Saving Seafood

ASMFC Schedules Peer Review for Northern Shrimp Benchmark Stock Assessment for August 14-16, 2018

June 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Benchmark Stock Assessment will be peer-reviewed on August 14 – 16, 2018 at the Residence Inn Portland Downtown Waterfront, 145 Fore Street, Portland, Maine 04101. The assessment will evaluate the condition of the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp resource and inform management of the stock. The peer review is open to the public, except for any discussions of confidential data when the public will be asked to leave the room.

Confidential data (see NOTE below) are data such as commercial landings that can be identified down to an individual or single entity. Federal and state laws prohibit the disclosure of confidential data, and ASMFC abides by those laws. Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data.  In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.

Additionally, the public and all other workshop participants will be asked to leave the room during the Peer Review Panel’s final deliberations.

For more information, please contact Patrick Campfield, Science Director, at pcampfield@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

NOTE: In determining what data are confidential, most agencies use the “rule of 3” for commercial catch and effort data. The “rule of 3” requires three separate contributors to fisheries data in order for the data to be considered non-confidential. This protects the identity of any single contributor. In some cases, annual summaries by state and species may still be confidential because only one or two dealers process the catch. Alternatively, if there is only one known harvester of a species in a state, the harvester’s identity is implicit and the data for that species from that state is confidential.

Fish wars loom as climate change pushes lobster, cod, and other species north

June 22, 2018 — Over the past 50 years, as Atlantic waters have warmed, fish populations have headed north in search of colder temperatures. Lobsters have migrated 170 miles and the iconic cod about 65 miles, while mid-Atlantic species such as black sea bass have surged about 250 miles north, federal surveys show.

But fishing limits and other rules, by and large, haven’t shifted with them.

The rapid movement of fisheries, in New England and around the world, has outpaced regulations and exacerbated tensions between fishermen in competing regions and countries, threatening to spark conflicts that specialists fear could lead to overfishing.

“This is a global problem that’s going to be getting worse,” said Malin Pinsky, an assistant professor of ecology at Rutgers University, who led a recently released study on the movement of fisheries in the journal Science.

With climate change expected to accelerate in the coming years, new fisheries are likely to emerge in the waters of more than 70 countries and in many new regions, the study found.

Fishing quotas in the United States have been traditionally set by councils overseeing specific regions, based on the belief that fish don’t move much.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Trump rescinds Obama-era ocean policy

June 22, 2018 — In another strike at his predecessor’s legacy, and one that could have long-term consequences for New England, President Trump this week rescinded an executive order by President Obama that established the first national ocean policy, which made protecting coastal waters and the Great Lakes a priority.

Trump said his executive order would cut bureaucracy and benefit business, while environmental advocates denounced his decision, saying it strongly favors commercial interests over conservation.

Trump’s order could alter New England’s plans to protect the Gulf of Maine and other waters in the region. It replaces the National Ocean Council, which brought together a host of federal departments and committees that work on ocean issues, with a new “streamlined” committee that will focus on science and technology and resource management.

It will also eliminate nine regional planning bodies around the country, which the White House called “unnecessary.”

“Claims that the ocean is being abandoned are not supported by the facts,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington, D.C., which represents the scallops industry.

He supported the elimination of the regional planning bodies, which he argued had failed in its mission to bring together competing interests, such as offshore wind-farm developers and fishermen, who have been at odds over plans to build turbines off Martha’s Vineyard.

Eliminating the groups “will not lead to less coordination amongst the federal government because they were not doing their stated job,” he said.

Officials at the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore drilling and wind companies, praised Trump’s order, saying Obama’s policies were “uber-bureaucratic” and “caused consternation, uncertainty, and concern for the offshore energy industry.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Climate Change Brought a Lobster Boom. Now It Could Cause a Bust.

June 21, 2018 — At 3:30 in the morning on a Friday in late May, the lobstermen ate breakfast. Outside, their boats bobbed in the labradorite water, lit only by the dull yellow of streetlamps across the bay. It was windy, too windy for fishing, but one by one the island’s fishermen showed up at the Surfside cafe anyway. Over pancakes and eggs, they grumbled about the season’s catch to date.

Some of the lobstermen said it was just too early in the season. Others feared that it was a sign of things to come. Since the early 1980s, climate change had warmed the Gulf of Maine’s cool waters to the ideal temperature for lobsters, which has helped grow Maine’s fishery fivefold to a half-billion-dollar industry, among the most valuable in the United States. But last year the state’s lobster landings dropped by 22 million pounds, to 111 million.

