Saving Seafood

Fishermen to Make Case to Fish for More Baby Eels in Maine

Interstate fishing regulators are considering the possibility of allowing Maine fishermen to catch more valuable baby eels.

February 5, 2018 — Interstate fishing regulators are considering the possibility of allowing Maine fishermen to catch more valuable baby eels.

Fishermen harvest baby eels, called elvers, from rivers and streams in Maine. They are worth more than $1,000 per pound to fishermen because they play a key role in Asian aquaculture operations.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is going to consider the subject of the elver quota on Tuesday.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News & World Report

 

Maine shutting down more scallop areas to protect harvest

February 5, 2018 — WHITING, Maine — Maine officials say the state’s shutting down a few high traffic scallop fishing areas to prevent overfishing.

The Maine Department of Marine Resource is closing Sand and Machias bays and Lower Englishman Bay starting on Sunday. It’s also shutting down parts of Cobscook Bay, which is the most fertile scallop fishing ground in Maine.

The parts of Cobscook Bay that will no longer be accessible include Whiting and Dennys bays.

The marine department says scallop monitoring surveys and industry reports show catch rates have slowed and fishermen are near their catch targets. The state routinely uses closures to prevent scallops from being overharvested.

Read the full story at WMTW

 

Ocean Acidification Threatens Our Shellfish

February 2, 2018 — The Massachusetts legislature is current considering a number of bills regarding ocean acidification. If passed into law, the bills will establish a special commission or task force to study the effects of coastal and ocean acidification on coastal communities, fishing and aquaculture industries, and local commercially-harvested species. These bills come at a very critical time when what we do or don’t do next to address the effects of ocean acidification could very well alter the Commonwealth’s culture and economy.

What is ocean acidification?

Excess carbon dioxide in our atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels is driving climate change and along for the ride is increased global temperatures, rising sea levels, and increased storm intensity. We hear about it almost daily. But on a planet that’s 70 percent ocean, what’s happening below the waves? They call it global warming’s evil twin: ocean acidification.

Much like the atmosphere, the ocean is absorbing more and more carbon dioxide. As a result, ocean temperatures are not only rising, but the actual chemistry of the ocean is changing. Research estimates that the ocean has become 30 percent more acidic since the Industrial Revolution. In particular, the Gulf of Maine is especially vulnerable because its colder waters can absorb more carbon dioxide than other ocean areas. Massachusetts’ bays and sounds are among those waters impacted by ocean acidification.

Why do we need to act?

Ocean acidification should be very alarming to Massachusetts and its legislators because it poses a grave threat to the Commonwealth’s shellfish fisheries – the most valuable in the Commonwealth. Increased ocean acidity interferes with the ability of shell-forming organisms such as clams, mussels, and oysters to build and maintain their calcium carbonate shells. The planktonic larval stages of many species are also vulnerable, a concern for hatcheries and wild populations of shellfish.

Read the full story at TalkingFish

 

Research shrimper: Trawls better every week

February 2, 2018 — There are days when Joe Jurek must feel the loneliness of the long-distance shrimper, a solitary figure in the Gulf of Maine as the only Massachusetts commercial fisherman allowed to harvest coveted northern shrimp from a fishery just entering its fifth year of closure.

Jurek, a Gloucester-based groundfisherman and the captain of the 42-foot FV Mystique Lady, has spent the past month executing weekly trawls for the sweet crustaceans that have disappeared from local fish markets while the fishery has been closed over dire concerns about the health of its shrimp stock.

Jurek is the Massachusetts representative in a two-state research set-aside program and is doing most of his fishing in the inshore vicinity of Cape Ann, Ipswich Bay and nearby Scantum Basin.

As with his counterpart in New Hampshire, Jurek is working with state and regional fishery regulators to collect samples and data that could help determine the future fate of the fishery.

Four weeks into his allotted 10-week fishing season that provides a total allowable catch of 13.3 metric tons for both vessels, Jurek offered a morsel of optimism, saying he has observed a slight increase in abundance from a year ago.

