Saving Seafood

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

Blue Harvest to supply $4.4 million in seafood for schools, food banks

September 25, 2020 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is buying more than $4.4 million in Northeast groundfish from Blue Harvest Fisheries, which will process the products for distribution to schools and food banks across the country.

The $4,425,480 purchase award from the USDA Commodity Procurement Program to will buy haddock, ocean perch and Atlantic pollock, with deliveries from the Blue Harvest facility in New Bedford, Mass., to begin Oct. 1 through Dec. 31.

It’s the first time in decades that East Coast seafood has been included in the commodities program, which buys farm products for distribution to institutions, nonprofit groups and needy households.

“Given the uncertainties surrounding the seafood market during the ongoing pandemic, this order will help ensure that the groundfish industry at the New Bedford waterfront can continue working, while providing food security for those who need it most,” Blue Harvest CEO Keith Decker said in a prepared statement announcing the purchase.

Company officials credited the Trump administration and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue for bringing East Coast fisheries in the program. They thanked members of the Massachusetts Congressional delegation, Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Reps. William Keating and Seth Moulton, all D-Mass., who in May asked Perdue to include East Coast seafood when making purchase agreements funded by the special Coronavirus Food Assistance Program and the USDA’s longstanding Section 32 program.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Blue Harvest Fisheries scores $4.4 million groundfish contract from US government

September 23, 2020 — Blue Harvest Fisheries has been granted a $4.4 million (€5.9 million) award from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to supply a total of 115,200 cases of frozen haddock, ocean perch and Atlantic pollock to child nutrition and other related food assistance programs around the United States.

Deliveries will start on Oct. 1 and run through Dec. 31.

All of the fish utilized for the program will be harvested by American-flagged vessels from Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-certified fisheries in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank, according to the company.

The products will be processed at Blue Harvest’s facility in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before being distributed to recipients nationwide.

Read the full story at IntraFish

NOAA Fisheries Sets 2020 Gulf of Maine Cod and Haddock Recreational Regulations in the Gulf of Maine

August 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is setting Gulf of Maine (GOM) cod and haddock recreational measures for 2020.

The recreational fishery for GOM cod and haddock is managed under the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan (FMP). The FMP includes a proactive recreational accountability measure, which allows the Regional Administrator, in consultation with the New England Fishery Management Council, to develop recreational management measures for the fishing year to ensure that the recreational sub-annual catch limits (ACLs) are achieved, but not exceeded. We project that current measures for GOM cod and haddock can be liberalized somewhat without the 2020 recreational fishery’s sub-ACLs being exceeded.

After consultation with the Council, we are making changes to Gulf of Maine cod and haddock management measures as shown in the table below:

Read the interim final rule as filed in the Federal Register and our bulletin.

Read the full release here

USTR extends tariff exclusions for some seafood products, others will face tariffs again

August 10, 2020 — The United States Trade Representative has released a list of products shipped from China that will receive an extension of tariff exclusions, with several seafood items on the list.

The exclusion extensions apply to several seafood products shipped from China, and allows those products to continue avoiding a 25 percent tariff. The product exclusions will continue to retroactively apply as of 24 September, 2018, and were set to expire on 7 August before the extension which came on the last day before those products would be back under the tariff program.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Northeast Groundfish Retail sales recovering, but prices stay down

August 5, 2020 — “Well, we’ve had an interesting first part of the fishing year,” says Bert Jongerden, general manager of the Portland Fish Exchange on Maine’s waterfront. “Prices have been very weak — I’m surprised by how much the lack of restaurant markets is impacting the pricing of groundfish.”

Generally, Jongerden notes, “a groundfish trawler averages around $2 a pound. But, right now, trawlers are getting around $1.25 to 1.30 a pound. It’s about 65 percent off this year, compared to last year.” Amid the continuing covid-19 closures, supermarket retail has been steadier, but it hasn’t made up for restaurant demand.

As New York City markets are beginning to open back up, “pollock, haddock and hake are moving along pretty well, but at reduced prices while flatfish like dabs, grey sole and monk tails are weak,” says Jongerden.

It’s been challenging to find markets for flatfish, which are typically popular in restaurants as full-plate fish. Jongerden says challenges for flatfish markets are compounded by the fact that processors along the northeast coast are having difficulty getting flatfish cut and processed.

“Finding cutters was challenging before covid-19 hit, but the pandemic has exacerbated things,” he says. “Processors have to be careful now, using screens and adjusting so workers aren’t close to one another. It all has a trickle-down effect.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA Fisheries Sets Management Measures for Northeast Groundfish

July 28, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

We are approving the previously proposed Framework 59 and implementing new catch limits for groundfish stocks for the 2020 fishing year (May 1, 2020 – April 30, 2021), including the three stocks managed jointly with Canada. These revised catch limits are based upon the results of stock assessments conducted in 2019.

Framework 59 is adjusting the allocations of the total quota between the commercial and recreational fishery for Gulf of Maine cod and haddock. The proportion of quota allocated to the recreational fishery is increasing from 33.7 percent to 37.5 percent for Gulf of Maine cod, and is increasing from 27.5 percent to 33.9 percent for Gulf of Maine haddock. Management measures for the recreational fishery will be announced in a separate rulemaking.

Read the final rule as filed in the Federal Register and the permit holder bulletin available on our website.

NOAA Fisheries Removes Regulations Implementing the Closed Area I Hook Gear Haddock Special Access Program

July 21, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today we filed the final rule to eliminate the regulations implementing the Closed Area I Hook Gear Haddock Special Access Program (SAP).

The Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment eliminated Closed Area I in 2018. As a result, the SAP for this area is unnecessary. The SAP no longer provides access or allows activity otherwise prohibited by any closed or gear restricted area. No vessel has participated in the SAP since the start of fishing year 2018.

Removing the program from the regulations helps to avoid confusion and inconsistency with other regulations.

For more details, please read the final rule as filed in the Federal Register or our bulletin.