Saving Seafood

Louisiana governor: Upriver floods a disaster for fisheries

June 18, 2019 — Louisiana’s governor says floodwaters from the Midwest are severely hurting people who make their living from coastal seafood, so he’s asking the federal government to declare a fisheries disaster for the state.

Floodwaters rushing from the Bonnet Carré Spillway north of New Orleans have killed oysters, hurt fish catches and damaged livelihoods, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

The fresh water has driven crabs, shrimp and fish out of bays and marshes and into saltier water where they can survive. But oysters are stuck — glued to the bottom.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, we are 9-and-a-half destroyed,” said Brad Robin, whose family controls about 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of oyster leases in Louisiana waters.

The full impact won’t be known for some time because the spillway, which protects New Orleans’ levees by directing huge amounts of Mississippi River water into usually brackish Lake Pontchartrain, remains open, Edwards said in a letter sent Thursday and released Monday.

If a long-range forecast of little rain holds up, spillway closing might begin in about four weeks, Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Matt Roe said Monday.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

LOUISIANA: Seafood industry pushes to make federal aid available

May 31, 2019 — Louisiana lieutenant governor and several Louisiana seafood industry groups are seeking to ensure that fishermen and harvesters affected by the Morganza Spillway’s opening can apply for federal aid to help them recover.

The Army Corps of Engineers is scheduled to open the spillway June 6, sending massive amounts of water from the Mississippi River into the Atchafalaya Basin. The action aims to relieve pressure on Mississippi River levees that protect cities along its route, including New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

But Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser and seafood industry representatives said today that pushing an estimated 1.5 million cubic-feet-per-second of rushing freshwater into a fragile ecosystem of more than 100 species of fish and aquatic life threatens the species and the fishermen, harvesters and businesses that depend on them.

“The opening of the Morganza Spillway will cause severe damage to the Atchafalaya Basin, our nation’s largest estuary,” Nungesser wrote in a letter he sent today to Gov. John Bel Edwards and Louisiana’s congressional delegation.

“The opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway earlier this year already has negatively impacted seafood in Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Borgne,” he said. “New fresh water flow into the basin will further impact the livelihoods of thousands of Gulf fisherman, as well as crawfish and oyster farmers. My office is also asking Congress to include assistance for the seafood industry in any future disaster recovery bills.”

Louisiana’s seafood industry is likely to be negatively impacted for months and potentially years, Nungesser said in a news release.

Read the full story at Houma Today

Suppliers Challenge Texas Law Targeting Shark Sales

February 20, 2019 — Sharks caught in U.S. waters are dressed in short order, fins are removed and carcasses are packed in trucks bound for Mexico. But an unconstitutional Texas law mandating sharks remain intact has cut off the Mexican market, shark-meat purveyors claim in a federal lawsuit.

Texas-based Ochoa Seafood Enterprises Inc. says in the complaint filed Tuesday in Houston federal court that its business depends on shark meat.

It gets 60 percent of its income from buying the meat from dealers in Louisiana, Florida and North Carolina and shipping all of it in refrigerated trucks through Texas to clients in Mexico City, where it’s filleted and put on grocery store shelves and restaurant menus.

But the company hit a snag last July when a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department agent contacted its owner and said an inspection of its refrigerated truck at the Mexico border had revealed it was shipping shark carcasses with the fins and tails removed in violation of Texas law.

Joined by its shark-meat supplier, Louisiana-based Venice Seafood LLC, and the trade group Sustainable Shark Alliance, Ochoa Seafood sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Executive Director Carter Smith.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Trump’s signature gives 26% boost to imported seafood inspections

February 19, 2019 — Don’t be surprised to see more scrutiny by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of imported seafood over the next few months thanks to the inclusion of Senate language in the final fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills signed by president Donald Trump on Friday.

The legislation retains language earlier argued for by Louisiana Republican senators John Kennedy and William Cassidy that requires FDA spend at least $15 million on its inspections of imported seafood during the fiscal year, a $3.1m, or 26%, increase over fiscal 2018.

The US government’s fiscal year ends on Sept. 30, meaning the impact could be felt shortly.

The Senate voted, 83-16, on Thursday afternoon to approve a legislative package that included seven spending measures, and the House followed suit with a 300-128 vote later in the evening. Trump’s signature on Friday ended the months-long budget standoff tied to his efforts to secure funding for a wall on the southern border, though a battle now is expected to begin over his much-reported national emergency declaration.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Interior announces region-wide oil and gas lease sale for Gulf

February 15, 2019 — The Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that BOEM will offer 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2019. The sale would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lease Sale 252, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program). Under this program, 10 region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the Gulf, where resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas infrastructure is well established. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.

Lease Sale 252 will include approximately 14,696 unleased blocks, located from three to 231 miles offshore, in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from 9′ to more than 11,115′ (three to 3,400 meters). The following areas are excluded from the lease sale: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006; blocks adjacent to or beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap; and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

The Gulf of Mexico OCS, covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.

Revenues received from OCS leases (including high bids, rental payments and royalty payments) are directed to the U.S. Treasury, certain Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund.

Read the full story at Workboat

Gulf Shrimp Landings Fall Below 2017 Average for Second Month in a Row

February 7, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Gulf shrimp landings have fallen below both the 2017 figure and the prior eight-year average for the second month in a row. According to seafood market reporter Jim Kenny, the drop below the eight-year average has actually occurred 8 out of 11 months this year.

