Saving Seafood

China opening up new seafood supply lines

February 26, 2019 –One of China’s largest and most inward cities, Lanzhou, is the latest to get an air cargo link to fly seafood from Southeast Asia. As China negotiates an end to trade tensions with the U.S. it has also been busily opening up new seafood trading routes and supply lines under its “One Belt, One Road” (also known as the New Silk Road) blueprint for opening up trade through new transport routes.

Not long ago, seafood imports into China were funnelled through just a handful of ports and airports, one of the reasons why smuggling such a popular route to get seafood into the country. Yet, recently, a 15-ton shipment of ribbonfish, grouper, and shrimp from Thailand was landed at Zhongzhou Airport, located in the desert outside Lanzhou – the latest in a series of inland ports and airports now allowed to handle seafood imports.

“With this new service seafood from Southeast Asia, we will now quickly reach local peoples’ tables,” a statement from the airport’s management proclaimed. Increasing the supply of imports of staple species like ribbonfish has also been central to China’s goals of keeping prices level.

Similarly, in the southern city of Nanning (capital of Guangxi Province), the Air Asia commercial service from Kuala Lumpur into Wu Wei Airport has become a supply line for both Indonesian grouper, Chilean salmon, and Canadian lobster, all transhipped through to Nanning, which last year was granted the right to handle customs for food imports.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Clearwater changes lobster fishing practices, asks for early MSC audit

February 25, 2019 –Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada-based Clearwater Seafoods has changed its controversial lobster fishing practices, which resulted in a fine from the Canadian government and a downgrade in the Ocean Wise recommendation for its lobster fishery.

Clearwater, via CS ManPar, was convicted of repeatedly storing 3,800 lobster traps on the ocean floor more than the limit of 72 hours. The offenses took place in Lobster Fishing Area 41, which is a unique territory exclusively licensed to Clearwater. Area 41 runs 80 kilometers from the shore out to the 200-mile limit from Georges Bank to the Laurentian Channel.  Clearwater paid a CAD 30,000 (USD 22,770, EUR 20,075) fine in relation to its guilty plea.

On 15 February, the CBC reported the fishery was downgraded in the recommendations made by Ocean Wise for sustainable fisheries.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Fishermen’s Forum opens Feb. 28

February 22, 2019 — No matter what the weather may be doing, the evidence that spring is just around the corner is incontrovertible.

Last week, pitchers and catchers reported to Major League Baseball training camps throughout Florida and Arizona. Next week, hundreds of fishermen, fisheries regulators, scientists and merchants selling everything marine from massive lobster boats and the gear needed to build and equip them to buoy sticks and health insurance will gather at the Samoset Resort for the 44th edition of the annual Maine Fishermen’s Forum.

The Forum opens on Thursday, Feb. 28, and runs through Sunday, with most of the activities crammed into the intervening Friday and Saturday. In addition to a huge maritime trade show and dozens of serious seminars, the Forum includes a variety of social activities and a silent auction and dinner that funds a significant scholarship program for children of fishing families pursuing postsecondary education.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Generations of Maine fishermen keep shuckin’ in the cold

February 22, 2019 — The salt water of Casco Bay is in Alex Todd’s blood.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” he said as he headed out off Chebeague Island with the sun just starting to peak above the horizon.

His boat, the Jacob & Joshua, named after his sons are out on these waters year-round.

Todd’s 17-year-old son Joshua was spending his February school vacation out on the boat fishing for scallops.

Joshua and sternman Levi Gloden pulled in shellfish in subzero temperatures as ice started to build up on the deck.

“It’s harder on them than it is on me,” Alex Todd said.

As the boat’s captain, Todd careful picks locations to drag the ocean floor for the prized shellfish, all from the comfort of the heated cabin where he sips his morning coffee.

“Every once in a while I’ll open the door and say, ‘Now do you think I should take a shirt off or? You know what I’m getting a little hot,’” Todd said. “I get a kick out of it but they don’t see the humor as much.”

That sense of humor is what keeps the crew going through the harsh winter months.

With every catch, Joshua and Levi alternate jobs, then sort and measure every shellfish by hand and throwing them in baskets.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Maine’s lobster industry braces for ‘catastrophic’ cuts to bait fish catch

February 21, 2019 — For the second year in a row, federal regulators have dramatically reduced the amount of Atlantic herring fishermen can haul after scientists counted far fewer juvenile Atlantic herring in the waters from Canada to New Jersey.

While determining that Atlantic herring, the chief bait used by lobstermen, is not overfished, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said “recruitment” — the number of juvenile herring — is so low that last Friday they finalized a rule reducing by more than half the amount of Atlantic herring that fishermen may catch in 2019, from 50,000 metric tons to 21,000 metric tons.

