Lobster Archives - Page 69 of 107

Fishery Management Council to Make Herring Trawler Decision

September 11, 2018 — An important decision for the future of the Atlantic Herring fishery will come this month from the New England Fishery Management Council.

The council will vote September 25 in Plymouth on a proposal that would push midwater trawlers at least 50 miles from the shores of Cape Cod.

The trawlers, which usually work in tandem, use very large nets to scoop up entire schools of herring, which has negatively impacted the local fishing industry and related economies.

Atlantic herring is a food source for many larger fish species and whales which feed in the area. Herring is also an important bait fish in the New England lobster industry.

Fishermen and local officials have urged fishery managers to impose a strict 50-mile buffer zone for the trawlers.

“They’ve removed so many of the herring from the waters that it’s really disrupted the entire ecosystem because there is not a solid forage base for other fish to feed on,” said Amanda Cousart, a policy analyst with the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Association.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

How New England’s Jonah Crab Turned From Garbage To Delicacy

September 6, 2018 — The Jonah crab is a medium-sized crab, ranging from brownish to reddish to greyish, boasting big claws tipped with black. During the winter, when most of the year’s crabs are caught along the Atlantic coast from Maine down to Rhode Island, it has an exceedingly hard shell, requiring a hammer or a saw to open. It’s mostly served as a plate of the large claws, with someone else taking care of scoring and cracking them open for the customer.

If this reminds you of Florida’s famed stone crab, which sells for about $30 a pound, you’re on the right track; the two species are very similar in appearance and even flavor. And yet until just a few years ago, the Jonah crab cost about $0.50 a pound. Or it was free. “Lobstermen would pull them up and in most cases have no idea what to do with the things, so they’d usually just throw them back,” says Bryan Holden, a partner at Luke’s Lobster who’s been right at the forefront of the Jonah crab’s transformation. (Luke is his brother.)

Jonah crabs are attracted to the same bait as lobsters, and are equally as flummoxed by lobster traps, so for decades, they were simply a bycatch. Maybe the lobstermen would bring them home themselves, or sell them for basically nothing to the small seafood shacks that spring up along any coast. Until about four years ago, there was no Jonah crab industry: few were processing it, and hardly anyone besides those who make their living from the sea in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine had even heard of it.

Read the full story at Modern Farmer

SEAN HORGAN: Of whale poop and lobster claws

September 4, 2018 — Well, Happy Labor Day. We hope you are celebrating by lying in a hammock, dozing in the sun while listening to a ballgame on the radio, taking a swim and any and all activities completely separated from the concept of work. Take the day. You’ve earned it. Even if you haven’t, we won’t spill.

As an homage to the chill, we’re going to abridge the top of the column, providing another piece to your day that doesn’t require much intellectual or emotional heavy lifting. I’m telling you, this Labor Day thing is the cat’s whiskers.

To the items:

Whale of a story

It feels as if any time we write about whales, it’s with a certain hand-wringing about their imperiled status. But there is another side to the coin and that is that the great beasts have been a constant and immensely pleasurable presence near the Cape Ann coastline all summer.

Our waters have been filled with the largest mammals of the sea from mid-spring. There was an early appearance of a dozen or so northern right whales, followed by humpbacks, minke and fin whales. We even heard from one Rockport lobsterman, whose name is being withheld because of his continued ties to the radical Weather Underground, of pilot whales feeding on schools of pogeys in as little as 9 feet of water hereabouts.

Perhaps you saw the story in the pages of the Gloucester Daily Times and online at gloucestertimes.com, where our intrepid correspondent, along with photographer Paul Bilodeau, journeyed out aboard a whale watch boat to check out all the hubbub.

Now comes a different type of whale story: how the scientific community is mustering even more arguments for protecting whales because of the benefits of their, well, poop.

