assessment for northern shrimp.

Based on preliminary findings, it is not expected to be a cheery meeting.

On Tuesday, the ASFMC said preliminary findings from the 2019 northern shrimp stock summer survey —and the Maine-New Hampshire survey — show no improvement in the health of the stock and provide no compelling reason for its northern shrimp section to recommend changes to the current management plan of closures.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Will Old Bones Tell Tales?

November 19, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Northeast Fisheries Science Center researchers are engaged in a multi-year effort to create the information needed to maintain viable fisheries in a warming world ocean. Projects are underway to improve stock assessments, modeling, and surveys, and to understand the vulnerabilities of coastal communities to climate change.

One of these projects looks at today’s cod in a warming Gulf of Maine through the lens of a similar time more than 300 years ago, when there was rapid ocean warming after the “little ice age” of the 1500s. Researchers are using fish parts gathered from a recent archaeological excavation of the Smuttynose Island fish station.

The fish parts date from 1640 to 1708, when the Smuttynose fish station was most active. The best-represented years are about 1640 to 1660. This was a time of intense harvest in the developing fishery during rapid ocean warming that is similar to what is happening in the Gulf of Maine today.

Examining these old fish parts may reveal how cod responded to intense fishing and warming in the 17th century. It will help us better project outcomes for Atlantic cod in the future.

Read the full release here