Saving Seafood

Massachusetts boat captains face charges for alleged clam harvesting violations

July 28, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — Reports to the state environmental police about illegal dredging for surf clams off Herring Cove Beach has resulted in criminal charges pending against two boat captains.

Matthews Collins, 29, of New Bedford will be arraigned Wednesday in Orleans District Court on a charge of violating state law for allegedly harvesting surf clams on the F/V Aimee Marie on March 24 shoreward of what is called the 12-foot depth contour line, according to the report of Massachusetts Environmental Police Lt. Robert Akin. The police seized 36 bushels of surf clams, with an estimated value of $666.

Under state law, dredging for surf clams is prohibited from Nov. 1 to April 30 within an area shoreward of the 12-foot depth contour, as measured at mean low water, south of Point Allerton in Hull to the Rhode Island border including Cape Cod and the Islands.

Collins is also charged with failing to properly display the boat’s identification number. The 1974 commercial fishing vessel is owned by Patricio Palacios, according to Akin’s report. The vessel typically works out of Provincetown, Provincetown Harbormaster Rex McKinsey said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Feds: ‘Wicked Tuna’ TV fisherman claimed to be disabled

July 27, 2015 — MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – A Massachusetts man seen manning big fishing rods and harpooning huge fish on the reality show “Wicked Tuna” collected government benefits while claiming to be disabled and unable to work, federal prosecutors said.

Paul Hebert, 50, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, accepted more than $44,000 in Social Security and Medicaid benefits between 2010 and 2013, according to a four-count indictment filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Burlington.

Hebert first filed for Social Security disability in the spring of 2009, claiming on his application that he was unable to work at any job, could not walk properly, could not lift heavy weights or drive for more than short distances, according to the indictment. Hebert also said he lived alone that he had no financial resources, no vehicle and no income. He began receiving benefits in October 2010, authorities said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Jersey Herald 

 

 

NOAA begins fence-mending with Northeast fishermen

July 23, 2015 —  NOAA Fisheries this week undertook an effort to build trust and cooperation from the New England fishing industry by including the industry in upcoming groundfish stock assessments.

NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, based in Woods Hole, conducted meetings at five sites Wednesday, with web meeting access provided for several more sites up and down the New England coast.

The NOAA scientists made a presentation of the assessment process and some of the options that the New England Fishery Management Council’s Science Committee has for action on assessments.

According to the NOAA web site, those options range from the status quo to a complete review and rebuild of all the methods and computer models being used by the science center to guide NOAA’s annual quota decisions on 20 different groundfish stocks.

With very few fishermen fishing for groundfish, few were among the 20 or so participants, according to Don Cuddy, spokesman for the New Bedford-based Center for Sustainable Fisheries.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Last Groundfish Permit Stays on Martha’s Vineyard, Though Days Are Numbered

July 23, 2015 — The Nature Conservancy, working with the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, has purchased the Island’s last historic groundfish permit, marking a major milestone in the trust’s efforts to develop a permit bank to support Island fishermen.

The federal New England multi-species permit, also known as a groundfish permit, was held by Greg Mayhew, owner of the Unicorn, a legendary 75-foot dragger out of Menemsha.

“We wanted our fishing permit to stay on Martha’s Vineyard and not go to some corporation or conglomerate,” Mr. Mayhew said in a statement issued Thursday by the conservancy.

Among other challenges facing local fishermen, the decline in groundfish populations in recent years has led to smaller quotas, leaving many businesses unable to compete. Since regrouping last year, the fishermen’s preservation trust has concentrated on developing a permit bank that would allow Vineyard fishermen to lease quota at an affordable rate.

Christopher McGuire, marine program director for The Nature Conservancy, said the Unicorn permit might only support one or two Island fishermen, since the quota is limited.

“There is only so much fish to lease out,” he said. But he added that there are relatively few groundfishermen on the Island, so competition for the quota might be light.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

 

Mercury emissions down but mercury in Mass. fish remains high

July 19, 2015 — MASSACHUSETTS — Mercury emissions from major Massachusetts sources have declined by 90 percent over the past two decades, but mercury levels in the state’s freshwater fish hold stubbornly high, with many species too contaminated for pregnant women and children to eat.

Yet languid summer days and the lure of Massachusetts’ 3,000 freshwater bodies – from the Berkshire’s Lake Pontoosuc to Boston’s Jamaica Pond – send many anglers casting for a good fish dinner.

The inability to reduce mercury in fish to safe eating levels troubles environment and health officials – and added to that concern is growing evidence that some freshwater fish in similar northern latitudes, from the Great Lakes to Scandinavia, appear to have increasing mercury levels after years of decline. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting found six studies in the past decade that point to increasing mercury levels in freshwater fish.

“We need to figure out what is going on,’’ said Michael S. Hutcheson, former head of air and water toxics for the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection who retired last month. Reducing emissions in Massachusetts certainly helped – some freshwater fish near closed incinerators and other mercury sources showed a 44 percent decline in mercury levels – but the difficulty in getting further reductions speaks to a more complex problem, he said.

Read the full story at NECIR

 

‘Wicked Tuna’ star steps up for charter fleet

July 17, 2015 — Say what you want for the potential for over-exposure after four years chasing large fish on the small screen, but the “Wicked Tuna” brand still holds a certain cache.

Just ask Tom Orrell of Gloucester-based Yankee Fleet.