According to the piece in Scientific American, a 2010 study showed whale feces injects about 23,000 metric tons of nitrogen into Gulf of Maine waters each year and conceivably could help with climate change.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

South Atlantic Fishery Management Council Meeting September 16-21, 2018

September 4, 2018 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

Members of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council will meet in September to address federal fishery management measures affecting offshore fisheries including snapper grouper, king and Spanish mackerel, spiny lobster, and habitat protection and ecosystem-based management. The meeting is open to the public unless otherwise specified, and public comment is now being accepted on agenda items.

Agendas, Overviews, and Briefing Materials:
The agenda for the week long meeting as well as individual committee agendas and helpful overviews are available from the Council meeting website. Documents, summaries, presentations, and other briefing materials for the meeting are also available.

Attend the Meeting via Webinar:
The meeting may be accessed via webinar each day as it occurs. Registration for each day is required. Register now and receive email reminders for the upcoming sessions.
– Monday, September 17 2:30 pm – 5 pm
– Tuesday, September 18 8:30 am – 5 pm
– Wednesday, September 19 8:30 am – 6 pm
– Thursday, September 20 8:30 am – 5 pm
– Friday, September 21 8:30 am – 12:00 pm

Public Comment:
Comments on agenda items may be submitted using the online comment form. The form allows Council members immediate access to all comments and gives others the opportunity to read comments as they are posted. The Council will also solicit public comment during the meeting beginning at 4:00 PM on Wednesday, September 19, 2018.

Agenda Highlights:
Final Approval: The Council is scheduled to approve four amendments for review by the Secretary of Commerce during the meeting. The amendments address vermilion snapper and black sea bass fishing levels, commercial king mackerel trip limits, use of bully nets in the spiny lobster fishery, and commercial measures as outlined in the Council’s Vision Blueprint for the Snapper Grouper Fishery.

Species Migration Northward
Representatives from the New England Fishery Management Council and the Mid-Atlantic Council will come together during the Habitat Protection and Ecosystem-Based Management Committee meeting to discuss changes in migratory patterns being observed as ocean temperatures continue to warm and other environmental changes occur.

Additional agenda highlights are available online. Access all of the meeting information, submit comments, and listen live as the meeting occurs.

Waters off New England in midst of record year for warmth

August 31, 2018 — The waters off of New England are already warming faster than most of the world’s oceans, and they are nearing the end of one of the hottest summers in their history.

That is the takeaway from an analysis of summer sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Maine by a marine scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland. The average sea surface temperature in the gulf was nearly 5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average during one 10-day stretch in August, said the scientist, Andy Pershing, who released the work Thursday.

Aug. 8 was the second warmest day in recorded history in the gulf, and there were other sustained stretches this summer that were a few degrees higher than the average from 1982 to 2011, Pershing said. He characterized this year as “especially warm” even for a body of water that he and other scientists previously identified as warming faster than 99 percent of the global ocean.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

Lobstermen Asked to Look Out for Tagged Crustaceans

August 29, 2018 — New England’s lobster fishermen are being asked to keep an eye out for tagged lobsters that are part of a survey of the valuable crustaceans.

The lobsters are tagged with green bars that say “SNECVTS” and black acoustic tags. They are part of a tagging program that’s part of a southern New England lobster study being conducted from May to November by Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation and the University of Rhode Island.

The study is designed to find out about lobster and Jonah crab abundance and distribution in the RI/MA Wind Energy Area, which is located south of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, in the area of Cox’s Ledge.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Chinese buyers hesitant to buy Alaska seafood as U.S. weighs another round of tariffs

August 28, 2018 — In the first round of what seems to be an escalating trade dispute between the U.S. and China, tariffs have been levied on billions of dollars worth of goods in both countries. The Alaska fishing industry, which harvests roughly 60 percent of all wild seafood in the U.S., has been caught in the crosshairs of that disagreement.

But it’s not the Chinese tariffs that’s giving the industry heartburn. It’s a proposed tariff on seafood imported from China.

The Alaska seafood industry has a unique relationship with China. Nearly $1 billion worth of Alaska seafood was exported into the country in 2017, but that’s just the first step in a global supply chain.

