Saving Seafood

Cooke Aquaculture acquires Houston fishing company in $650M deal

December 20, 2017 — New Brunswick seafood giant Cooke Aquaculture got even bigger on Tuesday, with its acquisition of a Houston, Texas company and its workforce of 1,000 people.

Cooke Aquaculture acquired Omega Protein Corp. in a $500 million USD deal — approximately $650 million (Canadian) — in one of the single largest foreign investment deals a New Brunswick company has ever done in the United States.

“It’s the single largest acquisition [our] company has ever made,” said Joel Richardson, vice-president of communications for Cooke.

“When a New Brunswick company reaches beyond our borders and acquires a company outside our province, it helps strengthen jobs back here and at home.”

Omega Protein, founded in the early 1900s, is a fishing company that sources omega oils and specialty protein products for both nutritional supplements and animal feeds.

They operate over 30 boats off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, near Mississippi, Louisiana and Virginia, and catch a forage fish called menhaden, which is rich in omega fatty acids.

Read the full story at CBC News

 

US seafood industry, ocean groups in unison against red snapper bill

December 19, 2017 — The National Fisheries Institute and ocean conservation groups don’t always see eye to eye on legislation, but they do with regard to HR 3588, the Red Snapper Act, which has been advanced by the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources.

They are both against it.

The bill, which the panel approved by a 22-16 vote following a brief markup hearing on Wednesday, along with two amendments to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, would transfer management of the red snapper recreational fishery in the Gulf of Mexico from a federal fisheries management council to several gulf states, including Louisiana. Representative Garrett Graves, who introduced the bill, represents the Republican districts of northern Terrebonne and Lafourche, in Louisiana.

Graves’ bill must still get to the House floor for a vote. And its companion bill, S. 1686, introduced in August by Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy, also a Republican, in the upper chamber’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, has just two co-sponsors (Republicans John Kennedy, also from Louisiana, and Luther Strange, from Alabama).

But the recreational fishing industry is excited.

“The need to update our nation’s fisheries management system to ensure the conservation of our public marine resources and reasonable public access to those resources is abundantly clear. We look forward to the full House consideration of the bill,” said Patrick Murray, president of Coastal Conservation Association, one of the nation’s largest sport fishing groups, in a written statement following the vote.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Red snapper measures advance in Congress

December 14, 2017 — Measures that will impact how much red snapper recreational fishermen will be able to catch in the Gulf of Mexico advanced today in Congress.

Proponents, including recreational fishing groups and Louisiana lawmakers, say the two bills approved by the House Natural Resources Committee would eliminate overly restrictive catch limits and unnecessarily short seasons for red snapper. The measures would give Gulf states more authority to regulate the popular species off their coasts.

Environmental and conservation groups counter that the measures will hamper efforts to help red snapper rebound from years of severe overfishing.

U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves, R-Baton Rouge, whose district includes northern Terrebonne and Lafourche, sponsored one of the bills and helped craft the other.

“As the stock has rebuilt, recreational anglers have unfairly seen fewer and fewer fishing days,” Graves said in introducing the Red Snapper Act of 2017 this summer. “Something has to change. It is time to replace the status quo with a management system that more accurately reflects today’s red snapper private recreational fishery.”

Read the full story at the Daily Comet

 

The Oyster Bed Partners with Gulf Seafood Foundation on Donation Program

November 27, 2017 — Two brothers in Louisiana are giving a whole new meaning to the term “Surf and Turf.” A new product launched by their company, The Oyster Bed, will not only benefit steak lovers at the dinner table, but also oystermen across the Gulf who have suffered through the two devastating hurricanes.

With the launch of a new steak plate able to withstand extreme thermal shock called “The Steak Bed,” Tommy and Adam Waller are teaming with the Gulf Seafood Foundation to assist oystermen across the Gulf devastated by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

“In the wake of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, hundreds of us reserve Marines were mobilized to help the citizens of Florida and Louisiana,” said Tommy Waller, a Marine Major Reservist and the outgoing Executive Officer at 3d Force Reconnaissance Company. “As recent oyster seasons opened across the Gulf, a large number of oyster fishermen are still struggling to recover from the damage they sustained during the storms. We felt it imperative to find a way to help.”

Read the full story at the Gulf Seafood Foundation

 

Fish shrinking as ocean temperatures rise

October 4, 2017 — One of the most economically important fish is shrinking in body weight, length and overall physical size as ocean temperatures rise, according to new research by LSU Boyd Professor R. Eugene Turner published today. The average body size of Menhaden—a small, silver fish—caught off the coasts from Maine to Texas—has shrunk by about 15 percent over the past 65 years.

Menhaden make up about one-half of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico fish harvest and had a dockside value of about $129 million in 2013. They are coastal species that spawn offshore and move to estuaries where juveniles grow to one- and two-year old fish. The air and off the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico has steadily increased, especially in estuaries, where heat exchange occurs efficiently between air and sea. Adult menhaden return offshore where they are harvested with purse seine nets.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Louisiana gets involved in federal red snapper lawsuit

October 2, 2017 — A federal court has ruled that the US state of Louisiana can intervene in a lawsuit on the federal government’s behalf as environmental groups seek the scrapping of a rule benefitting recreational red snapper fishers.

