Saving Seafood

NEFMC Presents 2017 Award for Excellence to Dr. Matt Cieri

April 20, 2017 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council today presented its 2017 Janice M. Plante Award for Excellence to Dr. Matt Cieri of the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR). Dr. Cieri received the award in recognition of the breadth of his scientific contributions and commitment to the Council process.

Council Chairman Dr. John Quinn said, “Dr. Cieri has devoted almost his entire professional career to the betterment of Atlantic herring science and management. He’s contributed extensively to the Council’s Atlantic Herring Plan Development Team and to herring stock assessments, and he’s been heavily involved with quota monitoring, which has helped us track catch trends and quota utilization in this important fishery.”

Dr. Cieri is a Marine Resource Scientist III at Maine DMR. He earned a Master of Science degree from Rutgers University and a PhD from the University of Maine. He oversees several programs and personnel within DMR, ranging from the Maine/New Hampshire Trawl Survey to Recreational Fishery Monitoring. He is well versed in a number of assessment models and methods. In additional to his considerable involvement with Atlantic herring, he also has contributed to assessment efforts related to monkfish, dogfish, groundfish, American eels, and Atlantic menhaden.

The Plante award is the Council’s highest honor, bestowed to an individual who has produced exceptional work “to further the effectiveness of the fishery management process in New England.”

Read the full release here

When is menhaden like a mortgage?

April 7, 2017 — What do forage fish and real estate have in common? Location, location, location.

A new study led by University of Washington fishery science Professor Ray Hilborn reveals some surprising relationships between predator success and prey abundance.

The paper, “When does fishing forage species affect their predators?” was published Monday in the journal Fisheries Research in response to the 2012 Lenfest Report, which set the recent standard for forage fish management by asserting that an across-the-board reduction in the commercial harvest of forage fish would result in higher numbers of fish species that prey on them.

“It looked reasonable that if you appropriate half of the production of a prey species by a fishery that you can’t support so much production of predators,” said Carl Walters, professor emeritus of the University of British Columbia’s Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries. “That seemed perfectly reasonable. It was just wrong.”

According to this study, prey species follow the real estate principle of investing in prime locations. When forage fish are abundant, the research shows, their population spreads over a wider area, creating smaller subpockets around a core reproduction zone. When they’re in low abundance, they retract to the core region. Successful predators keep their breeding grounds close to that core region, maintaining access to food even in times of low prey biomass.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Management Board to Meet November 14 to Consider Approval of Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan

April 5, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board will meet on November 14, 2017 (all day) to consider approval of Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden. The Commission’s Business Session will meet immediately following the conclusion of the Atlantic Menhaden Board meeting to consider final approval of Amendment 3. The meeting will take place in the Washington, DC/Baltimore, MD area. Additional details will be released well in advance of the meeting.

LOUISIANA: Season opens early for bait fish to meet demand

March 6, 2017 — The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission  announced a  Declaration of Emergency to open the commercial season for the harvest of bait menhaden starting Wednesday, March 15, 2017.

The actions on this declaration by the LWFC comes after request from the bait menhaden industry.

The commercial season for the harvest of bait menhaden typically opens on November 1 and runs through November 30 with a 3,000 metric ton quota. In the event that quota is not harvested during the normal November season, the bait season may resume April 1 of the following year.

Read the full story at KATC

Louisiana menhaden season to open March 15

March 3, 2017 — The commercial season for the harvest of bait menhaden will open March 15, the state Wildlife and Fisheries Commission decided today.

The season typically runs Nov. 1-20 with a 3,000-metric-ton quota. But when quota is not harvested during the normal season, the agency can reopen the fishery April 1 of the following year.

The bait industry asked the commission to open the season two weeks earlier to meet customer demand, officials said. The quota was not met in 2016, and opening the season two weeks earlier is not expected to negatively impact the quota or regular commercial menhaden season.

Read the full story at Houma Today

Health Benefits Of Omega-3 Fatty Acids, According To Science (+15 Best Omega-3 Foods)

March 1, 2017 — You may have heard about Omega-3 fatty acids before but you may not quite understand what it is or why we need it. Omega-3 is an essential fat the body is incapable of making naturally. That means that we have to get it from the foods and supplements that we put into our body.

Omega-3 is a polyunsaturated fat, which basically means that it is one of the “good fats”. Polyunsaturated fats are natural and healthy whereas saturated fats or “bad fats” are found in highly processed foods and can lead to unfavorable health complications when consumed in large amounts and over a long period of time.

Read the full story at Jen Reviews

Learning About Menhaden: A Journey to Reedville

January 27, 2017 — The following is excerpted from an article by Emily Liljestrand, a master’s student in the University System of Maryland’s Marine Estuarine Environmental Sciences program. It was published Tuesday by Maryland Sea Grant:

Atlantic menhaden, though completely unpalatable to all but the most desperate diners, can be found in many commercial products. They are processed into omega-3, fatty-acid-rich nutritional supplements as well as aquaculture feed and fertilizer. People have utilized them for hundreds of years. The name “menhaden” even comes from the Native American word “munnawhatteaug,” which means “that which fertilizes.”

To get from this one-foot-long, oily, bug-eyed creature to the myriad of products we use them for requires several steps of fishing and processing. Most of which we got to witness first-hand on our trip to Reedville.

We were welcomed by the Omega Protein staff who guided us to a cozy conference room where we watched a video that demonstrated the fishing operation. Delightful as it might have been, having nine students and faculty go out on a fishing vessel that can often spend days offshore is a bit impractical.

