Saving Seafood

Legal Sea Foods chowder not on Trump’s menu

January 13, 2017 — WASHINGTON — Ever since Ronald Reagan rode into this town, there’s been a certain custom here regarding Boston seafood. When new presidents move into the White House, the festivities include a steaming hot cup of New England clam chowder.

Or at least that used to be the tradition.

So far the Boston company that has traditionally supplied chowder, Legal Sea Foods, has been frozen out. Donald Trump’s campaign is built on challenging the status quo in Washington, and that evidently includes menus at inaugural lunches and balls.

“I haven’t heard from anybody yet,” said Roger Berkowitz, the CEO of Legal.

The reason is a matter of speculation. Could it be because Massachusetts voters didn’t support Trump? Or hard feelings over Legal’s ads making fun of Trump’s reported sensitivity about his small hands? Or is the new administration just charting its own course, unaware of tradition?

Berkowitz, for one, is holding out hope that the inaugural committee might still be interested in serving chowder during the weekend.

“It’s not partisan chowder,” he explained. “This has nothing to do with politics. . . . Maybe this is the chowder that brings America together — who knows?” It often comes down to the last minute, he said.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Candidates for New England Fishery Management Council Undergo Public Interview in New Hampshire

January 12, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — DURHAM, N.H. — The New England Fishery Management Council has four vacancies to fill, one from Maine, two from Massachusetts, and one from New Hampshire, currently held by Peter Kendall.

To assist in filling that vacancy, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department’s Marine Fisheries Division will host a candidates’ interview night on Tuesday, February 7, at 7:00 p.m., at the Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth, N.H.

Potential candidates must be prepared to present their qualifications at the session. Interested candidates should contact Doug Grout, Chief of Marine Fisheries for the N.H. Fish and Game Department, at (603) 868-1095.

Candidates will be interviewed by the Advisory Committee on Marine Fisheries and representatives of the New Hampshire Commercial Fishermen Association and Coastal Conservation Association – New Hampshire. The public is also invited to attend the session and will be provided an opportunity to ask questions of any candidate.

The process of filling council seats requires the governor of each New England state to submit names to the U.S. Secretary of Commerce for consideration. The State of New Hampshire uses a public process to recommend individuals for the Governor to consider for submission.

At most other regional management councils, names of potential nominees are submitted to the governor with the candidate’s application and support letters. After reviewing all applicants, the governor submits three choices for each seat, in order of preference. New Hampshire may be the only state that includes a formal public interview/town meeting format as part of the process.

According to the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Secretary of Commerce appoints the voting state specific, or obligatory, members and at-large members to the councils. The agency’s website states: “On the Secretary’s behalf, the NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator for Fisheries solicits nominations from governors and facilitates the annual appointments process. The appointments process begins each year in mid-January with nominations due from governors by March 15.

“In late June, the Secretary announces the appointee selections, and new council members take their seats on August 11. Terms expire each year on August 10 for approximately one-third of the 72 obligatory and at-large members.

“The ideal council appointee candidate is knowledgeable in fishery conservation and management, or the commercial or recreational harvest of fishery resources through occupational experience, scientific expertise, or related training.”

The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) is one of eight regional councils established by federal regulation in 1976. NEFMC is charged with conserving and managing fishery resources from three to 200 miles off the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

MASSACHUSETTS: Scalloper is guest speaker at Fishing Heritage Center

January 11, 2017 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center is hosting scalloper Chris Wright Jan. 11 for a talk on the way of life as a scallop fisherman in the 21st century.

Wright is part of four generations of fishermen, with his father, grandfather, two brothers and two sons all making a living from the sea.

The talk, starting at 7 p.m., is part of the “A Day in the Life” speaker series at the heritage center.

Wright dates his fishing career back to the age of 12, when he missed a week’s worth of Little League to work on his first fishing trip.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester fisherman represents state in shrimp study

January 11, 2017 — Joe Jurek is no stranger to the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp fishery, having incorporated shrimping into his annual fishing calendar even after moving to Gloucester about a decade ago to groundfish.

