Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: State official criticizes lobster red-listing as ‘counterproductive’

January 4, 2022 — Months after Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch, a sustainable seafood advisory list, red-listed American lobster fisheries in the U.S. and Canada due to the risks they pose to the endangered North Atlantic right whales, Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) director Dan McKiernan struck back by calling the decision “counterproductive.” The Times reached out to McKiernan in September but he did not provide comments after initial email correspondence.

Seafood Watch advises consumers on what seafood should be avoided or purchased based on whether procurement practices posed a risk to endangered marine life. For right whales, a species with an estimated 340 individuals left and fewer than 100 breeding females, a concern related to fishing includes entanglements from ropes.

However, McKiernan wrote that advising consumers not to buy lobsters, crabs, and fish caught with buoyed fixed fishing gears is “a colossal mistake.”

Read the full article at MV Times

MAINE: The Maine lobster issue demonstrates just how tricky sustainability is

October 7, 2022 — Maine lobsters may not be as sustainable as we think.

In September, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program downgraded the American lobster to its red list. The designation advises consumers to avoid eating them as “they’re caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment.” The organization monitors the environmental impact of wild-caught and farmed seafood commonly found in US stores (pdf).

The organization says that the fishery poses a risk (pdf) to endangered North Atlantic right whales, with concerns that entanglement in fishing gear is the leading cause of serious injury and death to these marine mammals. The group recommends avoiding lobster caught by traps from the Gulf of Maine and other areas of New England and Canada.

American lobsters—also known as Maine lobsters—have a history of being sustainably harvested to help maintain a healthy lobster population. The bulk of lobsters are caught between June and December. Maine has established trap limits, size limits, and, to protect pregnant lobsters, if lobstermen or women find a lobster with eggs, they are expected to cut a V shape into one the tail before returning it to the ocean to let others know not to harvest it.

But lobster harvesting affects the right whale population, illustrating how sustainability is about more than just the depletion of a given species, but also about the entire ecosystem. “Sustainability has a bunch of different ways to look at it… The lobsters themselves are doing fairly well,” said Gib Brogan, the fisheries campaign manager at Oceana, a nonprofit ocean conservation organization. “The other side of sustainability is looking at the effect of the fishery on the oceans.”

Read the full article at Quartz

Congressman wants to halt aquarium money after lobster spat

October 7, 2022 — A congressman from Maine said Wednesday he will file a proposal to withhold federal money from a California aquarium and conservation group that has recommended seafood consumers avoid buying lobster.

The move from Democratic Rep. Jared Golden came a week after a spat with Republican former Rep. Bruce Poliquin about support for Maine’s lobster industry. Golden, Poliquin and independent candidate Tiffany Bond are running to represent Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which is home to many lobster fishermen.

Poliquin called on Golden to return a donation of $667 from Julie Packard, the executive director of Monterey Bay Aquarium. The aquarium runs Seafood Watch, a conservation group that makes sustainability recommendations for seafood consumers. The group put lobster from the U.S. and Canada on its “red list” of seafood to avoid last month due to the threat posed to rare whales by entanglement in fishing gear.

Golden said Wednesday that he is presenting a bill to withhold any future federal funding from the aquarium and its programs. The aquarium has received more than $190 million in federal money since 2001, he said.

“This organization’s red list designation of American lobster could have a serious impact on the livelihoods of thousands of hard-working lobstermen, and I believe Congress must do something about it,” Golden said.

Read the full article at the Washington Post

MAINE: Maine’s congressional delegation introduces bill to strip Monterey Bay Aquarium of federal funding

October 7, 2022 — Two U.S. representatives of the state of Maine – U.S. Senator Angus King and U.S. Representative Jared Golden – have introduced a bill that would pull federal funding from the Monterey Bay Aquarium in response to its decision to red list Maine lobster.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch released a new set of updates in September 2022 that criticized the North American lobster fishery by placing it in the “avoid” category – largely due to the potential danger its lines pose to the approximately 300 remaining North Atlantic right whales left on earth.

Read the full article SeafoodSource

Diversifying the catch seen as more important than ever for Maine’s fishery

February 23, 2022 — While lobster dominates Maine’s seafood economy, threats to the industry suggest that improving the diversity of the state’s seafood production is an important solution to consider.

The lobster catch in Maine broke a record last year at $725 million, up more than $312 million from 2020. But concerns about the future of the industry are looming with new regulations that have been imposed to protect right whales.

More concern surfaced when the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, based in California, said it is considering adding the North American lobster to its “red list,” which means Maine’s lobster fishery would lose its sustainability label.

The preliminary report on the American lobster, which questions the impact lobster traps have on right whales in the Gulf of Maine, remains under consideration and is open to public comment through the end of March.

Maine’s lobster fishery is currently rated “yellow,” meaning it’s OK to buy, but consumers should be aware of “concerns” regarding how the product is caught or managed.

