Saving Seafood

Canada looking to add flexibility to right whale protection measures

October 30, 2018 — Canadian authorities are seeking to add greater flexibility to fishing regulations put in place to protect critically endangered North American right whales.

At an industry roundtable in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, on Tuesday, 23 October, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Coast Guard (DFO) Jonathan Wilkinson signaled a willingness to lessen the severe restrictions placed on various fisheries in 2018 to protect the whales.

In 2017, the death of 12 right whales in Canadian waters prompted DFO to impose extreme measures on fishing, shipping, and maritime traffic for the 2018 season. No right whales died in Canadian waters during this period, and the stiff measures kept Canada’s fishery on the right side of U.S. marine mammal protection legislation, which helped maintain access to U.S. markets for Canadian suppliers. However, fishermen said the closures cost them millions of dollars.

In recent months, regulators, scientists, and fishermen have worked together to find an accommodation in procedures for protecting the right whales. As a result of this work, a new pilot project has been proposed for the Grand Manan lobster fishery. In 2018, the sighting of a single right whale caused a 15-day shutdown of the fishery. For 2019, it will be sufficient for the Grand Manan lobster fishermen to cut their trailing buoy when a right whale is spotted.

New Brunswick Crab fishermen, who work in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are hoping this potential new flexibility extends to them. Martin Noel of New Brunswick’s Acadian Crab Fishermen’s Association said his group supported that avenue.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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

Turning an invasive problem into a bait solution

October 25, 2018 — With concerns growing over a likely bait shortage in the lobster industry in Maine and Canada due to a drastic cut in the upcoming season’s herring quota, Nova Scotia resident Patrick Swim has a possible solution. Swim thinks he can solve the bait shortage by harvesting an invasive species.

Silver carp is one of the four species of the invasive Asian carp (silver, bighead, grass, and black) that have placed the Great Lakes water system at risk. Carp were brought to North America in the 1970s as a biological control of algae, plants, and snails in aquaculture sites. Subsequent flooding allowed them to escape their pens, which created a new problem for the environment and marine life. A mature meter-long carp can weight 40 kilograms and consume up to 40 percent of their body weight each day, which puts stress on resources for native species. They also reproduce rapidly.

Swim was intrigued by reports that silver carp are so disturbed by noise and vibration caused by boat motors that they jump up to three meters out of the water. While looking at this flying fish phenomenon, Swim, whose family have long fished lobster on Canada’s Cape Sable Island, had an idea to harvest the carp, freeze it, cut it into pieces and sell it as a cheap bait to East Coast lobster fishermen.

In the past decades, Asian carp have replaced native fish species in areas of the Mississippi River and its tributaries. Their advance towards the Great Lakes has spurred the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency to spend tens of millions of dollars annually trying to contain them. So far, electro-magnetic fields and fish fences have prevented all but a few carp from entering the lakes.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

ASMFC Atlantic Herring Board Initiates Draft Addenda to Protect Spawning Herring in Areas 1A and 3

October 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board initiated Draft Addenda II and III to Amendment 3 of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Herring to consider strengthening spawning protections in Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) and extending spawning protections to Area 3 (off of Cape Cod and Georges Bank). This action responds to the results of the 2018 Benchmark Stock Assessment which showed reduced levels of recruitment and spawning stock biomass over the past five years, with 2016 recruitment levels the lowest on record.

Currently, the Board uses a series of closures to protect spawning aggregations in the Gulf of Maine. These closures, which were implemented through Amendment 3, extend for four to six weeks; their timing is informed by samples which are used to project the start of spawning. Recent analysis by the Atlantic Herring Technical Committee found that while the current spawning closure system was significantly improved under Amendment 3, the protocol could continue to be strengthened by considering when, and for how long, a closure is initiated. Specifically, the analysis showed, under the current protocol, spawning closures are initiated when there are approximately 25% spawners in the fishery; greater protection could be provided by initiating a closure when a lower percentage of the population is spawning and extending the closure for a longer time. As a result, the Board initiated Draft Addendum II to consider these modifications to the Gulf of Maine spawning closure protocol.

In addition, the Board initiated Draft Addendum III to consider the establishment of a spawning protection program in Area 3. This management area encompasses Georges Bank and the back side of Cape Cod. While both are recognized as important spawning areas for herring, they do not currently have protections specific to spawning. By initiating this addendum, the Board seeks to protect spawning in this region in order to promote stock rebuilding.

