Saving Seafood

New Study Seeks To Reveal The Secrets Of Halibut

August 29, 2018 — Fred Bennett has been a fisherman for about 60 years and he just stared, perplexed, at a graph supposedly showing a halibut, tagged to track its progress, moving in the water column.

He shook his head in consternation and looked at fellow captain Mike Anderson who has spent more than 40 years on the water.

How is that possible? Bennett wondered.

Anderson was laughing.

It’s not, he said – unless the storied flat fish had been eaten by something, most likely a great white shark.

“The tag was hanging out near the bottom during the day and was near the surface of the water during the night time, plus the tag temperature shot up suddenly and stayed there – pretty clear indications that it was eaten by a shark,” agreed George Maynard, research coordinator at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

Stumping Bennett and Anderson would be tough. The two spent many years catching halibut, a great-tasting fish that is making fishermen money in Canada, and used to make fishermen money here. But stocks crashed, and for the last 18 years local fishermen have been allowed to land only one fish per trip, and that one has to measure at least 41 inches.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Chronicle

 

Massachusetts raises fines as it updates fishing rules

August 29, 2018 — It’s going to cost you more to run afoul of the law out on the waters of the commonwealth beginning this November.

The state has doubled the civil fines and simplified and modernized the criminal fine system to run between $400 to $10,000 and as much as 30 months of jail time for offenders.

“It was really a big cleanup, especially on the criminal side, where we got rid of a lot of sections of penalties because they really reflected past enforcement priorities that just didn’t match the priorities of today,” said Jared Silva of the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

The revisions emerged from a two-year effort by DMF staff, Massachusetts Environmental Police and others to bring the state’s marine fine and penalty system into the 21st century, eliminating outdated enforcement measures and consolidating wherever possible.

“We repealed several sections,” Silva said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Lobstermen Asked to Look Out for Tagged Crustaceans

August 29, 2018 — New England’s lobster fishermen are being asked to keep an eye out for tagged lobsters that are part of a survey of the valuable crustaceans.

The lobsters are tagged with green bars that say “SNECVTS” and black acoustic tags. They are part of a tagging program that’s part of a southern New England lobster study being conducted from May to November by Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation and the University of Rhode Island.

The study is designed to find out about lobster and Jonah crab abundance and distribution in the RI/MA Wind Energy Area, which is located south of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, in the area of Cox’s Ledge.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

BETH CASONI: Canada needs to do more to protect right whales

August 28, 2018 — For generations, Massachusetts lobstermen have been part of a revered tradition of marine coexistence that has sustained a proud New England fishing industry and protected an ecosystem for marine mammals. Now, that coexistence is threatened and international action is needed.

The North Atlantic right whale is critically endangered and faces extinction within our lifetime. For centuries, these enormous and majestic animals have migrated through New England waters, but largely due to unintentional human harm from ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear, today the right whale population is estimated to be down to as few as 435. And the last year has been especially disastrous, with 17 confirmed right whale mortalities and no new calves sighted in the most recent calving season.

Now is the time for cooperative international intervention to turn this situation around and head off the preventable tragedy of extinction of this species.

For decades, the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association has worked in concert with conservation organizations like the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the International Fund for Animal Welfare to be good stewards of the ocean and marine mammals. Facing serious concerns about how to make a living and keep businesses going, we work to find middle ground between our industry and the efforts of conservationists to advance the shared aims of all.

Over the years, regulators have imposed restrictions on U.S. Atlantic Coast fisheries in an effort to reduce harm to endangered species including the right whale. The MLA is proud of our history of adopting and complying with these requirements. To name a few: Vessels, aircraft or other approaches must be restricted within 500 yards of a right whale; and, all vessels 65 feet or longer must travel at 10 knots or less in certain locations along the East Coast of the United States at certain times of year to avoid collision with right whales.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fisheries and Climate Change: What’s Going On in New England?

August 28, 2018 — From cod to lobster, it’s no secret that New England’s fisheries are suffering at the hands of rising water temperatures and ecological shifts related to climate change. But, sometimes, it smacks you in the face.

This past week alone, a new assessment found no improvement in the Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery, which has been closed for five years. And another study linked rising water temperatures to the spread of a shell disease that has hit lobsters in southern New England hard in recent years.

Andrew Pershing, the chief scientific officer for Gulf of Maine Research Institute shared his thoughts on what’s happening in the New England fisheries, and while it’s not great, it’s not all bad news.

“You have to really put lobster in Maine and New Hampshire and north-of-Cape-Cod in the winner category, where the warming over the last 30 years has been a real boon to that population and it’s helped them achieve the record catches that people in Maine have had over the last three or four years,” Pershing said.

But in southern New England, those warming waters have been the cause of a decline. They’re essentially making it too hot for baby lobsters to thrive, and now it also seems to be contributing to the spread of a lobster shell disease.

