Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Biden visits Somerset, pledges $2.3 billion to combat climate change

July 21, 2022 — Amid a heat wave scorching Massachusetts and breaking records in much of Europe, President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced forthcoming executive actions and a $2.3 billion infrastructure investment to tackle climate change, stating it’s “code red for humanity.”

Biden said shuttered fossil fuel plants are becoming the sites for clean energy construction and technologies, adding Brayton Point is on the frontier of clean energy.

The symbolism of the Somerset site as a shift toward renewable energy has been used by other elected officials, like U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, who, standing before the Port of New Bedford last year, said the city would reclaim the title of being the city that lit the world — this time with renewable wind energy instead of whale oil.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which oversees and regulates this development, has also discussed streamlining the process after the first projects, such as Vineyard Wind, got final approval.

As the process speeds up following a slow down during the Trump administration, fishermen and fishing industry representatives have expressed concern that not enough is being done to look into the potential negative impacts the wind farms might have on the fishing industry.

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

 

Fisheries groups oppose fast tracking offshore wind development in Gulf of Maine

July 21, 2022 — The health of the ocean is at stake, according to fishing industry advocates who oppose offshore wind development.

A report on the threats posed to commercial fishing was released after an offshore wind conference held in Boston in May.

The Partnership’s Vice President and Executive Director Angela Sanfilippo said her organization is concerned about the health of the ocean, the health of the fish stock, and the health of the industry. She calls plans for fast-tracking wind developments a threat to all three.

Read the full article at Cape Cod Times

Technology Making Shark Sightings Off Cape Cod Waters More Accurate

July 19, 2022 — With all the shark activity off Cape Cod waters so far this season, its no wonder the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife has added extra technology to make sightings even more accurate.

This past weekend alone, Cape Cod waters had 12 reported shark sightings from Provincetown to Chatham, some as close as 50 yards offshore. The newly updated Sharktivity App has been allowing beachgoers to report their sightings all summer, but new technology in the water is making things even more accurate.

Just recently MassWildife teamed up with the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy to install two acoustic receiver buoys off Wellfleet beaches. One floats offshore at  Newcomb Hollow and the other is at Lecount Hollow/Maguire Landing. ⁣⁣Both transmit extremely accurate data right to area beach staff.

Last summer several of these buoys were deployed by the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy all across the Cape coastline, but the Wellfleet buoys seem to be new this season.

Perhaps it’s the growing amount of shark activity in the area that made these buoys necessary or the tracking devices already placed in white sharks showing researching this is a popular area. Whatever the reason, the buoys are now active, making Cape Cod beach visits much safer.

No word on where the next buoys might be deployed, but if more sharks swim along the SouthCoast (like last week’s Westport shark visit) perhaps we’ll have buoys in our neck of the woods before the summer is over.

The buoys’ technology is extremely helpful to lifeguards on shore since they can tell you when a tagged shark is swimming off the coast and where it might be headed. Beach staff can then use that date to fly the appropriate shark flag to let beachgoers know what is going on.

Read the full article at WBSM

They’re bleeding horseshoe crabs on the Cape and some advocates are worried

July 18, 2022 — Between the local dump and highway, in a nondescript building that lacks any indication of who occupies it, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies recently began harvesting the milky-blue blood of an ancient creature plucked from the beaches and bays around Cape Cod.

Charles River Laboratories is one of just four companies in the United States — and now the second on the Cape — licensed to harvest the blood of horseshoe crabs for a valuable component that’s used to identify harmful bacteria during the testing of new drugs.

The bleeding of crabs, combined with their use as bait and losses to their coastal habitat, has led them to be listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which maintains the world’s most comprehensive list of threatened species. The group considers the crabs “endangered” in the Gulf of Maine and the Mid-Atlantic, areas that include Cape Cod, though officials in Massachusetts have cited surveys suggesting the region’s population has increased.

State officials also pointed to surveys done every spring for decades that show female horseshoe crabs at a near high in abundance. However, a similar state survey in the fall — which officials didn’t acknowledge until the Globe asked about it — shows the number of female crabs actually decreasing substantially over the past five years.

Since bled crabs are rarely tracked after they’re released, scientists and environmental advocates say it’s hard to know for sure how many crabs actually die, or are otherwise harmed, as a result of the bleeding, which drains large amounts of their blood.

Charles River officials told the Globe that just 4 percent of their crabs die before being returned to the wild; however, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources has estimated more than 20 percent of female crabs die within two weeks of being bled by the company.

Charles River officials have defended the additional pressure on the species, contending that the good from preventing the contamination of drugs outweighs the environmental impact. But there are now synthetic substitutes that rival companies say could reduce and eventually eliminate the need to rely on the crabs’ blood, which has been used for testing drugs since the 1970s.