Finally, to support future management of the stock, the Commission’s Executive Committee allocated funds to carry out sampling of the Atlantic herring fishery. This sampling will focus on investigating spatial and temporal spawning patterns in Georges Bank and Nantucket Shoals. For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

MAINE: Regulators moving to ban exotic bait that could threaten lobster fishery

October 23, 2018 — The American Lobster Management Board took a first step toward adopting regional bait safety rules, voting Monday to develop a resolution to prohibit the use of exotic baits that could introduce disease, parasites or invasive species to East Coast waters.

The board unanimously agreed on the need to shield native species, including the $1.4 billion Maine lobster industry, from the dangers posed by the mad scramble for new kinds of bait that may occur when regulators slash herring quotas next year.

This action came at the request of Maine Department of Marine Resources, which enacted its strict bait rules in 2013. But Commissioner Pat Keliher said risky bait is still finding its way into the Gulf of Maine through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Canada.

“This is one of the most serious issues we face as an organization,” Keliher told the board.

The board – which is part of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission – agreed to develop a bait safety resolution based on Maine’s rules that all lobstering states would enact by 2020 – a quick but voluntary fix. To get compliance, the board also plans to begin the slow process of adding bait safety to its lobster management plan.

The horseshoe crab board, for example, passed a similar resolution banning the use of Asian horseshoe crabs as bait. Most member states voluntarily honored the bait ban resolution, but New York continues to allow the practice, regulators noted.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Drastic cut to herring quota puts Maine lobstermen over the bait barrel

October 22, 2018 — The threat of a huge cut in next year’s herring catch quota has Maine bait dealers scrambling to find alternative ways to satisfy the voracious appetite of the state’s $1.4 billion lobster industry.

The New England Fishery Management Council voted last month to set the 2019 herring quota at 3.2 million pounds – about 78 million pounds less than what the East Coast herring fleet is permitted to catch this year – to help the population recover from a record-low number of juvenile herring. To put the cut in context, that is about 2,000 tractor-trailer trucks of the industry’s favorite bait that won’t be showing up in New England lobster ports next year.

“We knew we’d be losing a lot of herring quota since we first heard about the bad stock assessment, so we’ve had some time to prepare,” said Mary Beth Tooley, who oversees government and regulatory affairs for O’Hara Corp. in Rockland, Maine’s largest bait dealer. “We have someone out on the West Coast right now looking for new sources of frozen bait. But I don’t think people understand how bad it’s going to be.”

Some fishermen have told Tooley they aren’t worried about the bait shortage because they don’t use herring. Some have switched to pogy or rockfish because it fishes better for them, while others have weaned themselves off herring, or found ways to conserve bait use, because they saw the collapse coming. But as more fishermen look to other bait species, the prices of those species are likely to rise and their availability shrink, Tooley predicted.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Lower herring quotas squeeze lobster trade

October 19, 2018 — Nothing new, but for the fishing industry nothing is as constant as change.

Last year, according to the Department of Marine Resources, lobster was Maine’s most valuable fishery with landings of 110,819,760 pounds — the sixth highest ever — worth some $450,799,283.

Despite all the talk about high value species such as scallops and elvers, according to DMR herring were the state’s second most valuable commercial fishery in 2017.

Herring boats like the Sunlight and the Starlight owned by the O’Hara Corp. in Rockland or the Portland-based trawler Providian landed some 66,453,073 pounds of herring worth about $17.9 million at a record price of 27 cents per pound.

Most of those landings went to the dealers who supply herring — the primary source of bait for the lobster industry — to fishermen up and down the coast. And most of those herring came from what is known as “Area 1-A,” the inshore waters of the Gulf of Maine.

All that is going to change.

Faced with data that indicates the herring population, an important source of food for whales, tuna and seabirds, among other species, regulators at the New England Fisheries Management Council last week recommended drastic steps to reduce the amount of herring that fishermen will be allowed to catch.

If approved by NOAA Fisheries, the 2019 landings quota for herring would be set at just 14,558 metric tons (about 32 million pounds). That cut comes on top of an already sharp reduction imposed this past summer.

In the middle of the year, the quota was cut by more than half, from 110,000 metric tons (242.5 million pounds) to about 50,000 metric tons (some 110.2 million pounds).

