Saving Seafood

Our Coast’s History: NC’s Oyster War

August 29, 2018 — Late January 1891, the steamer Vesper, rented from the Wilmington Steamship Co. and mounted with a well-used howitzer and caisson borrowed from the state of Virginia, left Elizabeth City with militiamen of the Pasquotank Rifles. Their mission: To enforce “An Act to Promote and Protect the Oyster Interests of the State” that had been passed barely a week earlier.

After three years of growing tension between North Carolina oystermen and vessels drifting down from Chesapeake Bay to harvest oysters in Pamlico and Roanoke sounds, North Carolina’s legislature had acted, creating a list of draconian restrictions on the harvest that prohibited dredging and allowed only in-state residents to gather oysters.

Tasked with telling the oyster poachers — mostly from Maryland — of the new law, as conflicts go, the North Carolina oyster war wasn’t much of a war, the rhetoric far outstripping the action.

“As she (the Vesper) proceeds on the return trip if any dredgers are found continuing to ravish the oyster beds they will be arrested, even if their boats have to be blown out of the water and their crews killed,” the Wilmington Weekly Star wrote.

In the end, the Vesper made one arrest, with other boats heeding the warning and leaving North Carolina waters.

Although short-lived and bloodless, what occurred on the water was but a part of an intersection of changing priorities in northeastern North Carolina.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online 

 

The Anacostia River Is Mussel-ing Its Way To Clean Waters

August 28, 2018 — If you’ve got 5,600 freshwater mussels, you could serve about 280 steaming plates of moules marinières. Or, you could deposit the bivalves in the Anacostia River.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has opted for the latter as part of a larger effort to clean the river and renew the mussel population. Last week, staffers and volunteers with the nonprofit placed the creatures in 28 floating baskets at seven sites along the Anacostia River—six in D.C., and one in Maryland—with varying microhabitat conditions.

Jorge Bogantes Montero, the organization’s natural resources specialist, has already checked on one of the baskets, all of which have swimming pool noodles to keep them afloat and covered tops to protect the mussels from predators.

“They look great,” he says of the mussels in the baskets by the Anacostia Watershed Society’s floating office on Water Street SE.

How does he know? He peeked into the baskets and saw mussels with two little holes, which he calls an innie and an outie (one of which is filtering water and the other is secreting waste). “I could see pairs of holes all over the bottom, so I know they are working,” says Montero. “If you see slits open, that’d be a bad sign.” The next checkup will happen in late September, about a month after their deployment.

Much like oysters, mussels can filter large quantities of water (between 10-20 gallons daily) and they eat bacteria like E. coli. But that’s just one of their benefits to the ecosystem, says Montero. “They are providing a lot of ecosystem services even beyond filtration,” he says, like depositing sediment at the bottom of the river. Other critters also use their shells as places for shelter or nesting.

Read the full story at DCist

MARYLAND: After 42 years of fishing, he’s never seen anything like this 310-pound bull shark

August 15, 2018 — In the picture, the bull shark towers over the Maryland fisherman.

Larry “Boo” Powley stares into the camera, seemingly unfazed.

The story of how the 65-year-old commercial fisherman came to pose with a 310-pound bull shark began Monday morning when Powley set out on the Patuxent River in Southern Maryland.

Powley, who has been on the water for 42 years, said he was planning to catch his usual crop of menhaden, a common fish often used in fish oils for humans and bait for blue crab. Menhaden measure 15 inches at most, so the 8.6-foot-long bull shark that got stuck in his trap off Cedar Point, in St. Mary’s County, around sunrise wasn’t hard to notice.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Sportfishing Association opposes oil, gas, seismic testing along Atlantic coast

August 9, 2018 — The White Marlin Open is a hallmark event in Ocean City.

Last year, the tournament brought in more than 350 boats and 3,000 contestants – the camarederie and excitement were palpable.

The excitement this year is similar to last, but something has changed. We’ve all heard about the plans to open the Atlantic to drilling.

For the first time, fishermen are facing the prospect of our fisheries being pummeled by explosive noise, and our waters tainted by oil. Could this be our last tournament before oil and gas exploration in the Atlantic changes fishing and the town of Ocean City forever?

The Atlantic Coast Sportfishing Association hopes not.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

VIRGINIA: Menhaden landings pacing below disputed cap

August 8, 2018 — Chesapeake Bay landings of menhaden are coming in at a pace well below a controversial cap imposed by an interstate fisheries commission, Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner Steven Bowman said.

As of the end of June, landings for the so-called reduction fishery came in at 24,000 metric tons, Bowman told the management board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) this week.

He said that meant landings this year would almost certainly come in below the 51,000-ton cap the interstate commission imposed last year — a cut of more than 40 percent that the General Assembly balked at adopting.

Bowman, joined by Maryland’s director of fisheries, asked the board to hold off declaring that Virginia was not in compliance with the cap because the General Assembly had not written the 51,000-ton limit into state law.

That finding, if adopted by the commission and accepted by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, could shut down the menhaden fishery, which employs about 300 people working on Omega Protein’s fishing boats and its processing plant in Reedville, on the Northern Neck. While the cap applies only to menhaden caught by the big “purse seine” vessels Omega operates to catch fish to be processed for oil and fish meal, board members said a finding of noncompliance could shut down the bait fishery, in which smaller operators use a different technique to catch fish used by crabbers and in commercial fin-fisheries

Instead, Bowman and Blazer proposed that the commission find Virginia out of compliance if landings this year actually exceeded 51,000 tons.

That effort failed, but the board decided to delay until February acting on an alternative declaring Virginia out of compliance.

