Saving Seafood

Mysterious Lobster Deaths In Cape Cod Raise Climate Change Concern

October 24, 2019 — Last month, lobstermen in Cape Cod Bay hauled up something disturbing. In one section of the bay, all of their traps were full of dead lobsters. Research biologists went to work trying to solve the mystery, and what they found suggests we may see more of this as the climate changes.

When the fishermen first started pulling up traps full of dead lobsters, their first call was to Beth Casoni of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

“As you can imagine, they were concerned — greatly concerned — because they didn’t know how they died or why they died,” Casoni said.

Over the next five days or so, she got more calls about dead animals in the traps.

“And it wasn’t just lobsters,” she said. “It was skate and flounder and ling, which is an eel.”

Casoni called the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which sent divers out to take a look at the seafloor in the area.

“The fishermen were fearful that there would have been a mass die-off and the bottom would be littered with carnage,” Casoni said. “And the division was happy to report that they did not see any mass die-off in the area.”

Read the full story at WGBH

FLORIDA: Commercial lobster boats can have undersized lobster onboard. But not this many, police said

October 11, 2019 — A Keys fisherman was jailed Wednesday after police said his commercial boat, called “That’s Right,” had more undersized lobsters than he was allowed to keep on his boat temporarily.

Kent Alexander Quinn Downs, 33, of Marathon, was arrested on a felony charge of destroying evidence, and misdemeanor charges of interference with an officer and 11 counts of possession of undersized lobster.

Quinn Downs on Thursday remained at the Marathon jail without bond. He has a court date set for Oct. 24.

At about 1:45 p.m., a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission Officer Joshua Peters was patrolling the East Bahia Honda Channel off Big Pine Key and stopped the lobster boat for a marine inspection.

Read the full story at The Miami Herald

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobsters, fish fall victim to low oxygen levels in Cape Cod Bay

October 4, 2019 — Two weeks ago, lobstermen working off Scorton Creek started seeing something they had never experienced. Lobsters, in fact everything in their traps, were coming up dead.

Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries senior biologist Robert Glenn started fielding phone calls from puzzled fishermen Sept. 23. The fishermen were worried there might be something in the water that was killing the lobsters, fish, shellfish, even sea worms.

It turns out, it was something missing from the water: oxygen.

For the past two weeks, division researchers and scientists from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown have boarded vessels and taken water samples, gathered temperature data at various depths and measured the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. Preliminary results from testing on dozens of dead lobsters found nothing toxic in the water that could have killed them, and the focus was on a phenomenon that occurs every year — low oxygen in the layer of water along the ocean bottom, Glenn said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Truro lobsterman says rules to protect right whales costly to his business

September 30, 2019 — Cheryl Souza is ending her lobster sales after October.

But third-generation lobsterman Billy Souza, as it turns out, is considering quitting as well.

“It’s all the whale issues,” Souza said. Unlike the lobstering in the days of Souza’s grandfather, Frank Souza, and his father, William Souza, the current generation fishing off Cape Cod is under an intense and unique scrutiny. That scrutiny is directly linked to the increasing focus by federal and state regulators on imperiled North Atlantic right whales, which are dying or suffering debilitating injuries due to entanglement in fishing rope.

“We have the whale watch boats here, and we have the Division of Marine Fisheries that does flyovers all the time,” said Souza, 66. “The whales could get entangled anywhere in the world, but there’s so many eyes on them here it looks like we’re the bad guys and we’re not.” On any given early spring day, at least two to three right whale research vessels can be found in Cape Cod Bay, where the whales feed through May and then migrate northward to Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MAINE: Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve gets grant for lobster research

September 13, 2019 — The Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve will receive about $250,000 over two years to study how warming coastal waters are affecting lobsters in the Gulf of Maine, the National Sea Grant Office has announced.

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than most waters around the world.

Since lobsters thrive in cold water, this warming trend has raised concerns about the future of the Gulf’s lobster fishery. Southern New England has already seen dramatic declines in lobster counts and the fishery there is in jeopardy.