Maine lobstermen were already worried about what last summer’s cut would do to bait availability. Last week’s decision suggests that herring will be in extremely short supply and that what is available will be extremely expensive.

In 2013, Maine Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Patrice McCarron said, fishermen were paying $30 a bushel for bait. Last summer, a bushel cost about $45 on the coast, $60 on the islands.

On the O’Hara Lobster Bait website this week, the price of herring was quoted at $175 for a 400-pound barrel (44 cents per pound) or $690 for an 1,800-pound tank (about 38 cents per pound).

Whatever the cost, lobstermen use a lot of bait — thousands of pounds in a year.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

ASMFC: 77th Annual Meeting Supplemental Materials Now Available

October 17, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Supplemental materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 77th Annual Meeting are now available at http://www.asmfc.org/home/2018-annual-meeting for the following Boards/Committees (click on “Supplemental” following each relevant committee header to access the information). For ease of access, supplemental materials have been combined into one PDF – http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/77AnnualMeeting/2018AnnualMeetingCombined_Supplemental.pdf

American Lobster Management Board – Revised Agenda & Meeting Overview; ME DMR letter on NOAA Technical Memorandum on North Atlantic Right Whales—Evaluating Their Recovery Challenges in 2018; Memo on Recent Meeting of Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team; American Lobster FMP Review; and Report of the Electronic Reporting Subcommittee

Atlantic Herring Management Board – Memo on 2019 Specifications for Area 1A; Amendment 3 Spawning Re-Closure Protocol; and Public Comment

Strategic Planning Workshop – Draft Agenda & Summary of Strategic Planning Workgroup Meeting

Business Session – Draft 2019 Action Plan & Anticipated Board Activities for High Priority Species

Coastal Sharks Management Board – Advisory Panel Meeting Summary

Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Public Comment

Executive Committee – Draft Recommendations for Revising the Appeals Process & Awards Committee SOPPs

Weakfish Management Board – FMP Review

Horseshoe Crab Management Board – FMP Review & Public Comment

ISFMP Policy Board – Revised Draft Agenda & Meeting Overview; Public Comment; and Living Shorelines Factsheet

South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board – Public Comment Summary on Cobia PID (including hearing overviews and submitted comment); Black Drum, Spotted Seatrout and Spanish Mackerel FMP Reviews; Advisory Panel Nomination

As a reminder, Board proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning October 22nd at 8:30 a.m. and continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 1 p.m.) on Thursday, October 25th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board/section deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible. Please go to https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4350173068754736387 to register.

 

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Proposed lobster rules not based on science

October 16, 2018 — A scientific paper that called for stricter regulations on Maine’s lobster fishery to protect endangered right whales plainly illustrates a two-sided problem.

We need policymakers who will rely on science. And they need science that they can rely on. If either side of the equation is missing, nothing works.

When we talk about climate change, we are used to politicians who ignore the science. But this time, it was the scientists who let us down.

A report issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in advance of a big regulatory conference singled out stronger ropes, which, they said, are being used by Maine lobstermen and are entangling whales as they migrate through Maine waters.

The report’s authors proposed more gear changes and possible closures in some areas to respond to a rising number of whale deaths. They attributed the fatal entanglements to an unintended consequence of earlier regulations, which limited the number of vertical lines in the water, thus requiring longer strings of traps. “While this reduced the number of lines, it also meant that lines had to be stronger to accommodate the increased load of multiple traps,” the report’s authors wrote.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

With right whales at risk of extinction, regulators consider drastic action that could affect lobstermen

October 16, 2018 — With North Atlantic right whales increasingly at risk of extinction, federal regulators are considering drastic protection measures that could have sweeping consequences for the region’s lucrative lobster industry.

The species is in dangerous decline, with a record 17 right whale deaths and no recorded births last year, and entanglements in fishing gear are believed to be the leading cause of premature deaths. Three have died in US waters this year, including one 35-foot-long whale found Sunday about 100 miles east of Nantucket, federal officials said.

In an effort to protect the dwindling species, regulators last week hosted a series of often emotional meetings with fishermen, environmental advocates, and other federal and state officials about what to do.

The goal is to find a way to protect the whales while limiting the impact on lobstermen, who have hundreds of thousands of fishing lines that extend from their traps on the seafloor to their buoys on the surface of the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe