Saving Seafood

MAINE: Regional Ocean Plan Likely to Be Approved by Thanksgiving

November 4, 2016 — The Northeast Ocean Plan will be the first coordinated ocean strategy of its kind in the country when it is adopted by the National Ocean Council. That is likely to happen before Thanksgiving.

The Ocean Plan will not create new laws, regulations or penalties, but it will increase oversight of the area between the high-tide zone to 200 miles out to sea while coordinating 140 federal laws that regulate ocean activities in the Northeast.

That sounds overwhelming. It isn’t. The heart of the new plan is an easy-to-use data mapping tool that shows which laws apply to an activity or location and which agencies oversee them. Different uses, habitats, shipping lanes, infrastructure and more can be layered on one map to identify jurisdiction and potential conflicts.

The regional plan was developed in response to the 2010 Executive Order on Ocean Policy which requires better coastal and ocean management. Members from six Northeastern states, ten federal agencies, ten tribes and the New England Fisheries Management Council formed the Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB) to help craft it.

The goal is to coordinate planning based on regional information, even as the ocean environment and marine uses change. Improving and understanding marine life and habitats and ecosystem-based management are important guiding principles.

The Northeast states, which already have a history of working together on fisheries issues, started work on the ocean plan in 2012. The final draft was released for review October 19, making the Northeast Region the first in the country to complete a regional plan.

The Northeast RPB sought public and scientific input through hundreds of informal gatherings and public meetings over the past four years while drafting the plan. Part of their research included going to fishing wharves and small towns to get input. Planners incorporated the public comments and their responses into the final plan.

If the Northeast Ocean Plan is approved later this month as expected, implementation will soon follow. The Northeast Ocean Data Portal, which allows instant mapping of different ocean values and uses based on peer-reviewed data, makes it easy to identify where interests overlap and which agency has jurisdiction.

Read the full story at The Free Press Online 

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fish catch most valuable in U.S.

November 4, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – Citing 2015 landings worth $322 million, for the 16th year in a row the city held the top-value title nationwide for its fishing catch, according to NOAA Fisheries. The top ranking was thanks largely to scallops, SouthCoastToday.com reported Oct. 28.

New Bedford’s catch was 124 million pounds, good for 11th in the country.

“We’re reaping the benefits of good, cooperative science, and solid relationships between the regulators, the fishermen and the scientists,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission.

The annual catch reports, released by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, showed New Bedford’s catch dipped by about 11 percent last year, falling to 124 million pounds in 2015 from 140 million in 2014. The 2013 catch totaled 130 million pounds.

Read the full story at the Providence Business News 

MASSACHUSETTS: Scientists take advantage of rare shark stranding in Orleans

ORLEANS — The corpse lay on its side as scientists honed knives on whetstones in preparation for the first cut.

But the scene at the town transfer station Monday wasn’t a ghoulish Halloween skit intended to frighten the knot of onlookers; it was a necropsy on a 12-foot-long great white shark that washed onto Nauset Beach on Sunday, dying in the sand.

The scientists were there in part to see if there was any obvious reason the 20-year-old male shark had washed ashore and died. But they also were collecting valuable specimens from an animal that can no longer legally be caught and killed, leaving researchers dependent on the rare instances when one washes up on the beach.

“We hate to have sharks strand because we like to have them in the water and healthy, but when they do we maximize what we could possibly learn from them,” said Gregory Skomal, lead shark scientist at the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

Researchers from his agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology converged on the transfer station Monday morning to take advantage of the opportunity.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Salted, Pickled & Smoked: an exhibit of fishing community artifacts to open on Thursday, November 10th

November 1, 2016 — The following was released by the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center:

New Bedford, MA – The Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the opening of Salted, Pickled & Smoked: Preserving the Cultural Heritage of new Bedford’s Fishing Community, an exhibit of fishing community artifacts.

Co-curated by FHC Executive Director Laura Orleans and New Bedford Free Public Library Art Curator Janice Hodson, the exhibit will be on display on the 3rd floor of the New Bedford Free Public Library (613 Pleasant Street) from November 10, 2016 through January 7, 2017.  An opening reception is scheduled for Thursday, November 10th from 6-8 p.m.  Maritime Anthropologist Madeleine Hall-Arber will present a short talk about the project at 7 p.m. that evening.

The Fishing Heritage Center has been busy digitizing photographs and artifacts from the local fishing community as part of a year-long project.   Salted, Pickled, & Smoked: Preserving the Cultural Heritage of New Bedford’s Fishing Community is an exhibit highlighting some of the most interesting photographs, documents, objects, and stories that have been shared.

The project is a collaboration involving the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, University Archives and Special Collections at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Clair T. Carney Library at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, MIT Sea Grant, the New Bedford Free Public Library, and New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park. The project is funded by a Common Heritage grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

New Bedford again tops nation for dollar value of fishing catch

October 31st, 2016 — The city’s port has again topped the country for dollar value of its fishing catch, NOAA Fisheries reported this week, citing 2015 landings worth $322 million.

That marks 16 years in a row that New Bedford has held the top-value title, which is thanks largely to scallops. Dutch Harbor, Alaska, again was tops for total volume of catch, landing 787 million pounds last year.

New Bedford’s catch was much smaller: 124 million pounds, good for only 11th in the country and far behind Dutch Harbor. But Dutch Harbor’s catch had a value of $218 million — second-highest in the country — reflecting the strong commercial value of New Bedford’s scallop industry.

“The scallop industry has put New Bedford at the top of the food chain, as it were, of fishing ports for the last 16 years — that’s a very impressive streak,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission. “It really shows the impact of scallops but also the impact of cooperative research.”

In the 1990s, SMAST scientists Brian Rothschild and Kevin Stokesbury pioneered innovations in counting scallops, with cameras tested and used on local scallopers. The resulting data affected stock assessments by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), ultimately leading to larger catch quotas and helping secure steady catches for waterfront businesses.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

25 years ago, the crew of the Andrea Gail was lost in the ‘perfect storm’

October 31st, 2016 — At the heart of Gloucester, America’s oldest seaport, visitors will find an eight-foot-tall bronze fisherman at the wheel of his ship.

Engraved at the base of the Gloucester Fisherman’s Memorial are the names of more than 3,000 residents who were lost at sea and the following words: “They that go down to the sea in ships, 1623-1923.” Twenty-five years ago, one ship in particular gained national fame when it was lost during the “perfect storm” of 1991.

The “storm with no name” claimed the lives of six fishermen and the captain and crew of the Andrea Gail, a disaster that was later chronicled in Sebastian Junger’s bestselling book and a film starring George Clooney.

The storm left a trail of destruction from Nova Scotia to Florida, killing 13 people and causing close to $500 million in damage as it lashed the coast from Oct. 26 through Nov. 1 of that year.

Winds upwards of 70 mph “tossed [boats] like beach toys [in] the surf,” The Boston Globe reported on October 31, 1991. A small Marshfield home was even lifted from its foundation, floating in the water and endangering moored boats.

“At 3 o’clock Wednesday my mother was upset because there was salt water on her lawn,” a Chatham resident told the Globe. “At 6 o’clock there was no lawn and she was worried there’d be no house. Our house escaped by some miracle.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

Fisheries science center gets new director

October 28th, 2016 — Some might think it fitting that Jonathan Hare will take the reins as the new science and research director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Research Center in Woods Hole on Halloween. After all, he faces the daunting task of overseeing the research and data at the heart of the rebuilding of fish stocks in a region with the largest numbers of overfished species, in an ocean experiencing one of the fastest warming trends in the world, with fishermen who remain skeptical of the science used to manage fisheries.

“It’s a challenging time,” Hare said. The science center in Woods Hole that Hare will oversee provides scientific research and data on fish stocks from Canada to Cape Hatteras, N.C.

The $1 billion commercial fishery in the Northeast is home to the country’s No. 1 port, New Bedford, in terms of the value of species landed, but also has the highest number of overfished fish stocks in U.S. waters by far, including the region’s iconic species like cod and several species of flounder. The South Atlantic region is a distant second with only four overfished species, compared with the Northeast’s 14 species.

The demands placed on fishery managers to rebuild those stocks, some of which have not recovered despite decades of drastic cuts to fishing, are high. Plus, a new management system relies on accurate and timely estimates of fish populations, something increasingly difficult to accomplish given changing environmental conditions and tight federal budgets.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Times

New Bedford fishermen net sea scallops—and the richest catch in the country

October 28th, 2016 — Who knew a such a tiny mollusk could turn such a hefty sum?

According to a federal report Wednesday, the city of New Bedford retained its pole position as the nation’s most-valued port in 2015, pulling in a total catch worth $322 million.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual fisheries report, New Bedford’s total haul weighed 124 million pounds.

While that amount wasn’t even enough to land New Bedford in the top 10 ports for total quantity (Dutch Harbor, Alaska topped that list with 787 million pounds of mostly pollock and cod), it yet again made the Massachusetts port the richest—by more than $100 million. They were first by even a wider margin in 2014.

Why? Sea scallops.

According to the Associated Press, the pricey seafood delicacy (the larger counterpart to the bay scallop) accounted for more than three-quarters of New Bedford’s catch. More than 60 percent of the 35.7 million pounds of sea scallops were caught in Massachusetts, according to the NOAA.

The NOAA put the price of sea scallops at $12.26 per pound in 2015, slightly down from $12.55 per pound in 2014. But that’s still more than double the market price during the mid-2000s.

As The Boston Globe reported in 2013, the New Bedford scallop industry has buoyed the lives of fishermen in an otherwise struggling city.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

NOAA reports on state of US fisheries: Landings up, values down

October 27, 2016 — Gloucester improved its standing among all U.S. commercial ports in both the volume and value of its commercial seafood landings in 2015, according to the NOAA Fisheries annual Fisheries of the United States report released Wednesday.

The report is described by NOAA officials as an “annual snapshot of key national fishing and seafood statistics.” It showed the quantity of U.S. commercial seafood landings rebounded slightly in 2015 to 9.7 billion pounds valued at $5.2 billion. But the value of those landings decreased by almost 5 percent nationally from the previous year.

Gloucester’s performance in 2015 mirrored the national picture, with an increase in landings, but a decline in the overall value of those landings.

Gloucester, which ranked 22nd in volume of landings in 2014 among all U.S. commercial fishing ports, moved up two spots to 20th in 2015 by landing 68 million pounds of seafood — an increase of 11.5 percent from 2014.

And while America’s oldest seaport moved up four spots to No. 22 in the value of its landings, its 2015 value of $44 million actually represented a 4.3 percent drop from the $46 million worth of commercial seafood it landed in 2014.

The declines in value locally and nationally were reflected in prices off the boat, as the price index for edible fish declined by 9 percent nationally in 2015.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Poland to honor fisherman for saving treasure

October 27, 2016 — One of Poland’s greatest and most sacred works of art might not be there if not for the actions of a Gloucester fisherman and other Americans during World War II.

Curtis Dagley on Thursday will receive the Bene Merito medal from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland for his part in returning to Poland cultural treasures plundered by Nazi Germany. The honor also recognizes the imprisonment he suffered at the hands of the Communist authorities of Poland.

Drafted in 1945, the 18-year-old Dagley was a private when he was assigned a special mission in 1946. He was not told any details of the job.

He found himself one of 12 guards aboard a special train from Nuremberg, Germany, to Krakow, Poland, guarding artworks plundered by the Nazis in 1939, including a 15th century altarpiece hand-carved by Bavarian sculptor Veit Stoss. The works had been recovered by a special commission, known as The Monuments Men, which included Lanesville sculptor Walker Hancock, and were being returned to their owners.

The largest such Gothic piece in the world, the Voss altar measures 43 feet high (about four stories) by 36 feet wide when the two side panels are opened completely at the altar of St. Mary’s Church in Krakow. The revered altarpiece tells the story of the role of Mary in the expiation of the sins of the world by her son Jesus Christ. Some 200 incredibly realistic figures, some 12 feet tall, adorn it. It has been compared in its significance to the Polish nation to the U.S. Liberty Bell.

The return of the treasures coincided with and became a focal point of the Third of May anticommunist demonstrations in Poland in 1946.

Five days after the train’s arrival, Dagley was arrested at random by the Communist-controlled Polish security police, accused of shooting a Polish militiaman during an incident involving a woman. Another officer admitted to the shooting, but to protect artifacts still on the train, U.S. officers decided to say nothing; they told Dagley he’d be in jail a week.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times