Saving Seafood

DON CUDDY: New England surf clam fishery is headed for disaster

January 7, 2019 — When it comes to fishery management controversy never seems to be too far away. Last month you may have read about the dubious nature of a decision by the New England Fishery Management Council to close a large area of Nantucket Shoals to fishermen who harvest surf clams there, ostensibly to protect fish habitat. Questionable actions such as these undermine industry confidence in fishery regulators and serve only to alienate, and embitter, fishermen and the many others on the waterfront whose livelihoods are threatened by such draconian measures. With respect to protecting fish habitat allow me to quote from NOAA Fisheries’ own web site (fishwatch.gov) which bills itself as ‘U.S. Seafood Facts.’ The salient quote, with respect to the Atlantic surfclam, spissula solidissima, is this: “Fishing gear used to harvest surfclams has minimal impacts on habitat.” In spite of this fact these traditional grounds have now been designated as essential fish habitat and clamming is banned there indefinitely. NOAA also tells us that surfclams support a valuable fishery. Well, come April 9 it will not be nearly as valuable for those who participate in the harvest and that includes fishermen and shore workers in New Bedford, Gloucester and Bristol, Rhode Island where Galilean Seafood employs around 120 people in this fishery.

“There were five areas out there where we harvested our clams and the two areas with the most historical tows are the ones they closed,” Alan Rencurrel told me. Alan knows surf calms. He owns Nantucket Sound Seafood in New Bedford where the clams he catches are hand shucked. “If you steam ’em open they get chewy,” he said. He’s been fishing on the Shoals since 1992. “And there were boats out there before me.”

He also played me some high-resolution video, taken from a dredge-mounted camera, showing the sea bed in the area known as the Rose and Crown, the largest of the areas to be closed. There were no fish, rocks or cobble to be seen, just a solitary skate, on a sandy bottom littered with old mussel shells. “We can’t tow over rocky bottom like a scallop dredge,” he told me. It’s too hard on the gear and anyway clams prefer sand bottom, he said. Conversely, groundfish such as cod and haddock are found on hard bottom.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

New England Shellfish Harvest OK’d, With More Monitoring

December 10, 2018 — A regulatory board is allowing shellfish harvesting in a key management area off of New England, though more monitoring of the fishery will now apply.

The New England Fishery Management Council has approved new measures to allow the harvest of surfclams within the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area. The council says mussel fishermen will also be able to operate in the new areas.

The council says it wants fishermen and researchers to work together to get a better idea of where surfclams can be harvested without disturbing sensitive undersea habitat.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

New England Council Supports Surfclam, Mussel Fishery Access to Certain Areas Within Great South Channel HMA Plus Further Research

December 5, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The New England Fishery Management Council has signed off on new measures that will allow surfclam fishermen to continue fishing within strictly defined boundaries inside the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area (HMA). Increased monitoring provisions will apply. Mussel fishermen also will be able to fish in the new areas. The measures are included in the Council’s Clam Dredge Framework, which is a trailing action to Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat (EFH) Amendment 2, often referred to as OHA2.

The amendment was implemented April 9, 2018 and prohibited the use of mobile bottom-tending gear within the HMA. However, the surfclam fishery was granted a one-year exemption to continue operating in all but the northeast corner of the area. This exemption expires April 9, 2019. If the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, NOAA Fisheries) approves and implements the Clam Dredge Framework, surfclam and mussel fishermen will be granted long-term exemptions under certain restrictions for the following subareas:

  • McBlair – Year round;
  • Zone AB – Year round; and
  • East Door/OldSouth – seasonally from May 1 through October 31.

In addition, the Habitat Plan Development Team (PDT) will work with industry to prioritize research needs for two other sub-areas:

  • Rose and Crown; and
  • Zone D.

