Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘It’s just depressing’: As the pandemic worsens, oystermen struggle to remain afloat

November 23, 2020 — After raking up the last of the overgrown oysters and heaving them onto his small barge, Bruce Silverbrand puttered a mile or so to a shallow bend in Buttermilk Bay, where his daughter dumped the shellfish onto a growing reef of brackish discards.

Forsaking such a valuable delicacy would be unthinkable in normal times, but with environmental advocacy groups buying nearly a quarter of his annual crop to help reconstruct vital coastal reefs, the burly oysterman was happy to unload them, even at a reduced price.

The pandemic has hurt many businesses since March, but it has been particularly painful for the oyster industry. Unlike other seafood harvesters that have managed to sustain their businesses through the pandemic by selling to supermarkets, large institutions, and in some cases directly to consumers, nearly all oysters are sold at restaurants.

“Everybody is suffering through this,” said Silverbrand, who grows 450,000 oysters a year. “We’re trying our best to limp through this and come out on the other side. Some of us will make it; some of us won’t.”

Between March and October, sales from the state’s oyster growers plummeted by 50 percent compared with the same period last year, according to the state Division of Marine Fisheries. Compared with the previous five years, oyster sales have declined 43 percent.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Search on for 4-member crew of sunken Atlantic fishing boat

November 23, 2020 — The Coast Guard is searching for the four-member crew of a Maine fishing boat that sank off Massachusetts early Monday.

The 82-foot Emmy Rose went down about 20 miles northeast of Provincetown, Massachusetts, the Coast Guard said in an emailed statement.

The Coast Guard got the emergency alert around 1:30 a.m. and was on the scene by about 2:30 a.m., Petty Officer Ryan Noel said in a phone interview.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WPRI

MASSACHUSETTS: Selling seafood a family affair

November 20, 2020 — Twice before, Gloucester has boasted fish markets bearing the name of Capt. Vito Ciaramitaro. Now there is a third and it remains a family affair.

Capt. Vito’s Fresh Seafood and Delivery is up and running at 53 Washington St., joining Steve Connolly Seafood and Turner’s Seafood Market as the city’s hat trick of traditional full-service fishmongers.

“A town like Gloucester should have a lot of fish markets,” said Vito Ciaramitaro, the third of the Ciaramitaros to bear the name and one of the family members leading its return to the onshore fish business. “It’s what we’re known for.”

The venture is a collaboration of Vito, his sister Ninfa Ciaramitaro and their mother Enza Ciaramitaro, based on an idea from the second Capt. Vito, the father of the siblings and husband of Enza.

“My dad kind of come up with the idea because he still had a lot of friends fishing,” said Ninfa Ciaramitaro.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

66 turtles rescued from Cape Cod beaches, New England Aquarium says

November 20, 2020 — More than 60 turtles stranded on Cape Cod beaches have been rescued so far this fall and taken to New England Aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy, as rescue workers face new challenges because of the coronavirus pandemic, the aquarium said Thursday.

At Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, employees and volunteers scour the beaches for turtles stunned by the cold weather, sometimes suffering hypothermia and malnutrition, and take them to the sea turtle hospital, the aquarium said in a statement.

Though the season has just begun, 66 turtles have been treated so far, including Kemp’s ridleys, loggerheads, and leatherbacks, and more are expected in the coming days, the aquarium said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Coast Guard medevacs fisherman who fell overboard

November 20, 2020 — The Coast Guard reported it medevaced an injured fisherman 160 miles east of Boston on Thursday.

The crew of the 72-foot commercial fishing vessel Jennifer Anne notified the Coast Guard around 3:30 a.m. that a 35-year-old crew member had fallen overboard and was recovered by the other crew members.

The fisherman was experiencing hypothermia-like conditions and had minor lacerations, the crew reported

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishing interests fight ocean closures bill

November 20, 2020 — A national coalition of seafood industry and commercial fishery stakeholders is mobilizing against congressional legislation that would exclude commercial fishing from wide swaths of the nation’s fisheries.

The House bill, filed in late October by U.S. Rep. Raul Grivalja of Arizona, seeks to use “marine protected areas” to ban all “commercial extractive use” across 30% of the nation’s exclusive economic zone by 2030. The closures would be part of the so-called “30×30” strategy to conserve 30% of ocean habitat worldwide by the 2030 target date.

In a letter to Grivalja, more than 800 fishing stakeholders, including the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, framed the conservation-fueled proposal as an undermining threat to the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and an assault on the economic viability of fishing communities from New England to Alaska.

“Members are the commercial fishing industry are very concerned about the attempt to undermine the Magnuson Act via these proposed pieces of legislation,” said Jackie Odell, executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Expo News: Static electricity

November 17, 2020 — The fledgling U.S. offshore wind industry is gathering critical mass in southern New England, where a forthcoming environmental assessment of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind plan could determine how it and a dozen other East Coast projects might proceed.

Fishermen in the Northeast fleets, heirs to a 400-year New England industry, are deeply engaged on scientific, political and legal fronts, trying to slow what they see as federal and state governments overenthusiastic about granting wind developers chunks of the outer continental shelf.

In June 2018, East Coast fishing industry leaders organized the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance to represent fishermen’s interests to the wind industry and government regulators. Annie Hawkins, RODA’s executive director, says fishermen on every coast need to get involved.

“Just because the current projects are not located in your area doesn’t mean they won’t affect you,” Hawkins wrote in a July 2 commentary in NF. “A relatively small group of developers own the leases, and the federal permitting process is being tested and tweaked in real time.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Slow Speed Zone South of Nantucket to Protect Right Whales

November 16, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries is triggering a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone (Dynamic Management Area  or DMA) south of Nantucket.

This DMA was triggered by a November 15, 2020, sighting of an aggregation of right whales.

Mariners, please go around this areas or go slow (10 knots or less) inside this area where groups of right whales have been sighted.

South of Nantucket DMA is in effect through November 30.

40 59 N
40 23 N
069 05 W
069 52 W

Active Seasonal Management Areas November 1- April 30

Mandatory speed restrictions of 10 knots or less (50 CFR 224.105) are in effect in the following areas:

  • Block Island Sound
  • Ports of New York/New Jersey
  • Entrance to the Delaware Bay
    (Ports of Philadelphia and Wilmington)
  • Entrance to the Chesapeake Bay
    (Ports of Hampton Roads and Baltimore)
  • Ports of Morehead City and Beaufort, NC
  • Within a continuous area 20-nm from shore between Wilmington, North Carolina, to Brunswick, Georgia.

Find out more and get the coordinates for each mandatory slow speed zone.

Read the full release here

BOEM pushes back final findings on Vineyard Wind

November 16, 2020 — A sweeping environmental review of the Vineyard Wind offshore wind project is now tracking to be finalized Jan. 15, as the federal Bureau of Offshore Energy Management completes its review of public comments.

BOEM received more than 13,000 comments on its Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for Vineyard Wind, a planned 800-megawatt turbine array off southern New England, according to an agency spokesperson.

The final EIS is to be published Dec. 11, with the agency issuing its final record of decision Jan. 15 – a month’s delay for the report long-waited by the offshore wind supporters and its critics alike.

The second BOEM study was ordered up by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt in August 2019, after the National Marine Fisheries Service Greater Atlantic regional office refused to sign off on the first one. The supplemental study also looked at potential cumulative impacts of Vineyard Wind and 14 other potential wind projects now at various stages off the East Coast.

Read the full story at National Fisherman