October 7, 2019 — AquaBounty is planning to preemptively label its genetically modified salmon in the United States in 2020, a company spokesperson told SeafoodSource soon after Canadian seafood industry executives and NGOs spoke out against the fish.
At the Canadian Seafood Show in Montreal, Quebec, in September, a panel of seafood industry executives and environmental groups said that they do not plan to sell or support AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage salmon in Canada.
October 7, 2019 — Time is ticking on a federal tax credit that major wind farm companies had hoped to take advantage of. And without it the future of offshore wind farming is in question. Fox and Friends correspondent Todd Piro is here with more.
October 4, 2019 — Two weeks ago, lobstermen working off Scorton Creek started seeing something they had never experienced. Lobsters, in fact everything in their traps, were coming up dead.
Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries senior biologist Robert Glenn started fielding phone calls from puzzled fishermen Sept. 23. The fishermen were worried there might be something in the water that was killing the lobsters, fish, shellfish, even sea worms.
It turns out, it was something missing from the water: oxygen.
For the past two weeks, division researchers and scientists from the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown have boarded vessels and taken water samples, gathered temperature data at various depths and measured the amount of oxygen dissolved in the water. Preliminary results from testing on dozens of dead lobsters found nothing toxic in the water that could have killed them, and the focus was on a phenomenon that occurs every year — low oxygen in the layer of water along the ocean bottom, Glenn said.
October 4, 2019 — Federal fisheries regulators are taking heat from both sides of the debate over protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The latest salvo comes from a conservation group representing public employees, which says the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) ignored its own scientists when it reopened groundfishing areas that had been closed for decades.
Earlier this year, NMFS reopened 3000 square miles of ocean south of Nantucket to groundfishing, allowing the use of gillnets and rope. The agency said that based on previous regulatory reviews and some more recent scientific articles, it could not find sufficient evidence to conclude that fishing gear alone causes a decline in the health of large whales — and that further review was not necessary.
Conservationists say the agency cherry-picked the evidence.
October 4, 2019 — NOAA Fisheries released a more detailed response Wednesday to criticisms of the science it used to develop new protections for North Atlantic right whales, refuting or clarifying several points while admitting data collection remains “an ongoing challenge.”
The response was attached to a letter from NOAA assistant administrator Chris Oliver to Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. In August, the lobster trade group withdrew its support for the right whale protection plan approved in April by the federal Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team.
In its Aug. 30 letter to NOAA Fisheries, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said it based its defection on its own analysis of the science NOAA utilized in developing the right whale protection plan that points to the lobster industry as a chief cause of whale entanglements.
The MLA said its review concluded that lobster lines and gear are among the least prevalent causes of serious whale injuries or death.
October 4, 2019 — Without citing its sources, the group told the inspector general of the Commerce Department, which oversees the Fisheries Service, that it has “reason to believe” that there are e-mails, memos, and other internal communications that support their allegations that the agency’s officials were responsible for “blatantly mischaracterizing” the recommendations of its scientists on whether to open 3,000 square miles of popular feeding grounds for right whales to fishermen. The move, made under pressure from the fishing industry, outraged environmental advocates.
“An internal review process would likely reveal a disagreement within the agency, or a failure to take into account the advice of … its own right whale scientists, or true ‘agency expertise,’” Whitehouse wrote.
Officials at the Fisheries Service and the Commerce Department declined to comment on the complaint. An official at the inspector general’s office said he had yet to review the complaint.
Representatives of the scallop industry, which has been allowed to access the newly opened areas and has earned millions of dollars from their catch, said they were operating safely.
“Scallopers have been fishing for years, and there’s not a single known interaction with a right whale,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney at the Fisheries Survival Fund in Washington D.C., which represents the scallop industry. “If we’re not impacting them, then why should we be restricted from the area?”
But scientists say that other fisheries, such as those that use fixed gear like lobster traps, pose a grave threat to right whales. That threat has increased in the waters off Nantucket, where more right whales have been spotted in recent years.
October 4, 2019 — Years of debate over New England herring are culminating in new fishing limits and an inshore midwater trawl restricted area to reduce user conflicts.
With an Oct. 21 deadline for public comment, fishing and environmental groups are pushing for NMFS approval of Amendment 8 to the New England Fishery Management Council’s herring plan.
If approved by the agency, Amendment 8 would prohibit the use of midwater trawl gear inshore of the 12-mile territorial sea limit, from the Maine-Canada border south to the border of Rhode Island and Connecticut. Off eastern Cape Cod, the restricted area would bump out to 20 miles, within 30-minute squares 114 and 99.
John Pappalardo, CEO of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance that pushed hard for the changes, said the future impact is uncertain.
October 4, 2019 — When you see the new fishing vessel Viking Power, you’ll know it.
Due to arrive in New Bedford in early November, the unusual-looking scalloper has a hull that slopes outward at the bow. Just below the water line, it comes to a rounded point, like the nose of rocket.
Fleet Fisheries owner Lars Vinjerud II commissioned the boat. He said the aerodynamic shape serves two goals: to make the boat more fuel efficient, and to make it more comfortable and safer for the crew. The boat should do less pitching in rough seas.
“The waves are supposed to roll up and roll off,” he said.
Vinjerud designed the boat in concert with an Alabama shipyard, Williams Fabrication, which built the boat in Bayou La Batre, Alabama — the same harbor where the fictional Forrest Gump landed shrimp.
October 4, 2019 — The following was released by Shellstock:
Shellstock is an annual community celebration and fundraiser. Proceeds benefit the Westport Shellfish Propagation fund, which helps to ensure the ongoing enjoyment and prosperity that the Westport River offers the town and surrounding communities. All proceeds go to buying shellfish to be planted in the Westport River.
October 3, 2019 — American fishermen are expected to get a little more fishing quota under terms of an agreement with Canada.
The countries are home to fisheries for economically important species that cross international boundaries, such as cod and haddock. They reach agreement every year about how to divide catch on eastern Georges Bank, a critical fishing area off New England and Canada.
The New England Fishery Management Council says the U.S is scheduled to get 29% of the 1.4 million pound total allowable catch of cod on eastern Georges Bank in 2020. It’s also slated for 54% of the 66 million pound total allowable catch of haddock in the area.