Saving Seafood

Jersey Shore Fishing: Menhaden Public Hearing on Thursday

December 8th, 2016 — Anglers concerned about an increase in quota for menhaden reduction boats should be sure to attend Thursday’s 6:30 p.m. ASMFC public hearing at the DEP Nacote Creek Law Enforcement Office, 360 North New York Road.

Yesterday’s northeast wind created a rough sea, and the surf was basically unfishable. Strong northwest winds could solve that problem the next couple of days.

Capt. Rob Semkewyc has decided to conclude his season on the Sea Hunter from Atlantic Highlands. He posted the following:

Looking at the long range forecast I decided to just pack it in for the winter. I want to thank everyone who fished with us. I hope you enjoyed the season. The spring striper run was disappointing this year. The summer fluke season was pretty normal. We caught many and threw lots back. I was happy with the fall Striper fishing. We caught lots of fish! Have a great Holiday Season and a safe winter. We will start up again in the spring for the stripers, either late March or early April. If you would like to buy a gift Certificate for someone you can give me a call 732-291-4468 and I can get one out to you. Thanks again from Capt Rob and the crew of the Sea Hunter.

Read the full story from NewJersey.com 

Commission seeking public input on menhaden management plan

December 8th, 2016 – The group charged with coordinating the management and conservation of more than two dozen nearshore fish species in the Atlantic coastal states is seeking input on its management plan for menhaden.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission released a “public information document” last month outlining a series of options for managing the fish and requesting feedback from the public.

Menhaden are small, silvery fish that play a critical role in the bay’s ecosystem, according to the Chesapeake Bay Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

They serve as a forage fish for striped bass, weakfish, bluefish, and predatory birds like eagles, and also a key role as a filter feeder, feeding on phytoplankton and zooplankton, the NOAA office’s website says.

The menhaden management plan will address catch quotas for the fish along the Atlantic Coast.

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is calling for the commission to shift to an “ecosystem” management approach that “ensures there are enough menhaden in the water to fulfill their role in the food chain for the protection of all marine life.”

Public comments must be received by 5 p.m. on Jan. 4.

Comments may be mailed to Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, 1050 North Highland St., Suite 200A-N, Arlington, Virginia 22201.

Read the full story at the Capitol Gazette

Whale visit good sign for healthier Hudson

December 5th, 2016 — When a humpback whale swam all the way to the George Washington Bridge last month, it became a brief media spectacle, with the creature’s massive tail breaching the Hudson River while skyscrapers loomed in the background.

But for some,  the whale’s presence also signaled that the Hudson is slowly coming back from decades of pollution. The waterway is indeed healthier than it has  been since scientists began recording its demise a century ago from sewage, street runoff and industrial pollution, all of which have been curbed substantially in recent decades.

“People need to change their perception of these waters,” said Debbie Mans, executive director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper, a clean water advocacy group. “It has taken a lot of time, but it has slowly improved.”

Most experts think the whale, nicknamed Gotham, was  probably drawn up the Hudson in late November by schools of small bait fish called menhaden, or bunker, whose numbers along the Eastern Seaboard have soared in recent years.

Cleaner waters allows plankton to flourish closer to shore. That, in turn, provides a food source for fish like menhaden. And whales like nothing more than to munch on menhaden.

The fish have been so abundant this summer and autumn in the Hudson that Tom Lake, a consulting naturalist for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, said he saw schools of the fish 128 miles north of Bayonne.

Read the full story at The Record 

Big changes in the air over little menhaden

December 5th, 2016 — Big changes are being weighed for Atlantic menhaden, the little, oily fish that no one eats but that stirs such passion. At least one of the possible shifts could reverse recent increases in the allowable commercial catch.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates near-shore fishing from Maine to Florida — including the Chesapeake Bay — has invited public comment on several questions about future management of the menhaden fishery at hearings all along the coast. Sessions in the Bay watershed begin Monday, Dec. 5.

