Saving Seafood

Haddock broadline sales up, prices likely to rise

January 23, 2019 — Haddock, a species that for decades has largely been popular in New England and the Middle Atlantic, is starting to proliferate down the U.S. East Coast, according to the latest data.

Broadline sales of haddock increased in nearly every U.S. market between 2016 and 2018. At the low end, sales in the “East North Central” area stayed relatively flat, while sales in the West South Central region of the U.S. (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) increased by 92 percent.

Broadline sales everywhere else increased too: Middle Atlantic by seven percent, South Atlantic by 21 percent, Mountain-Pacific by 44 percent, West North Central by 49 percent, and East South Central by 48 percent.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

DON CUDDY: New England surf clam fishery is headed for disaster

January 7, 2019 — When it comes to fishery management controversy never seems to be too far away. Last month you may have read about the dubious nature of a decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to close a large area of Nantucket Shoals to fishermen who harvest surf clams there, ostensibly to protect fish habitat. Questionable actions such as these undermine industry confidence in fishery regulators and serve only to alienate, and embitter, fishermen and the many others on the waterfront whose livelihoods are threatened by such draconian measures. With respect to protecting fish habitat allow me to quote from NOAA Fisheries’ own web site (fishwatch.gov) which bills itself as ‘U.S. Seafood Facts.’ The salient quote, with respect to the Atlantic surfclam, spissula solidissima, is this: “Fishing gear used to harvest surfclams has minimal impacts on habitat.” In spite of this fact these traditional grounds have now been designated as essential fish habitat and clamming is banned there indefinitely. NOAA also tells us that surfclams support a valuable fishery. Well, come April 9 it will not be nearly as valuable for those who participate in the harvest and that includes fishermen and shore workers in New Bedford, Gloucester and Bristol, Rhode Island where Galilean Seafood employs around 120 people in this fishery.

“There were five areas out there where we harvested our clams and the two areas with the most historical tows are the ones they closed,” Alan Rencurrel told me. Alan knows surf calms. He owns Nantucket Sound Seafood in New Bedford where the clams he catches are hand shucked. “If you steam ’em open they get chewy,” he said. He’s been fishing on the Shoals since 1992. “And there were boats out there before me.”

He also played me some high-resolution video, taken from a dredge-mounted camera, showing the sea bed in the area known as the Rose and Crown, the largest of the areas to be closed. There were no fish, rocks or cobble to be seen, just a solitary skate, on a sandy bottom littered with old mussel shells. “We can’t tow over rocky bottom like a scallop dredge,” he told me. It’s too hard on the gear and anyway clams prefer sand bottom, he said. Conversely, groundfish such as cod and haddock are found on hard bottom.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishing quotas for cod, haddock to get a boost next year

December 10, 2018 — Commercial fishermen will be able to catch a little bit more cod and haddock off New England next year.

Fishermen seek the valuable groundfish species and others off the East Coast, with most coming to land in New England states. The New England Fishery Management Council has approved new catch limits for several species for the fishing year that begins May 1.

The largest catch limit will be for Georges Bank haddock. It’ll increase by almost 20 percent to more than 117 million pounds (53 million kilograms).

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WTNH

Bleak outlook for Pacific cod could see 2019 US pollock TAC hike, despite reduced biomass

December 5, 2018 — Although the biomass for pollock in the US eastern Bering Sea fishery is coming down, the total allowable catch (TAC) for 2019 could actually be increased, due to the outlook for further cuts to Pacific cod.

The TACs for pollock and cod, especially in light of the gloomy outlook for the latter, will be a major focus of the North Pacific Fishery Management Council (NPFMC) meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, this week, which will go ahead, after an earthquake hit the city last Friday. With whitefish prices set high, the Barents Sea cod and haddock fisheries coming down for 2019 and the Russians only increasing their pollock quota for next year marginally, industry players globally are looking to what happens at the meeting.

First, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists present their views on the outlook for 2019, then the council will decide on TAC levels for pollock, cod, yellowfin sole and other fish. There is uncertainty around pollock and cod moving further north, as previously reported by Undercurrent News. 

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

EU Commission proposes 2019 TACs for Atlantic, North Sea

November 9, 2018 — The European Commission has proposed new 2019 quotas for 89 separate stocks in the east Atlantic and North Sea.

The new quotas will see total allowable catch (TAC) increased or maintained for 62 stocks, while 22 stocks have seen a decrease in TAC — five of which have a proposed TAC of zero, indicating that the reduced stocks should no longer be targeted at all.

Some of the biggest quota gains belonged to North Atlantic haddock, which had a proposed TAC of 10,469 metric tons, up 103% from 2018; horse mackerel off the west coast of Spain, with a proposed quota of 94,017t, up 69%; and Norwegian lobster west of Sweden, up 65% to a new TAC of 19,424t.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

NGOs condemn EU Parliament’s decision to ‘overfish Atlantic waters’

October 29, 2018 — The European Parliament has voted to approve the multiannual plan for management of north-east Atlantic waters, despite the plan’s allowance for unsustainable fishing, said Oceana, ClientEarth and Seas at Risk.

The Western Waters, an area that stretches from Portugal to France, Ireland and the UK, is a heavily-used fishery for cod, haddock, plaice, sole and Norway lobster. In 2017, the area yielded 368,000 metric tons of produce, with a combined first sale value of roughly €1.4 billion.

However, current estimates suggest that as much as 41% of the region’s stocks are overfished. Environmental NGOs have been putting pressure on the EU Parliament to reduce catch quotas in the region as part of the 2013 commitment in the common fisheries policy (CFP) to end overfishing in European waters by 2020 at the latest.