Read the full story at WCAI

MASSACHUSETTS: Company widens net in seafood secrets case

August 27, 2018 — National Fish & Seafood and Kathleen A. Scanlon, the former employee the seafood processor is suing for allegedly stealing trade secrets for her new employer, had appeared to be heading for a settlement.

Now, not so much.

The Gloucester-based seafood processor last week amended its complaint against Scanlon, its former head of research and development and quality assurance, and her new employer, Tampa Bay Fisheries, by adding more defendants and more details of the alleged conspiracy and corporate theft.

The revised lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Boston, now levies charges against more executives from Tampa Bay Fisheries and its affiliates — including company President Robert Paterson, information technologies director Mark Marsh and Mark Pandolfo. The revised complaint also includes the John Doe named as a defendant in the original lawsuit.

Pandolfo, a vice president of sales at Tampa Bay Fisheries’ Kitchens Seafood affiliate, is a former NFS employee and the son of Richard Pandolfo, a former NFS vice president for sales who was convicted last year of wire fraud and defrauding the Internal Revenue Service in a scheme with other NFS executives.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Aquarium wins grant to test ropeless fishing gear

August 27, 2018 — The New England Aquarium has been awarded a $227,000 grant to test a ropeless fishing prototype to eliminate large whale entanglements in pot fishing gear, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced.

The federal agency awarded more than $2.3 million to 14 groups to support bycatch reduction research projects. Bycatch includes fish, marine mammals and turtles in this program, which intends to work side-by-side with fishermen on their boats to develop solutions to some of the top bycatch challenges in the country, the agency said in its announcement.

“U.S. pot fisheries that target crustaceans are popular in New England, and are important economically and culturally,” according to the aquarium’s description of its project. “However, the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, and other large species of whale and protected species can become entangled in the ropes used in pot fisheries.”

“Ropeless fishing” involves securing ropes to the seafloor where traps are being fished, and when the trap is ready to be hauled to check for catch, ropes are released to the surface by an acoustically triggered device, according to the aquarium.

In mid-July, the International Fund for Animal Welfare also funded a $30,000 test with Sandwich lobsterman David Casoni of one type of ropeless technology — an acoustic release system by Desert Star Systems — in cooperation with the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Fed seizure of accounts closes fish auction

August 27, 2018 — Last Friday night, without any notice, the U.S. Labor Department seized the bank accounts of the Cape Ann Seafood Exchange, leaving the fish auction and seafood processor unable to pay fishermen for landed fish and imperiling even further its ability to profitably operate on the Gloucester waterfront.

CASE owner Kristian Kristensen first knew there was trouble afoot when he started receiving text messages from his bank that his business balance had dipped below $25.

“I didn’t put the pieces together until Saturday,” Kristensen said Thursday. “That’s when I knew it was the Department of Labor.”

What followed was a business nightmare, as Kristensen tried to contact fishermen and other vendors about his inability to access his bank accounts for payments.

“Obviously at that point, checks were bouncing all over the place,” Kristensen said.

On Thursday afternoon, following two frantic days, Kristensen was still immersed in negotiations with Labor Department officials to regain control of his bank accounts and establish a plan to repay the balance owed in a manner that will allow him to remain in business.

“We’re about halfway there, but not all the way,” Kristensen said late Thursday afternoon. “We’re not quite there yet, but almost. It’s not like I don’t want to pay this.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Former captain of New Bedford fishing boat pleads guilty to interfering with Coast Guard inspection

August 24, 2018 — The former captain of a New Bedford-based commercial fishing boat, admitted Thursday to interfering with a U.S. Coast Guard inspection of his vessel after he sunk the ship’s fishing net, prosecutors said.

Thomas D. Simpson, 57, of South Portland, Maine, pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to destruction or removal of property subject to seizure and inspection, the U.S. attorney’s office said in a statement.

Sentencing was set for Nov. 28.

Simpson was the captain of the Fishing Vessel Bulldog, which was fishing off the Massachusetts coast May 31, 2014, when the Coast Guard conducted a routine inspection of the vessel, the statement said.

Officers asked Simpson, who was in the ship’s wheelhouse, to haul in the vessel’s fishing net. Instead, Simpson let out more of the cable attached to the net until it detached from the ship and sank to the ocean floor, officials said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

 

Initial tests of dead seals found in Maine and New Hampshire reveal avian flu and distemper

August 24, 2018 — Researchers found avian flu and distemper viruses in the preliminary tests performed on the first batch of samples from seals that have been washing up dead on beaches in Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts in unusually high numbers since July.

The Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office for NOAA said in a statement Thursday that the sampled seals, tested by Tufts University and the University of California, Davis laboratories, tested positive for either avian influenza or phocine distemper virus — four animals tested positive for both of the viruses.

“We have many more samples to process and analyze, so it is still too soon to determine if either or both of these viruses are the primary cause of the mortality event,” NOAA said.

Jennifer Goebel, a public affairs officer with NOAA, told Boston.com in an email that the initial results represent a “small number of the overall documented stranded seals” and continued testing is needed because co-infections are often found in the marine mammals.

Read the full story at Boston.com