“It seems there are a little bit more this year, particularly around Massachusetts,” Jurek said Tuesday. “We’ve especially noticed more small shrimp.”

That could be good news for regulators, shrimpers, consumers — last year, Cape Ann northern shrimp lovers, led by Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken, literally lined the dock with their own buckets waiting for Jurek to land his haul —  and of course, the shrimp, also known as Pandalus borealis.

For the past five years, regulators at the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission — which regulates the fishery — and the respective marine resources departments of Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire have wrung their hands over the plight of the northern shrimp.

The stock, through that period, has exhibited all-time lows in biomass, spawning and recruitment, leading to the closures and the establishment of the research set-asides (RSA).

‘Getting better every week’

Last year, Jurek joined one fisherman from New Hampshire and eight trawlers from Maine in the program that provided a total allowable catch of 53 metric tons, with each vessel allowed to catch up to 1,200 pounds of shrimp per trip.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Attorneys general urge offshore drilling plan’s cancellation

February 2, 2018 — The top lawyers for a dozen coastal states want the U.S. Interior Department to cancel the Trump administration’s plan to expand offshore drilling, warning it threatens their maritime economies and natural resources.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and her fellow attorneys general, all Democrats, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on Thursday about his agency’s proposed five-year oil and gas leasing plan that opens new ocean waters.

“Not only does this irresponsible and careless plan put our state’s jobs and environment at risk, but it shows utter disregard for the will and voices of thousands of local businesses and fishing families,” said Healey in a prepared statement. “My colleagues and I will continue to fight this plan.”

Healey first announced her opposition to the plan in an August 2017 letter to Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association agreed with her that the Interior Department’s plan to expand offshore drilling threatens Massachusetts’ $7.3 billion commercial fishing industry — the third largest in the country — and more than 240,000 jobs in the state.

The plan also could devastate the state’s robust recreation and tourism industries, according to Healey, as well harm the state’s coastal environment and protected endangered species, including the Northern Right Whale, which feeds in the waters off of Cape Cod and Nantucket, according to the comment letter. There are only about 460 critically endangered Northern Right Whales remaining worldwide.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

GLOUCESTER TIMES: Lobster industry’s discipline staves off collapse

February 1, 2018 — Conservation pays off.

For years, lobstermen in the Gulf of Maine have been returning large and egg-bearing females to the water, instead of selling them for a short-term profit. The long-held practice, called “v-notching” because the females’ tails are marked to alert other lobstermen of their fertility, has kept the lobster stock healthy. A 5-pound lobster can produce another thousand lobsters in its lifetime, fisheries scientists say. A 1.5-pound lobster produces about 100. The last several years have been some of the most profitable in the industry’s history.

Now, it looks like those years of self-restraint are going to help the industry weather a new challenge — climate change.

In a report released late last month, scientists predicted the Gulf of Maine lobster population will drop as much as 62 percent over the next 30 years. The change is coming as the waters warm, making it more difficult for baby lobsters to survive. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the conservation efforts used over the past several decades by lobstermen from Rockport and Gloucester to the state of Maine fostered exponential growth in the lobster population. Ironically, the warming waters also helped, until the temperature rose past a healthy level for young lobsters.

Read the full editorial at the Gloucester Times

 

NEFMC Takes Final Action on Deep-Sea Coral Amendment; Comments on Offshore Oil and Gas Drilling in North Atlantic

January 31, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has taken final action on its Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment and voted to submit the document to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for review and approval.

In June of 2017, the Council adopted coral protection zones for the Gulf of Maine. Yesterday, at its meeting in Portsmouth, NH, the Council, after extensive debate, approved a 600-meter minimum depth “broad zone” for the continental slope and canyons south of Georges Bank. Once the amendment is implemented, this zone – with one exception – will be closed to all bottom-tending gear, meaning both mobile gear such as trawls and dredges and fixed gear such as traps and gillnets. The Council approved an exemption for the Atlantic deep-sea red crab pot fishery.