“When sectors started in 2009, we would catch our groundfish quota as quickly as we could and then go fish the other fisheries, including the northern shrimp fishery,” Jurek said Tuesday. “I shrimped long before that, though. You could say it’s kind of my background.”

Jurek, owner and skipper of the 42-foot F/V Mystique Lady, will be the lone Massachusetts representative in the upcoming Gulf of Maine winter shrimp sampling program that will produce the only legal shrimping in 2017 in the Gulf of Maine.

The Mystique Lady is one of 10 trawlers participating in the sampling program, along with eight from Maine and one from New Hampshire captained by Mike Anderson of Rye. Jurek hopes to begin shrimping as soon as this weekend.

“I’m trying to get rolling so I can start Sunday,” Jurek said. “I’m really excited about catching some shrimp and about this program.”

He already has reached out to local lobstermen, providing a map of the area he intends to trawl and asking lobstermen to alert him to the presence of any gear that might be set or soaking in the area.

“If you have gear in the highlighted areas please touch base with me so we can work together,” Jurek wrote on his Facebook page. “And I will make sure I don’t tow thru any gear.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fisherman goes in water off Provincetown pier

January 9, 2017 — PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — A fisherman was taken to Cape Cod Hospital on Saturday night after he went overboard at MacMillan Pier, according to Provincetown police and the Coast Guard.

At around 9:30 p.m., a 47-foot Coast Guard lifeboat crew along with the Provincetown harbormaster and officers from the Provincetown police and fire departments responded after the fishing vessel Resolute sent out a mayday call about a crew member who had fallen overboard near the pier, according to the Coast Guard.

The Resolute’s crew threw the man a life ring with a strobe attached to it, according to the Coast Guard, but they were unable to bring him out of the water.

The harbormaster located the fisherman thanks to the strobe, and the Coast Guard was able to use the harbormaster’s boat to navigate closer to the man and pull him from the water, which was about 39 degrees at the time, according to the Coast Guard. The man was treated for possible hypothermia, police said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Lobstermen brace for third year of fishing ban

January 9, 2017 — It’s a classic New England scene, colorful lobster traps stacked up along a dock.

But for fishermen in South Shore lobster ports, those grounded traps are a symbol of hard times ahead.

A ban that keeps most of their gear out of the water for the winter is entering its third year, despite arguments that it causes them unfair economic hardship.

“If it made sense, that would be one thing,” Irvine Nash, a lobsterman for 48 years, said as he stood on a dock in Green Harbor. “But it don’t,” he said.

Behind him, fishermen were pulling traps out of the water and loading them on trucks. They will sit empty in yards and garages until May, when the government lifts the ban.

Under a recent rule from the National Marine Fisheries Service, all traps from outer Cape Cod to Cape Cod Bay and parts of Massachusetts Bay must be out of the water by Feb. 1. That’s an area just under 3,000 square nautical miles.

The federal agency first imposed the ban in 2015, to decrease the likelihood of endangered North Atlantic right whales, which come to Cape Cod Bay every winter, from entangling themselves in lobster lines.

There are now only about 520 right whales left, according to the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, up from about 300 in the 1990s.

Read the full story at the Marshfield Mariner

Would You Eat This Fish? A Shark Called Dogfish Makes A Tasty Taco

January 9, 2017 — If you’ve never laid eyes on a dogfish — or tasted one — you’re not alone.

Yep, it’s in the shark family. (See those telltale fins?) And fisherman Jamie Eldredge is now making a living catching dogfish off the shores of Cape Cod, Mass.

When populations of cod — the Cape’s namesake fish — became too scarce, Eldredge wanted to keep fishing. That’s when he turned to dogfish — and it’s turned out to be a good option. The day I went out with him, Eldredge caught close to 6,000 lbs. (Check out the video above.)

“It’s one of the most plentiful fish we have on the East Coast right now,” Brian Marder, owner of Marder Trawling Inc., told us. Fishermen in Chatham, Mass., caught about 6 million pounds of dogfish last year.

So, who’s eating all this dogfish? Not Americans. “99 percent of it” is shipped out, Marder says.

The British use dogfish to make fish and chips. The French use it in stews and soups. Italians import it, too. The Europeans are eating it up. But Americans haven’t developed a taste for it. At least, not yet.

The story of the dogfish is typical of the seafood swap. “The majority of the seafood we catch in our U.S. fisheries doesn’t stay here,” explains Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, who leads the Seafood Watch program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

And while we export most of what is caught off U.S. shores, what do Americans eat? Imported fish. About “90 percent of the seafood we consume in the U.S. is actually caught or farm-raised overseas,” Kemmerly says.

To sustainable seafood advocates, this swap doesn’t make much sense. “We’re kind of missing out on the bounty we actually have here,” Kemmerly says.

And, it’s not just dogfish.

The Environmental Defense Fund has launched a campaign called Eat These Fish to tell the story of a whole slew of plentiful fish caught off our shores. The group is trumpeting the conservation success of U.S. fisheries. Some species have been brought back from the brink of extinction through a system of quotas and collaboration between fishermen, conservationists and regulators. They point to fish such as Acadian Redfish and Pacific Ocean Perch.

Read the full story at the University of Houston

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center hosting Scanning Day

January 6, 2017 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford, Mass. – The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center will host Scanning Day on January 14, 2017 from 10:00 a.m. to noon. Scanning Day is an opportunity for the public to share and preserve a digital image of their fishing industry photographs, documents and other records for future generations.

The Center invites the public to bring their fishing industry related photographs, both historic and contemporary, as well as documents such as settlement sheets, union books, or news clippings to be scanned. Staff will scan the materials and record any information the owner shares about each piece.  The owner will leave with their originals along with a digital copy  of the scans on a flash drive. The Center is working to create a digital archive of these materials which will be made available to researchers and the public. These documents will help us to tell the story of the fishing industry.  Scanning Day will take place the second Saturday of each month from 10:00 a.m. to noon. This event is free and open to the public.

For more information please contact the Fishing Heritage Center at: info@fishingheritagecenter.org or call (508) 993-8894.

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center Speaker Series Continues A Day in the Life of Scallop Captain Chris Wright

January 5, 2016 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford, MA – The New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center’s A Day in the Life speaker series continues on Wednesday, January 11, 2017 at 7:00 p.m. with Captain Chris Wright.

Chris Wright was born in New Bedford and raised in Fairhaven. His family has been connected to the fishing industry for 4 generations. Both his father and grandfather worked in the industry.  Now he, his two brothers, and his two sons are all fishermen.  Chris made his first fishing trip at the age of 12 during summer vacation.  He had to tell his Little League coach he was going to have to miss all the games that week!

Chris is a graduate of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After graduation, he started as an engineer then worked his way up to mate and eventually to captain. He has been a captain for over 25 years and is currently Captain of two scallop vessels –  F/V Huntress and F/V Harvester.

Chris will discuss the fishery, the gear, and his daily life at sea, providing a firsthand account of the work and life of a scallop captain.

Admission to A Day in the Life is free to members and volunteers; $5 for non-members.  The Center is handicap accessible through the parking lot entrance. Free off-street parking available  The Center is located at 38 Bethel Street in New Bedford’s historic downtown.

Fish 2.0 business competition to host New England, southeast Asia workshops

January 4, 2017 — Seafood startup business competition Fish 2.0 is seeking participants in New England and southeast Asia for workshops aimed at preparing them for the 2017 event, the group said.

The deadline to apply for the three-day New England workshop, which will begin on Feb. 6 at Salem, Massachusetts’s Salem State University, is Jan. 6.

The free workshop will give participants a headstart on entering the contest by providing practice pitching sessions “and advice on integrating social and environmental sustainability into their business strategy”, organizers said.

On one page application is required.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News