The most important issue under consideration involves setting new “reference points” regulating the catch of menhaden that would account for their value to other fish and predators — not just their commercial importance. But the commission also is weighing whether to shake up how the total catch is distributed along the coast.

Though generally not caught to be eaten, menhaden are netted in great numbers for processing into animal feed and health supplements, and for use as bait to catch crabs, striped bass and other fish. They are the largest catch, by weight, in the Bay. The small waterfront village of Reedville, VA — home to the menhaden fleet of Omega Protein Corp. — ranks sixth nationwide in fish landings, by weight, after a handful of ports in Alaska and Louisiana.

But menhaden are also an important food source for other fish, including striped bass, and for predators such as osprey, bald eagles, whales and dolphins. Conservationists, recreational anglers and many biologists have long expressed concerns about the impact of the commercial menhaden catch — especially Omega’s — on the availability of forage for other species, leading to intense debates over fishery management.

In 2012, the Atlantic States commission imposed a first-ever coastwide catch reduction of 20 percent for menhaden after a scientific assessment concluded they were overfished. A followup study using new models and information concluded last year that the earlier assessment was wrong. The commission has responded by twice ratcheting up annual catch limits, with a 6.5 percent increase approved in October, allowing for 200,000 metric tons to be caught coastwide in 2017.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal 

The real reason why you’re suddenly seeing whales in N.J. and N.Y. waters

November 28, 2016 — If you’ve spent any time walking the beaches or boating the ocean waters of New Jersey or New York in recent weeks, you’ve likely been treated to spectacle that has been a rarity in these parts for most of the past century or so: whales.

They’ve been seemingly everywhere.

Breaching just past the sandbars in Asbury Park.

Swimming past groups of surfers in Rockaway Beach.

Bumping into boats off Belmar.

And this week’s ultimate cetacean sensation: a humpback whale swam up the Hudson River for a photo op in front of the George Washington Bridge.

Besides inspiring a chorus of oohs and aahs, the increase in sightings is adding a blubbery new wrinkle to a raging debate over a far smaller fish: the Atlantic menhaden. It’s the menhaden, also known as “bunker” — clumsy, multidinous, slow swimming virtual floating hamburgers — that those whales are chasing.

Even as the whales were gulping down bunker along the coast of New Jersey, the ASMFC has been pushing the commercial quotas back up closer to pre 2012 catch levels. Last year, the catch limit was raised 10 percent, with the ASMFC citing data that showed bunker were not being overfished.

And, then, three weeks ago, the council voted to raise the commercial catch limits another 6.5 percent.

That move has been cheered by commercial fishing operations who argue the limits were never necessary and simply jeopardized an industry that employs hundreds of people from New Jersey to Virginia, where the largest menhaden processing operation, Omega Protein Corp, is located.

“The fact that there’s a lot of fish around has nothing do with reducing these quotas,” said Jeff Kaelin, spokesman for Lund’s Fisheries, a Cape May commercial fishing company that sells bunker as lobster bait. The increased number of whale sightings is simply the result of smaller fish growing to a larger size due to “environmental conditions.”

“The stock was not overfished,” he said. “It’s never been.”

Kaelin said the 20 percent coast-wide reduction translated into a roughly 50 percent cut for New Jersey companies that harvest bunker, because it shut down the fishery early in the year and put the state’s crucial fall harvest off limits.

“If the science says we need to cut back we will, but in this case we feel very strongly that we’re underfishing the stock,” he said.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW YORK: Why researchers think humpback whale swam up the Hudson

November 22, 2016 — The whale spotted in the Hudson River Thursday in Friday was likely led there by food, the head of a local whale research group said.

Photos of the humpback whale showed it “lunge feeding,” said Paul Sieswerda, president of Gotham Whale.

“That’s when they come up and break the surface and consume these bait balls of menhaden,” he said.

Predators drive menhaden, sometimes known as bunker fish, into tight balls. This allows whales to open their mouths and eat them all at once.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW YORK: Thousands of dead fish clogged a New York canal. Why?

November 16, 2016 — Residents of Hampton Bays, N.Y., awoke Monday morning to find their local canal clogged with tens of thousands of silvery, dead fish. The bodies were packed together so tightly that it looked as though you could walk across them, one man told the local news channel News12. The air was thick with their noxious smell.

This was a classic fish kill — a massive die-off that occurs when too many fish are in a body of water with too little oxygen. Under ordinary circumstances, fish extract oxygen that has been dissolved in water as it filters through their gills. When the amount of dissolved oxygen is insufficient, the fish become hypoxic — they suffocate and die.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued a statement saying the closing of locks at Shinnecock Canal early Monday inadvertently trapped a large school of Atlantic menhaden — small silvery fish also known as bunker — in the canal. The school of normally saltwater fish had probably been chased into the canal by predators.

“They chased them in here, but unfortunately the locks are closed so it’s just a dead end, they can’t get out,” Chris Paparo, a lab manager at Stony Brook University Marine Sciences Center, told the New York Daily News. “And with the sheer number of fish in here, it just sucks the oxygen out of the water and they suffocate.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Menhaden management up for debate

November 15th, 2016 — Interstate fishing managers are hosting public hearings about the future of the menhaden fishery, which they say is in good shape.

Atlantic menhaden, or or pogies, are small fish that swim in large schools and represent a key piece of the ocean’s food chain. They are also fished commercially all along the East Coast, in part because of their use as a dietary supplement and for use as bait. 

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says menhaden are not being overfished and their reproduction is good. The commission is holding a series of hearings about the way it regulates the fishery.

Fishermen typically catch more than 500,000 tons of the fish every year. The fishery was worth more than $114 million in 2014. The largest fisheries are in Virginia, Louisiana and Mississippi.

The hearings are set to take place between Nov. 30 and Dec. 20 in cities from Florida to Maine. Regulators are seeking input from fishermen and other stakeholders about how the fishery is managed.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Gloucester Times 

NC State Researcher affiliate begins project on Atlantic menhaden fisheries management

November 10th, 2016 — With 500 years of fishing in his family’s lineage, the second interviewee of the day spoke longer than most.

He explained how his Swedish parents emigrated to New Jersey in the 1950s, assuming that America was “the place to be” to solidify their fishing future. They made their new home in Cape May at the southern tip of that state, home to a robust fishing economy and history. Their catch would include scallops, loligo squid and mackerel — the area was, and still is, rife with seafood.

This fisherman was talking with me about Atlantic menhaden. This small oily fish represents a critical piece of the food chain for many fisheries, a source of bait for lobstermen and crabbers, and an essential ingredient for omega-3 oil products, such as human supplements, animal feeds and even lipstick.

I had made the trek from Raleigh to Cape May to better understand the socioeconomic dimensions of the Atlantic menhaden fishery, tracking the fish from its Atlantic Ocean home to its final form as fish food, health product and other uses. My goal is to inform the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or ASMFC, menhaden board about the role that fish plays for fishermen and the folks that process, distribute and buy it. The ASMFC funded the study to provide socioeconomic data on the menhaden industry.

Read the full story from NC State University here  

Rebound seen for popular lobster bait fishery

November 9th, 2016 — Commercial fishermen can breathe a sigh a relief, as interstate fishing regulators say that the population of menhaden, a fish only topped by herring as the most popular type of bait for Maine’s lobster industry, continues to be healthy.

According to the Associated Press, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is reporting that menhaden fishery isn’t experiencing overfishing and continues to reproduce at a healthy rate. Atlantic Menhaden Board Chairman Robert Ballou added that the healthy population levels will give regulators a chance to reevaluate how to manage the fishery, which is typically worth more than $100 million annually, the AP reported.

The good news about the menhaden population comes on the heels of Maine’s menhaden fishery being closed by regulators for a week and a half in August, following reports that the annual landings quota for Maine, Rhode Island and New York, had been exceeded.

Read the full story at Mainebiz