November 16, 2018 — Hyannis – The public comment period is open on National Marine Fisheries Service proposals for the summer flounder and black sea bass fisheries in 2019.
Regulators are also proposing to maintain previously established specifications for the 2019 scup fishery.
November 16, 2018 — Aquaculture is on the rise in Massachusetts. For many entering the business, shellfish farming seems like a more secure option than the marine fisheries. But climate change looms as a long-term threat over the industry.
Paul Wittenstein always wanted to be a commercial fisherman.
Growing up in Harwich, he worked summer jobs at fish markets and on chartered fishing boats. In college, he started out studying fisheries technology, but it was a bad time for the industry. “All the while I was in school, I was watching the fishing industry struggling,” he said. “I watched the cod disappear. I watched small boats battling big boats. At the same time, I saw this tiny little shellfish industry start to take hold.”
November 15, 2018 — The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series hosted by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center continues on Friday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. with “Life by Lobster,” a 55-minute documentary that takes you inside the lives of five young lobster fishermen determined to pursue this proud traditional vocation against steadily mounting obstacles.
Contrasting the stark beauty of the Downeast Maine seacoast with the stark reality of earning a living there, “Life by Lobster,” a documentary by independent filmmaker Iain McCray Martin, takes audiences inside the lives of five young lobster fishermen determined to pursue this proud traditional vocation against steadily mounting obstacles, a press release from the center states.
Co-produced by LA television director J. Miller Tobin (“Gossip Girl,” “Num3ers,” “CSI”) and Maine-based Opera House Arts, LBL was selected as part of the Maine International Film Festival’s Best of 2009 collection and is partially funded by the Perfect Storm Foundation, among others.
“I began work on this film when I was 19, in the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at Emory University. During that first year away from the small island off the coast of Maine where I had grown up, I realized, like never before, the uniqueness of my home and the people who define it,” said Martin.
“Facing a myriad of economic and regulatory hurdles, not to mention trying to overcome youthful inexperience in a tough, competitive industry, these young men could be, I feared, a dying breed. Their story needed to be told.”
November 15, 2018 — When James A. Santapaola Jr. got nabbed landing 183 illegal lobsters at a local lobster wholesaler two years ago, the Gloucester lobsterman eventually cut a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to 20 of the counts and pay two fines totaling $10,050.
Later, the state Division of Marine Fisheries suspended his state lobstering license for three months.
Now, nearly two years after the plea deal, Santapaola Jr. — who was arrested again last week on charges of possessing 47 illegal lobsters — has paid only $720 of the $10,050 in fines, according to the clerk’s office at the Gloucester District Court.
Melissa Teixeira Prince, chief court clerk, on Wednesday said Santapaola Jr. is scheduled for a status review with court officials on Monday, Nov. 19, to discuss the outstanding balance on the fines from the previous offenses.
Last Friday afternoon, the Massachusetts Environmental Police, operating with Gloucester police and officers from NOAA Law Enforcement, arrested the 42-year-old Santapaola Jr. for possessing five crates and one tote of illegal live lobsters which law enforcement officers estimated collectively to weigh between 500 and 600 pounds.
November 15, 2018 — The lobster industry in southern New England has been on the decline for decades. As waters warm, some lobster fishermen are adapting by switching their catch to Jonah crab, a crustacean once considered a trash species.
Mike Palombo is captain of a 72-foot lobster boat, but his main catch is crabs.
He leaves from the Sandwich Marina for three-day fishing trips, going out over 100 miles to haul traps in the Canyons. One day this fall, he and his crew returned with around 23,000 Jonah crab and 2,000 lobsters in big saltwater holding tanks. “It was a good trip, very productive,” he said.
Jonah crab are sturdy, hard-shelled creatures, with black-tipped claws. They’re about a pound apiece. You might not have heard of them, but Jonah crab are sustaining Southern New England fishermen left stranded by the decline of lobsters.
Tracy Pugh, a lobster biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said there’s been a drop in the lobster population south of the Cape, in part because the water temperature is rising. “The Southern New England lobsters are experiencing the bad aspects of climate change,” she said, “because they’re already in the southern extent of their range.”
Pugh says the warmer water is causing the lobsters to experience physiological stress. It’s also bringing in new diseases that affect lobster, and an uptick in predators like black seabass and tautog.
November 14, 2018 — A Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod helicopter crew medevaced a sick 54-year-old man from the 87-foot fishing boat Generation Sunday night 42 miles off Nantucket. The captain of the Generation contacted the Coast Guard at approximately 5:20 p.m. and requested assistance for his sick crew member.
In a press release from the United States Coast Guard, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew arrived on scene and hoisted the patient to the helicopter. The aircrew flew the man to Massachusetts General Hospital for further care.
The patient was reported to be in stable condition at the time of the transfer.
November 13, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts revised the effort control measures for the 2018 Area 1A Trimester 3 (October 1 – December 31) fishery. Board members, with input from industry, agreed to seven (7) consecutive landing days until 92% of the Area 1A sub-ACL is projected to be harvested. Vessels may only land once every 24-hour period.
