Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: Maryland embarks on marketing campaign for invasive blue catfish

January 10, 2024 — For decades, the rivers and shores surrounding the Chesapeake Bay have slowly been taken over by an invasive species – the blue catfish, otherwise known as Ictalurus furcatus.

The U.S. states of Maryland and Virginia, which border the bay, have had to deal with the species ever since anglers introduced it to Virginia’s waters in the hopes of establishing it as a fun and challenging fish to catch. Unfortunately, for all the other animals living in the bay – including important commercial species like blue crab, oysters, and rockfish – bay turned out to be the perfect habitat for the invasive blue catfish, which began to multiply exponentially in the decades following the initial release.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MARYLAND: Maryland loses bid for federal fishery disaster aid

January 8, 2024 — Blue catfish and other nonnative species may be gobbling up blue crabs and wreaking havoc on other Chesapeake Bay fisheries, but that doesn’t qualify for federal disaster assistance.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service has rejected Maryland Gov. Wes Moore’s petition asking the agency to declare a federal fishery disaster because of the “explosion” of blue catfish, flathead catfish and northern snakeheads in the Bay.

In the petition submitted in March, Moore said scientists have been seeing “disturbing trends” of declines in crabs, striped bass and five other commercial fish since 2012, when blue catfish began to move into Maryland.

Read the full article at the Bay Journal 

 

Lawmakers rally behind visa exemptions for seafood processors

January 7, 2024 — U.S. senators are lining up behind legislation that would exempt seafood processors from the nation’s annual cap on H-2B temporary worker visas.

The seafood processing sector depends on foreign workers to meet seasonal demands. The Maryland crab industry, for example, brings in 500 workers annually via the H-2B program during the crab season.

“For years, the struggle to hire seasonal workers has put an incredible strain on America’s seafood industry,” U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) said in a statement. “The chronic worker shortage has put seafood and crab businesses, particularly those on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, at risk of permanent damage.”

Under the status quo, seafood processors must compete against other industries dependent on foreign labor in the visa lottery, introducing a high level of uncertainty as they attempt to fill out their workforce. The federal government has regularly issued additional visas beyond the statutory cap, but seafood companies still say it’s difficult to secure enough workers through the program.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

US Wind requests marine mammal take authorization for offshore wind construction

January 7, 2023 — US Wind has submitted a request for Incidental Take Regulations to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in regards to construction of the Maryland Offshore Wind Project.

The regulations would govern the authorization of take of a small number of 19 species of marine mammals. A “small number” is considered less than one-third of estimated populations in the area, though specific small numbers are not defined. According to NOAA, take is harassing, hunting, capturing or killing any marine mammal, or attempting to do so. Though intentional take is prohibited, incidental take of small numbers can be allowed through an application process.

Actions of take can include negligent or intentional operation of an aircraft or boat, detaining marine mammals and other acts which result in disturbing them. Take can occur through acts with the potential to injure these animals in the wild, classified as level A harassment, or potential to disturb behavioral patterns like breathing, migration, breeding and sheltering, which are classified as level B harassment.

Read the full article at WRDE

MARYLAND: What happened to offshore wind in Maryland?

December 28, 2022 — Energy company Orsted is pausing “all development spend” on an offshore wind project in Maryland and may cancel the project entirely. The hiatus was announced by the Danish company’s CEO last month — on the same day Orsted also said it was ceasing development on two offshore wind projects in New Jersey.

Officials in both states were taken by surprise, including New Jersey’s governor, who publicly lambasted Orsted.

Orsted’s offshore wind project in Maryland, called Skipjack, has been in development since 2017, according to its website. The farm was supposed to generate 966 megawatts of clean energy, enough to power about 300,000 homes. The company also developed a site at Tradepoint Atlantic — a large industrial complex in Baltimore County that also houses distribution warehouses for companies like Amazon and FedEx — to support the now discontinued New Jersey offshore wind projects.

