Saving Seafood

European firm pitches huge wind farm off Martha’s Vineyard

November 10, 2015 — A major European energy company is proposing what could be North America’s largest offshore wind farm 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, outlining its plans less than a year after the proposed Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound suffered a stunning financial setback.

Denmark-based DONG Energy A/S, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms, Monday said it would build up to 100 giant wind turbines, generating as much as 1,000 megawatts of electricity — more than double the output Cape Wind had proposed for its site off Cape Cod. The Danish company recently acquired one of the leases for a stretch of ocean that the US government has designated for wind farms. It has dubbed the local operation Bay State Wind.

Company officials, seeking to distinguish their plans from the controversial Cape Wind project, pointed to DONG Energy’s long track record in building ocean wind farms. They also noted the turbines would be much farther out to sea, potentially drawing less opposition from oceanfront homeowners than Cape Wind.

“We have the experience and we have the expertise,” said Thomas Brostrom, the company’s North American general manager said in an interview Sunday.

DONG Energy faces lengthy Massachusetts and US permitting processes that include environmental reviews and approvals for where its power lines would come ashore. Once those approvals are in hand, DONG Energy said, it would take about three years to build the wind farm, and the first phase could include 30 to 35 turbines and be in service by early next decade.

Other than getting the transfer of the lease approved by the US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, DONG Energy has yet to file any applications for the projects with the federal or state government.

The group that battled the Cape Wind project since its inception has adopted a much softer tone for the Danish project and others proposed in the waters south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Regulators consider what to do about collapsed lobster stock

November 9, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Interstate fishing regulators are considering what to do about southern New England’s collapsed lobster population, and fishermen fear new restrictions could land on them as a result.

The lobster population has sunk to the lowest levels on record in southern New England waters, affecting once-productive fishing grounds off Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. The catch off Rhode Island is a third of the size that it was in the late 1990s, and it has all but disappeared off Connecticut.

A science committee of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is working on a report about the lobster stock that the commission’s lobster board will see in February. The board could then make a decision about the future of the fishery, including changing quotas or enacting new restrictions.

William Adler, a longtime Massachusetts lobstermen and a member of the lobster board, said that a moratorium is not likely on the table but that something needs to be done to conserve the region’s lobsters, which are beloved by restaurant diners.

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

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobsterman rescued after boat burns

November 6, 2015 — Editor’s note: Proper safety and survival training is  critically important for dealing with emergencies and disasters at sea. To learn more about maritime safety and to enroll in a maritime safety and emergency preparedness course, contact Fishing Partnership Support Services.

A lobsterman was forced to jump overboard after his vessel caught fire just off Plum Island on Friday morning.

Luckily for Sam Allen of the Dawn Breaker, two men in a nearby vessel were able to pull him out of the water within 15 minutes.

Though Allen, an Ipswich resident, sustained no injuries, the Dawn Breaker is a total loss.

The fire started when the Dawn Breaker’s engine began to overheat. Allen tried to put the flames out with a portable fire extinguisher, but the vessel went up fast, Lt. Lee Prentiss of the Ipswich Fire Department said.

The Coast Guard lauded Allen for his quick actions.

“This is the mark of a true professional mariner,” said Petty Officer 1st Class Darin Crozier, a watchstander at Coast Guard Sector Boston’s command center, in a statement. “He was prepared and did everything right — he donned his immersion suit, communicated his location clearly with his radio, and abandoned ship with his locator beacon.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Image courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

MASSACHUSETTS: When the Bay Scallops Beckon, Time and Tide Wait for No Man

November 5, 2015 — Hathaway is a big family name on the Edgartown waterfront. And among them all, Dick Hathaway is a legend. There are many stories that circulate around this hardworking, hard headed, crusty fellow, but no one questions one fact: Dick Hathaway loves to go fishing for bay scallops. At 87 years of age, he was the eldest on Cape Pogue Pond on Monday morning, the opening day of the commercial bay scalloping season.

Dick Hathaway fishes now with his younger cousin, Mike Hathaway. On Monday they were up and out early. Dick’s wife Janice was up early too, well before sunrise, making him a sandwich and putting it in his small cooler.

By 9 a.m., there were close to 40 fishermen out on the pond.

Dick’s earliest memory of scalloping goes back to when he was a kid, just old enough to go commercial fishing. He worked side by side with his uncle. “I went with Lewis Hathaway,” he said. “We were in Anthier’s Pond [Sengekontacket].They didn’t allow motors in the pond.”

In those days they used dip nets, wind and the power of the hand. They rowed.

To harvest the bay scallops, Lewis tossed the drag off the stern of the skiff, Dick said.“He’d hand me the line and I’d go to the bow and pull in the drag.”

Today shellfishermen use powerful outboard motors. Most boats have a winch that is powered by a gas motor to help raise the drag from the bottom.

Read the full story at Vineyard Gazette

 

Woods Hole Report: Climate, weather and the economy

October 31, 2015 — The coastal ocean and its fisheries have played a huge role in the cultural and economic development of Cape Cod. Yet recent changes in the atmosphere and deep ocean threaten the natural rhythms that govern the ecosystems of the shallow waters surrounding Cape Cod.

One factor affecting the coastal ocean in the northeastern United States is a change in the motions of the atmospheric jet stream. We felt the effects during the past winter, which was exceptionally cold and snowy. In recent years, the north-south movements of the jet stream have been increasing. However, the eastward motion has been stalling, resulting in more persistent weather patterns – cold or warm – that affect the temperature distribution in the coastal ocean.

In early 2015, the jet stream dipped well southward of its normal position and stalled, bringing a steady burst of storms moving along the coast and cooling the coastal ocean. By contrast, the jet stream remained well north of its normal wintertime position in the winter of 2011-2012 so that warm air remained over New England for much of the winter. As a result, spring water temperatures were much warmer than usual, 3-4 degrees Fahrenheit above normal over a six-month period, and as high as 10 degrees Fahrenheit for short time periods.

Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found temperatures of continental shelf waters in 2012 off New England were the highest they’ve been in 150 years of measurements.

Read the full story at The Metrowest Daily News

 

 

Will Maine lobster crash like cod? Only close ocean monitoring will tell

November 2, 2015 — There was a mix of news about the Gulf of Maine last week. First, there were dire warnings about the role of rising ocean temperatures in the demise of cod in the North Atlantic. Then came what sounded like good news — Maine has surpassed Massachusetts to become the state with the second most lucrative seafood landings in the country. Finally, on Friday, federal regulators announced they would close the Gulf of Maine herring fishery this month.

All of these stories are interrelated and point to the need for much more research to gain better understanding about what is happening in the Atlantic Ocean and why. With better knowledge about how changing ocean conditions affect different species, regulators can more effectively target rules to protect them and the fishermen who make a living catching them.

The virtual disappearance of cod from the waters off New England is not news. But a new report, published in the journal Science, concludes that rising ocean temperatures played a much larger role in the decline than initially thought. The study’s lead author, Andrew Pershing, is a scientist with the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.

In the simplest sense, regulators decide how many tons of a species can be taken from the ocean based on assessments of that species’ population. The problem with cod management, Pershing’s report concludes, is that regulators didn’t fully grasp the severity of the ocean temperature increase and what it meant for the legendary groundfish. As a result, regulators allowed fishermen to catch too many cod.

“Failure to recognize the impact of warming on cod contributed to overfishing,” the report said. “Recovery of this fishery depends on sound management, but the size of the stock depends on future temperature conditions. The experience in the Gulf of Maine highlights the need to incorporate environmental factors into resource management.”

This is especially true in the gulf, which is warming faster than 99.9 percent of the world’s oceans. Most troubling, beginning in 2004, the rate of warming in the Gulf of Maine increased more than seven-fold, the report says. Because of this rapid warming, regulatory limits on cod fishing didn’t work because cod did not reproduce and grow as expected.

This isn’t an academic problem. As the cod population declined, regulators imposed quotas that allowed fishermen to catch less. When the population didn’t rebound, regulators tightened the quotas, adding to the economic hardship for fishing communities.

Read the full editorial at Bangor Daily News

Report: Gloucester, Mass. landings down, but worth more

November 2, 2015 — The volume and value of U.S. seafood landings remained flat in 2014, while the declines locally in volume and value have leveled off from the ear-popping decline experienced the previous year, according to NOAA’s Fisheries of the U.S. report.

According to the annual report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Gloucester held serve at No. 22 among U.S. ports in volume of landings, but declined to 26th (from 25th last year) in the value of its landings.

New Bedford, riding the lucrative success of its scallop fishery, was ranked as the nation’s top revenue-producing port for the 15th consecutive year. It generated $329 million from the 140 million pounds of fish landed in 2014, but that was down 13.2 percent from the $379 million in value from 2013.

Dutch Harbor, Alaska, reported a catch of 762 million pounds, and came in second for value, at $191 million.

Nationally, U.S. ports landed 9.5 billion pounds of fish in 2013 worth $5.4 billion. That represents a 4 percent decline in landings and less than 1 percent decline in value.

“The overall trends from landings and value for U.S. wild-caught fish is positive even though landings and value are down slightly from last year,” said NOAA Chief Scientist Richard Merrick, who said the declines all fall within the range of statistical error.

Local data

For Gloucester, the report’s data produced a mixed bag, with a slight decrease in landings offset by a slightly higher value from those landings that NOAA primarily attributed to a strong pricing year for lobsters.

A year after losing about 25 percent of both the volume and the value of its landed catch, Gloucester in 2014 landed 61 million pounds of fish, down slightly from the 62 million pounds landed in 2013 and drastically below the 83 million pounds landed here in 2012, before the current slide commenced.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

New Bedford seafood company files for chapter 11 bankruptcy

October 28, 2015 — A New Bedford seafood company filed yesterday under chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, listing assets of $709,000 and liabilities of $2.9 million.

Chapter 11 usually indicates a company is trying to reorganize and stay in business.

Top Quality Seafood & Shellfish LLC listed its biggest unsecured creditor as Atlantic Capes Fisheries of Cape May, New Jersey, owed $2.06 million. The filing attributes the debt to a “civil judgment.” The biggest Boston creditor listed is Red’s Best, owed $15,643.

Read the full story from the Boston Business Journal

Like a Scallop in the Headlights

October 29, 2015 — Scallops, like deer, freeze in the headlights. A blast of artificial light causes scallops to refuse to swim. It’s an unusual reaction, given that marine creatures generally either flock to the light, like moths, or scurry from the intrusion. Understanding this odd behavior might help governments take better care of scallop fisheries.

Liese Siemann, a research biologist at the Coonamessett Farm Foundation in Massachusetts, discovered the mollusks’ motionlessness by accident while watching videos of Atlantic sea scallops off the east coast of Long Island, New York. Traditionally, scientists survey scallop fishing grounds by dredging—scooping creatures from the seafloor to count them. But Siemann and her team were testing video survey equipment, trawling a camera through the sea. She says video surveys are safer for protected species or in protected areas, and are becoming more common.

Looking at the footage, Siemann noticed that when the camera’s light was off, scallops swam away as the sled approached. But when the camera’s light was switched on, the scallops seemed to stay put. Scallops aren’t the most mobile animals, but they can swim a few meters at a time by opening and closing their shells. They can also spin around, jump, and flip over if they get turned upside down.

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine

 

Feds: Maine beats Massachusetts for fisheries landings value

October 30, 2015 — A 23 percent increase in the value of the country’s 2014 total lobster landings has made Maine the second-most lucrative state for commercial marine fisheries behind Alaska, according to federal officials.

Maine, where 84 percent of all lobster caught nationwide was brought ashore last year, surpassed Massachusetts with help from a 75 cent increase in the national average price lobstermen earned for their catch, according to an annual report released Thursday by the National Marine Fisheries Service. The national average price paid to fishermen for lobster increased from $3.08 in 2013 to $3.83 in 2014, federal officials indicated in the 2014 Fisheries of the United States report.

Read the full story from the Bangor Daily News