Saving Seafood

A calico lobster turned up at a Maryland fish market. The chances of finding one: 1 in 30 million

January 15, 2019 — He spared her life and named her Eve. Now instead of a lobster pot she’s going to live in an aquarium.

The owner of a fish market in suburban Washington was sifting through his daily seafood delivery from Maine in late December when he came across a curious find: a lobster with a speckled, orange-and-black shell. It turned out to be a rare calico lobster.

The odds of catching one are about one in 30 million.

The owner of the Ocean City Seafood market in Silver Spring, Maryland, who wants to be identified only as Nicholas, didn’t want to send the crustacean to a restaurant to become someone’s dinner. So he set her aside.

“He didn’t know why she was special,” said Rita Montoya, a spokeswoman for the market. “He just formed a bond with her.”

Read the full story at CNN

Oyster farming bills brewing in Virginia, Maryland legislatures

January 10, 2019 — Jockeying has already begun in Virginia over legislation to determine the fate of the state’s coal ash pits, and new oyster-related measures are in the works in both Maryland and Virginia as the two states’ lawmakers begin their annual legislative sessions today.

In Virginia, Gov. Ralph Northam last week declared his support of legislation that would require coal ash produced by the state’s power plants to be removed from unlined pits and either recycled or deposited in safer, lined landfills.

The byproduct of coal-fired electricity generation, the ash is laced with heavy metals and has been linked to cancer, respiratory problems and other illnesses. An estimated 30 million tons are being stored at sites near Chesapeake Bay tributaries.

Dominion Energy, which owns the sites, estimates that such a cleanup would cost billions of dollars. The Richmond-based company has long advocated leaving the ash where it is, capping it with a layer of soil and a synthetic liner. Legislators have delayed that plan for the last two years, though, amid opposition from environmental groups.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Chesapeake Bay health worsened in 2018 for the first time in a decade, report says

January 9, 2019 — For the first time in a decade, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay declined, dropping from a C- to a D+ in an annual State of the Bay report issued Monday.

Culprits in the decline include increased runoff from rainstorms in 2018 that were rendered more intense by a changing climate and continued failure in some jurisdictions to curb nutrient and sediment loads.

This is especially true in Pennsylvania, which consistently fails to meet most of its bay cleanup commitments, and where the chronically polluted Susquehanna River delivers half the bay’s freshwater.

“Simply put, the bay suffered a massive assault in 2018,” Will Baker, president of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told reporters. “The bay’s sustained improvement was reversed in 2018, exposing just how fragile the recovery is.”

Adding to the assault, Baker said, are plans by the Trump administration to roll back clean water and clean air regulations that will directly impact the watershed.

Trump plans to overturn an Obama-era rule and reduce federal oversight for vast sections of the nation’s waterways and wetlands, and also ease federal restrictions for coal-fired power plant emissions. About a third of the nitrogen that reaches the bay comes from airborne sources, said Baker, some from as far away as the Midwest.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

MARYLAND: 2019 Chesapeake Environmental & Economic Summit

January 3, 2019 — The following was released by the Clean Chesapeake Coalition & Delmarva Fisheries Association:

The Clean Chesapeake Coalition (CCC) and Delmarva Fisheries Association (DFA) are teaming up to host an informational summit for new and returning Maryland General Assembly legislators. Three panels will focus on the economic and environmental challenges that face working farmers and watermen of Maryland amid ongoing Chesapeake Bay water quality improvement efforts. For too long, those who rely on the bounty of the land and water have been demonized when discussion turns to environmental issues. Despite the fact that these groups form an integral part of the fabric of our economy, culture and heritage, their members are often left out of the conversations about public management and regulations that affect their livelihoods. CCC & DFA are joining together to share with our State representatives and local officials sustainability plans that are based on scientific research, demonstrated success and concern for the welfare of all of the inhabitants around the nation’s largest estuary. We advocate for solutions that bring stakeholders together to engage their skills and resources in efficient and fiscally responsible ways.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

11:00 Welcome – Opening Remarks -Honorable Boyd K. Rutherford, Lt. Governor

11:15 Panel 1: Agricultural Issues including BMPs, State-Funded Farming Initiatives, Poultry Regulations

12:00 Light Food and Refreshments

12:30 The Conowingo Factor video showing

12:45 Panel 2: Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay including MDE’s WQC for Conowingo Dam relicensing, MES’s Conowingo Sediment Characterization and Innovative Reuse Project, Clean Water Commerce, Phase III WIPs

1:30 Panel 3: Sustainable fisheries management including recent Oyster Stock Assessment, shell replenishment, oysters as BMP for pollution reduction

2:15 Recognition Awards

Fisheries on both VA, MD legislative agendas for 2019

January 3, 2019 — Oysters will be on the legislative menu in Maryland in 2019, while Virginia lawmakers will have menhaden on their plates. But for legislators gathering in both states in January, many of the environmental issues confronting them will be leftovers from previous years.

In Annapolis, environmentalists hope to capitalize on an infusion of dozens of newly elected legislators to push through bills that have failed to gain traction in years past. In Richmond, activists face a different situation, seeking to make headway in an election year, with all of the legislative seats up for grabs.

Here are some of the environmental issues lawmakers in each state can expect to face.

Maryland

Oysters: In the wake of a troubling scientific assessment of Maryland’s oyster population, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation is seeking legislation to protect the five Bay tributaries selected for large-scale restoration from being reopened to harvest and to lay out a framework for the development of a new fishery management plan for the species.