Regulators hope the dramatic cut will prevent or reduce the risk of the fishery becoming depleted, NOAA said in a release.

The new limit has prompted predictions of bait shortages and sky-high prices and has members of Maine’s fishing community describing the situation as “catastrophic” and “devastating.”

“It’s huge,” Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, said. “Prices are going to go up, and lobstermen are going to be struggling to find as much bait as they are accustomed to.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Cut in herring quota bodes ill for lobster

February 13, 2019 — Imagine running a trucking business and having your supply of diesel fuel cut by 70 percent.

For all practical purposes, that’s what happened to the Maine lobster industry last week.

On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries arm announced that it was cutting the 2019 herring quota by about 70 percent. That’s bad news for lobstermen.

While diesel oil is the fuel that powers most lobster boats, herring is the fuel that powers the Maine lobster industry.

Herring is the most popular bait used in the Maine lobster fishery and with the cut in the herring quota from about 110 million pounds last year to about 33 million pounds this year, bait is going to be scarce, and expensive.

The reduction wasn’t unexpected.

Last August, at the request of the New England Fishery Management Council, NOAA reduced the 2018 annual catch limit (ACL) for herring from about 231 million pounds to about 107 million pounds to reduce the risk of overfishing.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

 

Lobster industry willing to be ‘right-sized’ for right whales?

February 11, 2019 — Last week, there was much ado in the lobster industry, particularly in Maine where fishermen, regulators and legislators are discussing the possibility of loosening some of the permitting constraints to accelerate the pace of issuing new licenses in a classic old guard vs. new guard tableau.

On a more macro level, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission said its American lobster management board is considering new measures to reduce the amount of vertical fishing lines in the water as a further protection for right whales.

The goal, they said, is to remove as much as 40 percent of the existing lines and gear through a combination of gear changes, trap limits, area closures and other actions to make the waters safer for the highly imperiled right whales that probably are starting their migration north as we speak.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

US House panel resumes focus on climate change, warming oceans

February 11, 2019 — Climate change is hitting the lobster industry in two ways, Beth Casoni, the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association’s executive director, told the US House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee’s Water, Oceans and Wildlife – or WOW — panel on Thursday.

The Gulf of Maine is warming at a faster pace than 99% of other bodies of water and, by 2050, could lose 62% of its lobsters as a result, she said. Meanwhile, ocean acidification is making it harder for juvenile lobsters to grow shells, leaving them open to predators and disease.

“These threats from climate change are intensified by the other challenges lobstermen are facing,” said Casoni, one of seven witnesses at the two-hour hearing. “We do not have the luxury of looking at any one of these impacts on its own – all of them collectively are causing declines in the resource, hurting our bottom line, and our communities.

The event on Thursay was the second hearing called by the Natural Resources Committee on climate change since Democrats took control of the lower chamber in the 2018 election. The day before representative Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who now chairs the main committee, held a more general discussion.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Regulators to consider reducing lobstermen’s lines to protect right whales

February 8, 2019 — Regulators will consider removing up to 40 percent of the lines that link seabed lobster traps to buoys on the surface, taking the step in the hopes of protecting the endangered North Atlantic right whale and avoiding federal restrictions on the lobster fishery.

Fishermen who serve on the American Lobster Management Board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission say the action is required to prevent the federal government from declaring the lobster fishery a threat to North Atlantic right whales, whose population has dwindled to 411 because of changes in habitat, low calving rates, ship strikes and entanglement in fishing lines. If the federal government places a “jeopardy” finding on the species, it would likely trigger far more burdensome restrictions on Maine’s $1.4 billion a year lobster industry, board members said.

Better that fishery participants decide what concessions they can live with than leave it up to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Potential changes coming for Maine’s lobster industry

February 8, 2019 — Multiple rule-changes could be coming for Maine’s lucrative lobster industry from both the state and federal governments in the coming year.

At the federal level, concerns over entanglements with the endangered North Atlantic right whale have led fisheries managers to begin discussing what steps need to be taken by the lobster industry to avoid whale deaths. Currently there are just over 400 right whales left in the world, and high death rates in 2016 and 2017 have led rule makers to consider changes to gear requirements.

At a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council in Virginia, the lobster board voted unanimously to push forward a set of actions intended to reduce the amount of vertical lines from lobster traps in the water. Those changes could include lower limits on the number of traps that lobstermen are allowed to use, changes in gear configuration, and seasonal closures.

Read the full story at Seafood Source