Now, scientists and some fishermen are worried that the waters might eventually warm too much for the lobsters, and are asking how much longer the boom can last.

“Climate change really helped us for the last 20 years,” said Dave Cousens, who stepped down as president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association in March. But, he added, “Climate change is going to kill us, in probably the next 30.”

Read the full story at the New York Times

Greenland Salmon Agreement Touted as Path to Save Fish

June 21, 2018 — Conservation groups say they are optimistic that an agreement with Greenland will help endangered wild Atlantic salmon begin to recover.

The salmon are considered endangered in the Gulf of Maine by the U.S. government. The North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization held a meeting in Portland last week to try to broker a deal to keep more of the fish alive.

Greenland fishermen continue to fish for the salmon, while U.S. commercial fishermen do not. The NASCO meeting resulted in a deal in which Greenland will reduce its annual quota for the fish from nearly 100,000 pounds to about 66,000 pounds. It also suspends Greenland’s commercial harvest of the fish.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at US News

NOAA eyes expanding reporting rules for lobstermen

June 14, 2018 — Federal fishing managers are asking for comments about potential changes to the way the U.S.’s lucrative lobster fishing industry is monitored.

The American lobster fishery is based in New England and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars every year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is looking to craft new rules about the way fishermen report their catch.

The NOAA is considering a recommendation to require all federal lobster permit holders to report on catches for each fishing trip. It’s also looking at expanding its own offshore sampling program.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Boston.com

NEFMC Approves 2019-2020 Scallop RSA Priorities; Initiates Framework 30

June 13, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council: 

The New England Fishery Management Council today approved research priorities for the 2019-2020 Scallop Research Set-Aside (RSA) Program. Once again, the Council ranked resource surveys as “high” on the list of preferred projects.

The Council also initiated Framework Adjustment 30 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan. The framework will include specifications for fishing year 2019 and default measures for 2020, as well as the addition of “standard default measures” – actions that have become a routine part of each year’s fishery and can be included automatically in each specifications package, barring Council objection.

RSA PRIORITIES – TWO CATEGORIES

More specifically, the Council approved two categories of priorities for the next RSA cycle. These include: (1) “high” priorities; and (2) “general research areas” with no preference in ranking. Survey-related research is at the top of the list with three subcomponents, all of which carry equal weight:

  • 1a: An intensive industry-based survey of each relevant scallop rotational area – Closed Area I, Closed Area II, Nantucket Lightship, Elephant Trunk, and Hudson Canyon – that will provide estimates of total and exploitable biomass to be used for setting catch limits under the fishery’s rotational area management program;
  • 1b: An intensive industry-based survey of areas of importance, such as open areas with high scallop recruitment or areas of overall importance to the fishery, which possibly could cover:
    • The Habitat Area of Particular Concern in Closed Area II and surrounding bottom,
    • The area south of Closed Area II that formerly was part of the Closed Area II extension,
    • Delmarva,
    • Areas off Long Island, and
    • Areas in the Gulf of Maine that recently have been or are likely to be fished;
  • 1c: A broadscale industry-based survey of Georges Bank and/or Mid-Atlantic scallop resource areas, which does not need to be carried out by a single grant recipient.

The other “high” 2019-2020 Scallop RSA priority involves dredge efficiency. The Council is looking for proposals that investigate variability in dredge efficiency across habitats, times, areas, scallop densities, and gear designs to improve dredge survey estimates either through new research or analyses of existing data sets.

Read the full release here

SONIA FERNANDEZ: Doing right by the whales

June 12, 2018 — These are not good times for the North Atlantic right whale. Ship strikes and gear entanglement play major roles in the mortality of these highly endangered mammals, which now number fewer than 500. Making matters worse, climate-mediated shifts are pushing their prey out of the whales’ usual feeding grounds, rendering traditional habitat-focused protection policies less than optimal.

This reality was starkly apparent in the summer of 2017, when 17 turned up dead in U.S.-Canadian waters—a mass mortality event attributed in large part to gear entanglement and ship strikes. The event also revealed that the whales had gone beyond their typical distributional boundaries. Scientists estimate that unless protective policies are expanded to cover their shifting distribution, right whales may face extinction in less than 30 years.

That’s according to a new study by researchers including UC Santa Barbara Marine Science Institute ecologist Erin Meyer-Gutbrod. With atmospheric scientist Charles H. Greene, of Cornell University, and postdoctoral research associate Kimberley T. A. Davies, of Dalhousie University, Meyer-Gutbrod authored the paper “Marine Species Range Shifts Necessitate Advanced Policy Planning,” which appears in the journal Oceanography.

