Saving Seafood

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

The future looks bright for Maine’s growing aquaculture industry

May 20, 2019 — “Aquaculture is farming, commercial fishing is hunting,” says Sebastion Belle of the Maine Aquaculture Association.

There are about 200 aquaculture farms on Maine’s coastal waters, and Belle says the industry is poised to double over the next decade.

Farms like Gary and Matt Moretti’s.

The father and son duo started Bang Island Mussels in 2010. They lease 17 acres of ocean from the state of Maine to grow mussels, kelp and they have just begun experimenting with scallops.

Read the full story at WCSH-WLBZ

New bill would limit finfish aquaculture start-ups

March 8, 2019 — Alaska Rep. Don Young (R) introduced the Keep Fin Fish Free Act in early May, a bill that that would prohibit federal agencies from authorizing commercial finfish aquaculture operations in the Federal Exclusive Economic Zone unless specifically authorized by Congress.

The seafood industry is critical to Alaska’s economy, and we must be doing all we can to protect the health and integrity of our state’s wild fish stock,” said Young. “If not properly managed, industrial aquaculture operations threaten Alaska’s unique ecosystem with non-native and genetically modified fish species.

There is only one federally regulated offshore aquaculture producer currently in operations in the United States — Catalina Sea Ranch, which produces 2 million pounds of mussels a year in a 100-acre site six miles off the coast of California. But plans to establish new marine finfish operations have been discussed off and on for years.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Climate change’s deadliest effects are unfolding under the sea

April 26, 2019 — Think of the dangers climate change poses to animals, and you’ll likely picture skinny polar bears or cliff-diving walruses (collective sob). But it turns out that our overheating planet is actually wreaking the most havoc on creatures out of our sight: marine life.

Sea animals like crabs, lobster, and fish are dying off at twice the rate of land animals, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday.

The researchers looked at more than 400 cold-blooded animals on land and sea, including lizards, dragonflies, lobsters, and mussels. They found that creatures that people rely on for food (fish, mollusks, shellfish) are among the most vulnerable, especially in the developing world, where many rely on them for a regular protein source.

Read the full story at Grist

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