Once prioritized research needs are identified for Rose and Crown and Zone D, the Council’s intent is that fishermen and researchers will work collaboratively toward obtaining exempted fishing permits for these sub-areas to better define where concentrations of surfclams can be harvested without disturbing sensitive habitat. The Council said this research potentially could lead to the development of additional exemptions in the future.

Read the full release at the New England Fishery Management Council

 

Could Oysters Ease Trade Tensions With U.S.? European Leaders Hope So

November 14, 2018 — BRUSSELS — The United States and Europe may one day put aside their differences on trade, eliminate tariffs on industrial goods and work together to rein in their common economic adversary, China.

But for Cecilia Malmstrom, the European trade commissioner, the most urgent task is to produce quick results, however humble, that will keep an impatient President Trump from imposing even more drastic penalties on European imports than the tariffs his administration has already levied.

So when Ms. Malmstrom meets in Washington on Wednesday with her American counterpart, Robert E. Lighthizer, she will count it as a substantial victory if she can lower the barriers hindering one bit of trans-Atlantic commerce: oysters.

The United States and Europe have long banned the importing of each other’s shellfish. But a deal to ease trade on that front has been in the works for several years and could be dressed up by both sides as a success that helps smooth relations with the White House.

Shellfish may seem like an odd focus for negotiators, but exports from the United States are worth about $1.7 billion a year. And international trade in clams, mussels, oysters and scallops — all of which are shipped live by air — is growing.

The emphasis on mollusks also illustrates a strategy that officials in Brussels hope will prevent Mr. Trump from acting on a threat to impose steep tariffs on European cars, a potentially devastating blow to the European economy.

Read the full story at The New York Times

 

Some North Carolina seafood unsafe to eat after Hurricane Florence

October 26, 2018 — Some seafood caught in North Carolina may not be safe to eat in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence.

Florence made landfall in Wrightsville Beach on Sept. 14. It was a Category 1 storm at landfall, and the storm moved extremely slowly–dumping dozens of inches of rain on many parts of North Carolina.

Florence dumped 8 trillion gallons of water on North Carolina. That’s enough to fill Falls Lake more than 70 times.

The influx of water turned creeks and streams into whitewater rapids that picked up everything in their paths.

The polluted runoff spilled into the Cape Fear River and Neuse River, then into the Pamlico Sound, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean.

The runoff forced North Carolina’s Department of Marine Fisheries to order a blanket ban on harvesting any shellfish off the coast. Months after the storm, miles of coastline remain off limits.

Wildlife most vulnerable to the pollution are filter feeders like clams, mussels and oysters.

Read the full story at ABC 11

Scientists Say Black Sea Bass Behavior Could Be Affected by Offshore Wind

October 1, 2018 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — Scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center say that offshore wind energy construction could affect the behavior of Black Sea Bass.

Black Sea Bass live up and down the east coast from Maine to the Gulf of Mexico, providing a significant ecological and economic importance.

The fish are also attracted to structurally complex habitats, often found around rocky reefs, mussel beds, cobble and rock fields, and artificial habitats like shipwrecks.

Scientists, commercial and recreational fisherman have expressed their concerns about how the sounds that come with the development of offshore wind energy overlapping with the natural habitats of Black Sea Bass.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

Maine nonprofit awarded NOAA grant to develop green crab market

September 19, 2018 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Saltonstall-Kennedy Grant Program has given a grant of USD 267,440 (EUR 229,165) to a Maine, U.S.A.-based nonprofit Manomet in order to work on creating a fishery for invasive European green crabs.

The grant will allow Manomet to expand its project on creating a new economic opportunity out of soft-shell green crabs in New England. The green crab, a species that is invasive to New England, has been present for more than a hundred years and has recently expanded in numbers to the point it is putting pressure on local species.

That pressure has contributed to record low landings of caught and farmed mussels, and also threatens Maine’s softshell clam industry.

