Saving Seafood

Economist says coastal restoration projects would pump billions into southeast Louisiana’s economy

October 17, 2019 — Two projects planned by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority will have a multibillion-dollar economic impact on southeast Louisiana, according to a report presented to the CPRA board Wednesday.

The CPRA expects to spend $1.8 billion over seven years on two controversial diversion projects that would redirect land-building sediment from the Mississippi River to Barataria Bay and Breton Bay.

“That’s a non-trivial sum of money, obviously,” said Loren Scott, an economist who studied the potential economic impact for the Restore the Mississippi Delta Campaign and The Environmental Defense Fund.

In the four-parish region that includes Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Orleans and Jefferson parishes, sales at businesses would increase by more than $3.1 billion while household earnings would increase more than $809 million, according to Scott’s projections.

Read the full story at KPVI

Record low Gulf Coast supply could jolt oyster prices

October 10, 2019 — This spring’s record-shattering flooding from the Mississippi River has wreaked historic havoc on oyster production in the Gulf of Mexico, which could reverberate for years to come with scant supply and hard-to-digest prices.

Louisiana, which bore the worst of the damage from too-low salinity and smothering algae blooms and historically accounts for 75 percent of Gulf harvests and 34 percent of U.S. harvests, is all but out of commission for this fall’s oyster harvest season.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US Commerce declares fishing disasters for 7 states

September 26, 2019 — U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has declared fishing disasters for seven states on three coasts.

“Fishing is the cornerstone of countless coastal economies and has been a way of life for generations of Americans,” he said in a brief news release Wednesday. “This determination acknowledges the critical role fisheries play in our communities, and the risks they face from natural disasters and other causes beyond their control.”

Ross’ action makes people and businesses eligible for NOAA fisheries disaster assistance. Congress has appropriated $165 million for such help for fiscal 2019 and the Commerce Department decides allocations to eligible fisheries, the statement said.

The statement said a regional disaster occurred for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because of “extreme flooding events in the Gulf of Mexico.” Alaska and California each had multiple requests approved; one for both Georgia and South Carolina will help shrimpers and shrimp processors. An unusually cold spell in January 2018 killed the vast majority of shrimp overwintering in estuaries, Erin Weeks, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, said in an email.

Read the full story at The Star Tribune

LOUISIANA: New seafood bill leaves business owners with a fishy taste in their mouths

September 17, 2019 — A new seafood bill is causing local restaurants to tell customers just how local their seafood is.

Signed by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on June 19, House Bill 335 requires restaurants that sell imported crawfish and shrimp to disclose where the seafood is coming from. According to the Louisiana Restaurant Association, businesses will have to disclose this information either on the restaurant’s menu or main entrance. Failure to comply with the new bill will cause any restaurant to receive a violation of the state’s sanitary code.

Having taken effect on Sept. 1, many business owners will not have to comply with this bill due to only selling domestic seafood. One such restaurant is Drago’s Seafood Restaurant.

According to Drago’s owner Tommy Cvitanovich, all of the shrimp and crawfish served there is local. However, Cvitanovich admitted that knowing exactly how local the seafood is can be a struggle and leads to many questions.

Read the full story at The Maroon

Gulf fisheries suffer major losses; recovery underway

September 6, 2019 — After devastating commercial fishery losses in Louisiana and Mississippi following freshwater intrusion from the Bonnet Carre Spillway opening earlier this year, officials are working on recovery efforts.

On 6 September, the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources (MDMR) and the University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast Research Laboratory released around 90,000 juvenile spotted seatrout (speckled trout) into Hancock County waters.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Miss. Coast will pay steep price in new plan to save Louisiana wetlands, fishermen warn

August 26, 2019 — Fishermen in South Louisiana have a warning for the Mississippi Coast: If you think the Bonnet Carré Spillway has wreaked havoc in the Mississippi Sound, just wait until Louisiana gets permission for a new diversion of Mississippi River water.

The fishermen in St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes say they have watched saltwater marshes, shrimp, oysters and fish disappear over the last decade because of Mississippi River diversions that flow continuously into the Breton Sound estuary.

They have been trying to fight the state of Louisiana’s plan for new river diversions that would flow into the Barataria Bay and Breton Sound estuaries south of New Orleans. The state is forging ahead with plans, claiming the diversions will build land along Louisiana’s coast, where wetlands the size of a football field sink into the water every 100 minutes.

Read the full story at The Sun Herald

Expect a busier-than-normal hurricane season, NOAA says

August 9th, 2019 –In an uptick from the preseason forecast, the Atlantic hurricane season now is expected to be above normal, with 10 to 17 named storms, including five to nine hurricanes, the Climate Prediction Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, announced Thursday.

Two to four of those hurricanes are forecast to be Category 3 or stronger, with winds greater than 110 mph, experts said, in line with the May prediction. Hurricane Barry hit Louisiana in July as a Category 1 storm.

“We expect conditions to be more favorable for storm development through the rest of the season,” Gerry Bell, the prediction center’s lead seasonal hurricane forecaster, told CNN.

The updated forecast was issued just ahead of the start of the most active hurricane period — the roughly eight weeks that surround September 10, when hurricane season hits its statistical peak.

Read the full story at CNN

NOAA: Request for Comments on Red Snapper Fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

August 8, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council (Gulf Council) developed six amendments to the Fishery Management Plan for Reef Fish Resources in the Gulf of Mexico (Reef Fish FMP) to allow the five Gulf of Mexico states some management authority for private angler red snapper recreational fishing. The Council has transmitted these Amendments to NOAA Fisheries.

  • NOAA Fisheries requests your comments regarding the changes these Amendments would make to Gulf of Mexico private recreational red snapper management in federal waters. Comments are due by October 7, 2019.
  • Amendment 50A includes actions that affect all states and Amendments 50B-F analyze actions specific to each Gulf of Mexico state (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Texas, respectively).
  • NOAA Fisheries will also publish a proposed rule to implement these changes and will send another Fishery Bulletin to request comments at that time. Comments on both the amendment and proposed rule will be considered in the final rule.

Read the full story at Fishing Wire

The Mississippi River Devastated Fisheries This Year. Some See It As A Preview Of The Future

August 7, 2019 — One of the ways the state plans to rebuild land on the Louisiana coast is by sediment diversions — diverting the silt, sand, and dirty waters of the Mississippi River into the marsh.

For years, many in the commercial fishing industry have claimed that the influx of freshwater funneled through diversions would ruin their industry. Now, some fishers feel they have proof: the damaging impacts of the 2019 Mississippi River Flood.

On a bayou in the St. Bernard Parish town of Yscloskey, George Barisich starts up his shrimp boat.

“Hear that?” he says, as the diesel engine below our feet roars to a start. “That’s the sound we want to hear.”

Barisich says that engine hasn’t gotten much use lately. There is no point in heading into the marsh when there aren’t any shrimp to catch.

“I’m 82 percent off on my brown shrimp,” he says of this season. “Eighty two. And there’s a lot of people just as bad.”

Read the full story at WWNO

Wind farms could one day power New Orleans, but high cost, other issues cause for concern

August 1, 2019 — For years, solar power has been the rallying cry of New Orleans City Council members aiming to chart a more sustainable energy future for New Orleans.

Its advocates have long said that solar panels — which now adorn a smattering of city rooftops and will soon populate a 200-acre site in New Orleans East — are cheaper and better suited to the coastal city than the giant windmills that create energy in other parts of the U.S.

But other renewable energy advocates, federal officials and representatives of the wind-power industry recently told a council committee that wind power ought to get a closer look, even if costs would need to fall sharply to make a wind farm in the Gulf of Mexico a viable future power source for New Orleans.

Read the full story at Nola.com