Trimester 3 landings will be closely monitored and the directed fishery will close when 92% of the Area 1A sub-ACL is projected to be reached. Fishermen are prohibited from landing more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip once the fishery is closed. For more information, please contact Megan Ware at 703.842.0740 ormware@asmfc.org.
November 13, 2018 — Late last month, four endangered sea turtles washed ashore in northern Cape Cod, marking an early onset to what has now become a yearly event: the sea turtle stranding season.
These turtles—in last month’s case, Kemp’s ridley sea turtles—venture into the Gulf of Maine during warm months, but they can become hypothermic and slow moving when colder winter waters abruptly arrive, making it hard to escape.
“They are enjoying the warm water, and then all of a sudden the cold comes, and they can’t get out fast enough,” said Andrew Pershing, an oceanographer at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine.
Thanks to record-breaking summer water temperatures that quickly transition to cooler conditions, an expanded sea turtle stranding season is just one facet of a new normal for the Gulf of Maine, Pershing explained. And this new normal is a striking contrast to prior conditions.
This year, the Gulf of Maine has experienced only 45 days with what have not been considered heat wave temperatures. Such persistent warmth, scientists warn, can set off a series of other cascading effects on the marine life and fisheries that have historically defined the culture and economy of this region’s coastline.
November 12, 2018 — Attending the day-long symposium on offshore wind held at the Whaling Museum on October 30 was time well spent. As our region is poised on the brink of this new era there are more questions than answers and the symposium afforded participants a broad overview of its potential development and impact.
There was considerable expertise present. Of particular interest was the experience and counsel shared by a delegation from the UK that included fishermen, regulators and businessmen. The takeaway, for me, was the enormous scale of this enterprise, if fully developed as envisioned, along with the sheer immensity of its component parts. The numbers involved, in financial, engineering and logistical terms, are truly galactic.
Mark O’Reilly, CEO and chairman of Team Humber Marine Alliance hails from Grimsby, which found itself in a position similar to that facing New Bedford now when offshore wind was proposed in that region. The city, an old whaling and fishing port, had fallen on hard times but was favorably located, geographically, to become a hub for offshore wind. Without any experience, the city had to grapple with this new and unknown industry to discover how it might benefit from the opportunity. In Grimsby it has become a success story but some hard lessons were learned and O’Reilly cautioned New Bedford, and everyone else involved, on the dangers of parochialism. With the U.S. government currently offering leases for wind farms off the Atlantic coast from here to Delaware there is burgeoning competition among coastal states to attract developers. But the majority of ports in the sector are simply not large enough, or do not have sufficient land mass available, to accommodate all of the needs of this giant industry. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut must learn to collaborate, he said. Ports such as Davisville, New London, Brayton Point and New Bedford will all be involved and should present a unified front. O’Reilly suggested that New Bedford’s role in the industry would be in ‘O and M,’ operation and maintenance. However, one surprise that emerged from his account of the Humber experience was the amount of fabrication completed elsewhere. The nacelles came from Cuxhaven in Germany while the towers came from Spain and Vietnam.
From Northern Ireland came a tale of offshore wind and fishing brought by Davey Hill from Kilkeel, a small port suffering because of low fishing quotas. When fishermen viewed the areas mapped out for a wind farm in prime fishing grounds they were aghast but soon realized protest was futile. So Hill and other fishermen looked to take advantage of the situation and formed a successful company, Sea Source Offshore, that provides “guard vessels” to patrol turbine sites. They then used the income to start their own fishing cooperative and acquire a larger offshore fishing vessel.
November 12, 2018 — Fishermen, fish processors and others warned on Thursday that fishing grounds will be lost with the construction of Vineyard Wind, and some expressed doubt that planned UMass Dartmouth research can happen fast enough to document the loss.
“We have this huge area we’re going to develop, and obviously we’ve got a pretty close timeline,” said Ed Barrett, a commercial fisherman from the South Shore. “How are you ever going to even come close to figuring out an impact? … I have zero faith in that.”
UMD’s School for Marine Science and Technology held the meeting to collect fishing industry comments as researchers begin to design monitoring studies that would occur before, during and after construction. Vineyard Wind has hired SMAST to help write a monitoring plan to submit to federal regulators, Professor Steve Cadrin said in an interview prior to the meeting.
Three similar meetings are planned for Rhode Island, Chatham and Martha’s Vineyard.
Katie Almeida, fishery policy analyst for The Town Dock, a squid dealer and processor in Rhode Island, said that for two years, her company has been asking for at least five years of pre-construction fishery monitoring, and the conversation has not gone any further.
“And now we’re down to what, a year?” she said. “How can we get any meaningful science and study done that’s going to actually hold up to any kind of scrutiny for baseline studies?”
People have been asking for a delay, she said.
Cadrin and Professor Kevin Stokesbury hosted the meeting. One of the problems they will face in designing a study, Stokesbury said, is that whatever survey methods they use before construction, they have to be able to use during and after construction, to eliminate variables.