“Lobsters prefer cold water and will move to deeper, offshore areas to find it,” said Jason Goldstein, research director at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. “We plan to discover how the inshore and offshore movements of female lobsters are affected by warming waters, and whether their young can settle and grow in shallow nursery habitats as coastal waters become warmer.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NOAA Fisheries Seeks Comments on a Control Date for the American Lobster Fishery

August 22, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is seeking comments on a control date (a date that may be used to establish eligibility) of April 29, 2019 for the American lobster fishery, as we consider ways to reduce threats of entanglement by fixed-gear fisheries to North Atlantic right whales.

In April 2019, NOAA Fisheries convened the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team (TRT) to discuss management measures to reduce the risk of serious injury and entanglement of endangered whales in fishing gear. At the meeting, the New England states and the offshore lobster industry committed to reducing the risk of serious injury and mortality from lobster gear to the North Atlantic right whale by 60 percent in all lobster management areas. The specific measures to achieve this goal are not yet finalized, but will focus on reducing the number, and lowering the breaking strength of, vertical lines used in the lobster trap fishery.

Following the TRT meeting the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s  Lobster Management Board established a control date of April 29, 2019, and recommended that NOAA Fisheries do the same for federal waters.

Read the full release here

New Jersey weighs measures to protect lobsters as harvests shrink

July 25, 2019 — The US east coast state of New Jersey is undertaking a “full review of its lobster management” practices, including possible changes to the minimum size, following a continued drop in landings, the New Jersey Evening Post reports this week.

The state landed just 193 metric tons in 2018, down even from the 268t harvested in 2011, according to the newspaper. However, lobster remains New Jersey’s most valuable commercial species, with its landings accounting for about half of the fishing fleet’s annual income.

That was $190.5 million in 2017, down from $193.0m in 2017, according to the latest available data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The current review is looking at all management measures and has had input from scientists and fisheries managers in  European countries, according to the newspaper, which notes that several harvesters have been taken to court recently for exceeding minimum catch sizes.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen rally against delay in opening season

May 10, 2019 — South Shore lobstermen rallied Thursday morning at Town Wharf to protest the decision by the state Division of Marine Fisheries to delay the opening of the season until May 14 to protect right whales.

“There’s a lot of people that are suffering with this closure,” said rally organizer Sheryl Holmes, whose husband, Roscoe “Stoney” Holmes, is a commercial lobsterman who owns the F/V Haley’s Comet out of Plymouth.

The seasonal speed reductions and trap-gear bans imposed by the state to protect right whales typically end May 1, but have been extended first to May 8, and now to May 14.

Read the full story from the Cape Cod Times at the Patriot Ledger

Despite tariff impacts, Maine lobster market remains robust

March 15, 2019 — Just over eight months since the start of a trade war between China and the United States, the Maine lobster industry is still coping with the affects of a 25 percent tariff on their goods.

Maine had been on track to more than double the value of exports to China, with USD 87 million (EUR 76.9 million) worth of the crustacean being sold through June 2018, compared to roughly half that value through the same period in 2017. However, once China implemented a 25 percent tariff on a wide list of goods from the U.S., shipments of live lobster from Maine to China plummeted to the point that they were almost nonexistent compared to the start of the year – and things haven’t changed much since then.

“The tariff story has dominated the media, and lobster has been the case study,” Annie Tselikis, executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers’ Association, told SeafoodSource. “We’ve been vocal about it because it really has impacted the business.”

The market, which had seen explosive growth in the past few years, suddenly dried up overnight, for reasons completely out of the hands of Maine companies shipping live lobsters to China.

Even with the challenges, however, companies that focused on live lobster shipments have managed to make up ground by re-focusing efforts in other areas.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Black sea bass gobbling up lobsters

March 12, 2019 — Black sea bass, a saltwater fish taken commercially and recreationally in Massachusetts, have increased in number throughout southern New England waters and rattled the lobster industry with their wolfish appetites.

“They feed aggressively,” Rutgers University marine biologist Olaf Jensen said. “They’re not picky eaters. If it’s the right size and it’s alive, they’ll eat it.”

The young of New England’s iconic crustacean fall into the right size category. “Black sea bass love little lobsters,” Michael Armstrong, assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said.

That’s of deep concern to Beth Casoni, president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, who says lobster traps are being pillaged by these fish. They are often hauled up with the bass inside the traps, alongside lobsters they couldn’t fit in their mouths, she said. Even more concerning to Casoni is their alleged habit of picking off undersize lobsters tossed overboard by lobstermen.

Read the full story at The Martha’s Vineyard Times