Manomet has already launched efforts to galvanize efforts on commercializing green crabs. On 6 and 7 June, the organization hosted a “Green Crab Working Summit” in Portland, Maine, to bring together various experts to discuss commercialization of the species.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

The Anacostia River Is Mussel-ing Its Way To Clean Waters

August 28, 2018 — If you’ve got 5,600 freshwater mussels, you could serve about 280 steaming plates of moules marinières. Or, you could deposit the bivalves in the Anacostia River.

The Anacostia Watershed Society has opted for the latter as part of a larger effort to clean the river and renew the mussel population. Last week, staffers and volunteers with the nonprofit placed the creatures in 28 floating baskets at seven sites along the Anacostia River—six in D.C., and one in Maryland—with varying microhabitat conditions.

Jorge Bogantes Montero, the organization’s natural resources specialist, has already checked on one of the baskets, all of which have swimming pool noodles to keep them afloat and covered tops to protect the mussels from predators.

“They look great,” he says of the mussels in the baskets by the Anacostia Watershed Society’s floating office on Water Street SE.

How does he know? He peeked into the baskets and saw mussels with two little holes, which he calls an innie and an outie (one of which is filtering water and the other is secreting waste). “I could see pairs of holes all over the bottom, so I know they are working,” says Montero. “If you see slits open, that’d be a bad sign.” The next checkup will happen in late September, about a month after their deployment.

Much like oysters, mussels can filter large quantities of water (between 10-20 gallons daily) and they eat bacteria like E. coli. But that’s just one of their benefits to the ecosystem, says Montero. “They are providing a lot of ecosystem services even beyond filtration,” he says, like depositing sediment at the bottom of the river. Other critters also use their shells as places for shelter or nesting.

Read the full story at DCist

Mussels Could Help Make the Anacostia Safe for Swimming

July 11, 2018 — It might be hard to imagine now, but the DC Department of Energy and the Environment says the Anacostia River will be swimmable and fishable in the next 14 years. How will it get there? As part of the ongoing effort to clean up the river and fulfill the promises of the Anacostia 2032 plan, the department, along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Anacostia Watershed Society, is attempting to outsource some of the cleanup to an unlikely crew: freshwater mussels.

In June, floating baskets and submerged silos containing dozens of baby mussels from a hatchery—each about as big as a sunflower seed—were placed in the water, from Buzzard Point to Bladensburg, as part of a 10-week study. The team has since been conducting weekly water-quality checks, and the progress so far is encouraging. On Monday, Fred Pinkney, a Fish and Wildlife environmental contaminants specialist, measured some of the mussels under the 11th Street bridge and by a pier at the Yards. Both locations showed promising growth.

If the mussels are thriving, that’s great news for the status of the river.  Mussels are a biological indicator species. When they die off or fail to thrive, it means the water can’t support the ecosystem. In two more weeks—the halfway point of the 10-week study—all of the mussels will get their first official measurement.

Read the full story at the Washingtonian

Mussels test positive for opioids in Seattle’s Puget Sound

May 29, 2018 — Scientists at the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife have found that mussels in Seattle’s waters are testing positive for opioids.

The finding suggests “a lot of people” are taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound, researchers say.

Scientists used mussels as a way to test pollution in Seattle’s waters and discovered high enough oxycodone levels for the shellfish to test positive.

Mussels do not metabolise opioids, but some fish can become addicted.

Mussels are filter-feeders, which means they filter water for nutrients to nourish themselves. In the process, they end up storing pollutants in their tissues, which makes them a prime indicator species.

State researchers distributed clean mussels around the Puget Sound and extracted them months later to test the waters.

Of the 18 locations scientists used, three showed traces of oxycodone. The drug traces were not enough to get any humans high from consumption, but enough to indicate a problem, officials said.

“What we eat and what we excrete goes into the Puget Sound,” Jennifer Lanksbury, a biologist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, told CBS News affiliate KIRO.

“It’s telling me there’s a lot of people taking oxycodone in the Puget Sound area.”

Read the full story at BBC News