Saving Seafood

Despite recovery, humpback whales still suffer from ship strikes

April 27, 2017 — Decades after most countries retired their harpoons, whales still face threats from fishermen, ships, and coastal pollution. But one species that seemed to have overcome these challenges was Megaptera novaeangliae, better known as the humpback whale.

Heavily hunted by the early 20th century, an international whaling moratorium and protection under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) gave humpbacks the breathing space they needed to recover.

From 1986 to 2008, the whales’ numbers rose to 60,000 worldwide, and their status on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s “Red List” improved from “Endangered” to “Least Concern.” By last September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that nine of the 14 distinct humpback populations no longer warranted ESA protection. Last year, one was even spotted in the Hudson River.

But a study published Tuesday in the journal Marine Mammal Science puts an asterisk on this progress. Close to shore, ship collisions threaten several species of whales, and these strikes may be greatly underreported for one humpback population in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Christian Science Monitor

Conservation group boosts alewife restoration efforts

April 25, 2017 — If Maine’s once enormous population of alewives is ever to be restored, it will take the continuing efforts of a dedicated group of volunteers.

That was the message last week to more than a dozen people concerned with the health of the alewife runs in Surry, Penobscot and Orland from Brett Ciccotelli, a fisheries biologist with the Downeast Salmon Federation.

Ciccotelli spoke at a meeting at The Gatherings in Surry aimed at increasing the number of volunteer monitors who will count alewives as they return to Downeast streams in the coming week.

Ciccotelli talked about the importance of the alewife to the Maine ecosystem and briefly reviewed how Maine has managed the alewife resource in recent years.

He also explained how the Downeast Salmon Federation was collecting data with an eye to increasing the number of the small river herring that make a successful journey from the sea to their freshwater spawning grounds each spring and then return to the sea again in fall.

Anadromous alewives return from the ocean each spring to travel up Maine’s rivers and streams to lay their eggs in lakes and ponds. Schools of tiny young fish migrate out at summer’s end, to spend some time in the estuary and the ocean maturing, before returning three to four years later to the river they were born in to start the cycle again.

Alewives play an important role in the food web, serving as a forage species that feeds small mammals, birds and larger fish. The decline in the alewife population, Ciccotelli said, “probably contributes to the loss of groundfish” such as cod and haddock in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

2016 fishing review highlights monitors —human and electronic

April 24, 2017 — NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Office released its annual year in review for 2016 and nowhere does it mention the ever-churning debate over Gulf of Maine cod and the yawning divide between scientists’ data and the primary-source observations of fishermen.

For the most part, the report is a four-color chronicle of what officials at Gloucester-based GARFO — which manages the nation’s federal fisheries from the Gulf of Maine south to Cape Hatteras and west to the Great Lakes — consider the agency’s most tangible accomplishments in 2016.

Still, the review gives some insight into some of the agency’s management priorities and policy areas where it may marshal its resources in the future.

It specifically mentions the office’s work in drafting a recovery plan for endangered Atlantic salmon and a five-year action plan for the species. It highlights its work with commercial groundfishermen — many of them from Gloucester — on potential changes to the small-mesh whiting fishery.

The report also highlights the agency’s transfer of the cost of of at-sea monitoring to permit holders.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Boats may be hitting whales in Gulf of Maine more often, study suggests

April 24, 2017 — A group of marine scientists says collisions of whales and boats off the New England coast may be more common than previously thought.

The scientists focused on the humpback whale population in the southern Gulf of Maine, a body of water off Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. They found that almost 15 percent of the whales, which come to New England to feed every spring, had injuries or scarring consistent with at least one vessel strike.

The researchers, who published their findings in the March issue of the journal Marine Mammal Science, said the work shows that the occurrence of such strikes is most likely underestimated. They also said their own figure is likely low because it does not account for whales that are killed in ship strikes.

“Vessel strikes are a significant risk to both whales and to boaters,” said Alex Hill, the lead author of the study, who is a scientist with the conservation group Whale and Dolphin Conservation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. “Long-term studies can help us figure out if our outreach programs to boaters are effective, what kind of management actions are needed and help to assess the health of the population.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

Fishery management council OKs lobstering in deep coral

April 20, 2017 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The New England Fishery Management Council has given preliminary approval to a plan to protect corals in the Gulf of Maine and on the Continental Slope south of Georges Bank from the ravages of commercial fishing but exempted the Maine lobster fishery from a proposed ban on the use of fishing gear that would affect the sea floor.

On Tuesday, April 18, by a reported vote of 14-1, the council adopted a preferred alternative plan under its proposed Omnibus Coral Protection Amendment for the inshore Gulf of Maine that would prohibit both trawls and dredges, but not lobster traps and pots, within both the Schoodic Ridge and Mount Desert Rock areas.

According to a statement released Wednesday afternoon, council members recognized the potentially devastating economic impact of preventing the lobster fishery from working within those inshore areas and acknowledged that shifts in effort to other locations could be problematic.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

No shrimp today: Maine’s waters are warming and it’s costing fishermen money

April 20, 2017 — David Goethel wishes he could retire.

