Saving Seafood

Fishermen Team Up With Food Banks To Help Hungry Families

December 28, 2020 — As the COVID-19 pandemic hit hard in the spring, fishermen watched their markets dry up. Restaurants and cafeterias — normally major fish buyers — closed or cut back orders significantly. Fishermen weren’t sure if they were going to get paid for what they brought to the dock.

Meanwhile as people lost jobs, food banks started to see an unprecedented demand for services. Things were getting desperate, with long lines for food assistance in many states.

Out of these dual crises, a new idea was born. Food assistance programs across the country have started connecting with local fishermen to stock up on local seafood, many for the first time. And the arrangement seems to be helping the fishermen, the economy and those in need of healthy food.

In Massachusetts, the Greater Boston Food Bank, which serves more than 500,000 food-insecure people with its 600-plus network partners, was looking for ideas.

Read the full story at WNYC

Roger Berkowitz: Legal Sea Foods sale allows for retail, QVC expansion

December 23, 2020 — Transitioning from building a successful seafood restaurant chain to focus on retail, e-commerce, and other channels is almost like going home for Legal Sea Foods President and CEO Roger Berkowitz.

On 22 December, the Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based company announced it is selling its 27 restaurants to PPX Hospitality Brands, which also operate the Smith & Wollensky and The Strega Group restaurant chain.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: Legal Sea Foods restaurant chain sold to Boston company

December 23, 2020 — The Boston-based restaurant chain Legal Sea Foods has been sold, Legal’s chief executive said Tuesday.

Legal’s 25 locations will now be operated by Boston-based PPX Hospitality Brands, which owns the Smith & Wollensky steakhouse restaurants and Strega Italian restaurants, according to a statement.

“It’s a bit of mixed emotions,” Legal President and CEO Roger Berkowitz told Boston.com. “It was a family business — particularly a family business that deals directly with the public. One of the great things, I suppose, about the restaurant business in general is that you come in contact with so many people from so many walks of life.”

Berkowitz will retain ownership rights of the Legal Sea Foods name for the company’s e-commerce and retail business.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts officials plan lobster-fishing bans to protect right whales

December 22, 2020 — Officials in the U.S. state of Massachusetts are proposing a complete ban on lobster fishing in all state waters during periods when the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale is in the region.

The new regulations would prevent lobstermen from setting traps between February and May – and potentially longer if the whales remain offshore, according to The Boston Globe. The regulations would also require lobstermen to use more easily breakable rope, limit the state’s lobster catch, and curtail the use of gillnets in state waters.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MASSACHUSETTS: A lifeline to the next generation of fishermen

December 22, 2020 — Ken Baughman has fished since he was a kid and loves being on the water. The Falmouth resident, smart and determined, bought a second-hand motor, built his own boat and launched his career as a commercial fisherman this summer.

It has been tough going.

 “It’s virtually impossible. You really have to come in as an apprentice,” he said.

That may soon be a possibility as the Young Fishermen’s Development Act passed Congress this week.

The act, modeled after the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s successful Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program, creates the first federal program dedicated to training  the next generation of commercial fishermen and includes an apprenticeship program to connect retiring fishermen and vessel owners with new and beginning fishermen.

It provides education in sustainable and accountable fishing practices, marine stewardship, successful business practices, and technical initiatives that address the needs of beginning fishermen through a competitive grants program for collaborative state, tribal, local, or regionally-based networks or partnerships.

“The Young Fishermen’s Development Act is crucial to the success of the Cape’s small-boat fleets and the communities that rely on commercial fishing, an industry that helped build the peninsula and is a vital part of the new blue economy,” said John Pappalardo, CEO of the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

MASSACHUSETTS: Seasonal Ban on Lobstering Aims to Protect Right Whales

December 21, 2020 — With the North Atlantic right whale population at a dangerously low ebb, the state Division of Marine Fisheries is proposing a statewide seasonal ban on lobstering in a last-chance effort to save the critically endangered species from extinction.

Floated by the DMF during public hearings on Dec. 8 and 9, the proposed regulations come in the wake of a report that estimated right whale populations at only 366 marine mammals — down from the 481 estimated in 2011 — and a continued “unusual mortality event” that has seen more than 30 right whale deaths in the past three years.