But in the video we got to see the whole fishing process. Spotter planes take off across the Chesapeake Bay and nearshore Atlantic waters, looking for the telltale sign of a menhaden school – darkened bubbling waters where menhaden were being targeted by predatory fish and sea birds. Pilots can estimate with a high degree of accuracy not only the size of a school but also the average size of menhaden within that school.

The fishing vessel charges onto the scene and once in position, deploys two smaller seine boats that together use a single net to rope up as much of the school as they can. Once the bottom “purse string” gets pulled, it’s only a matter of hauling everything up onto the larger vessel and/or vacuuming menhaden into the hold. If done efficiently, the whole process may take no longer than half an hour.

Our guided tour around the on-shore facility in Reedville showed us how the processing continues onshore. The school of menhaden (or multiple schools, collected over several days) are deposited into a large holding vat and cooked at extreme temperatures. This procedure breaks down the fish and creates a sort of menhaden “slurry.” Through a series of heating, cooling, and further chemical processing, the lighter liquid oil gets separated from the harder, denser meal.

Omega Protein told us about its efforts to make its processing operations sustainable. It uses recycled/reclaimed water extracted from the menhaden themselves as a cooling agent, which has saved about 18 million gallons of water annually, and safely disposes of nitrogen byproducts. Omega’s fossil fuel consumption has dropped by 80 percent since 2012 thanks to several plant renovations.

Read the full story at Maryland Sea Grant

MONTY DEIHL: What The Virginian-Pilot gets wrong about menhaden

January 13, 2017 — THE PILOT gets one thing absolutely right in its Dec. 28 editorial on menhaden management (“Let scientists manage menhaden approach”): Menhaden is important to the Chesapeake Bay, and the species and the fishery that depend on it deserve proper management.

Unfortunately, the editorial’s proposals are based on a flawed and incomplete understanding of menhaden science and management.

The Pilot urges fisheries managers at the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission to adopt ecosystem-based reference points as it considers Amendment 3 to the Menhaden Fishery Management Plan.

While almost everyone supports ecosystem-based management in the long run, no such system is ready to be implemented. The ASMFC’s best fisheries scientists are currently developing new ecological reference points specifically for menhaden, which are expected to be completed in the next few years.

In the meantime, fisheries managers should not reach for unproven, improper management practices when they lack the necessary science to guide the process.

In supporting new reference points, the editorial offers an ill-informed indictment of the current management approach, calling it a “tragedy of the commons.” But the ASMFC’s latest stock assessment found that menhaden fishing mortality is at its lowest level on record — hardly the “tragedy of the commons” that The Pilot suggests.

Read the full opinion piece at the Virginian-Pilot

CHRISTI LINARDICH: Fishing isn’t the problem

January 12, 2017 — “Let scientists manage menhaden approach” (editorial, Dec. 28) perpetuates the belief that so many people seem to have lately — that the largest impact on striped bass populations is lack of menhaden to eat.

According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, menhaden biomass was lowest during the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, but during that time (1993-2004, to be exact) striper recruitment was strong.

This is not easily explained, but neither is the simplified belief that taking a sustainable amount of menhaden out is magically taking striper off the end of people’s fishing lines.

Critics conveniently ignore the fact that the Chesapeake Bay and associated rivers, which striper depend on to complete their reproductive cycle and menhaden rely on for nursery grounds, has been severely altered by humans through dams and pollution.

Read the full letter to the editor at the Virginian-Pilot

RHODE ISLAND: Fishing community shares thoughts on menhaden

December 30, 2016 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), which manages many of the saltwater species we fish in Rhode Island that travel the east coast, held an Atlantic menhaden public hearing Monday at the URI Bay Campus.

The hearing addressed a Public Information Document (PID) that aims to incorporate ecosystem-based management strategies to manage Atlantic menhaden. The PID serves as a predecessor to an amendment (Amendment 3) to the Atlantic menhaden Fishery Management Plan scheduled to be developed next year. About 30 recreational and commercial fishermen, fish processors, environmental groups (like Save the Bay) and fish managers attended the hearing. Two main issues were discussed at the hearing. The first issue was the use of ecosystem-based management strategies to determine stock status and allowable catch limits. The second issue addressed landing timeframes, which would be used to determine allocation of quota.

Recreational anglers up and down the east coast have claimed that fishing for striped bass and other game fish is off when the quantity of Atlantic menhaden (a forage fish for striped bass) is down. Additionally, Atlantic menhaden are filter feeders, with each fish processing thousands of gallons of water filtering out plankton to help prevent algae blooms. The Atlantic menhaden Fishery Management Plan will be the first ASMFC plan that utilizes ecosystem-based management in this fashion.

Meghan Lapp of Seafreeze, Ltd., North Kingstown (the largest producer and trader of sea-frozen fish on the East Coast) and a member of the ASMFC Atlantic menhaden Advisory Panel, said “Historically, Rhode Island has landed a lot more fish than the allocation reflects.” George Allen, representing the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association (a recreational fishing association that represents 30 different fishing organizations with 7,500 members), said, “Currently, one state (Virginia) takes 85 percent of the catch because of the Atlantic menhaden reduction fishery. This is inequitable for the rest of the coastal states.”

Most in attendance were in agreement that the Atlantic menhaden allocation in the northeast states, and specifically Rhode Island, should be enhanced to more accurately reflect historical catch over a longer period of time, including the time period when landings were high due to active processing plants in the northern states. So, instead of using average landings between 2009 and 2011, many at the meeting were advocating for a longer time-series average, extending to include years prior to 2009 such as 1985, when more accurate bait fishery landings data became available.

Read the full story at the Cranston Herald