“So much of our exports to China are reprocessed and re-exported,” Garrett Everidge, a fisheries economist with the McDowell Group, said.

Everidge explains that after those fish are reprocessed, they’re exported into markets around the world, including the U.S. Although, it’s hard to discern from trade data just how much winds back up in the U.S. market.

China kept its relationship with the Alaska seafood industry in mind when it levied a 25 percent tariff on U.S. seafood earlier this summer.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

BETH CASONI: Canada needs to do more to protect right whales

August 28, 2018 — For generations, Massachusetts lobstermen have been part of a revered tradition of marine coexistence that has sustained a proud New England fishing industry and protected an ecosystem for marine mammals. Now, that coexistence is threatened and international action is needed.

The North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered and faces extinction within our lifetime. For centuries, these enormous and majestic animals have migrated through New England waters, but largely due to unintentional human harm from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, today the right whale population is estimated to be down to as few as 435. And the last year has been especially disastrous, with 17 confirmed right whale mortalities and no new calves sighted in the most recent calving season.

Now is the time for cooperative international intervention to turn this situation around and head off the preventable tragedy of extinction of this species.

For decades, the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association has worked in concert with conservation organizations like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the International Fund for Animal Welfare to be good stewards of the ocean and marine mammals. Facing serious concerns about how to make a living and keep businesses going, we work to find middle ground between our industry and the efforts of conservationists to advance the shared aims of all.

Over the years, regulators have imposed restrictions on U.S. Atlantic Coast fisheries in an effort to reduce harm to endangered species including the right whale. The MLA is proud of our history of adopting and complying with these requirements. To name a few: Vessels, aircraft or other approaches must be restricted within 500 yards of a right whale; and, all vessels 65 feet or longer must travel at 10 knots or less in certain locations along the East Coast of the United States at certain times of year to avoid collision with right whales.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fisheries and Climate Change: What’s Going On in New England?

August 28, 2018 — From cod to lobster, it’s no secret that New England’s fisheries are suffering at the hands of rising water temperatures and ecological shifts related to climate change. But, sometimes, it smacks you in the face.

This past week alone, a new assessment found no improvement in the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery, which has been closed for five years. And another study linked rising water temperatures to the spread of a shell disease that has hit lobsters in southern New England hard in recent years.

Andrew Pershing, the chief scientific officer for Gulf of Maine Research Institute shared his thoughts on what’s happening in the New England fisheries, and while it’s not great, it’s not all bad news.

“You have to really put lobster in Maine and New Hampshire and north-of-Cape-Cod in the winner category, where the warming over the last 30 years has been a real boon to that population and it’s helped them achieve the record catches that people in Maine have had over the last three or four years,” Pershing said.

But in southern New England, those warming waters have been the cause of a decline. They’re essentially making it too hot for baby lobsters to thrive, and now it also seems to be contributing to the spread of a lobster shell disease.

Read the full story at WCAI

Seafood industry counters PETA protest with anger, humor

August 27, 2018 — Anti-seafood advertising messages in a few U.S. and Canadian cities are gaining attention this summer – positive, negative, and humorous.

Timed before major summer seafood festivals, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)-sponsored billboards express the individuality of crustaceans. For example, the current billboard displayed in Baltimore, Maryland, which includes an image of a Maryland blue crab, states: “I’m me, not meat. See the individual. Go vegan.”

The billboard, near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and several seafood restaurants such as Phillips Seafood, McCormick & Schmick’s, and The Oceanaire Seafood Room, will be in place for the Baltimore Seafood Festival on 15 September.

In late July, PETA posted ads with the same message: ”I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan,” along with the image of a Maine lobster, on the concourse in the Portland International Jetport. The ads are near several airport restaurants, including Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster Cafe, which sells live lobsters.

A previous PETA investigation of Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster revealed that live lobsters were “impaled, torn apart, and decapitated – even as their legs continued to move,” PETA said in a statement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source