A Department of Natural Resources stock assessment found in November that the number of market-size bivalves last season was half of what it had been 15 years earlier, and that the shellfish were being overfished in roughly half of the state’s waters. The assessment had been ordered by the General Assembly in 2017 after the DNR moved to open some state oyster sanctuaries to supplement a faltering commercial harvest. Lawmakers blocked the DNR move until the assessment was complete.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

For decades, scientists thought sturgeon had vanished from Maryland waters. They’re delighted to be wrong

January 3, 2019 — When David Secor started his career at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory almost three decades ago, one of his first projects concluded that the Atlantic sturgeon had all but disappeared from polluted Maryland waters.

The population of the massive fish — often 14 feet long — that once swam with dinosaurs plummeted in the 1900s amid rising demand for their eggs, better known as caviar. Overfishing devastated the species for the same reason caviar is such an expensive delicacy: Sturgeon roe is scarce because females don’t produce it until they’re at least 9 or 10 years old. Even then, the fish don’t spawn every year.

So Secor and other biologists were shocked and then intrigued when, over the past decade, watermen and recreational fishermen started spotting what looked unmistakably like sturgeon flopping and splashing around the Nanticoke River on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. One even landed on the deck of a fisherman’s boat.

Read the full story at the Carroll County Times

Governors, attorneys general join fight against seismic testing

December 28, 2018 — North Carolina’s Attorney General Josh Stein, along with attorneys general from Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Virginia and New York have moved to take their own action stop the proposed use of airguns to survey the Atlantic Ocean floor for oil and gas.

“North Carolina’s beautiful coastline supports tens of thousands of jobs and billions in economic activity,” said Stein in a statement. “That is why I am fighting this move to take our state one step closer to offshore drilling. I will continue to do everything in my power to protect our state’s coast.”

A lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, and federal officials was filed last week in South Carolina by a coalition of local and national non-governmental organizations.

“In moving to intervene on the side of the organizations, the attorneys general are seeking to file their own complaint on behalf of their respective states,” according to the announcement.

The seismic testing surveys is one step closer to allowing offshore drilling, “An action that would result in severe and potentially irreparable harm to our coastline and its critically important tourism and fishing economy,” the release continued.

Five private companies applied in 2014 and 2015 to the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, for permits to use air guns for seismic testing to search for oil and gas on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Read the full story at The Outer Banks Voice

East Coast states sue to challenge Trump’s offshore oil move

December 21, 2018 — Nine states along the East Coast have joined a lawsuit challenging a key move by the Trump administration that could allow offshore oil and natural gas drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.

The states’ Democratic attorneys general are objecting both to the possible harm to marine life from the administration-approved seismic testing and to the potential offshore drilling that could result from the testing.

The states filed a motion to join a lawsuit environmental groups filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina.

“Seismic testing will have dangerous consequences for hundreds of thousands of marine mammals, including endangered species,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh (D), who is leading the multistate effort, said in a statement Thursday.

“While the administration continues to place the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of our precious natural resources, attorneys general up and down the Atlantic coast will continue to fight these and other efforts to open the waters off our shores to drilling for oil and gas.”

Frosh announced his lawsuit at Baltimore’s National Aquarium in an effort to highlight what he says would be the damage to marine life from both the testing and any drilling.

Read the full story at The Hill

Oyster aquaculture limits disease in wild oyster populations

December 17, 2018 — A fisheries researcher at the University of Rhode Island has found that oyster aquaculture operations can limit the spread of disease among wild populations of oysters. The findings are contrary to long-held beliefs that diseases are often spread from farmed populations to wild populations.

“The very act of aquaculture has positive effects on wild populations of oysters,” said Tal Ben-Horin, a postdoctoral fellow at the URI Department of Fisheries, Animal and Veterinary Sciences in the College of the Environment and Life Sciences. “The established way of thinking is that disease spreads from aquaculture, but in fact aquaculture may limit disease in nearby wild populations.”

Working with colleagues at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, Rutgers University, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Ben-Horin integrated data from previous studies into mathematical models to examine the interactions between farmed oysters, wild oysters and the common oyster disease Dermo.

Read the full story from the University of Rhode Island at Phys.org

‘Just short of a crisis’: Tensions flare as Virginia halts oyster seed harvest in James

December 17, 2018 — Virginia fishery managers are taking the rare step of halting oyster seed harvests in the lower James River as they seek to protect the baby bivalves from overfishing.

Oyster seeds are wild-grown juvenile oysters, or “spat.” Many oyster farmers working in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries depend on regular shipments of fresh seed to replenish their lease areas.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission expects to temporarily stop the catch before the season’s scheduled closure at the end of the year. Without the action, watermen almost certainly would surpass the fall quota of 40,000 oyster seed bushels taken from the river, officials said.

The commission also agreed to block out-of-state seed transfer permits, effective Oct. 31. Between half and two-thirds of the seeds collected from the James are typically sold to Maryland buyers, according to the commission, which will decide whether purchases can resume in the spring based on fall surveys of the river bottom.

The moves come after the commission cut off last year’s spring harvest — when as many as 80,000 bushels were up for grabs — with about a month left to go. That marked the first time since the cap was enacted in 2011 that the commission called on watermen to hang up their hand tongs.

“Basically, the quota did what it was supposed to do,” said Andrew Button, head of the commission’s oyster conservation and replenishment department. “It’s not really to limit anybody but a way to protect the resource.”

Read the full story at The Bay Journal