The 600-meter minimum depth broad zone, known as Option 6 in the Coral Amendment, was the Council’s preferred alternative for the continental slope and canyons prior to public hearings. However, the Council postponed final action last June in order to consider an additional proposal put forward by environmental groups. Known as Option 7, the new proposal covered more bottom and included shallower depths, ranging between 300 meters and 550 meters. Option 7 would have prohibited mobile bottom-tending gear but not fixed gear.

The Council’s Habitat Plan Development Team, using trawl vessel monitoring system data to identify fishing grounds, edited the Option 7 boundary to reduce economic impacts.

Before making a final determination, the Council considered extensive analyses of:

  • Option 6, the 600-meter minimum zone
  • Option 7 as revised, the 300-meter to 550-meter zone
  • Option 6/7 combined with Option 7 for mobile bottom-tending gear and Option 6 for all bottom-tending gear. An exemption for the deep-sea red crab pot fishery was considered for all options.

In the end, the Council selected the 600-meter broad zone, which encompasses 25,153 square miles. This option, which also was recommended by the Habitat Committee and Advisory Panel, covers: 75% of the known coral within the zone; 75% of the areas highly or very highly suitable as habitat for soft corals; and 85% of the areas with slopes greater than 30°. It also has lower economic impacts on fishermen using mobile bottom-tending gear.

Gulf of Maine 

Here’s a recap of what the Council approved last June for the Gulf of Maine:

  • Outer Schoodic Ridge and Mt. Desert Rock – The Council adopted a discrete coral protection zone for each of these areas where mobile bottom-tending gear (trawls and dredges) will be prohibited. Other types of fishing gear will be allowed, including lobster traps/pots.
  • Jordan Basin DHRA – The Council designated a Dedicated Habitat Research Area in Jordan Basin on/around the 114 fathom bump site, which encompasses roughly 40 square miles. This designation is meant to focus attention on the coral habitats at this site. The Council believes additional research on corals and fishing gear impacts should be directed here. No fishing restrictions are proposed at this time.

The Omnibus Deep-Sea Coral Amendment also specifies that anyone conducting research activities in coral zones would be required to obtain a letter of acknowledgement from NMFS’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office.

Once the amendment is implemented, changes to the following provisions will be allowable through framework adjustments: (1) adding, revising, or removing coral protection zones; (2) changing fishing restrictions; and (3) adopting or changing special fishery programs.

Offshore and Oil Gas Drilling 

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is soliciting comments through March 9, 2018 on its Draft National 2019-2024 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program, which includes the North and Mid-Atlantic Planning Areas. The Council agreed to send a letter to BOEM recommending exclusion of these two areas from the five-year plan because oil and gas exploration and extraction activities in the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf involve inappropriate risks that “may harm living marine resources and the communities that depend on them.” The draft plan proposes lease sales in 2021 and 2023 for the North Atlantic area and in 2020, 2022, and 2024 for the Mid-Atlantic area.

The New England Council previously submitted oil and gas development comments to BOEM and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on June 29, 2017 and August 15, 2017. In the August letter and reiterated in this next letter, the Council broke down its concerns into five categories, which involve the following:

  • Direct displacement of fishing activities due to survey or extraction activities in offshore environments;
  • Harm to sensitive, deep-water benthic habitats, including deep-sea corals, due to extraction activities;
  • Negative impacts on living marine resources due to highdecibel sounds emitted during seismic gas surveys and drilling operations, including potential harm to some of the 28 species managed by the New England Council;
  • Negative impacts to nearshore fish habitats due to infrastructure development needed to support an Atlantic oil and gas industry; and
  • Risks associated with leaks and spills resulting from oil and gas extraction and transport.

The Council also supported developing a report to spatially document the value of fisheries on the Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf. The report will be used when developing future comments related to both renewable and non-renewable offshore energy.

More Information

View the release in its entirety here.

 

Maine disputes study that predicts sharp decline in Gulf of Maine lobsters

The Department of Marine Resources won’t be using researchers’ model to make management decisions, saying that forecasting fishery populations 30 years out is extremely difficult.

