Saving Seafood

Innovative Fish Farms Aim to Feed the Planet, Save Jobs and Clean Up an Industry’s Dirty Reputation

April 20, 2022 — Carter Newell owns and operates one of the most productive mussel farms in the state of Maine. One frigid spring morning I joined him and his two-person crew on a short boat ride to the barge he calls Mumbles, a 60-by-24-foot vessel anchored that day in a quiet cove in the brackish Damariscotta River. Named for the Welsh seaside town where Newell once did research, Mumbles was tethered to a steel-framed raft hung with hundreds of 45-foot ropes, each thick with thousands of mussels in various stages of development.

I shivered in the piercing wind as a crew member stepped from Mumbles onto the shifting raft to identify mussel ropes ready for harvest. Newell remained on the barge to helm a 16-foot crane that hauled up the designated ropes, each heavy with a Christmas tree–shaped aggregation of roughly 3,000 mussels. An outsized brush then swept the bivalves off the ropes and into an enormous stainless steel bucket. Another machine funneled them into a heavy polyethylene bag the size of a baby elephant, from which they were poured onto a conveyor-belt apparatus to be scrubbed, sorted and bagged. Newell designed this ungainly Willy Wonka–esque apparatus over decades in a costly process of trial and error that faced—and ultimately overcame—several challenges, including protecting the mussels from turbulent seas and voracious eider ducks.

Read the full story at Scientific American

 

Mollusks in Oregon coast watersheds contain forestry pesticides, study says

May 11, 2021 — Oysters, estuarine clams and freshwater mussels in watersheds along the Oregon coast contain pesticides used in managing forests, according to a study funded by Oregon Sea Grant.

Researchers from Portland State University found pesticides in 38 percent of the tissue samples. Indaziflam, an herbicide currently used in Oregon forestry, was found in about 7 percent of the samples. Contaminants also included pesticides used in orchards, Christmas tree farms and homes, as well as banned pesticides, including DDT byproducts.

The study, published in the journal Toxics, may help guide forest management practices to reduce the amounts of forestry chemicals entering aquatic ecosystems.

The study was led by Kaegan Scully-Engelmeyer, a doctoral student in the earth, environment and society program at PSU, and PSU marine ecologist Elise Granek.

They collected tissue samples from freshwater western pearlshell mussels — softshell clams typically found in the upper area of estuaries — and Pacific oysters. They collected them from watersheds along the Oregon coast in 2017 and 2018. These organisms are good indicators of environmental contamination because they are sedentary filter feeders.

Read the full story at the Newport News Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Chatham, feds reach truce on disputed fishing rights

March 10, 2021 — With the keystroke of an electronic signature, the Select Board signaled an end Monday night to seven years of bitter wrangling with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service over control of fisheries in the waters off Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

The board signed a memorandum of understanding that codified the relationship that exists now between the town and the federal agency in which Chatham continues to manage fisheries for clams, oysters and scallops in the disputed area — and the two parties agree to work together on future changes as new fisheries or fishing technologies emerge.

“This memorandum of understanding creates a process to ensure the sustainable management of fishery resources that have been so important to our town and ensures our town will continue to manage these fisheries consistent with past practices,” board Chair Shareen Davis said. The agreement does continue a ban on harvesting mussels, which are eaten by migrating waterfowl.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Panel: Ocean acidification threatens lucrative shellfish sector

February 10, 2021 — As a result of climate change and direct human factors, the waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Massachusetts are becoming more acidic, making them a less friendly habitat for the shellfish that drive a key industry here.

With no action, many of the scallops, clams, mollusks and lobsters at the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf of Maine will begin to dissolve by 2060 and new ones will struggle to form, imperiling an industry that supports thousands of people in the Bay State, a special commission said in a report Tuesday.

The Special Legislative Commission on Ocean Acidification recommended that Massachusetts establish a broad ocean acidification monitoring system and funnel more money into existing programs that address some of the things that are making the ocean more acidic, like residential and agricultural runoff, septic discharges and the deterioration of natural wetlands.

“Ocean acidification poses a serious threat to the Massachusetts state economy, and a potentially existential threat to coastal economies that rely heavily on shellfishing,” the commission wrote in the conclusions of its report. “Massachusetts should act to combat ocean acidification now, rather than later. Ocean acidification is expected to worsen significantly before the end of the century. Actions taken now will ultimately be more cost-effective and valuable than actions taken when significant damage has already occurred.”

Global carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the ocean and nutrient pollution of waterways drive the pH level of areas of the ocean down, making the waters more acidic and limiting certain ions that help clams, oysters, scallops, mussels and lobsters form their protective shells.

Read the full story at WHDH

UK shellfish sector hit with EU ban

February 5, 2021 — The European Union has put a stop to the import of live bivalve mollusks from the United Kingdom that are not ready for human consumption, plunging the country’s shellfish sector into further uncertainty.

The measure follows on the heels of the challenges caused by new post-Brexit border rules. Historically, U.K. shellfish producers have exported millions of pounds of mussels, scallops, oysters, and other products into E.U. member-states. However, as the U.K. is now a separate country and subject to strict hygiene rules, it is no longer allowed to transport these animals to the E.U. unless they have already been treated in purification plants.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Northeast Offshore Mussel Farming Would Contribute to American Seafood Competitiveness

July 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The first environmental suitability study for blue mussel culture in federal waters off New England’s shore was conducted by scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Milford Laboratory. The study revealed great potential for farming. The scientific team has continued this work, furthering the case for offshore mussel farms in a recent perspectives column in Fisheries Magazine. They have also published findings in Ocean & Coastal Management, examining the risks harmful algal blooms pose to offshore aquaculture.

