Saving Seafood

Restoration projects seek to fight “tragic” decline in Gulf of Mexico oyster population

November 19, 2018 — Last week, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources officially moved to cancel the state’s wild oyster season, which would have run from November through April.

Exploratory dives at oyster harvesting grounds had revealed a continued steep decline in the number of oysters in the state’s waters. Last year’s season was curtailed after fishermen harvested just 136 110-pound sacks of oysters, down from 7,000 sacks in 2013, according to the Associated Press.

Scott Bannon, director of the Marine Resources Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said the findings revealed the apparent collapse of the region’s oyster ecology.

“It’s tragic, to be honest,” Bannon told AL.com.

Numerous factors have dealt blows not just to Alabama’s oyster grounds, but those of the entire Gulf of Mexico. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill, hurricanes, disease, and changes in freshwater flows to Gulf rivers and streams have collectively damaged the fishery to the point where up to 85 percent of the gulf’s original oyster reefs no longer remain intact.

According to a new report by The Nature Conservancy, “Oyster Restoration in the Gulf of Mexico,” this dramatic decline has damaged the stability and productivity of the Gulf’s estuaries and harmed coastal economies.

Seth Blitch, the director of coastal and marine conservation in Louisiana for The Nature Conservancy, told SeafoodSource the oyster habitat and the oyster fishery “is not in a particularly good place right now,” which could spell bigger problems for the region.

“Oysters, to me, are a great proxy to a lot of things,” he said. “If oysters are doing well, that’s a good indication of good water quality and of the health entire near-shore estuarine system. When oysters start to fail, that’s good indication there are larger issues at play.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Louisiana inside red snapper limit; Florida, Alabama go over

November 5, 2018 — If Chad Courville didn’t physically show how upset he is with recent catch data posted for each of the five Gulf states, his words certainly did during Thursday’s Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission monthly meeting in Baton Rouge.

Courville, one of the commission’s seven, took note of a report indicating Florida’s recreational fishermen caught 113.5 percent of its allowed red snapper catch during its 40-day season. Alabama’s report was 100.2 percent.

“The MRIP numbers are insane,” Courville said, mentioning the federal Marine Resources Information Program data showing Alabama might have taken as much as four million pounds of snapper and its state agency reported on pounds of red snapper during the recreational season.

Meanwhile, Louisiana, using its highly accredited and federally approved LA Creel system, showed its state anglers took 99.2 percent of its allowed 700,000-pound-plus red snapper allowed limit. Mississippi reported at 95.6 percent while Texas’ numbers are not final because the Lone Star State continues to hold its state waters open to red snapper catches.

Read the full story at The Advocate

 

Bipartisan aquaculture bill filed in US House

October 1, 2018 — American aquaculture supporters scored a victory late last week as two U.S. congressmen announced the filing of a bill that would give the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration regulatory authority over fish farming in federal waters.

U.S. Reps. Steven Palazzo (R-Mississippi) and Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota) introduced the Advancing the Quality and Understanding of American Aquaculture, or AQUAA, Act in a joint statement on Friday 28 September. The House bill is a companion piece to a bill with the same name filed earlier this year by U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).

It also comes just days after a federal judge in Louisiana ruled that NOAA Fisheries could not use the Magnuson-Stevens Act to regulate aquaculture in offshore waters.

Prior to that ruling, aquaculture supporters touted the AQUAA Act as a way to streamline the process for which developers received permits for such projects. The procedure, which could require approvals from such agencies as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Department of Transportation, was seen as expensive and burdensome as agencies sometimes could not agree which one should take the lead.

“The United States does not have a comprehensive, nationwide permitting system for marine aquaculture in federal waters. Our bill seeks to rectify this by establishing an office under NOAA that would be charged with coordinating the federal permitting process,” Palazzo said. “It would also fund research and extension services for several existing aquaculture priorities.”

Palazzo had been lined up to be the Republican sponsor of the bill for weeks as an industry trade group sought support from the Democratic side. Stronger America Through Seafood touted Peterson’s bona fides in a statement shortly after the bill was announced.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Committee votes to let states receive more money from offshore drilling

September 14, 2018 — A House committee voted Thursday to increase the money coastal states receive from offshore oil and natural gas drilling off their coasts.

The bill, from Rep. Garrett Graves (R-La.), would give Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama half of the fee and royalty payments that companies give the federal government to drill for oil and gas in a set of new wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

That would be an increase from the current 37.5 percent, which last year amounted to 0.4 percent of the government’s total income from offshore drilling going to Louisiana last year, or $11 million, Graves said.

At a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee, Graves framed the issue as one of shoring up states’ coasts. All of the money Louisiana gets from offshore drilling goes to coastal resilience, and Graves said his bill would mandate a quarter of the money go for that purpose for all four states.

“We’ve got to stop the stupidity of spending billions of dollars after disasters instead of millions before,” Graves said.

The panel passed the bill by voice vote after an intense debate over whether Gulf states should get special treatment for the drilling that occurs off their shores.

In one exchange, Rep. Raul Grijalva (Ariz.), the panel’s top Democrat, wanted the money to go to all coastal states for resilience, not just the Gulf of Mexico ones.

Read the full story at The Hill

Will Louisiana’s shrimpers strike? ‘It’s a last resort’

August 28, 2018 — Acy Cooper bought his first shrimping vessel, an old wooden flatboat, when he was 15.

Cooper followed his father and grandfather before him into the rich gumbo Gulf of Mexico waters from the fishing community of Venice on the coast of southern Louisiana.

Today Cooper and his two sons and son-in-law operate two Laffite skiffs — one 35-footer and one 30-footer — docked in the same community for another generation.

But although many American business owners are bracing for potential negative impacts of a trade war triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Cooper and his fellow shrimpers are pleading for such protections as foreign producers dump shrimp in the U.S. and cratering prices in the process.

In fact, earlier this month, about 200 members of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, of which Cooper is president, threatened to go on strike without some action either from the Gulf Coast processors who buy their shrimp or from the president in the forms of tariffs or quotas.

“We were getting $1 a pound in the 1980s; now we’re getting 55 cents,” Cooper said as he prepared to spend another night on his boat casting his skimmer nets during the white shrimp season that began in August. “(Striking) is a last resort, but we have to show the processors we’re not going to work for nothing. Our communities are dying.”

During the shrimpers’ meeting in Houma one yelled, according to a nola.com report, “How many heard (Trump) say ‘make America great again’? Make shrimping great again!”

Read the full story at the Monroe News Star

ALABAMA: 8 years after Deepwater Horizon, beaches look good, but are they really?

August 24, 2018 — Cory Phipps didn’t know what to expect on the family vacation to the Alabama Gulf Coast this year.

The last time he visited Gulf Shores and Orange Beach was 2008, some 2 years before the Deepwater Horizon oil spill sparked an environmental and economic disaster of monumental proportions.

“We were hoping it would be nice,” the Gadsden resident said in late-July, as he frolicked in the waters off Gulf State Park with his daughters Rory and Tory. “Of course we had heard about the oil spill and all the trouble it caused. But just look around, it’s beautiful. We like Gulf Shores much more than Panama City and some of the other beaches. It’s more family friendly down here.”

On April 20, 2010, an explosion and fire on the Deepwater oil well set in motion what  many experts have called the greatest marine ecological disaster in history. The offshore well was about 40 miles south of Louisiana. The fire and explosion took 11 lives on the rig. And when the gushing well was declared sealed on Sept. 19, 2010, 4.9 million barrels of oil (or about 210 million gallons) had poured into the Gulf, according to U.S. government estimates.

Fisheries and beaches were closed as the oil spill migrated north and east along the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle coasts. Hotels and condos went empty and cities that rely on tourism, such as Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, became veritable ghost towns at the height of the season.

Read the full story at the Montgomery Advertiser

Red snapper: Unusual experiment in Gulf of Mexico may ripple nationwide

August 8, 2018 — An unusual experiment playing out in the Gulf of Mexico is not only helping defuse the nation’s most politically charged fishing dispute but also advancing a new way of managing one of the country’s most popular pastimes.

Federal regulators and the five Gulf states – Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas – are sharing oversight of red snapper, the reef fish prized by private anglers and seafood lovers across the United States.

