Saving Seafood

Atlantic Herring Landing Days for Area 1A’s Trimester 2 and Next “Days Out” Meeting Notice

April 28, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (Commission) Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts set the “days out” effort control measures for the 2016 Area 1A Trimester 2 (June 1 – September 30) as follows:

·         June 1 – 30: Vessels may land herring three (3) consecutive days a week.All other days are designated as “days out” of the fishery (e.g., vessels may not land herring).

·         July 1 – 14: Vessels may land herring four (4) consecutive days a week. All other days are designated as “days out” of the fishery.

·         July 15 – September 30: Vessels may land herring five (5) consecutive days a week until further notice. All other days are designated as “days out” of the fishery.

Landing days in New Hampshire and Massachusetts begin on Monday of each week at 12:01 a.m. Landings days in Maine begin on Sunday of each week at 6:00 p.m.

The initial Area 1A sub-annual catch limit (ACL) is 30,397 metric tons (mt) after adjusting for a carryover from 2014. The Area 1A sub-ACL will be adjusted after the final rule for the 2016-2018 herring specifications is released. The final 2016 Area 1A sub-ACL will include the following reductions: 8% bycatch, 3% research set-aside and 295 mt fixed gear set-aside. The Section allocated 72.8% of the sub-ACL to Trimester 2.

By starting with three landings days per week and then adjusting to four and then five days during Trimester 2, the allocation is projected to extend through the end of the trimester. Landings will be monitored closely and the directed fishery will be adjusted to zero landing days when the trimester’s allocation is projected to be reached. The Atlantic Herring Section members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are scheduled to reconvene via conference call to review fishing effort and adjust landing days as necessary on the following day:

·         Monday, July 11 at 10:00 AM

To join the call, please dial 888.394.8197 and enter passcode 499811 as prompted.

Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip from Area 1A until June 1, 2016.  Please contact Ashton Harp at 703.842.0740 for more information.

Aquinnah Herring Cam Offers Fish’s Eye View of Underwater Action

April 28, 2016 — Since installing the Island’s first underwater herring cam in March, scientists for the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah), have had a fish’s-eye view of herring, otters, cormorants and other species making their way through a historic herring run in Aquinnah.

On a chilly afternoon this week, Bret Stearns, director of the tribe’s natural resources department, along with lab manager Andrew Jacobs, stood at the top of a steep bank looking down at a simple fish weir and monitoring station between Menemsha and Squibnocket ponds. Small metal poles formed a V-shaped fence, forcing anything larger than a minnow into a small chamber where an underwater camera is running 24 hours a day. Occasionally a cormorant would splash to the surface on the other side and paddle its way upstream, under a culvert and into Squibnocket Pond.

A long-running moratorium on herring fishing in the state applies to both commercial and recreational use, but Native American tribes are allowed to harvest the fish for sustenance. The natural resources department has long sought a better system to monitor the population and ensure that the fish are being harvested sustainably.

In the past, commercial harvests could provide an estimate for the overall population, Mr. Stearns said, but solid numbers were out of reach. In recent years, the data has been purely anecdotal. “There was really nothing to document how the population was doing,” Mr. Stearns said.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Portland Press Herald: Clean Water Rule will help sustain fishermen’s livelihoods

April 22, 2016 — SACO, Maine — You can learn a lot about the life cycle of certain types of fish by spending your time on the seas. As a small-scale, sustainable hook fisherman, I’ve certainly been able to learn a lot over my years. But more recently, some of what I’ve learned has me really scared.

Take herring, a fish that we see a lot of around New England. They make their way to inland rivers in the spring in order to spawn before heading offshore. The problem is, New England has had a huge problem with pollution in our waterways – and herring, at a very young age, are particularly susceptible to pollution. And what they take in could very well end up on your dinner plate.

The same is true with Atlantic salmon, a fish that was harvested here by Native Americans and Pilgrims hundreds of years ago – and that now is on the verge of extinction. Some will say that’s because of climate change, and that’s probably partially true. What they are missing is water quality.

Read the full editorial at the Portland Press Herald

As Pacific sardine collapse worsens, scientists worry about possible ripple in the ecosystem

April 19, 2016 — Nearly a year into a West Coast sardine fishing ban enacted to protect the collapsing population, the fish formerly worth more than $8 million to Oregon’s economy have shown no signs of a comeback.

New federal research indicates numbers of the small, silvery, schooling fish have plummeted further than before the fishing moratorium, dashing any hope of lifting it in 2016.

With the current sardine population hovering at 7 percent of its 2007 peak, fishermen now say they expect to wait a decade or more to revive the fishery.

“I don’t want to take a pessimistic view, but I would think we’ll be shut down until 2030,” said Ryan Kapp, a Bellingham, Washington, fisherman who advises the Pacific Fishery Management Council on sardines and other fish.

Sardines aren’t struggling in isolation. Other fish near the bottom of the marine food web, such as anchovies and herring, are also down. The shortage of sustenance is rippling upward to create crises for predator species from seals to seabirds.

Researchers can’t tell exactly what’s driving the die-off, nor how long it will last. Some say the crash can be attributed to cyclical boom-and-bust population dynamics sardines have always exhibited.

Read the full story at The Daily Astorian

Dedicated Man Helps Endangered Herring Complete Spawning Run

April 12, 2016 — When Bill McWha moved to Wakefield, RI, he expected to deliver packages for UPS. Instead, he found himself transporting tens of thousands of river herring en route to their spawning grounds on the Saugatucket River. According to National Geographic, McWha first visited the river in 2010 and saw thousands of river herring unable to pass the Main Street Dam. So, armed with only a net, he perched himself on a 14-foot board and scooped 10 to 15 fish at a time, then placed them back into the river above the dam.

