Saving Seafood

Why Is the Gulf of Maine Warming Faster Than 99% of the Ocean?

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.

Read the full story at Earth & Space Science News

DON CUDDY: An industry still fishing for answers on offshore wind

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.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishermen ask for more time to study wind impact

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.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

ASMFC Atlantic Herring Days Out Call Scheduled for November 13, 2018 at 10:30 AM

November 9, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Fisheries Management Council:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Herring Management Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts set effort control measures for the Area 1A (inshore Gulf of Maine) fishery via Days Out meetings/calls.

The Atlantic Herring Board members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts are scheduled to convene via conference call to review fishing effort on:

• Tuesday, November 13th at 10:30 AM

To join the call, please dial 888.585.9008 and enter conference room number 502-884-672 as prompted.

Please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740 for more information.

Fisheries Researchers Map Habitats Ahead of Offshore Wind Development

November 9, 2018 — HYANNIS, Mass. – NOAA Fisheries researchers are helping to inform federal managers and developers on the impacts that construction and operation of offshore wind facilities will have on ocean bottom habitats and fisheries.

The Northeast Fisheries Science Center conducted four years of research to build a database of information, including water temperatures, topography, sediments, currents and marine life in the eight Wind Energy Areas authorized by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management along the East Coast.

The designated WEAs encompass just over 4,000 square nautical miles of seafloor from Massachusetts to North Carolina. About 40 percent of the area has actually been leased to date, including the Vineyard Wind project development south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Declining species’ future tops agenda at whale of a meeting

November 9, 2018 — A group of scientists, conservationists and others is meeting in Massachusetts to brainstorm strategies to save one of the rarest marine mammals on the planet.

It’s the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium’s annual meeting, and it’s wrapping up on Thursday at the Whaling Museum in New Bedford. The right whales number only about 440 and have suffered from high mortality and poor reproduction in recent years.

The meeting began on Wednesday. The agenda includes sessions about everything from the summertime occurrence of the whales in the Bay of Fundy to changes in the abundance of the tiny organisms they need to eat to survive.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Tribune

New estimate lowers number of right whales

November 9, 2018 — A gut feeling among North Atlantic right whale experts that the population of the beleaguered animals has dropped to around 400 has been reinforced with a new statistical estimate of 411 animals as of the end of 2017.

“The public shouldn’t think there are exactly 411 whales,” Center for Coastal Studies right whale researcher Charles “Stormy” Mayo said Thursday at the end of the two-day North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium annual meeting in New Bedford. “We believe that they are in the low 400s, or around 400.”

The consortium’s annual report card for the end of 2016 had set the population number at 451, using a statistical model unveiled last year.

The loss of about 40 right whales, under the statistical model, between the end of 2016 and the end of 2017 would include the 12 documented deaths in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada and the five off the Cape and Islands linked in large part to human causes of entanglement in fishing rope and being struck by ships.

“Everyone in the field – conservationists, the public, scientists – continue to be saddened by the decline,” Mayo said. “There’s no question there’s a decline. There’s no question we need to solve the mortality issue.”

The maximum number of human-caused deaths should be no more than one a year to sustain the critically endangered population along the U.S. and Canadian coast, according to a federal stock assessment in September.

U.S. and Canadian government agencies and nonprofit organizations are working to identify the best ways to respond, with new technology to eliminate vertical ropes in the water, for example.

Read the full story at The Inquirer and Mirror

American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop Scheduled for January 28-31, in New Bedford, MA

November 8, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will hold the American Lobster Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop at the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, 836 South Rodney French Boulevard, New Bedford, MA. The stock assessment, which is scheduled for completion in the summer of 2020, will evaluate the health of the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and Southern New England stocks and inform management of this species.  The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data*, when the public will be asked to leave the room.  

The Commission welcomes the submission of alternate assessment models. For alternate models to be considered, the model description, model input, final model estimates, and complete source code must be provided to Jeff Kipp, Senior Stock Assessment Scientist, at jkipp@asmfc.org by December 28, 2018. Any models submitted without complete, editable source code and input files will not be considered.

For more information about the assessment or attending the upcoming workshop (space will be limited), please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

* Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data.  In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.

 

Ocean Shock: Fish Flee for Cooler Waters, Upending Lives in US South

November 7, 2018 — This is part of “Ocean Shock,” a Reuters series exploring climate change’s impact on sea creatures and the people who depend on them.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son” drifts from Karroll Tillett’s workshop, a wooden shed about half a mile from where he was born.

Tillett, known as “Frog” to everyone here, has lived most of his 75 years on the water, much of it chasing summer flounder. But the chasing got harder and harder, and now he spends his time making nets for other fishermen at his workshop, at the end of a dirt path next to his ex-wife’s house.

The house is on CB Daniels Sr. Road, one of several named after two of the fishing clans that have held sway for decades in this small coastal town. Besides CB Daniels Sr. Road, there’s ER Daniels Road and just plain Daniels Road. In Frog’s family, there’s Tink Tillett Road and Rondal Tillett Road.

Once upon a time, these fishing families were pioneers. In the 1970s and 1980s, they built summer flounder into a major catch for the region. The 15 brothers and sisters of the Daniels clan parlayed the business into a multinational fishing company, and three years ago they sold it to a Canadian outfit for tens of millions of dollars.

But for Frog Tillett and almost everyone else in these parts, there’s not much money to be made fishing offshore here anymore.

Forty years ago, Tillett fished for summer flounder in December and January in waters near Wanchese, then followed the fish north as the weather warmed. In recent years, however, fewer summer flounder have traveled as far south in the winter, and the most productive area has shifted north, closer to Martha’s Vineyard and the southern shore of Long Island.

Reuters has spent more than a year scouring decades of maritime temperature readings, fishery records and other little-used data to create a portrait of the planet’s hidden climate disruption — in the rarely explored depths of the seas that cover more than 70 percent of the Earth’s surface. The reporting has come to a disturbing conclusion: Marine life is facing an epic dislocation.

Read the full story from Reuters at Voice of America

Trial date set in case of clam espionage

November 7, 2018 — The federal trial between Gloucester-based National Fish and Seafood and the Florida-based seafood processing competitor it accuses of corporate espionage now is not expected to commence until at least midway through 2019.

U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin on Monday set next July 22 as the opening trial date in the lawsuit between National Fish and competitor Tampa Bay Fisheries of Dover, Florida.

In the lawsuit, initially filed last July, National Fish accuses Tampa Bay Fisheries of hiring away Kathleen A. Scanlon, a 23-year employee at National Fish, and using her to help steal recipes, client information and other trade secrets on her way out the door from the Gloucester company.

The order by Sorokin, who sits in the U.S. District Court in Boston, also established the discovery schedule for the trial and set a status conference with attorneys from both sides for the afternoon of April 17.

If Sorokin’s trial date holds, the trial will begin almost exactly one year since the the intellectual property battle between the two seafood processing competitors burst into the public consciousness.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times