Saving Seafood

Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab populations are healthy, report finds

July 6, 2020 — The bay’s blue crabs aren’t being over-harvested and the population isn’t depleted, which means there’s no need for significant changes in how many watermen catch, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s annual Blue Crab Advisory Report said.

Although crab numbers declined from 594 million last year to 405 million this year, that’s in line with natural variation, according to the report, which was released Wednesday.

At that level, there’s no need for significant change in the rules the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, or its counterparts in Maryland and the Potomac River, set for when and how watermen catch crabs, the report noted.

The key issue for those regulators, and the Bay program, is that the stock of female crabs remains robust. If too many are harvested when they could be reproducing, the overall population could crash, as happened in the late 1990s.

While the current count of female crabs declined by 26% from last year’s total, to 141 million, that’s well above the 70 million minimum fisheries scientists say is needed to maintain the population of crabs, the report noted.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts senators push Trump for aid for their states’ seafood industries

July 6, 2020 — Four U.S. senators representing the Chesapeake Bay region wrote a letter to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue on Wednesday, 1 July, urging him to invest COVID-19 funding to the area’s shellfish farmers whose businesses have been greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

The letter, written by Virginia’s U.S. Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine and Maryland’s U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, all Democrats, asks Perdue to use some of the USD 16 billion (EUR 14.2 billion) appropriated through the CARES Act to purchase oysters and clams from Chesapeake-based aquaculture businesses.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Trump visa ban excludes “essential” seafood industry

June 23, 2020 — On Monday, 22 June, U.S. President Donald Trump issued an executive order to temporarily suspend foreign seasonal workers from entering the United States. However, the order carves out an exception for workers who provide “services essential” to the country’s food supply chain.

That’s good news for U.S. seafood processors who depend on H-2B visa workers to fill critical jobs during fishing season.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Maryland’s wild oyster harvest doubles from last year

June 16, 2020 — Despite having fewer days to work, Maryland watermen harvested nearly twice as many wild oysters last season as they did the previous year, state officials report. Even so, a new study finds the state’s population of bivalves is in much better shape now than it was two years ago, with abundance up and overfishing down.

As a result, state fisheries managers say they’re weighing whether to maintain catch restrictions put in place last season or relax them for the next wild harvest season, which normally begins Oct. 1.

Data presented Monday night to the Department of Natural Resources’ Oyster Advisory Commission indicates that the overall abundance of adult, market-size oysters in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay has rebounded considerably since 2018 and is now at the fifth highest level since 1999.

Preliminary figures indicate the wild harvest last season topped 270,000 bushels, a nearly 90% jump from the 145,000 bushels landed in the 2018–19 season.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

STUDY: MATURE OYSTER REEFS COULD BOOST BLUE CRAB NUMBERS BY 80%

June 9, 2020 — Restoring oyster reefs is a priority on the Chesapeake Bay, as we know healthy oyster populations can buoy Bay-wide clean water efforts. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wanted to know just how much restored reefs can help, and how that could translate to the Bay region’s economy.

So NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation used a high-tech model to predict long-term benefits of restored oyster reefs in the Choptank River system. Spoiler alert: the predicted benefits would be remarkable for both the ecology and the crab industry.

Together with six partner institutions, NOAA published a technical memorandum that looks at oyster reefs in Harris Creek, the Little Choptank River, and the Tred Avon River, all parts of the Choptank system that have been targeted with large-scale oyster restoration under the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. These reefs are considered “young” today (Harris Creek’s oyster sanctuary was just completed in 2015, and the other two are still underway), but the research model also looked at what may happen when the reefs are “mature,” roughly 15 years after restoration.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Oyster Reef Restoration Efforts Could Use Your Help—And Your Oyster Shells

May 28, 2020 — A couple of centuries ago, oysters were ridiculously prevalent in the Chesapeake Bay, which stretches nearly 200 miles from Havre de Grace, Maryland to Virginia Beach, Virginia. At that time, more than 17 million bushels of everyone’s favorite bivalve were pulled from its waters every year, but that number has since dropped by 98 percent due to a depressing combination of overfishing, degradation of their habitats, and water pollution.

But part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s mission to “Save the Bay” includes a number of oyster restoration programs, including small-scale oyster farming and “oyster gardening,” which allows amateur aquaculturists to spend a year caring for baby oysters, which are then transplanted onto protected reefs when they’re a year old. These restored reefs not only help to increase the oyster population, but they also provide food and shelter for a variety of fish and other marine life.