Though many simply shook their heads, some curious passersby stopped to help. McWha and a dozen volunteers helped about 20,000 fish over the dam during the next three weeks. Since then, helping the herring on their spawning run has become an annual event in Wakefield. Every March and April, growing numbers of volunteers join McWha as he mounts a wooden platform and nets the fish.

McWha says that he felt terrible about the herring’s plight and knew that he had to help. To him, it was “a waste that these herring weren’t going to be able to spawn.”  McWha told National Geographic that he “felt an emotional connection to them, and just had to get them over the dam.”

McWha’s efforts expanded upstream in 2013, when volunteers used buckets to move fish beyond a second dam. In 2014, 75 volunteers, armed with only nets, helped an astonishing 72,000 fish navigate the Main Street Dam. Over the past year or so, however, efforts have slowed down as officials work on existing fish ladders, improving the run. McWha and his band of volunteers will be standing by to count fish and, if necessary, break out the nets and help fish over the dam.

See the full story at Field & Stream

New NOAA rules governing bycatch in Atlantic herring fishery start May 4

April 7, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has approved adjustments to its Atlantic herring fishery management plan that aim to minimize bycatch.

The new rules require vessels to report slippage – catch discarded prior to official sampling by an approved observer – to be reported in each ship’s daily herring catch report.

In addition, vessels must either return to port or move 15 nautical miles away from the location where the slippage occurred, depending on whether the event is deemed a precautionary measure performed for reasons of safety or whether it is considered an avoidable accident. If the latter is the case, the vessel at fault must return to port, and if the slippage is deemed accidental, the vessel still must move and may not fish in that area for the duration of its journey.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NMFS Partially Approves Herring Framework Adjustment 4: Empty Fish Hold Provision Not Adopted

April 6, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) partially approved Framework Adjustment 4 to the Federal Herring Fishery Management Plan—the final rule published today, April 4th. The empty fish hold provision, which was recommended by the New England Fishery Management Council and provisionally adopted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) in Amendment 3 to the Interstate FMP, was not approved. The justification for not approving this provision is provided in the following excerpts from the final rule. The final rule can be found at: https://federalregister.gov/a/2016-07583.

NMFS could not approve the empty fish hold provision because “…there is insufficient support in the record to conclude that herring vessels are harvesting excess fish and discarding unsold fish at sea. The costs associated with a herring trip, including fuel, crew wages, and insurance, are substantial, so it is unlikely that vessel operators are making herring trips to harvest fish that will ultimately be discarded.”

In addition, NMFS determined “Framework 4’s proposed waiver provides no way of verifying the amount of fish reported relative to the amount of fish left in the hold. Therefore, NMFS does not believe that this measure contains a viable mechanism to verify whether harvested fish that are left in the hold were reported by the vessel.”

Ultimately, “Because the measure lacks a mechanism to verify or correct the amount of fish reported on the VTR, the measure is unlikely to improve catch monitoring in the herring fishery. In contrast, the compliance and enforcement costs associated with the measure may be high.”

As stated in Amendment 3, implementation of the empty fish hold provision is contingent on federal adoption. Since NMFS did not approve this provision, ASMFC will maintain status quo measures on this issue. Under status quo there is no requirement to empty vessel holds of fish prior to a fishing trip departure. Amendment 3 was updated to reflect this information and can be obtained at: http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file//57042f26Amendment3_RevisedApril2016.pdf.

Feds make West Coast ban on new forage fisheries official

April 5, 2016 — SEATTLE — Federal officials finalized rules Monday for a West Coast ban on catching forage fish, the small fish that larger species, seabirds and marine mammals depend on for food.

The ban on new commercial fisheries will protect little schooling fish that play a critical role in the marine food web but that are not actively fished or managed, the National Marine Fisheries Service said. It marks the first action under a new approach to fisheries management that considers how one species affects others in the ecosystem.

The ban does not affect existing fisheries for forage fish, such as sardines and anchovies. It covers species including Pacific sand lance, silversides and certain varieties of herring, smelt and squid. The restrictions apply to federal waters from 3 to 200 miles off Washington, Oregon and California, and do not affect fishing authorized by tribes.

Fishermen generally do not target forage fish in federal waters, and no West Coast fishing boats are known to be considering efforts do so.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Oregonian

Number of New Hampshire groundfishermen continues to decline

March 30, 2016 — PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — The number of New Hampshire boats fishing for groundfish has continued to decline, with only five full-time groundfisherman left in the state.

Fishermen have been catching haddock, cod and flounder off the coast and selling it in New Hampshire for centuries. But fishermen said that quotas and regulations over the past decade that are meant to protect groundfish have made it almost impossible to make a living.

The regulations have also affected other fishermen. At Tuesday’s regional meeting of the New England Fishery Management Council, some complained they were unable to catch herring to use as bait because they were in the same area as regulated groundfish.

Read the full story at WMUR

Herring, Haddock Fishermen at Odds as Regulators Seek Peace

January 26, 2016—PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Fishing regulators are trying to broker peace between two of the most economically important fisheries in the Northeast, herring and haddock.

One of the areas where fishermen seek the two species is Georges Bank, a critical fishing ground off the New England coast. Atlantic herring are important as bait and sometimes as food, while haddock are a staple of New England’s fish markets and seafood restaurants.

Herring fishermen often accidentally capture haddock as bycatch, and they are allowed a “catch cap” of the fish in Georges Bank every year. They exceeded it last year, as they have in other recent years, and regulators closed a large section of Georges Bank to herring fishing until May 1, 2016.

Some herring fishermen have requested higher bycatch limits or other changes to the rules, but haddock and other groundfishermen frequently opposed changes. Haddock are an important money-maker for fishermen of bottom-dwelling species because they are much more abundant in Northeastern waters than cod, which have collapsed off of New England.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times