Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: With More Scallops But Fewer Fishermen, Select Board Raises Bushel Limit For Commercial Fleet

November 22, 2024 — There are more adult scallops in Nantucket Harbor than at any time since 2012, according to the town’s Natural Resources Department. That year, the island’s commercial fleet harvested more than 18,000 bushels, far beyond what fishermen have caught in recent years.

That should be good news. But the problem is that today, there are approximately 75 percent fewer fishermen out on the water scalloping.

So on Wednesday, acting on a recommendation from the Harbor & Shellfish Advisory Board, the members of the Select Board voted unanimously to increase the bay scallop bushel limit for commercial scallopers from five bushels to six bushels per commercial license for the remainder of the 2024-2025 bay scallop season.

Read the full article at the Nantucket Current

Top U.S. ports for a quarter century

November 21, 2024 — For the 25th consecutive year, Dutch Harbor, AK, and New Bedford, MA, ranked as the top U.S. fishing ports for volume and value in 2022.

Nationwide, commercial landings that year were 8.4 billion pounds valued at $5.9 billion, down by 2.6 percent and 11 percent ($632 million), respectively.

Those are two of the top takeaways from the annual Fisheries of the United States report released this month by NOAA Fisheries. The data show a downward press almost across the board from Covid-driven impacts as the global pandemic waned in 2022.

The easy-to-read, 23-page report provides a national snapshot of U.S. commercial fisheries, aquaculture, seafood processing, imports and exports, market trends, and per capita consumption.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

MASSACHUSETTS: Cuban-born net maker shares his journey from Havana to New Bedford’s working waterfront

November 15, 2024 — When he had his chance, Cuban-born net maker Miguel Sanchez escaped his home country, jumping from a Cuban fishing boat aboard a ship heading to Canada.

The young law student escaped to start a new life, far away from Cuba and its oppressive dictatorship, the only member of his family to escape.

Sanchez left Havana abruptly on March 24, 1996, before heading to Canada, arriving in Nova Scotia on April 15, 1996.

A year ago, after spending more than 20 years in Nova Scotia, he got a call to work at Reidar’s Manufacturing on the New Bedford waterfront. His skills as a net maker were in demand.

Read the full article at the The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: How to get a job on a fishing boat? There’s no easy answer

November 13, 2024 — It’s an early fall morning, and Pat Avila is watching the sun crack over New Bedford Harbor from the passenger seat of his car. His trunk is loaded with a neon-yellow laundry sack for his foul-weather gear and a camo duffle holding everything else he might need on a fishing trip lasting anywhere between two days and two weeks.

Route 18 commuters aren’t yet on the road, and the waterfront is just beginning to stir. There is the clanging of fishermen mending their gear and the sighing brakes of freezer trucks. A baby blue scallop boat peels past the hurricane barrier, its diesel engine murmuring, as it heads to the open ocean beyond.

Avila, 39, with a wiry stature and tightly cropped haircut, eyes the ship in the distance as it heads out to sea. He isn’t on a boat this morning. At least, not yet. Instead, he is plying the docks in pursuit of landing a spot on a commercial fishing trip.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Shellfish dying, lobster leaving: Mass. marine ecosystem faces hotter, harsher future as climate warms

November 13, 2024 — Massachusetts Bay is changing: It’s getting hotter, more acidic, and harsher around the edges.

Native fish species are fleeing north or dying in marine heat waves. Powerful storms are kicking up pollution that was settled at the bottom of riverbeds and carrying those damaging contaminants into the bay. Humans, to protect ourselves against rising seas, are constructing hard walls that force out soft marshland habitats.

Those are some of the key findings in a new sweeping review of the latest climate science on Massachusetts’ marine ecosystems, which comes the same week that nations are meeting in Azerbaijan for the United Nation’s annual climate summit, this year called COP29.

The Boston Research Advisory Group report found that deadly hot marine heat waves — once extremely rare — could become commonplace. Scientists warn that those and other impacts are only going to get worse if the climate continues to warm with dire and possibly irreversible impacts on the ocean.