On Wednesday, for the second consecutive year, Orrell ran a special Yankee Fleet charter fishing trip featuring “Wicked Tuna” mainstay and Beverly native Dave Marciano. And for the second year in a row, it was a raging success.

“It really went wonderfully,” Orrell said Thursday. “Everybody caught a lot of fish and everybody came home ecstatic. We’ve already booked it for next year.”

Orrell said he had about 50 fishermen aboard the 100-foot long Yankee Freedom and they spent much of the day catching haddock and redfish. They even got up close and personal with a porbeagle shark.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

MASSACHUSETTS: School district signs up for local seafood

July 14, 2015 — CHICOPEE, Mass. (AP) — A Massachusetts public school system is the first school district to sign on to a Maine science institute’s seafood certification system.

A spokesman for Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland, Maine, announced the partnership with the Chicopee district on Tuesday. The institute says the agreement means the district’s 7,800 students will be able to eat seafood that is responsibly harvested and traceable to the Gulf of Maine.

Chicopee sustainability coordinator Madison Walker says the move supports the region’s food economy. She says it will also help teach students about the fishing industry and marine ecosystems.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Herald 

 

DON CUDDY: Spreading misinformation about our fisheries

July 15, 2015 — Anyone knowledgeable about the commercial fisheries of the United States will find nothing original in the op-ed piece recently submitted to the New York Times by the environmental organization Oceana.

Even its title ‘A Knockout Blow for American Fish Stocks’ is misleading. American fish stocks are healthy. NOAA’S annual report to Congress, submitted at the end of 2014 showed that only twenty-six of the three hundred and eight fish stocks assessed were subject to overfishing.

‘Overfishing’ occurs when too many fish are removed from a population to produce maximum sustainable yield. As a scientific term it is quite misleading, carrying, as it does, the clear implication that low stock assessments result solely from fishing pressure; whereas ‘overfishing’ can result from a number of other factors, such as changes in water temperature or salinity, degraded habitat and increased predation.

NOAA also maintains an ‘overfished’ list; comprising any stock whose biomass is such that its capacity to produce its maximum sustainable yield is in jeopardy. Only thirty-seven of two hundred and twenty eight stocks found themselves on that list. Hardly a knockout. No new stocks were added to the list in 2014. In fact, three were removed from the previous year, according to the NOAA report.

The Oceana piece also asserts that recent estimates determined that New England cod stocks were at three to seven percent of target levels. As fishermen in the Gulf of Maine can attest, most of that bottom is now taken over by lobster gear and neither the fishermen nor the NOAA survey vessel can tow through that. So nobody can determine with any certainty how much cod might be out there; not to mention the fact that if a fisherman sees cod in the water he goes someplace else. Why? Because the introduction of fishing sectors and catch shares in New England have made cod a commodity, like pork bellies. The result is best illustrated by New Hampshire fisherman Dave Goethel’s plight. He has a photo showing 2000 pounds of cod that his 40-foot boat caught, after a one-hour tow on a research trip last December. If sold, the cash value at the dock would have brought him $3,000. But to lease those 2,000 pounds of cod would have cost him $4500. That’s what you call a knockout. In a multispecies fishery you need some cod quota, even if you are targeting haddock or other groundfish species and so the lease price keeps going up. That is one reason why the percentage of fishing quota actually caught in the New England groundfishery in 2013-2014 was only 33 percent of the allowable catch limit. Because of regulatory constraints fishermen are now avoiding fish that allegedly are not there.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

New England boaters beware: Leatherback sea turtles are huge but hard to see

July 9, 2015 — It should be easy to spot leatherback sea turtles. They can weigh up to 850 pounds and grow up to 8 feet long.

But at sea their slick, black soft shell camouflages them, making them difficult for boaters and fishermen to see.

Each year as many as two dozen of the endangered species wash up along the Massachusetts coast, including a 560-pound, 5-foot-4-inch female adolescent leatherback found recently in Barnstable.

The turtle, which had signs of scarring from entanglement wounds around its hind flippers and evidence of a recent, more severe entanglement around its neck and left front flipper, was taken to the aquarium’s sea turtle hospital in Quincy.

Boat strikes and marine ropes are the most common human causes of leatherback deaths. Moorings and lobster trap lines are also dangerous.

“We want boaters to be aware,” said New England Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse.

During July and August, these majestic giants travel up the coast past Cape Cod Bay and the South Shore to the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full story at the Swansea Herald News

 

Observer program for lobster boats on the wane

July 15, 2015 — The number of scheduled observer trips aboard Cape Ann lobster boats and others throughout Massachusetts have fallen off dramatically since the contentious Gloucester meeting last month where NOAA outlined plans to increase observer coverage for the Northeast lobster fishery.

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Scituate-based Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said her discussions with the association’s membership revealed a significant drop in the number of lobstermen being contacted to schedule observer coverage on a future trip.

“I’ve been asking every fisherman from everywhere whether they’re getting called like before and they’re all telling me the same thing, that it’s pretty quiet,” Casoni said. “We’re pretty pleased with that.”

The same is true around Cape Ann, according to Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer, longtime Gloucester fisherman and lobsterman who now serves as the president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.

“There hasn’t been anyone contacted around here since the meeting,” Sawyer said.

The June 4 meeting at NOAA’s regional headquarters in the Blackburn Industrial Park provided the first glimpse of the rabid opposition among lobstermen to expanding the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program throughout the New England lobstering industry and as far down the East Coast as Maryland.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times