The dramatic rule changes propose extending the state’s existing Feb. 1 through April 30 lobster trap closure in Cape Cod Bay to all waters under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth, including the Vineyard and Nantucket Sound. Buoyed recreational lobster and crab trap fishing would also be closed. The recreational closure would run from the Tuesday after Columbus Day through the Friday preceding Memorial Day.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Cape Cod, New Bedford fishermen train to survive the winter sea

December 21, 2020 — Temperatures at the Sandwich Marina on Friday morning stood at the freezing mark, with a bitter wind and driving snow. Despite this, 25 crewmen and captains from Cape and New Bedford fishing vessels sat down in slushy snow to wriggle into what could be the most important article of clothing they will ever try on.

They call them Gumby suits, and it’s easy to see why. A survival suit is bright orange with oversized hands and feet and a tight-fitting hood that reveals only a small moon of flesh: eyes, nose and mouth.

The water temperature in the marina was 47 degrees, and Dan Orchard, the vice president of Fishing Partnership Support Services, had the men suit up and jump into the water within a half-hour of arrival. The shock of going from comfort to cold, disorienting water temperatures was about as close to the real thing as could be had shoreside.

Orchard and other staff from the fishing partnership were conducting a day of survival training for fishermen after captains requested it following the sinking of the Emmy Rose. Four crew members and their captain died with the wreck 20 miles east of Provincetown in the early morning hours of Nov. 23.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: With sale of Legal Sea Foods, another Boston institution changes hands

December 21, 2020 — If it’s not Roger, is it Legal?

That’s the question as Roger Berkowitz, the chief executive and public face of Legal Sea Foods, is poised to sign off as soon as Monday on the the sale of the restaurant business his family started in 1968 to PPX Hospitality Group, owner of Smith & Wollensky steakhouses and three Boston-area Strega restaurants.

The pending deal is the latest chapter in Legal’s local lore: Roger’s family opening the first Legal Sea Foods restaurant in Cambridge, next to the fish market of the same name his father had opened in 1950. The expansion into Boston, the suburbs, and down the Eastern Seaboard to Florida. The feud between Roger and his brother Marc, after Roger took over as CEO. And the comical ads — some groan-inducing, some not-quite suitable for a family restaurant — with the tagline, “If it isn’t fresh, it isn’t Legal!”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: In a major effort to protect endangered whales, state officials plan to ban lobster fishing for several months a year

December 18, 2020 — In a major step to protect North Atlantic right whales, state officials are poised to ban lobster fishing in all Massachusetts waters during periods when the critically endangered species typically feeds in the region.

The proposed restrictions, which could be devastating for hundreds of fixed-gear fishermen from Buzzards Bay to Ipswich Bay, would prevent commercial lobstermen from setting their traps between February and May, and potentially longer if whales remain offshore. They would also require the state’s 800 lobstermen to use special rope that breaks more easily under pressure from whales, limit the state’s recreational lobster catch, and curtail the use of vertical mesh lines known as gillnets.

State officials said the rules, which were proposed a few weeks after scientists estimated that there are only about 356 right whales remaining, are likely to take effect as soon as February, after a public comment period.

“The draft regulations are designed to reduce the risk of endangered whales becoming entangled in fixed fishing gear,” said Dan McKiernan, director of the Division of Marine Fisheries who noted during recent online hearings that 32 right whales have died and another 14 have sustained life-threatening injuries since 2017.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Massachusetts has new plan to curb North Atlantic right whale entanglements

December 18, 2020 — New federal rules to reduce the chances of endangered right whales becoming entangled in lobster pot and gillnet gear are expected soon, but so are the whales, with as much as 2/3 of the remaining population arriving in state waters in the coming months.

Hoping to have additional protections in place, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries held public hearings last week on a plan they believe will make the state compliant with the federal plan and satisfy a judge’s order.

Friday is the last day to submit public comment on the plan which, among other things, would close down all state waters to fishing with lobster pots for three months beginning Feb. 1 and close an additional area off Scituate to gillnet fishing. All recreational lobster and crab pot gear would also have to be out of the water from the day after Columbus Day through the Friday before Memorial Day.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times