According to the group’s findings, “only five calves were born in 2017 and no newborn calves have been sighted thus far in 2018.”

“What we have seen with prey limitation is that whales will search outside of their traditional feeding grounds, looking for denser aggregations of zooplankton,” said Meyer-Gutbrod, who studies the effects of environmental change on right whale populations. Due to the northward movement of their food from their usual Gulf of Maine feeding grounds to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canadian waters, the whales, too, are shifting away from their usual habitats and into unprotected regions. The combination of food scarcity in their usual habitat and lack of protection in their adopted feeding grounds, Meyer-Gutbrod and colleagues say, calls for advanced policy planning that essentially follows these whales as they stake out new territory.

“Prey limitation is not typically so severe that right whales starve to death,” said Meyer-Gutbrod. However, she explained, when prey is scarce, adult females don’t have enough energy to reproduce successfully. In addition, when the whales move from their typical protected waters into heavily-trafficked and unprotected areas, they encounter a minefield of obstacles, from commercial shipping vessels to crab and lobster fishing gear.

Read the full opinion piece at PHYS.org

Author Christopher White asks, is it ‘Boom or Bust for Maine’s Greatest Fishery?’

June 11, 2018 — Christopher White’s new book, “The Last Lobster: Boom or Bust for Maine’s Greatest Fishery?” landed on our desk with an ominous thump a couple of weeks ago. We called him in Santa Fe, where he’s living, to ask about how he reported his book (especially as an out-of-stater), what he finds to be optimistic about, and the role climate change plays in the future of lobstering. He also confessed to scheduling an interview at his favorite restaurant on Vinalhaven specifically for the lobster.

POP-UP STORY: White has written five books. The most recent were about fishermen (“Skipjack,” the story of the last days of a particular kind of wooden boat used for commercial fishing, specifically oyster dredging) and disappearing glaciers (“The Melting World”). For this book, he deliberately sought out a story that combined both those interests. “I looked for a story about how commercial fishing was affected by climate change. The first one that popped up on the map was the Gulf of Maine and lobstering.”

TEEN YEARS: Maine wasn’t new to White; he’d come to the state as a teenager. “I spent a lot of time in Maine, not only on the coast but at Rangeley and Lake Moosemeguntic.” He’s also a sailor, and he crewed on small boats as a young man as well. “I crewed from Camden to Vinalhaven, for example.” When he arrived in Maine to start reporting, “it was very interesting to go some of the places that I had visited at 16.” An old favorite was Vinalhaven, where he revisited his deep affection for the Harbor Gawker. “I conducted an interview there just so I could have lunch.” (The family that owned it for 40 years sold it, and a new restaurant, The Nightingale, is in the midst of opening.)

Read the full story at The Portland Press Herald

Cape Cod researchers use robots to monitor red tide

June 4, 2018 — Leaning over the side of a small skiff in Salt Pond, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researcher David Kulis shook the excess water out of a plankton net, then emptied the contents into a water bottle.

The gold tint to the water, he said, was likely Alexandrium, single-cell algae that produce a powerful neurotoxin. When concentrated in shellfish meat that feed on algae, the toxin can paralyze respiratory muscles in humans, a condition known as paralytic shellfish poisoning, which can be fatal.

Kulis and Northeastern University intern Taylor Mannes were using the tools plankton researchers had relied on for decades: a windsock-shaped net, with fine mesh to capture the single-celled organisms, and a Niskin bottle, originally developed in 1894 for polar research to retrieve samples at discrete depths. Lowered by hand to marks on a line corresponding to various depths, its opening is closed by sliding a lead weight down the line.

But with human health and a burgeoning shellfish and aquaculture industry in the balance, red tide research has gone decidedly high-tech. Sophisticated instruments are now deployed offshore in the Gulf of Maine and at inshore sites like Salt Pond in North Eastham.

Salt Pond is a natural laboratory, said Michael Brosnahan, a red tide researcher at WHOI. It already has a native population of red tide cells that survive the harsh New England winter as hardened cysts on the bottom of the pond. The incoming tide also pushes additional cysts from the larger marsh down a narrow creek and deposits them in deeper water in the pond, beyond the reach of the outgoing tide.

Red tide algae produce food through photosynthesis, and when the cysts hatch in the spring, they swim up into sunlit waters between five feet and eight feet deep. They remain at depths below the outlet creek channel, and relatively few of the free swimming cells are swept back out into the marsh by the tide.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times