The latest vote has agreed to allow fishing at levels above the scientifically-advised maximum sustainable yield, a move that many NGOs have condemned as being adverse to the objectives laid out in the CFP.

“The Parliament has agreed fishing mortality ranges that, at their upper limit, can exceed the fishing rates above scientifically advised sustainable levels,” said Andrea Ripol, fisheries policy offer at Seas At Risk. “This means that stocks will not be restored to healthy levels, bringing negative socioeconomic impacts in the longer term.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Five Wild Days Aboard a New England Squid Boat

September 12, 2018 — Corey Harris wasn’t concerned about the storm. The captain of Rhonda Denise, a 77-foot commercial trawler, he’d been stuck in port all week, as two nor’easters, in early March, slammed the New England coast back-to-back. Now a third brewed offshore. But Harris saw an opportunity. “We’ll thread the needle between the storms,” he told me over the phone. We’d catch as much squid as possible, then haul ass back to port before the next system hit. Bring seasickness. medicine, he added. “It’ll be rough—but worth it.”

On the Thursday of our departure, the Port of Galilee, in Point Judith, Rhode Island, was full of boats but empty of people. If you’ve eaten calamari at a seafood shack or a little red-sauce joint, odds are it crossed the dock here in Point Judith. In 2016, the village’s 119 vessels landed 22.6 million pounds of squid, valued at $28.6 million—its best haul to date. It’s the 15th-highest-earning seaport in the country and first in squid on the Atlantic seaboard. By all measures, it’s the calamari capital of the East Coast. And with ongoing downturns in cod, flounder, and haddock, scores of commercial fishermen, not only here but also up and down the New England shore, now depend on squid to stay afloat in a notoriously unpredictable industry.

Harris met me in the parking lot. Among the local fishermen, he’s one of “the few young guys worth a shit,” a longtime captain told me. He’s also something of an anomaly. The salutatorian of his high school, in Babylon, New York, he dropped out of his university’s pre-dental program, in 2007, to work on trawlers, drawn to fishing for reasons that he can’t quite explain. Soft-spoken and ambitious, with a tight red beard, he started as a deckhand on Rhonda Denise, made captain by age 22, and became a co-owner a few years later. Now, at 31, he’s still 20 years younger than the majority of guys on the dock. “The storms have kept most boats in,” he told me. “There’s no fish on the market. Prices will be high.” There was no need to worry about the weather, he added—as long as we made it back by Monday.

Read the full story at Men’s Journal

 

Catching fish is easy part; Quota system? Not so much

August 6, 2018 –By 4 a.m. every morning the Finlander is out in the ocean, sometimes traveling as far as 50 to 70 miles into the Gulf of Maine, to catch fish to be sold directly to restaurants and customers at local farmers’ markets.

The Finlander is a 36-foot Northern Bay and one of two vessels operated by New England Fishmongers. On a good day, Finlander’s crew will haul in 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of fish, according to Capt. Tim Rider.

The reason the Finlander usually travels so far out, even beyond the reception of the vessel’s VHF radio, is to increase the odds of catching Atlantic pollock and haddock, instead of a large haul of cod, which has a much higher fishing quota lease price per pound. But out at sea, when the 24-ounce jig is in the water, it’s anyone’s guess what may bite.

“If there’s a problem that far out, we’re out of VHF radio reception in a 36-foot boat and we’re likely dead,” Rider, also the owner of New England Fishmongers, said. “Best case, we’d be stuck out there a long time by ourselves before there is any chance we could be rescued.”

Despite the risks of fishing on the high seas, Rider’s crew feels a sense of heightened purpose to reconnect local restaurants directly to the fishermen.

“This is the only job I could see myself doing seven days a week,” Finlander crew member Chris Roberts said after only his second week as a member of the Finlander’s crew on Monday. “With us, our fish, you’re eating what was caught yesterday. Nothing beats being out on the boat; casting out and catching fish with your hands.”

Read the full story at Fosters.com

Historic Maine cod fishery had all-time worst year in 2017

July 30, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine — One of the most historic fisheries in the country hit an all-time low last year as cod fishermen continued to struggle with choking quotas and low abundance of the fish.

Maine’s cod fishery has existed since at least the early 17th century, and it was once one of the strongest in the country. The fishery peaked at more than 21 million pounds of cod, a fish often used with the fish and chips dish, in 1991.

But fishermen only brought 79,816 pounds of cod to land in Maine in 2017, mirroring a downward trend around New England, where cod fishermen have also struggled in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, state data said. Maine’s total was less than half the 2016 haul and by far the lowest on record according to state data that go back to 1950.

One reason for the collapse is that federal quotas for cod are so low many fishermen are just avoiding them altogether, said Terry Alexander, a veteran fisherman out of Portland and Boston. Cod fishermen typically also seek other species, such as haddock and flounder, and they must stop fishing altogether once they reach quota for cod, per the rules.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Cooking class serves up less popular fish in delicious way

July 3, 2018 — If cod and haddock are your go to fish at the local fish market, you might consider venturing out and making some waves with other — just as delicious — species that are so much easier on the wallet.

Thanks to a grant from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the New Bedford Port Authority and the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, a free cooking class was held recently demonstrating pollock and scup as the main entree.

The class was taught by Chef Henry Bousquet at New Bedford Regional Vocational-Technical High School.

The next class on July 25 features red fish and whiting and will involve how to cook and serve a whole fish.

The final class is set for Aug. 15 is entitled “Crafting Sauces that enhance and highlight underutilized species.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times