Saving Seafood

Massachusetts sets rules for recreational catches

February 26, 2021 — Massachusetts has set fishing regulations for the upcoming 2021 recreational fishing season, retaining the status quo in state waters on seasons and limits for most species.

The exceptions are the striped bass circle hook requirements, as well as the Gulf of Maine haddock and cod seasons and a pending recommendation on gear restrictions for blue crabs.

The Division of Marine Fisheries expects to announce the new regulations on the three pending measures in late March. It has scheduled a virtual public hearing for March 2 at 6 p.m. Participation requires advanced registration at http://bit.ly/3pRGpBZ.

Here are the 2021 regulations on seasons and limits for a variety of recreational species:

Black sea bass — The season will run May 18 to Sept. 8. The minimum size is 15 inches and the trip possession limit is five fish per angler.

Bluefish — The season runs all year, with no size limits. Possession limits are three fish per day for anglers fishing from the shore or aboard private vessels. The trip possession limit for anglers aboard for-hire craft is five fish.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NEFMC Recommends 2021 Recreational Measures for Gulf of Maine Cod and Haddock for GARFO’s Consideration

February 18, 2021 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

Recognizing that COVID-19 will continue to impact angler and party/charter boat fishing in the year ahead, the New England Fishery Management Council voted during its late-January 2021 webinar meeting to recommend that NOAA Fisheries, through its Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO), implement status quo recreational fishing measures for Gulf of Maine cod and Gulf of Maine haddock for the 2021 fishing year.

These are the same measures that GARFO implemented on August 13, 2020 during the pandemic to provide additional fishing opportunities for cod and more access to the abundant haddock resource at a time when the recreational fishing community, especially the for-hire fleet, was greatly impacted by the pandemic. In selecting those measures, GARFO considered the Council’s June 2020 request to expand the fall fishing window to help recreational fishermen make up for lost access to the springtime fishery.

The Council received input from both its Recreational Advisory Panel and Groundfish Committee before voting. GARFO will consider the Council’s recommendation, but NOAA Fisheries will make the final decision.

Read the full release here

Bristol Seafood forges supplier relationship with Alaska’s Blue North, invests in Marel’s FleXicut waterjet line

January 13, 2021 — Portland, Maine-based company Bristol Seafood has established a new supply partnership with Blue North, a division of Bristol Bay Alaska Seafoods, according to a 10 January announcement.

Bristol is already the largest importer and producer of Norwegian, line-caught haddock in the U.S., and also provides Alaska cod, among other offerings. The company provides an array of products featuring Alaska cod, including refreshed and frozen fillets, loins, and portions, as well as retail-ready bagged frozen portions. Its value-added My Fish Dish product line also spotlights the popular species.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

COVID-19 HAS HIT COMMERCIAL FISHING HARD

January 4, 2021 — Of those who kept fishing, nearly all reported a decline in income compared with previous years, according to the study in PLOS ONE.

The study, which covers March to June and included 258 fishers, also examined data on fish landings and found that the catch for some species, such as squid and scallops, decreased compared with previous years. The catch for other species, such as black sea bass and haddock, was on par with or higher than previous years, suggesting that many fishermen fished as much as they had been before the pandemic, while earning less income.

“They may have kept fishing to pay their bills or crew, or to maintain their livelihoods or their quotas until markets rebound,” says main author Sarah Lindley Smith, a postdoctoral associate in the human ecology department in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Most of the fishermen who stopped fishing during the early months of the pandemic planned to resume fishing instead of leaving the industry.”

The pandemic has slammed the fishing industry due to the loss of restaurant sales, disruptions in export markets, and a decline in seafood prices. Before the pandemic, 70% of seafood spending in the United States took place in restaurants, the study notes.

Read the full story at Futurity

Emergency Rule to Increase Carryover for NE Groundfish – Effective 12/31

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

NOAA Fisheries is announcing a temporary rule for an emergency action that increases the maximum level of Annual Catch Entitlement allowed to be carried over in the Northeast groundfish fishery from fishing year 2019 into fishing year 2020.

On July 2, 2020, the New England Fishery Management Council requested that NOAA Fisheries implement an emergency action to mitigate significant adverse economic impacts to the groundfish fishery caused by the state health and travel restrictions, and market disruptions at the end of fishing year 2019.

This action, which is effective tomorrow (December 31, 2020), increases the maximum carryover of fishing year 2019 sector Annual Catch Entitlement for Gulf of Maine haddock, Georges Bank haddock, and American plaice. The action also allows for unused leased-in Days-At-Sea to be carried over from fishing year 2019 into fishing year 2020 by common pool vessels.

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

Read the full release here

Survey shows extent of covid-19 impact to East Coast fishermen

December 30, 2020 — Up to 40 percent of fishermen from Maine to North Carolina suspended their operations in spring 2020 as the covid-19 pandemic collapsed the seafood market, according to new findings from a Rutgers University study.

“A lot of what we found was that in the early months of the pandemic a lot of fishermen were not fishing, or waiting it out,” said Sarah Lindley Smith, a post-doctoral research associate in the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers, a longtime center of research into the social and community effects of changing fisheries.

