Saving Seafood

Biden releases management plan for Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument

June 5, 2024 — The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has released its final management plan for the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

“I applaud the release of the final management plan, a critical and giant stride by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service [USFWS] and NOAA to realizing the potential for stewarding our interactions with, teaching about, and studying the inner workings of this ocean wilderness,” Mystic Aquarium Senior Research Scientist Peter Auster said in a statement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Safe to reproduce: horseshoe crabs enjoy new protections on local beaches

June 3, 2024 — At Stage Harbor in Chatham, Derek Perry, the state’s horseshoe crab biologist, walks the shoreline, counting how many horseshoe crabs fall within a 25-square-meter area.

It’s not an easy task, especially when the males in the group are clamoring to reach the limpet-and-seaweed encrusted females. But after a few moments, he’s satisfied with the count.

“That’s 67 crabs in a five-by-five-square-meter quadrat,” Perry said. “So it’s a fair number.”

Of them, 61 are male, and each is trying to latch onto one of the six females in the area. According to Perry, it’s pretty easy to identify the sex of a horseshoe crab at a distance, because the females are 30% bigger, and the males form a “conga line” behind them.

Read the full article at CAI

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen and Scientists See a Fishery in Flux

May 30, 2024 — This year, May 15 marked the beginning of the lobster fishing season on the Outer Cape. The fishery is not an insignificant one here. There are 42 fishermen on the Outer Cape who collectively land about 830,000 pounds of lobster every year, according to data on the Mass. Lobstermen’s Association website. This represents about 5 percent of the Massachusetts fishery.

While overall the fishery seems stable, some lobstermen are seeing changes that have them worried about its future. Scientists are looking into what role the changing climate may be playing in those changes, but they don’t have definitive answers.

“It’s horrible,” said Mike Rego, a lobsterman and owner of the F/V Miss Lilly who operates out of Provincetown. “Last year was the worst year I ever had.”

Dana Pazolt, another Provincetown lobsterman who owns the F/V Black Sheep, said that the last four years have been slim for lobsters around the Outer Cape. “You’ve got to hunt for them,” he said. “I can’t tell you why that is.”

The surface waters of the Gulf of Maine are warming at a rate of about one degree per decade, faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

Meanwhile, in other areas, warming has already had an effect — it played a major role in causing the collapse of the lobster fishery in Long Island Sound in 1999.

Lobsters do appear to be shifting their range north. From 1985 to 2016, Maine experienced a 650-percent increase in its lobster population, according to data from the Maine Dept. of Marine Resources. This may be due in part to the decline in Atlantic cod, a lobster predator, but it is also likely due to warming temperatures making lobster conditions more favorable farther north.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent 

MASSACHUSETTS: For Bendiksen family, ‘Sea Stories’ are stories of their lives

May 30, 2024 — In the Bendiksen family kitchen, framed photos of the fishing boats they have owned hang on the wall. For Captain Reidar Bendiksen and his wife, Kirsten, these boats are like family members.

The most cherished memories of the Bendiksens’ lives — the day they first met, the births of their children — are deeply intertwined with the fishing industry.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford’s fishing heritage is online, thanks to this archivist and ‘history detective’

May 29, 2024 — Retired engineer John Ryan spent hours and hours at the hurricane barrier taking thousands of photographs of fishing vessels going in and out of New Bedford Harbor.

When his family found thousands of slides and photographs among his things after his death, they didn’t know what to do with them. When co-curator Phil Mello learned of this, he suggested the family take them to the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center.

When archivist Connor Gaudet started his position at the Fishing Heritage Center, his priority was to get Ryan’s photograph collection in its new online database

Read the full article at the Standard-Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: After second dock collapse, troubles on New Bedford waterfront

May 28, 2024 — On April 26, a nearly 500-foot stretch of dock owned by top executives at Eastern Fisheries collapsed into the New Bedford harbor. It was the second such collapse in just six months — the first of which hospitalized two workers and has since caused significant challenges for some businesses operating at the port.

The sudden dock collapses have left waterfront business owners and city officials asking: what are the causes, who is responsible, and is it safe to operate heavy machinery on the busy but dilapidated northern wharf?

The city says the aging port needs an overhaul. It’s a challenging feat. Facing the costs, the Port Authority has sold some properties in recent years, transferring the burden of expensive repairs to the companies that use the infrastructure. But the patchwork of public and private properties along the northern wharf makes it difficult to carry out one comprehensive overhaul.