Read the full story at the Portland Phoenix

Maine lobster at risk of losing a sustainability label over right whale concerns

February 22, 2022 — Maine’s lobster fishery is at risk of losing a key sustainability label over concerns for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

Industry members, meanwhile, say the idea that Maine’s lobster fishery poses an environmental threat is nonsensical.

The California-based Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program is considering which species to add to its “red list,” and North American lobster from both the U.S. and Canadian fisheries is a candidate, as are over a dozen other species fished up and down the East Coast, according to a draft assessment.

Seafood Watch, which is designed to help consumers make informed choices about sustainable seafood, rates fisheries as green for “best choice,” yellow for “good alternative” and red for “avoid.”

Industries on the program’s red list are “overfished, lack strong management or are caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment,” according to Seafood Watch.

It’s the latter reason that the program may urge consumers to steer clear of the state’s lobster fishery, which landed a record-value catch of $725 million in 2021. Trap-caught Maine lobster already has been downgraded to yellow status, but Seafood Watch representatives declined to answer questions about when the change occurred or when the fishery might be downgraded to red.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at The Portland Press Herald

 

As major seafood watch list weighs ‘red-listing’ lobster, Mass. lobstermen push back

February 10, 2022 — A popular seafood ranking guide is considering “red listing” American lobster and other New England fisheries for the danger they pose to endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s “Seafood Watch” list is used by grocery stores and restaurants like Whole Foods, Red Lobster and Aramark to inform their purchases.

But Massachusetts lobstermen are pushing back on the description of their industry as unsustainable.

“The [Massachusetts] lobster fishery is doing more than any other region,” said Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association Executive Director Beth Casoni. “We are currently under a three-month closure for the protection of right whales. No other state has 9,000 square miles closed to lobster vertical lines.”

Casoni also pointed to the local industry’s early adoption of weaker ropes that can break if a whale becomes entangled.

“When I saw this, I was quite concerned where they were lumping in all the states, all the regions in the United States, to have the American lobster listed as a red choice,” Casoni said. She said her group plans to submit comments to Seafood Watch challenging the designation.

Read the full story at WBUR

U.S. is top contributor to plastic waste, report shows

December 2, 2021 — The United States ranks as the world’s leading contributor of plastic waste and needs a national strategy to combat the issue, according to a congressionally mandated report released Tuesday.

“The developing plastic waste crisis has been building for decades,” the National Academy of Sciences study said, noting the world’s current predicament stems from years of technological advances. “The success of the 20th century miracle invention of plastics has also produced a global scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look.”

The United States contributes more to this deluge than any other nation, according to the analysis, generating about 287 pounds of plastics per person. Overall, the United States produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — almost twice as much as China, and more than the entire European Union combined.

“The volume is astounding,” said Monterey Bay Aquarium’s chief conservation and science officer, Margaret Spring, who chaired the NAS committee, in an interview.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Are sea otters taking a bite out of California’s Dungeness crab season?

December 15, 2020 — Dungeness crabs are a holiday tradition every year on tables across Northern California. But the prized crustaceans also are a prime delicacy for other local residents — sea otters that live along the Central Coast.

Scientists are studying whether to relocate sea otters north into San Francisco Bay to help expand their population back to its historic range. But fishermen have been wary, concerned that the otters could reduce the number of Dungeness crabs, a $51 million industry, and one of California’s largest commercial fisheries.

Now a new study suggests the two beloved ocean luminaries may be able to co-exist. In a paper published Thursday, researchers from Duke University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the U.S. Geological Survey found that as the number of sea otters has grown off central California in recent decades, the catch of Dungeness crabs by fishermen in Half Moon Bay, Monterey and Morro Bay actually also has gone up, not down.

The study could increase the chances that otters will be reintroduced into San Francisco Bay nearly 200 years after they were last seen there, or to other places north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Read the full story at The Monterey Herald

How the digital wave is contributing to the rise of sustainable fisheries

November 12, 2020 — World fish consumption has almost doubled between the 1960s and now, and some estimates suggest fish contributes to at least 50 percent of total animal protein intake in developing nations. Despite higher demand for seafood and fish, world reserves have not kept up, and aquaculture is becoming more common as a result.

Aquaculture uses techniques of breeding marine species in all types of water environments as a means to supplement seafood demand. The practice comes with many advantages, including reducing the dependence on wild-caught species, but also raises environmental concerns, which some industry experts are trying to address with up-and-coming technologies such as analytics, blockchain, artificial intelligence and the internet of things.

Jennifer Kemmerly, vice president of global ocean initiatives at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, said a focus on sustainability is necessary in the field, as 3 billion people rely on seafood, and 60 million people rely on the seafood industry for their livelihood. But this demand comes with noticeable problems, Kemmerly observed during a breakout session during VERGE 20 in late October.

“There’s a lot of overfishing, or depleted fish stocks on the wild side of capture fisheries. There is illegality and mismanagement traceability back to the source of where the seafood is coming from, even whether it is farmed or wild… There are environmental issues and concerns that need to be dealt with,” she said.

Read the full story at GreenBiz