An online survey in spring 2020 brought responses from 258 Northeast fishermen and the results are published in the science journal PLOS One. Covering the critical early pandemic weeks of March to June 2020, the researchers also looked at landings reports and found that catches for some species like squid and scallops declined compared with the same time period of previous years.

But some other landings, including black sea bass and haddock, were on par or even higher than earlier years. Alongside their survey results, the researchers say that suggests some fishermen kept fishing hard even as they earned less.

“Groundfishermen were more likely to continue fishing” than those in other fisheries, said Smith. Even as the dominant restaurant market – accounting for 70 percent of U.S. seafood sales – vanished in those early months, local retail demand especially in New England helped keep crews working to find cod and haddock.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Maine Fishing Community Mourns Loss of 4 Fishermen at Sea

November 25, 2020 — Maine‘s commercial fishing community is mourning the loss of four fishermen who went missing when an 82-foot (25-meter) fishing vessel sank off Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The Coast Guard said Tuesday it called off the search for the crew of the Portland-based Emmy Rose that sank early Monday morning while en route to Gloucester, Massachusetts. The four men aboard were all Maine fishermen, authorities said.

The Sustainable Harvest Sector, a group of 100 fishing vessel owners and operators, identified the crew members as Robert Blethen; Jeff Matthews; Michael Porper and Ethan Ward. Members of the fishing community contributed to a GoFundMe for the men’s families that had attracted dozen of donations by Wednesday afternoon.

The fishermen were harvesting groundfish such as haddock. The cause of the vessel’s sinking remains undetermined.

“My heart goes out to the family and community of the fishermen aboard the F/V Emmy Rose,” said Maine Rep. Genevieve McDonald, who is a lobster boat captain.

The Sustainable Harvest Sector said in a statement that it would release information about memorial services for the fishermen when they are available.

Read the full story at U.S. News

Electronic monitoring long-awaited boon for Cape fishermen

October 12, 2020 — More than a decade of advocacy by local fishermen finally paid off when the New England Fishery Management Council at its meeting last month approved the use of video cameras on fishing vessels to monitor catches.

Electronic monitoring is a critical part of the council plan known as Amendment 23 that passed Sept. 30 and set a target of covering 100% of all fishing trips to catch bottom-feeding species such as cod, haddock and flounders that are collectively known as groundfish.

“The Council has known for quite a while now that we needed to improve the groundfish monitoring program,” council spokesperson Janice Plante said. “We’d had some issues in the past with unreported or misreported catches. We know there’s an incentive to illegally discard certain stocks, especially those with low catch limits.”

Plus, just 31% of groundfish trips were required to be covered by human observers riding on fishing vessels tracking the number of discarded and caught fish and Plante said the council knew that sometimes fishermen fished differently on observed trips and unobserved trips.

“These are all things the Council wanted to address by improving the catch monitoring program,” Plante wrote in an email.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Regulators Move to Increase At-Sea Monitoring of Groundfish Catch in New England Waters

October 2, 2020 — New England fishing regulators have approved a plan that would significantly increase at-sea monitoring for groundfish trips, as a way to help inform scientists and stocks managers about what’s being caught in area waters.

The plan calls for in-person observers or video monitoring on up to 100 percent of trips made by fishermen who target cod, flounder, haddock, and other groundfish.

For the first four years, nearly all costs are expected to be covered by the federal government and other organizations to avoid financially burdening fishermen. But if the full costs aren’t covered beyond that point, the monitoring level could drop back to the current 40 percent, paid for, at least in part, by fishermen. The new plan calls for reevaluation of costs and other considerations in the fifth year.

The plan was endorsed by the New England Fishery Management Council but still requires additional federal approvals before taking effect.

Read the full story at CAI

Predator-prey interaction study reveals more food does not always mean more consumption

September 30, 2020 — Scientists at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center have developed an unusually rich picture of who is eating whom off the Northeastern United States. The findings, published recently in Fish and Fisheries, provide a close look at fish feeding habits for 17 fish species, predators, and their prey.

The predators are divided into 48 predator-size categories, and 14  species. Fish predators included Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, haddock, goosefish, pollock, spiny dogfish, winter flounder, and yellowtail founder among others. Prey species included forage fish, squid, zooplankton, shrimp-like crustaceans, shellfish, brittle stars, sand dollars, and sea urchins.

“We have the largest, continuous dataset of fish feeding habits in the world at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, and that enabled us to do a study of this scale and scope,” said Brian Smith, a food habits researcher at the center and lead author of the study. “We focused on common and important prey for the many predatory fishes of interest, and hopefully filled in some gaps in information relating prey availability to predation.”

Feeding patterns within and among different groups of fishes vary by the size of the fish, the abundance or density of the prey, and other factors. Researchers who study  need to account for this predation in their models. Few studies, however, have looked simultaneously at the feeding patterns among different groups of predatory fish—fish feeders, plankton feeders, and benthic or bottom feeders. The study also looked at how those groups interact with their prey throughout the water column.

Read the full story at PHYS.org