“This latest incident highlights the need for long-term solutions to aging infrastructure at different points in the port. Such solutions will require time and significant outside funding,” Gordon Carr, director of the New Bedford Port Authority, wrote in a statement to The Light. “The Port Authority continues to take its role in such an effort seriously and will support businesses and property owners in pursuing these solutions as we are able.”

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

NOAA states endangered North Atlantic right whales are approaching extinction after another dies off the coast of Massachusetts

May 21, 2024 — In a recent update, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries have issued a warning.

The organization states that the endangered North Atlantic right whales are approaching extinction. An Unusual Mortality Event was declared for North Atlantic right whales in 2017, and currently includes 139 individuals (40 dead, 34 seriously injured, and 65 sub lethally injured or ill). The primary causes of the UME, according to the NOAA are entanglements in fishing gear and vessel strikes in both U.S. and Canadian waters, which are long-standing threats to the recovery of the species.

In the same warning, the NOAA issued an update believing that a right whale off the coast of Massachusetts is dead.

Read the full article at Fall River Reporter

MASSACHUSETTS: What belongs on New Bedford State Pier? Here is what’s proposed.

May 14, 2024– A new “boat-to-table” seafood restaurant proposed for State Pier would employ 125 at peak season and bring thousands of people downtown.

That’s according to Servedwell Hospitality owner Steve Silverstein, who is proposing the new 6,500-square-foot restaurant that would seat 300, and feature roof-deck dining and two bars.

It would represent a $5 million investment by Servedwell Hospitality.

Silverstein made one of the seven presentations Monday night of what’s being proposed for the eight-acre State Pier’s redevelopment.

Meeting was held at New Bedford Whaling Museum

The meeting at the New Bedford Whaling Museum was hosted by MassDevelopment, the state’s development finance agency and land bank, which manages the state-owned property.

A MassDevelopment review committee will review the proposals and make recommendations.

The committee could recommend accepting the proposals in total or partially – none of which are mutually exclusive – or reject them all. Leases for successful RFPS could run up to 35 years.

Read the full article at the Standard-Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Sewage related restrictions will hurt oyster growers

May 13, 2024 — After a storm wiped out Luke Sebesta’s Dartmouth aquaculture business in 2022, he was looking forward to purchasing 20,000 seed oysters this spring to get it back up and running. But this March, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries announced new restrictions on shellfish beds in parts of Buzzards Bay. Now, his re-opening of his Nonquitt oyster farm — Buzzards Bay Oysters — is at a “standstill.”

“It’s making me question whether it’s even worth it,” he said.

On March 12, the state announced new regulations of the shellfish beds surrounding the New Bedford and Fairhaven wastewater treatment plant outfalls — the main discharge pipes for treated sewage. These changes are part of a statewide effort to expand the areas around these pipes that are closed to shellfishing — called “buffer zones” — to comply with requirements in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.

These buffer zones are based on computer modeling of how treated sewage flows from treatment plants out of these pipes, and dilutes and disperses into its receiving waters near shellfish beds. They are meant to protect consumers from the risk of getting sick when eating shellfish grown near a wastewater treatment plant, if it fails and dispenses untreated sewage into the water.

Roughly 90,000 acres of Buzzards Bay shellfish beds, stretching from Dartmouth to Mattapoisett, changed from fully approved to conditionally approved as a result of the computer modeling. That means oyster growers using these beds could now be shut down for seven to 21 days after episodes of “rainfall or seasonally poor water quality or other predictable events.”

State officials say the change is a necessary concession. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration recommended closing down more than 103,000 acres of beds across Buzzards Bay, based on its modeling. The state says the new classification plan protects public health, keeps growers open, and complies with requirements in the National Shellfish Sanitation Program.

Read the full article at National Fisherman

U.S. Proposes 8 Wind Energy Areas in Gulf of Maine

May 10, 2024 — Offshore wind is key to Massachusetts meeting its decarbonization goals, particularly the state’s Clean Energy and Climate plan, which commits to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The Mass. Clean Energy Center, a state agency established to boost the clean energy sector, anticipates that nearly 60 percent of all electricity in the state will be generated by wind by that year.

Cape Cod fishermen are watching the developments closely, according to Aubrey Ellertson Church, policy manager at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. In an email to the Independent, she said that local fishermen’s primary concern is whether the location of the wind farms would push them out of their traditional fishing areas and into other already-fished areas, increasing competition among boats.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent