Saving Seafood

Ugly delicacy? Industry touts weird looking Monkfish

March 1, 2018 — Now serving sea monsters.

That’s the message from members of the fishing industry, environmentalists and regulators who are trying to convince U.S. consumers to eat more of a particularly weird looking creature from the deep — monkfish.

Monkfish have been commercially fished for years, but recent analyses by the federal government show the monster-like bottom dweller can withstand more fishing pressure. However, U.S. fishermen often fall short of their quota for the fish.

A lack of reliable markets for the fish and convoluted fishing regulations make it difficult to catch the full quota, fishermen said. Nevertheless, the U.S. government is upping harvesters’ limits for monkfish for the next three years.

Some New England fishermen switched to targeting monkfish in recent decades when traditional species such as cod began to decline, said Jan Margeson, a Chatham, Massachusetts, fisherman who made such a switch himself. He said the availability of monkfish represents an opportunity for the industry.

“It is healthy. We can’t even catch the quota,” he said. “We had to find an alternative species once groundfish died years ago.”

Monkfish, also known as goosefish, are predatory fish that camouflage themselves on the ocean bottom and can grow to be about 5 feet long. With a gaping maw and uneven, jagged teeth, its appearance is the stuff of nightmares.

Read the full story at ABC News

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Proposed exemption good for Cape Cod fishermen

CHATHAM, Mass. (March 24, 2016) — When a fisherman is getting just pennies to the pound for fish, paying an additional $710 for someone to ride along and count each one can really cut into the bottom line.

“We couldn’t afford the $700,” said Chatham fisherman Jan Margeson. “It would have put you into a negative day.”

Margeson and other Cape Cod fishermen who pursue relatively low value species like skate and dogfish argue they use nets with such a large mesh that almost all other species simply swim right through and escape.

The observers they are occasionally required to carry are intended to double check the amounts of groundfish, like cod, haddock and flounder they are catching along with dogfish and skates. But Cape fishermen say they don’t catch any of the groundfish and feel the observers, known as “At-Sea Monitors,” are unnecessary and expensive.

Newly proposed regulations released for public comment this week confirm what Cape fishermen have been saying for years, by granting them an exemption to the requirement to carry the monitors on nearly all their fishing trips for skate and dogfish, which became the dominant species landed in Cape ports after the decline of groundfish, especially cod, in recent years.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

JAN MARGESON: Disburse disaster aid to all active fishermen

September 3, 2015 — A typical small-boat fisherman from Cape Cod — or anywhere in the state for that matter — has more than navigating around the tides and the wind to contend with in today’s complicated regulatory world and in the face of a changing ocean. There’s crew to pay to sustain viable communities, gear and fuel to buy to support a coastal economy, and safety equipment to update to make sure they are prepared in any emergency.

Starting in October, these family fishermen will have to undertake a new added expense: paying for at-sea monitors who count the fish they harvest and those they have to throw back.

Until now, the federal government has paid for the services as part of a new management program it initiated to help bring back declining species of fish, such as our peninsula’s namesake cod. Now, it is turning it into an unfunded mandate, and Massachusetts’ fishermen could go out of business over it.

Profit margins in fishing are not high, and the federal government’s own report found that 59 percent of the state’s groundfishermen would go into the red if they had to pay for onboard monitors.

Read the full opinion piece at the Cape Cod Times