The Case for Mussels

Milford’s Darien Mizuta and Gary Wikfors suggest that a New England offshore mussel farming industry would be environmentally sustainable and beneficial for food security and the economy. The United States is the world’s top importer of seafood, despite having the second largest Exclusive Economic Zone. In May, the president of the United States signed an executive order promoting American seafood competitiveness and economic growth. The order calls for increasing domestic seafood production, including making aquaculture permitting more efficient and predictable and bolstering aquaculture research.

Mussels are the top imported bivalve shellfish in the United States, currently contributing more than $102 million to the $14 billion U.S. seafood deficit. Close to Canada’s mussel-producing Prince Edward Island, New England is the import epicenter for mussel products, including fresh live mussels, frozen mussels, and prepared mussel dinners.

With advances in mussel farming in the 1990s, the United States began importing more mussels, mostly from Canada. “The success of Prince Edward Island mussel farming has created a new market for mussels in the northeast United States that is growing beyond the production capacity of PEI,” explains Wikfors, who is also the director of the Milford Laboratory, where Darien Mizuta was a postdoctoral researcher.

Read the full release here

Crowds removing sea creatures from San Pedro tide pools put delicate ecosystem at risk

July 20, 2020 — It was against the backdrop of a pounding surf one recent morning that almost 30 people had gathered on the cragged and slippery folds of White Point tidal pools in San Pedro and set to work with gardening spades, buckets and bags.

As ocean water rippled about their knees, they collected mussels, black turban snails, purple sea urchins and even a lobster. Then, as the tide began to rise, they trundled back to their cars hauling sacks, backpacks and five-gallon buckets filled with intertidal creatures.

“It’s a fun way to spend the day and grab a free dinner,” said Lisa Yan, 55, an unemployed casino card dealer. “Especially for those of us who lost jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic…. All you need is a fishing license.”

Area residents and officials say that ever since beach restrictions were lifted at this popular Palos Verdes Peninsula spot, an unprecedented number of people have been harvesting edible sea creatures — animals that had, up until recently, enjoyed relative solitude during the coronavirus lockdown.

In prior years, animal harvesting was far less common, and tidal pool etiquette held that creatures should not be disturbed.

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Growing body of evidence makes case for offshore mussel farming

January 16, 2020 — Calling it “an opportunity too good to ignore,” NOAA scientists are giving a thumbs-up to offshore mussel farming in the Northeast United States based on new research and a trove of data. The news signals a step forward on how to chip away at the $15 billion US seafood trade deficit.

Serial entrepreneur Phil Cruver claimed “first mover” status in the space in 2012 when he founded the 100-acre Catalina Sea Ranch off Long Beach, California. Despite waves of publicity since, regulatory and funding concerns have given entrepreneurs the jitters such that only research trial farms have followed.

But this new strong scientific basis for offshore mussel farming could be the first step in changing all that.

The researchers at the Milford Laboratory, part of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, have authored a series of papers—including one yet-to-be-published—that give prospective aquaculture entrepreneurs “fundamental knowledge” for farm planning, as well as a broad overview of environmental, economic, and social issues.

Read the full story at Aquaculture North America

Shell shock: Giant invasive mussels eradicated from U.S. ponds

December 2, 2019 — Most Americans know mussels as thumb-sized shellfish that occasionally adorn restaurant dinner plates.

But a colony of mussels as big as the dinner plates themselves has recently been wiped out from a New Jersey pond, where they had threatened to spread to the nearby Delaware River and wreak ecological havoc, as they already are doing in other parts of the world.

Federal wildlife officials and a New Jersey conservation group say they’re confident they have narrowly avoided a serious environmental problem by eradicating Chinese pond mussels from a former fish farm in Hunterdon County.

The mussels, in larvae form, hitched a ride to this country inside the gills of Asian carp that were imported for the Huey Property in Franklin Township and quickly began reproducing. Unlike the little mussels many Americans know, these ones can approach the size of footballs.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WHYY

Deep water sites off the US northeast coast are suitable for offshore blue mussel farms

October 17, 2019 — Offshore mussel farm sites need to have the right temperature, food availability, and the right currents. According to a study by researchers at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, several suitable locations can be found off the Northeastern U.S.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering, suggest that the most promising locations for mussel aquaculture among the six oceanic sites studied are off New York’s Long Island, north of Cape Ann in Massachusetts, and off New Hampshire.

A number of research projects have been conducted in the past few decades at pilot mussel farms in Rhode Island Sound near Martha’s Vineyard, off the Isle of Shoals in New Hampshire, and north of Cape Ann in Massachusetts. Results were encouraging, but no commercial ventures have gone forward.

The authors acknowledge that these waters are busy and already subject to numerous competing and overlapping uses. They argue that finding the optimum locations for farms, where the conditions can support the kind of production that will be profitable, is an essential first step in development. If farms are going to compete with other uses, then managers and entrepreneurs alike need to know as much as possible about the requirements and benefits of offshore shellfish farms — especially when some uses must be excluded so that others may thrive.

Read the full story at Science Daily