At 63, he’s been fishing off the Gulf of Maine for over 34 years. Shrimp used to be plentiful there. Back in 2000, Goethel remembers seeing 100 commercial boats out in the harbor. Now, he’s just one of a handful of local fisherman struggling to make a living.

“There was life on the docks, there were people working,” lifelong fisherman Arnold Gamage, 64, agrees. “Now, it looks like a ghost town.”

Maine’s fishing industry has been declining for years due to factors like overfishing and increased regulation, but there’s another culprit eating away at profits: Maine’s ocean waters are warming — and it’s killing northern shrimp.

Goethel, Gamage and other fishermen used to look forward to shrimping as a way to augment their income in the cold New England winters.

“Now, I see a lot of those same people, they’ve got 4-wheel trucks and they’re trying to plow snow to take in some kind of income,” Goethel says.

Regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission banned commercial shrimping in 2014. The goal was to give northern shrimp a chance to repopulate. While the ban has helped, regulators are still worried about the species’ survival.

Read the full story at WGNO

Regulators to allow lobster fishing in Gulf of Maine coral canyons

April 19, 2017 — New England regulators have voted to allow lobster fishing in proposed deep-sea coral protection zones, including two heavily fished areas in Down East Maine.

The New England Fisheries Management Council voted 14-1 to ban most fishing in the canyons and plateaus where slow-growing, cold-water coral gardens flourish in the dark waters of the Gulf of Maine.

But pleas from Maine lobster fishermen who say a trap ban in fertile fishing grounds off Mount Desert Rock and Outer Schoodic Ridge would cost them millions helped sway an initially resistant council to grant a lobstering exemption.

Fishermen also said closing these areas would have led to more traps, and fishing lines, being dropped in nearby waters traveled by endangered right whales, which can suffer injuries or die if they become entangled in lobster fishing lines.

Opponents, including environmentalists and some who fish for other species that would not get an exemption in the coral zones, have argued it is not fair to give lobstermen “a pass” because their traps damage coral, too, even if not as bad as trawl nets.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Federal regulators move to change scallop fishery rules

April 19, 2017 — Fishing regulators have started changing the way the East Coast scallop fishery is managed, with an eye toward avoiding more conflicts between small- and big-boat fishermen.

The New England Fishery Management Council decided to initiate changes Tuesday. Government fishing regulators use different rules for different classes of boats that work the same areas. Recently, a class mostly made up of smaller boats has been in conflict with bigger boats in the northern Gulf of Maine.

Some fishermen in the small-boat fishery contend the rules allow bigger boats to exploit scallops, one of the most valuable fisheries in America. Bigger boats say the two can co-exist.

The management council says there is a “critical need to initiate surveys and develop additional tools to better manage the area.” It also says the new rules could include limiting some boats from fishing in the area until the scallop population can be more accurately determined.

Crafting new rules will likely take months, and they might not be finished before next year’s scallop season begins in April.

“The process was started, but now the real work begins,” said Togue Brawn, who runs a scallop business called Downeast Dayboat and has advocated for small-boat fishermen.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Changes coming to management of East Coast scallop fishery

April 18, 2017 — Fishing regulators have started changing the way the East Coast scallop fishery is managed, with an eye toward avoiding more conflicts between small- and big-boat fishermen.

The New England Fishery Management Council decided to initiate changes Tuesday. Government fishing regulators use different rules for different classes of boats that work the same areas. Recently, a class mostly made up of smaller boats has been in conflict with bigger boats in the northern Gulf of Maine.

Some fishermen in the small-boat fishery contend the rules allow bigger boats to overexploit scallops, which are the subject of one of the most valuable fisheries in America. Bigger boats say the two can co-exist.

The management council says there is a “critical need to initiate surveys and develop additional tools to better manage the area.” It also says the new rules could include limiting some boats from fishing in the area until the total scallop population can be more accurately determined.

Crafting new rules will likely take months, and they might not be finished before next year’s scallop season begins in April.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Seattle P-I

NEFMC Initiates Scallop Framework 29 to Address Specifications, Flatfish AMs, NGOM

April 18, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

During its mid-April meeting in Mystic, CT, the New England Fishery Management Council initiated Framework Adjustment 29 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan. The framework will address four “2017 scallop management priorities” identified last fall. These include:

  • Fishery specifications for the 2018 scallop fishing year and default specifications for 2019;
  • Flatfish accountability measures for scallopers;
  • Scallop access area modifications to be consistent with pending habitat area revisions; and
  • Measures for the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Management Area.

While specifications and AM adjustments are required to be in the framework, the following problem statement explains the reason for the NGOM measures:

“Recent high landings and unknown biomass in the Northern Gulf of Maine Scallop Management Area underscore the critical need to initiate surveys and develop additional tools to better manage the area and fully understand total removals.”

Framework 29 may consider limiting vessels from fishing in the NGOM until biomass is more accurately determined and management measures can ensure sustainable harvest for all permit categories.

Read the full release here