One pharmaceutical giant that has received government permission for a synthetic alternative, Eli Lilly, has used its substitute to test COVID-19 antibody drugs.

Officials at Charles River said they’re developing their own synthetic versions but it would take years before they were ready and widely adopted.

“The synthetics we’ve tested are not sensitive enough to ensure patient safety,” Girshick said. “We’re actually pushing for a synthetic ourselves, and spending a lot of money to get there.”

Until then, she said, the company will be harvesting the blood from horseshoe crabs.

Read the full article from The Boston Globe

Public reaction to New Bedford fishing industry investigation: ‘This is a disgrace’

July 18, 2022 — New Bedford Light reporter Will Sennott’s deep investigation into how foreign private equity is taking over New Bedford’s lucrative waterfront sparked passionate and often angry responses from ordinary citizens.

The article, written in partnership with ProPublica, uncovers a business model that undercuts fishermen and shifts control of the waterfront out of New Bedford.

Following is a collection of email and social media reaction:

“I always learn so much reading The New Bedford Light. The title really lives up to the name, as it truly sheds a light on issues of importance to our community.

Will Sennott’s article on the fishing industry’s rapid takeover by private equity firms was most informative. This is a development that should concern all of us.

New Bedford’s hard-working, devoted fishermen have been the backbone of our economy for generations. What hurts them and their families, hurts me.

Folks are complaining now about the high price of fish and scallops, but it will only get worse. And, personally, I think putting the squeeze on the very people who do the backbreaking work is unconscionable.

Corporate greed at its best.

The question is, ‘Who has the power to stop this practice, and can it realistically be stopped?’”

— Dawn Blake Souza, retired educator and New Bedford Public Schools principal, via email

“This @willsennott and @NewBedfordLight piece on how private equity firms and foreign investors like the Brenninkmeijer family, living in moated castles in Germany, have taken over much of New England’s fishing industry for @propublica, is something else #fishing.”

— Aleksander @aleksanderrr_, via Twitter

“Private equity owns everything with very little regulatory oversight and extremely generous tax treatment. #TaxWealth.”

— JO @JO_loves_coffee, via Twitter

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

 

These fish are critical to New England, and they’re disappearing

July 14, 2022 — Hutchins, a habitat restoration biologist with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, lives and works on Cape Ann. Along with a small group of volunteers, he monitors the baby eels migrating upstream at Mill Brook between spring and fall. In a year, sometimes they’ll document well over a thousand elvers.

Half a century ago, fishermen harvested millions of pounds of American eels annually up and down the Atlantic Coast. By 2013, however, researchers estimated the population had dropped by half.

Experts suspect overfishing and coastal development have played a role in the decline, along with eutrophication — when nutrients from sewage and fertilizers choke the oxygen from ponds and streams.

Another fish fundamental to fresh and saltwater ecology is the river herring.

Alewives and bluebacks are migratory herring that range along the East Coast from Florida to Maine. Whereas eels are born in the ocean but live in freshwater, river herring live in coastal waters and only venture inland to spawn.

As with eel, river herring populations began to crash in the 1980s, coinciding with advances in commercial fishing techniques and new construction along the coast.

Massachusetts is home to about 3,000 dams, with many built in the 19th century for water power, reservoirs, or flood control.

“A dam in a river is like a blocked artery; it’s like a heart attack,” said Robert Kearns, a climate resiliency specialist at the Charles River Watershed Association. “It degrades the water quality behind it; reduces the dissolved oxygen which fish rely on to breathe and to live … and creates a habitat that’s better for invasive species.”

Beyond commercial fishing, a report by the American Sportfishing Association found saltwater sport fishing generates over $500 million dollars a year in sales, wages, and taxes in Massachusetts.

But amid the reality of human-made climate change, the future of the herring and the eels, on which so much depends, remains very much in question.

Read the full story at WBUR

Justin Mello: First, ground fishing takeover — next is the scallop industry

July 8, 2022 — I’ve spoken at every scallop leasing meeting and webinar against consolidation, leasing, stacking. Whatever name they throw on it, it’s bad.

We can clearly see the negative impacts on crew and community in other fisheries, for example, ground fish. Many companies, including my father’s, suffered after changes were made in the ground fish industry. I myself witnessed the quick transition when I first started unloading boats. We would unload many draggers when I first started. And about three years later we didn’t have one left. And we transitioned mostly to scallops.

The big companies push for this every so many years. They come up with different angles every time. Flexibility, safety, efficiency. But it only comes down to greed. And the sad part is, every year there are less and less voices to speak up. Especially in a year like this. Many single boat owners are selling. And there are less voices to communicate the point we are trying to make.