Due to the government shutdown, the National Marine Fisheries Service just released numbers for November 2018 and landings for all species, headless came in at 8.207 million lbs. To compare, landings in November 2017 hit 8.898 million lbs. The cumulative total now stands at 89.971 million lbs.; 3.7 million pounds or four percent below the January – November 2017 total of 93.681 million lbs. Compared to the prior eight-year average, November 2018 landings are 10 percent lower.

November’s low Gulf shrimp landings come after the lowest reported commercial shrimp harvest in the Gulf of Mexico for any October. The Southern Shrimp Alliance reported that only 10.4 million pounds were harvested in October 2018, a 30% drop from the 16-year historical average for October landings. In October low volumes were being blamed on a lack of reporting of any shrimp landings from the West Coast of Florida, as well as the reporting of only 3.6 million pounds of shrimp from Louisiana. For comparison, the 16-year-historical average for Louisiana landings in October is 7.7 million pounds.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

Shutdown might delay state management vote

January 28, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council opens its first 2019 meeting Monday in Orange Beach, Alabama, but its 17 members might not be able to take final votes on two key items.

Reef Fish Amendment 50, the hot-button item to hand recreational red snapper management to the five Gulf States, was scheduled for a final vote during the meeting’s run through Thursday.

A Gulf Council release explained, “Due to the partial government shutdown, the required Federal Register Notice was not published in advance of this meeting. As a result, the Council will not be able to take final action.”

The government re-opened Friday.

The other item is a move to move charterboat skippers into a new Federal Charter/Headboat Permits system.

The four-day agenda begins with committee meetings from 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Monday, and the Reef Fish Committee dominates Tuesday’s schedule and into Wednesday morning. The full council will meet from 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Wednesday with public comments taken from 1:30-4:30 p.m. before a 4:45-5:30 p.m. closed session and a full council meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday.

Read the full story at The Advocate

Haddock broadline sales up, prices likely to rise

January 23, 2019 — Haddock, a species that for decades has largely been popular in New England and the Middle Atlantic, is starting to proliferate down the U.S. East Coast, according to the latest data.

Broadline sales of haddock increased in nearly every U.S. market between 2016 and 2018. At the low end, sales in the “East North Central” area stayed relatively flat, while sales in the West South Central region of the U.S. (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) increased by 92 percent.

Broadline sales everywhere else increased too: Middle Atlantic by seven percent, South Atlantic by 21 percent, Mountain-Pacific by 44 percent, West North Central by 49 percent, and East South Central by 48 percent.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

NOAA Seeks Comment on Changes to Charter/Headboat Reporting Requirements

December 6, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries has proposed a new rule that would modify reporting requirements for owners or operators of vessels with a federal Gulf charter/headboat reef fish permit or Gulf charter/headboat coastal migratory pelagics permit. These proposed changes would require the owner or operator of a vessel with one of these permits to:

  • Electronically declare (hail-out) a fishing trip before leaving port.
  • Submit an electronic fishing report for each trip prior to the vessel offloading fish, or within 30 minutes after the end of the trip if no fish are landed.
  • Install NOAA Fisheries-approved hardware/software with global positioning system (GPS) capabilities that, at a minimum, archive vessel position data and transmit data to NOAA Fisheries. This requirement would not preclude the use of GPS devices that provide real-time location data or vessel monitoring systems (VMS). The GPS portion of the hardware must be permanently affixed to the vessel and turned on at all times, unless a power-down exemption is granted.
  • Comply with these reporting requirements no matter where the vessel is fishing.

You can submit comments electronically via https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=NOAA-NMFS-2018-0111 or by mail to:

Rich Malinowski

Southeast Regional Office, NMFS

263 13th Avenue South

St. Petersburg, Florida 33701

Comments are due January 9, 2019.

NOAA Fisheries will review public comments and modify the proposed changes if necessary then submit the rule to the Secretary of Commerce for review and approval. If the Secretary of Commerce approves the rule, NOAA Fisheries would implement the changes in phases during 2019.

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council approved these changes to improve data collection and fisheries management. NOAA Fisheries has compiled several Frequently Asked Questions on these proposed changes. For more information, contact Chris Schieble at cschieble@wlf.la.gov or 504-284-2035.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries is charged with managing and protecting Louisiana’s abundant natural resources. For more information, visit us at www.wlf.la.gov. To receive email alerts, signup at http://www.wlf.la.gov/signup.

Read the full release here

Gulf of Mexico Oysters are in Trouble, but There’s Hope and a Plan

November 28, 2018 — Oysters in the Gulf of Mexico have seen better days.

Aside from the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in 2010 — which killed between 4 and 8.3 billion adult oysters, according to NOAA — changes in freshwater flow along the Gulf and sedimentation caused by more frequent storms have taken their toll on the Gulf’s oyster population.

But all hope is not lost. In fact, there’s even a plan, according to a report by environmental organization The Nature Conservancy (TNC).

Compared to historic levels, an estimated 85 percent of the Gulf’s oyster population has been lost, and the impact ranges further than the $100-million-per-year market they provide.

Oyster beds in the Gulf are vital in improving water quality, providing protection from shoreline erosion and serving as a habitat for fish and wildlife.

The impact of waves, boat wakes and storm surge on the Gulf’s shoreline is reduced by oyster reefs. Reefs are also unique in that they can continue to grow to keep up with or even outpace sea level rise, according to an entry in the journal Nature, something hard sea walls can’t do.

Additionally, a single oyster can filter 50 gallons of water in one day. In places like Galveston Bay, a 130-acre reef containing 10 oysters per square meter would be capable of filtering about 260 million gallons of water each day. In comparison, Houston’s 39 wastewater treatment plants combined to filter 252 million gallons per day in 2009, according to Texas Parks and Wildlife.

Read the full story at The Weather Channel