Gulf of Maine Archives - Page 76 of 99

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.

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

New England Fishery Management Council Holds Meeting

April 18, 2017 — Fishing regulators are getting ready to discuss ways to better manage the east coast scallop fishery to avoid more conflicts between small and big boat fishermen.

The New England Fishery Management Council is holding a meeting on the subject today.

Some fishermen in the small boat fishery say the rules allow bigger boats to over exploit the scallops, which are the subject of one of the most valuable fisheries in America.

Federal regulators have shut down the northern Gulf of Maine last month amid the conflict.

Read the full story at WABI

Top cod counter: More data needed

April 14, 2017 — The Baker administration cabinet secretary in charge of the industry-based survey of Gulf of Maine cod agrees with commercial fishing interests that conclusions drawn from the initial findings of the multi-year study are premature.

Matthew A. Beaton, secretary of the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, penned a letter to commercial groundfish sectors in which he addressed the most recent incident to fan the flames of discontent among fishermen regarding the validity of the science used to measure the Gulf of Maine cod biomass.

“While it is too early too have enough data to make definitive conclusions about the status of Gulf of Maine cod, the administration anticipates the IBS data will be a helpful resource for both the fishing and research communities,” Beaton wrote.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries, which is conducting the industry-based survey (IBS) funded by fishery disaster aid monies, recently completed the first year of its random-area survey and is set to embark on the second year sometime this month.

But on April 3, a Boston Globe story proclaimed the initial results — which fall in line with the dire assessments by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center of the cod stock’s imperiled state — “a milestone in the war over the true state of cod” in the Gulf of Maine.

The story said the DMF scientists had “reached the same dismal conclusion that their federal counterparts did: The region’s cod are at a historic low — about 80 percent less than the population from just a decade ago.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

Read the letter here

JACKIE ODELL: Controversy over region’s cod population

April 11, 2017 — RE “DWINDLING cod population no fluke in Mass.” (Editorial, April 5): Small family-owned fishing businesses operating in New England rely upon sound science. In recent years, reports for stocks like Gulf of Maine cod have gone from being overly optimistic to overly pessimistic, seemingly overnight. This flip-flop has justifiably created doubt and suspicion among those who participate in the fishery.

Further contributing to this skepticism has been the remarkable abundance of codfish observed by both commercial and recreational fishermen on the water over the past three years, as environmental conditions and oceanographic cycles have shifted. Today, fishermen spend more time avoiding these fish than catching them.

The Gulf of Maine cod stock, assessed to be reportedly near collapse, is instead becoming more and more difficult to avoid across a wide region. This is the case for many fish stocks in New England, not just cod. Many in the fishery today are left with questions about the limitations of the data sets, models, and processes that are used to assess stocks today.

Read the full opinion piece at the Boston Globe

Proposed closure of coral grounds in Gulf of Maine has lobster industry on edge

April 10, 2017 — Over the past 10 years, the issue of how to protect endangered whales from getting tangled in fishing gear has been a driving factor in how lobstermen configure their gear and how much money they have to spend to comply with regulations.

Now federal officials have cited the need to protect deep-sea corals in a proposal to close some areas to fishing — a proposal that, according to lobstermen, could pose a serious threat to how they ply their trade.

“The [potential] financial impact is huge,” Jim Dow, a Bass Harbor lobsterman and board member with Maine Lobstermen’s Association, said Wednesday. “You’re talking a lot of the coast that is going to be affected by it.”

The discovery in 2014 of deep-sea corals in the gulf, near Mount Desert Rock and along the Outer Schoodic Ridges, has prompted the New England Fisheries Management Council to consider making those area off-limits to fishing vessels in order to protect the coral from damage. According to Maine Department of Marine Resources, fishermen from at least 15 harbors in Hancock and Washington counties could be affected by the proposed closure.

But what has fishermen on edge the most about the concept is that regulators don’t know how much more coral has yet to be discovered in the gulf. They fear the proposed closure could set a precedent that would result in even more areas becoming off-limits to Maine’s $500 million lobster fishery, which is the biggest fishery in Maine and one of the most lucrative in the country.