Read the full article at the Baltimore Banner

Menhaden Fisheries Coalition Corrects Misleading Statements from Chesapeake Legal Alliance

December 26, 2023 — The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition addresses five inaccurate and misleading statements made in a recent press release by the Chesapeake Legal Alliance and the Southern Maryland Recreational Fishing Organization regarding their petition for rulemaking to the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC). A brief overview of inaccuracies, expert statements, and scientific findings is listed below, followed by a more detailed discussion of each false claim.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Chesapeake Bay dead zone ‘smallest’ it’s been since 1985

December 2, 2023 — The “dead zone” in the Chesapeake Bay is the smallest it has been since recording began in 1985, according to new data from Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Old Dominion University and Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

The dead zone is the area in which there is a relative low amount of oxygen, a condition known as hypoxia. Typically, this means that polluted runoff has brought in phosphorus and nitrogen, which feeds growth of algal blooms. These blooms eventually die and decompose, removing oxygen from the surrounding waters faster than it can be replenished. Animals such as crabs, oysters and fish need healthy levels of oxygen in the water to survive.

The Maryland Department of Natural Resources reported dissolved oxygen levels in the Chesapeake Bay were “much better” than past years. The department reported the dead zone averaged 0.52 cubic miles from May to October this year, compared with the historical average of 0.97 cubic miles.

VIMS reported a dead zone of 0.58 cubic miles. The institute reported that hypoxia began earlier than usual, in April, but it remained “uncharacteristically low” from June until ending in late-September. The relatively early end resulted from cooling temperatures in September and strong winds during Tropical Storm Ophelia.

Read the full article at the Virginian Pilot

MARYLAND: Following worrying rockfish population data, Maryland looks to cancel spring trophy season for 2024

November 30, 2023 — After five straight years of troubling data on the population of young rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland officials plan to enact emergency regulations canceling this spring’s trophy season for recreational anglers.

The rules would eliminate the once exciting two weeks each spring when anglers targeted large fish swimming up the bay to spawn. But this period had been delayed from April into May in recent years in an effort to protect the spawning fish, which diminished its allure.

“That’s the time when Maryland fishermen have access to what is essentially a large, oceanic fish,” said Lynn Fegley, director of fishing and boating services at Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources. “But given the very low recruitment—baby striped bass numbers—we’ve had successively over the last few years, we are moving to just give the fish a break.”

The emergency rules were spurred by a troubling so-called young-of-the-year survey, released in October, that found juvenile striped bass numbers in the Chesapeake Bay at their second-worst result since the survey began in the 1950s. It marked the fifth successive year showing numbers well below the historical average.

Under the new rules proposed by the department, Chesapeake Bay anglers wouldn’t be able to catch and keep rockfish, also known as striped bass, until May 16 next year. In the Susquehanna Flats, located at the mouth of the Susquehanna River near Perryville, Maryland’s newly proposed rules would push back the start date until June 1.

State officials said that the delayed opening in the flats, where many striped bass end their journeys from the Atlantic Ocean to spawn, is an attempt to further protect large adult fish lingering in the sprawling underwater grass beds near the Susquehanna, so they can produce more young

Read the full article at PHYS.org

Researchers: Blue Catfish Stomach Contents Suggest Large Impact On Crab, Menhaden

November 29, 2023 — In terms of appetite and willingness to gorge on just about anything, blue catfish have few peers in the Chesapeake Bay, experts say.

“They’re eating everything, anything they can get their mouths around,” said Noah Bressman, a fish biologist at Salisbury University in Maryland.

Now, a clearer picture is emerging of their ecological toll. Two new studies based in tidal rivers on opposite sides of the Bay show that the invasive species is gobbling up prized native aquatic life, such as menhaden and blue crabs, at high rates.

Read the full article at Chesapeake Bay Magazine

MARYLAND: BOEM Hosts Offshore Wind Meeting; Public Comments Accepted Through Nov. 20

October 26, 2023 — Community members came out in droves this week to share their comments regarding an offshore wind project near Ocean City.

On Tuesday evening, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) hosted the first of two in-person public meetings regarding a draft environmental impact statement (EIS) on US Wind’s offshore wind project. Lorena Edenfield, environmental protection specialist for BOEM, said the federal agency will continue to collect comments through Nov. 20.

“Tonight, we really are here because we want to hear what we need to be including in the EIS,” she said. “We did do some scoping last year to determine what we needed to include in the draft EIS, and that really informed the process. So now we want to know how we did.”

Read the full article at the Dispatch