Omega spokesman Ben Landry said he believed the menhaden board’s decision to delay acting reflected commissioners’ new-found concern, underlined by NOAA’s Lynch, about the scientific basis for the cap.

“We have no intention of blowing past the 51,000,” he said. “But it’s an artificial number … our concern is flexibility; if there are storms out in the ocean, we’d like to be able to come into the bay.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Southern Maryland county considers limiting dock access for oyster farmers

August 7, 2018 — Oyster farming has grown rapidly in Maryland in recent years — too rapidly, in the eyes of some. Last week, spurred by complaints from waterfront homeowners and others, local elected officials in St. Mary’s County moved to put the brakes on the burgeoning industry along their shoreline.

The Southern Maryland county’s board of commissioners voted on July 31 to hold a public hearing on Aug. 28 on a proposed 18-month moratorium on the use of commercial docks to land oysters from any newly issued aquaculture leases in local waters.

Randy Guy, president of the five-member board of commissioners, said they want to “slow down” what he called a proliferation of oyster farming operations in St. Mary’s. The county has no direct role in the approval of state-issued aquaculture leases, so they’re looking to change that by asserting local zoning control over the use of docks and marinas that support the shellfish enterprises.

“We’ve got people coming in who are not involved in the local water culture,” Guy said, noting that some of those seeking leases don’t live in St. Mary’s. “We feel some of this is restricting recreational areas and causing hazards for boating. … I’m worried about an accident happening.”

He and other commissioners — three of whom own waterfront homes — have said they’re also concerned about the aesthetics and impacts on property values from cages or floating baskets of oysters in front of waterfront homes. And at least a couple contend homeowners should have a say in whether they’re permitted.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Company to explore ocean floor off Maryland’s coast to prepare for offshore wind plans

August 1, 2018 — Deepwater Wind, which operates a wind farm in waters off Rhode Island, wants to build another one off the Maryland coast. But before its proposal can go forward, the company needs to know what lies on the sea floor here — and within the ancient layers of sediment beneath it.

So geologists, marine biologists and archaeologists will spend the next couple of months seeking answers, scouting the potential footprint of a wind energy project planned near the mouth of the Delaware Bay.

The survey, being launched this week, is a key step in advancing a proposal vying to be the nation’s second offshore wind farm.

“You can imagine, if you’re going to build a house, you want to know more than just what’s the geology in your town,” said Jeffrey Grybowski, the company’s CEO. “We need to have a very detailed picture of the ocean floor.”

That includes any hills or valleys, boulders or sand dunes, thriving habitats for aquatic life, and even any shipwrecks.

Read the full story at the Capital Gazette

 

MARYLAND: Why the fishing industry is against offshore wind farms near Ocean City

July 23, 2018 — Concern from the fishing industry is the latest development in the escalating debate over offshore wind farms near Ocean City.

Representatives say wind farms could cause harm by driving marine wildlife away, disturbing the ocean environment and making navigation more difficult for fishers and mariners.

“Now with the current offshore wind leasing process, we have these fishing grounds being sold right out from under us,” said Meghan Lapp during a recent presentation to the Ocean City Town Council. Lapp is a fishing liaison for Seafreeze Ltd., a Rhode Island commercial fishing company.

But marine biologists and wind farm officials say the impact won’t be that severe.

“I think they took an emotional approach to the problem. … So there was some degree of misinformation,” said Salvo Vitale, general counsel for U.S. Wind, one of the offshore wind energy companies involved in the Maryland project.

Conflicting information has muddied many discussions surrounding offshore wind energy. This back and forth pattern of counter arguments has persisted throughout the history of the project.

Read the full story at the Salisbury Daily Times

MARYLAND: Offshore Wind Projects’ Impact On Fishing Grounds Discussed

July 18, 2018 — After hearing a strong presentation on the potential impacts of offshore wind energy farms on fishing off the Ocean City coast and throughout the mid-Atlantic, resort officials this week seemed poised to strengthen their opposition to the proposed projects.

Since the Maryland Public Service Commission over a year ago approved the leases for two wind energy projects off the coast, Ocean City officials have been in a prolonged battle with the two approved developers to site the massive turbines offshore by at least 26 miles, or a distance perceived to have them not visible from the shoreline. From the beginning, the Mayor and Council’s official position has been an overall support of the concept of renewable, offshore wind energy, but not at the expense of sightlines from the resort’s coast and the potential impact on tourism and property values.

While much of the wind turbine issues, at least locally, have focused on the proposed distance and the perceived impact on tourism and property values, there has been little formal discussion of the possible impact on the resort’s vast fishing industry. Almost certainly, there will be some disruption of commercial and recreational fishing during the construction of the vast wind farms off the resort coast including some likely closures.

Read the full story at the Maryland Coast Dispatch

Are Chesapeake Bay dolphins eating all the fish?

July 18, 2018 — Rockfish are a Chesapeake Bay delicacy pursued heavily by commercial and recreational fishermen alike.

But many say it’s been a poor year on the Bay and now a growing number are beginning to question whether an apparently increasing population of dolphins in the Bay might be to blame.

Researchers who have been tracking dolphins in increasing numbers said they don’t have any answers.

“We don’t have information to confirm one way or the other if there is any impact,” say Greg Bortz, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

Many commercial watermen said dolphins are chasing and eating valuable game species like rockfish, but there are many other environmental factors that are impacting the health of the Bay this season.

“We’ve had a lot of weather that isn’t normal,” said commercial fisherman Andy Mattes III, who noted heavy rains this spring and high temperatures this summer.

Mattes said low oxygen in much of the bay cause by polluted runoff is a major problem. He said blaming dolphins is too simplistic.

Read the full story at WUSA 9