The bigger the company, the more bills they have, the more they take from their money makers: the boats. Even when they say they don’t take from the crew, they just take off the top. So it comes off the crew one way or another. So who’s to say they won’t pass off leasing costs? No one. All they do is add a little section on your settlement and call it “miscellaneous expense” and take whatever they want or need.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: How foreign private equity hooked New England’s fishing industry

July 6, 2022 — Before dawn, Jerry Leeman churned through inky black waters, clutching the wheel of the fishing vessel Harmony.

The 85-foot trawler, deep green and speckled with rust, was returning from a grueling fishing trip deep into the Atlantic swells. Leeman and his crew of four had worked 10 consecutive days, 20 hours a day, to haul in more than 50,000 pounds of fish: pollock, haddock and ocean perch, a trio known as groundfish in the industry and as whitefish in the freezer aisle.

As sunrise broke over New Bedford harbor, the fish were offloaded in plastic crates onto the asphalt dock of Blue Harvest Fisheries, one of the largest fishing companies on the East Coast. About 390 million pounds of seafood move each year through New Bedford’s waterfront, the top-earning commercial fishing port in the nation.

Leeman and his crew are barely sharing in the bounty. On deck, Leeman held a one-page “settlement sheet,” the fishing industry’s version of a pay stub. Blue Harvest charges Leeman and his crew for fuel, gear, leasing of fishing rights, and maintenance on the company-owned vessel. Across six trips in the past 14 months, Leeman netted about 14 cents a pound, and the crew, about 7 cents each — a small fraction of the $2.28 per pound that a species like haddock typically fetches at auction.

“It’s a nickel-and-dime game,” said the 40-year-old Leeman, who wore a flannel shirt beneath foul weather gear and a necklace strung with a compass, a cross, and three pieces of jade — one piece for each of his three children. “Tell me how I can catch 50,000 pounds of fish yet I don’t know what my kids are going to have for dinner.”

Leeman’s lament is a familiar one in New Bedford, an industrial city tucked below Cape Cod on the south coast of Massachusetts. In recent years, the port of New Bedford has thrived, generating $11.1 billion in business revenue, jobs, taxes and personal income in 2018, according to one study. But a quiet shift is remaking the city and the industry that sustains it, realizing local fishermen’s deepest fears of losing control over their livelihood.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Light

Port of New Bedford Applauds Appointment of Eric Hansen to New England Fishery Management Council

June 28, 2022 — The following was released yesterday by the Port of New Bedford:

The Port of New Bedford applauds today’s appointment of Eric Hansen, a New Bedford scalloper and president of the Fisheries Survival Fund, to a seat on the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC). Hansen’s appointment will help ensure the concerns of New Bedford’s vital fishing community are represented at the Council level. New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, chairman of the New Bedford Port Authority, recommended Hansen for the seat in a February letter to Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.

The Port thanks Gov. Baker, who nominated Hansen to the Council, and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who made the appointment. The Port also thanks NOAA Assistant Administrator Janet Coit and NOAA Greater Atlantic Regional Administrator Michael Pentony.

For the past 21 years, New Bedford has been the most valuable fishing port in the country, with $451 million worth of seafood landed in 2020. In addition to species like surf clams and ocean quahog, a major share of the Port’s success is due to the value of New England’s scallop fishery, one of the most valuable fisheries in the country.

Prior to Hansen’s appointment, there was no representative from New Bedford on the NEFMC. Having a voice on the Council who understands the needs of our fishermen and our fishing community is critical to preserving the economic and cultural future of the Port.

“As the most valuable commercial fishing port in the nation, New Bedford deserves a seat at the table where management decisions are made, and we appreciate Secretary Raimondo’s recognition of that fact,” Mayor Mitchell said. “Eric’s extensive knowledge and experience, and his solid reputation in the industry, will enable him to serve with distinction.”

Hansen brings years of fisheries management experience to his new role on the NEFMC. He has previously served on the Council’s Scallop and Monkfish Advisory panels. In his role as president of the Fisheries Survival Fund, he has effectively advocated for the scallop fishery as it has become one of the most sustainable and effectively managed species in the country.

Study: Offshore wind development could reduce surf clam catch revenue by as much as 15%

June 28, 2022 — Offshore wind farms could reduce the catch of Atlantic surf clams in the mid-Atlantic, according to a new study from Rutgers University.

The research published last week was funded by the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. Rutgers associate professor Daphne Munroe found that the leases for wind projects could reduce surf clam revenue by 3-15% in the area from Virginia to Massachusetts. The fishery is worth more than $30 million annually.

The study did not include Maine, but adds to a sparse but growing body of research about potential conflicts between offshore wind and fishing.

Read the full story at Maine Public