Two advocacy groups — New York City’s Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Washington D.C.’s Ocean Conservancy — had sued the federal government in August alleging that the way the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) managed the red snapper fishery violated federal law.

The challenge, the fourth of its kind in recent years, argued that a NOAA temporary rule extending chronically short recreational red snapper seasons for recreational fishers  — from three days to 42 — violated the fishery’s management plan.

The suit wants the temporary rule set aside as the action could greatly diminish red snapper populations, the groups claim.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Redfish suffer deformities, heart problems from oil – even tiny amounts

September 22, 2017 — Even in trace amounts, oil can warp the spines, disfigure the faces and weaken the hearts of redfish larvae. That makes it difficult for young fish to swim, eat and grow into the 40-pounders that excite anglers.

The first comprehensive study of oil spill effects on the popular sport fish found that “micro-droplets” of oil, such as those that disperse after larger spills, cause skull and jaw deformities and can twist backbones upward, producing fish with awkward J-shaped bodies. Exposure to small amounts of oil reduced the cardiac functions of redfish by 70 percent, according to the study published this month in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

“Certainly, oil spills kill,” said Alexis Khursigara, a marine scientist with the University of Texas and the study’s lead author. “But sometimes those that survive can have complex deformities that can result in a delayed death because they’re not swimming well or fast enough, or they have a hard time capturing prey.”

More than 1 million of the fish, known as red drum, were caught in Louisiana waters last year, making it the second largest recreational catch after spotted seatrout, commonly called speckled trout. Commercial fishing for redfish was banned in Louisiana in the late 1980s to keep the species from becoming extinct, amid the Cajun food craze that was popularized nationally by legendary New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme’s blackened redfish dish. By 1988, only 2 percent of the fish were escaping capture to spawn offshore.

Read the full story at the New Orleans Times-Picayune

Monica Goldberg: New red snapper proposals need safeguards from overfishing

September 21, 2017 — Lawmakers in the House and Senate recently introduced legislation aimed at the perpetually contentious Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery. Thanks to stronger conservation standards and accountability, red snapper numbers in the Gulf have tripled in the last decade and catch limits have doubled, leading to increased value for commercial fishermen and access for charter and for-hire vessels. Unfortunately, private anglers are stuck under a profoundly broken management system. Congressman Garret Graves, Senator Bill Cassidy and others on Capitol Hill propose to give the Gulf states the chance to manage this specific part of the red snapper fishery.

We share the desire to give private anglers more flexibility and certainty in their fishing opportunities, and states are already innovating under current law, such as the LA Creel program in Louisiana. The new bills (H.R. 3588 and S. 1686) have improved significantly from similar attempts last Congress. But without further safeguards, they threaten to take us back to the failures of the past, when the fishery was severely depleted and red snapper was hard to find for seafood consumers and anglers alike.

The current proposals would give the five Gulf States authority to manage the private angler portion of the red snapper fishery in both state and federal waters; commercial and charter/for-hire fishermen would remain under federal management. But because the bills lack provisions to ensure that the private angler sector stays within its quota (after exceeding it nine of the last 12 years), the bills would jeopardize the sustainability of the fishery and undermine the commercial and charter sectors.

Read the full opinion piece at the Environmental Defense Fund

Louisiana will use $20 million in BP fines to expand a coastal monitoring program

September 14, 2017 — Louisiana has received $19.5 million in fines from the 2010 BP oil spill to expand a system to collect data on the effect of coastal restoration projects.

The System-Wide Assessment and Monitoring Program, or SWAMP, monitors changes in Louisiana’s ecosystem over time.

Among other things, it evaluates how human factors like restoration projects and climate change affect the environment, including wildlife, fisheries and certain types of vegetation.

SWAMP will be used to understand changes in the ecosystem, evaluate responses to sea-level rise and protect communities from flooding and other natural disasters, said Syed Khalil, a geologist assistant administrator for the state Coastal Protection & Restoration Authority.

“Ecosystem restoration is very complex,” Khalil said. “What we are doing does not have any boilerplate template, so we need to monitor the results of restoration and then correct or modify our approach, if need be.”

Read the full story at The Lens

Gulf Seafood Foundation Donations to Go to Fishing Community Affected by Hurricane Harvey

September 7, 2017 — In the Gulf of Mexico, hurricane after hurricane and disaster after disaster, Gulf fishermen and their families are often the hardest hit and most forgotten when it comes to piecing their lives back together. Hurricane Harvey is no different. While the world awes at photos of a flooded downtown Houston, the media has failed to cover the grounded or sunk fishing boats, destroyed docks or flooded processing and ice houses.

“Our fishing community is suffering,” said Jim Gossen, president of the Gulf Seafood Foundation. “Livelihoods have been demolished from Corpus Christi, TX to Grand Isle, LA a lot of our brethren are going to need a lot of help to get back on their feet, much less back in business. That is why the board of directors of the Gulf Seafood Foundation has committed all funds raised for the rest of this year by the non-profit to be donated toward helping the Gulf Coastal fishing communities.”

The Gulf Seafood Foundation was formed to support and promote the high standards for the Gulf’s vast commercial and recreational fisheries industry, but its rooted in helping Gulf fishing communities during times of disasters.

Read the full story from the Gulf Seafood Foundation