In order for an oyster to live past the larval stage, it has to find a solid object to attach to. Once it’s safely anchored, it can put its energy into feeding itself and growing its own shell. It also happens that the best things that baby oysters—also called spat—can attach themselves to are the discarded shells of other oysters.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

Seafood industry hit hard by economic downturn of pandemic

May 19, 2020 — Seafood company managers like Jon Pearlman can see the impact of the coronavirus and economic downturn simply by looking at the trucks leaving the lot.

During a busy season, almost 30 of them are used to transport hundreds of orders every day. However, over the last two months, the amount of trucks has dwindled.

“Today, I’ve got seven,” Pearlman said. “The last two months have been devastating.”

As the president of the Congressional Seafood Company, Pearlman has witnessed the growing popularity of seafood around Maryland and surrounding areas since beginning operations in 1996.

But with the company mainly doing business with high-end restaurants, hotels, and caterers, the economic downturn this year has brought things to a crawl.

“It’s heartbreaking, it’s scary, I’m certainly nervous for the future,” Pearlman said. “Where a restaurant used to maybe spend $1,000 or $1,500 on seafood for their daily allowance, now they have two items that they’re offering carry-out on.”

Read the full story at WUSA

Study: Bay Rockfish Die at Twice the Rate of Those in Atlantic

May 18, 2020 — Striped bass that stay year-round in the Chesapeake Bay are dying at nearly twice the rate of those that migrate each year to the Atlantic Ocean, a new study has found. The cause or causes aren’t clear, but the lead researcher said that it needs to be addressed to right a troubling decline in the prized finfish.

An electronic tagging study led by scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that large mature striped bass leave the Bay every year to roam coastal waters until the next spring. Those smaller, younger fish that remain in the Chesapeake died off at the rate of 70% a year.

“The mortality rate is alarming,” said Dave Secor, a professor at the UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons. “If fish are dying at greater than 50% or 60% a year, that’s a problem.”

The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS One, appears likely to draw further attention to disease and overfishing, two suspects in the decline of striped bass, also known as rockfish, which are among the most sought-after fish in the Chesapeake and along the Atlantic coast.

UMCES scientists implanted acoustic transmitters in 100 striped bass from the Potomac River and tracked their movements over four years. Signals emitted by their tags were picked up as they swam by receivers stationed in the Bay and along the coast — a kind of E-Z Pass network for fish, as Secor described it.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Federal funds earmarked for Maryland, Virginia, Delaware fisheries hurt by coronavirus

May 15, 2020 — About $10 million in federal funding has been set aside to assist Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware fisheries hurt by the novel coronavirus.

Virginia fisheries are set to receive $4.5 million, Maryland fisheries will receive $4.1 million and Delaware fisheries will receive $1 million, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division.

Specifically, these funds will help address direct or indirect fishery-related losses as well as negative impacts to subsistence, cultural or ceremonial fishing caused by COVID-19, according to NOAA.

Fishery participants eligible for funding will be able to work with their state marine fisheries management agencies, territories or tribes to apply for these funds. In order to obtain funds, a business must have experienced a revenue loss greater than 35 percent of its prior 5-year average or experienced any negative impacts to subsistence, cultural or ceremonial fisheries

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

Large rockfish leave Chesapeake Bay to become ocean migrators

May 15, 2020 — A new electronic tagging study of 100 Potomac River striped bass sheds light on rockfish migration in Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coast. University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researchers found that when rockfish reach 32 inches in length they leave Chesapeake Bay and become ocean migrators. Small fish stayed in the Bay had higher mortality rates than those that undertook ocean migrations.

“Knowing the size at which they leave, we can do improved management that is tailored better to commercial and  sectors those related to catch and size limits,” said study author and Professor Dave Secor of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “It allows us to bring different parts of the fishery into an assessment model to evaluate stock health and test how effective regulations will be.”

Chesapeake Bay striped , also known as rockfish, (Morone saxatilis) were implanted with two-inch acoustic transmitters and their coastal shelf migrations recorded over a four-year period by telemetry receivers throughout the Mid-Atlantic shelf waters and southern New England. Researchers found that only large striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay migrate to ocean waters when they reach 32 inches in length, and smaller fish remain resident to the Chesapeake Bay, regardless of sex.

Read the full story at PHYS.org