January 29, 2018 — The state agency that oversees Maine’s marine fisheries is questioning the reliability of a new study that predicts a sharp decline in Gulf of Maine lobsters over the next 30 years.

The Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration built a computer model that predicts the population will fall 40 to 62 percent by 2030.

But Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources, won’t be using the model to help him decide how to manage the state’s most valuable fishery, which pumped $533.1 million into the state economy in 2016.

“(He) does not have confidence in a model that simulates what might happen decades in the future,” spokesman Jeff Nichols said. “This is a wild resource, making predictions extremely challenging.”

Thirty years ago, when landings were less than 20 million pounds, no one could have predicted that the Maine lobster fleet would be landing more than 130 million pounds a year in 2016, Nichols said.

“The commissioner and his science staff don’t question the science, but rather see this as an unreliable tool on which to base management decisions,” he said.

The department isn’t alone in having doubts about the study. Maine lobster dealers voiced skepticism, too, recalling previous erroneous lobster forecasts by some of the same scientific organizations.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Conservation Practices Help Lobsters Weather Climate Change

January 29, 2018 — It’s no secret that the lobster fishery in southern New England is in trouble. The population has declined by almost eighty percent in the past few decades. In contrast, lobsters in the Gulf of Maine have exploded and the fishery has seen record landings. So, what gives?

Rising water temperatures are a big part of the story. Baby lobsters have a set-point: 61.5°F. Go much above that, and first-year lobsters start dying off. That’s what has been happening during recent summers in places like Buzzards Bay and Narragansett Bay. Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Maine, which is one of the most rapidly warming ocean areas anywhere in the world, the increase in temperatures has put lobsters into their sweet spot.

But that’s not where the story ends. A new study used a computer model to tease apart the influence of environmental changes and conservation practices, which differ significantly between Maine and southern New England. For generations, Maine lobstermen have been throwing back fertile females (after cutting a notch out of their tails so that they can be recognized even when they’re not carrying eggs) and the biggest lobsters. Those practices didn’t hit southern New England until a decade ago.

The conclusion of the new analysis is a bitter pill for southern New England lobstermen, according to Andrew Pershing, chief scientific officer and head of the Ecosystem Modeling Lab at Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Read the full story at WCAI

 

New report says future of Maine lobster industry could be worse

January 29, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Warming ocean waters will have a big impact on Maine’s $547 million lobster industry in coming years, but the future would look a lot bleaker if not for the conservation efforts of the state’s thousands of lobster fishermen.

According to a study led by scientists at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and NOAA Fisheries, conservation practices long advocated by Maine lobstermen are helping make the lobster fishery more resilient to climate change.

For generations, lobstermen in Maine have returned large lobsters and egg-bearing female lobsters to the water rather than keeping them. Lobstermen first marked the tails of the egg bearers with a distinctive “V-notch” to give them further protection.

According to the scientists, these conservation practices, developed by custom and now mandated by state law, distinguish the fishery in the Gulf of Maine, where Maine harvesters trap some 83 percent of all lobster landings, from southern New England, where fishermen historically refused to take the same steps to preserve large, reproductive lobsters.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study shows how warming waters and contrasting conservation practices have contributed to significantly different results in the two fisheries.

Over the past decade (at least until this past year), Maine lobster landings have climbed steadily, setting new records nearly every year. During the same time period, the southern New England lobster population, and lobster fishery, has collapsed.

According to figures compiled by regulators, the commercial lobster landings in Connecticut fell from more than 2.5 million pounds in 1995 to about 200,000 pounds in 2015. In Rhode Island, the catch fell from more than 5 million pounds in 1995 to less than 2.4 million pounds in 2015. In New York, the commercial lobster industry has virtually disappeared.

Led by Arnault Le Bris of the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the scientists used advanced computer models to simulate the ecosystem under varying conditions. The results show that temperature change was the primary contributor to population changes, but conservation efforts made significant differences in how the lobster population responded.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American