If the planet does not stop emitting planet-warming greenhouse gasses, marine heat waves could occur off the coast of Massachusetts once every decade if the planet reaches 2 degrees Celsius of warming and perhaps every other year with 3 degrees of warming. The vast majority of excess heat generated by anthropogenic warming is absorbed by the planet’s oceans.

Read the following was released by The Boston Globe

Troubles at factory making Vineyard Wind blades

November 12, 2024 — At least 14 turbine blades built for the Vineyard Wind project have been shipped to France from New Bedford, apparently due to a manufacturing defect that has resulted in layoffs and suspensions at the blade manufacturing plant in Gaspé, Quebec.

GE Vernova laid off nine managers and suspended 11 unionized floor workers at the LM Wind factory in Gaspé last month in response to the defective blade that broke on a turbine in July, the local union confirmed to The Light on Monday. The Gaspé plant had been manufacturing and supplying most of the blades for the Vineyard Wind project until the blade failure.

Managers at the LM Wind plant may have falsified quality testing data, according to a report from local outlet Radio Gaspésie. Citing anonymous sources, the radio station reported in late October that executives at the LM Wind plant may have asked employees to falsify quality control data, favoring production quantity over quality.

The local union is contesting the suspensions of the floor workers, “who are not responsible for the directives of their former superiors,” said Thierry Larivière, spokesperson for the wind power workers’ national union, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, in an email to The Light on Monday.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

US East Coast states select firms to run offshore wind development compensation fund for fishers

November 12, 2024 — A coalition of U.S. East Coast states have selected two firms to manage the Offshore Wind Fisheries Compensation Fund, a mitigation program built to compensate commercial and recreation for-hire fishers for revenue lost due to offshore wind developments.

The fund is a collaboration between the governments of 11 East Coast states – Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina – to provide financial compensation for economic loss caused by offshore wind projects along the Atlantic Coast. The states launched a competition earlier this year to select an administrator to run the new fund.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Do hurricanes pose a danger to fish and other sea life?

November 11, 2024 — What happens to fish and other sea creatures during a hurricane? Do they flee the area or ride out the storm?

According to an article on the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association website, hurricanes generate high waves, rough undercurrents and shifting sands, and all three may harm sea life.

“Slow-moving fish and turtles and shellfish beds are often decimated by the rough undercurrents and rapid changes in water temperature and salinity wrought by a hurricane,” the article states.

According to NOAA, don’t worry too much about sharks, whales, and other large animals because they swiftly move to calmer waters and are not overly affected by hurricanes.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford oral history exhibit tells the stories of immigrants in the fishing industry

November 11, 2024 — “Casting A Wider Net,” a new exhibit exploring the stories of Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Guatemalan and Salvadoran members of New Bedford’s working waterfront in their own words, will soon open to the public.

The exhibit opens Thursday, Nov. 14, at 6 p.m. on AHA! Night at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center at 38 Bethel St. The exhibit will remain on display through May 31, then travel to locations throughout the community.

Anyone interested in learning more about this project is encouraged to explore the exhibit and meet with the program participants from 6 to 8 p.m.

All of the community ethnographers are expected to be on hand to answer questions along with some of the people who shared their stories through the interview process.

Read the full article at The Standard-Times

$2M to give more ocean information to fishers, scientists. ‘It will make a difference.’

November 8, 2024 — A $2 million dollar grant aimed at beefing up collaboration between commercial fishermen and scientists was announced in late October at an event in Sandwich.

The money will put 450 more sensors on commercial fishing equipment and data monitors on 150 more commercial fishing vessels.

The research and development grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative Innovation Institute to the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance will make it possible to gather more ocean data and share it widely, according to James Byrnes, director of operations and programs.

“We’re creating the largest collection of boats and sensors in the U.S. for at-scale monitoring of the oceans in and around Massachusetts,” he said at the announcement.

Read the full article at Yahoo News!