“They could probably find coral along the entire coast of Maine, outside of 3 miles [in federal waters], if they start hunting for it,” David Cousens, a South Thomaston fishermen and president of Maine Lobstermen’s Association, told more than 100 fishermen last month at a meeting on the topic at the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport.

Terry Stockwell, a senior DMR official who represents Maine on the council and other fishing regulatory entities, said the state has been lobbying the council to consider making an exception for the lobster trap fishery at the proposed closure sites in the gulf but so far without success. Traps are lowered and then raised from the bottom and so should cause less damage to coral than other types of gear such as scallop dredges, which are dragged along the bottom, according to Stockwell and others who support making lobster traps exempt.

“Twice I’ve gone down in flames,” Stockwell said of his efforts to date to get the council to agree to an exemption for lobster trap gear.

Further offshore in the Gulf of Maine, beyond the reach of the small boats that make up Maine’s lobster fishing fleet, the council also is proposing coral-related fishing closures in parts of the Jordan and Georges basins.

Outside the Gulf of Maine, roughly 100 to 200 nautical miles southeast of Cape Cod, are 20 underwater canyons at the edge of the continental shelf, where coral closures also could be enacted. Five of those canyons, along with four seamounts off the continental shelf, are part of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which former President Obama created last September and which is being challenged in federal court by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

It’s a Boy! Right whale calves spotted in Cape Cod Bay

April 5, 2017 — On Monday, April 3, the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) right whale aerial survey team spotted a right whale mother and calf pair in the north end of Cape Cod Bay between Race Point and Marshfield. This sighting came just hours after researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center identified a different mother / calf pair observed in the Cape Cod Canal. These are the first sightings of the new calves of the year in Gulf of Maine waters.

The male calf spotted by the CCS team is the offspring of a whale named Pediddle, a whale at least 39 years old that was first identified in 1978 and first seen in Cape Cod Bay in 1979. The new calf is Pediddle’s eighth documented by scientists; her last calf was born in 2009.

“During the sighting the mom was subsurface feeding while the calf was rolling and tail slapping,” said Alison Ogilvie, an aerial observer for the Center’s Right Whale Ecology Program. “Mom and calf looked very healthy considering they’ve just completed a more than 800 mile migration from the calving grounds off Georgia and Florida.”

The aerial survey team also observed and photographed 71 other individual right whales in Cape Cod Bay on Monday, the most seen so far this season.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

What’s Happening To Cod In New England?

April 4, 2017 — Cod stocks in New England are at an historic low, down 80 percent from a decade ago, according to new data from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

Those findings are contested by some in the fishing community.

Vito Giacalone, policy director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition in Gloucester, said, “Everyone that fishes the Gulf of Maine, amateur fishermen that go out for the first time — no one can believe that someone can actually say that this cod stock is not in good shape.”

Listen to the interview at WBUR

“Sacred Cod” Tells of Fishery and Way of Life in Peril

April 3, 2017 — New England’s iconic cod fishery has hit an all-time low. Scientists point the finger at a combination of fishing and climate change. Many fishermen reject that assessment and blame their woes on regulators. A new documentary film, Sacred Cod, tells the story of two populations in crisis – the cod, and the fishermen who’ve built a way of life around them.

Cod fishing is what brought the first Europeans to New England, and the commercial fishery is the oldest in the nation. Hundreds of years of fishing pressure has brought cod populations in southern New England and the Gulf of Maine to record low levels. Federal fishery biologists have estimated that the reproductively active population is just 3-4 percent of what would be needed for a healthy, sustainable fishery.

That hasn’t improved in the past few years, despite fishing restrictions that amount to a virtual closure of the fishery. Scientists say climate change is a likely culprit. Rising water temperatures affect reproductive success, reducing the number of eggs a female produces and also reducing survival of young codfish. Scientists are also seeing changes in the base of the food chain that may be linked to climate change.

Many fishermen reject this assessment, though, and say fishing restrictions are unnecessary. They contend that there are plenty of cod to be caught, if you just know where to look.

Read the full story at WCAI