Congress last year created the two-year pilot program, known as the “experimental fishing permit” program. It grants states the day-to-day authority to manage red snapper seasons for recreational fishing in U.S. waters as far as 200 miles from the shoreline. Normally, state jurisdiction extends to no more than 9 miles off the coast.

The catch: States are in charge but they must follow strict federal fisheries rules and close the season once they’ve reached their quota.

For environmental groups, it means tougher protections apply to the entire red snapper habitat, including state waters. For the federal government, it’s a chance to test ways of counting fish in an attempt to settle once and for all just how many there are swimming around the Gulf. And for recreational anglers, it means more time to fish for red snapper in federal waters that in recent years have had short seasons.

“We definitely have to get away from the federal government telling us how many fish we can catch,” said Justin Lee Fadalla, 31, a private boat angler from Mobile, Ala. who supports the change. “We really need the state (managing) and actually doing these research trips. They know how many snapper are out there. When you go out and catch your limit in 10 minutes, there’s not a shortage of red snapper.”

Read the full story at the Abilene Reporter News

Louisiana shrimp industry representatives welcome Trump tariffs

July 12, 2018 — Louisiana shrimp industry representatives welcomed the Trump administration’s announcement today that it will impose tariffs on Chinese seafood imports.

Members of the Louisiana Shrimp Task Force, meeting in Houma, said they are considering a push for similar 10 percent tariffs on other top countries that send shrimp to the U.S., including India, Indonesia and Vietnam.

“We need to start a meeting in Washington by contacting an associate of Donald Trump to see his availability,” Houma shrimper Barry Rogers told the panel, which advises the state Wildlife and Fisheries Commission on issues affecting the industry. “Once we would have that meeting set up with him, we’ll also need to get our congressmen. ”

Shrimpers in Terrebonne, Lafourche and across the U.S. coast have long complained that a wave of cheaper, mostly farm-raised imports has made it difficult for domestic shrimp fishermen to compete. About 90 percent of shrimp consumed in the U.S. is imported.

Read the full story at The Daily Comet

USF-led study discovers what lives in the gulf after BP disaster

July 6, 2018 — Eight years ago, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank off Louisiana, one of the big problems facing scientists trying to assess the damage caused by the oil spill was that no one knew much about what lives in the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s no longer a problem, according to the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Sciences.

Partially funded by money that BP had to pay in the wake of the 2010 disaster, USF scientists joined with colleagues from three other universities to put together the first-ever comprehensive look at what fish and other wildlife call the gulf their home.

Compiling the data for their study, just published in the scientific journal Marine and Coastal Fisheries, required 12 separate voyages over seven years on the USF research ship R/V Weatherbird II. That included two trips to Mexico and one to Cuba, according to lead research scientist Steve Murawski of USF.

During those voyages the scientists caught 15,000 fish of 166 species from 343 locations. They tested the specimens for oil residues and other pollutants. Overall, the degree of oil contamination of fish from the northern gulf continues to decline, the report said, but none of the areas assessed so far have been free of oil.

One surprise in their findings, Murawski said, was that the part of the gulf with the lowest diversity of fish species is the area of the gulf with the greatest number of offshore oil rigs.

“They’ve had 50 to 60 years of oil development there,” he said. “So that may be one of the at-risk areas” in case of a future oil spill. A disaster like Deepwater Horizon could more easily wipe out the fish living there to the point where they could not bounce back, he explained.

Read the full story at the Tampa Bay Times

Gulf’s deep-sea coral granted new protections by federal regulators

July 3, 2018 — Federal fisheries regulators have approved a plan granting new protections to some of the Gulf of Mexico’s oldest and most fragile stands of deep-sea coral.

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council unanimously voted to designate about 480 square miles as Habitat Areas of Particular Concern, a status that would make them a priority for conservation and scientific study. The protected areas are broken up into 21 sites, most off the Louisiana coast.

The council’s designations have been submitted to the National Marine Fisheries Service for review. Final approval is expected after a two-month public comment period.

Environmental groups had been lobbying for the protections for years. The Pew Charitable Trusts, which gathered 16,000 signatures in support, called the council’s decision “a major milestone” for critically important marine habitat.

Read the full story at The Times-Picayune