Saving Seafood

Scallops 2: NEFMC Takes Final Action on Framework 30

December 6, 2018 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

During its December 4-6 meeting in Newport, RI, the New England Fishery Management Council approved Framework Adjustment 30 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan. The framework contains: (1) specifications for the 2019 scallop fishing year, which will begin on April 1; (2) default specifications for 2020; and (3) two “standard default measures” that will carry on into future years.

The Council will submit the framework to the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS, NOAA Fisheries) for review and implementation. The Scallop Plan Development Team projects that, under the provisions selected by the Council, the region’s scallop fleet should be able to land roughly 60 million pounds of scallop meats in the 2019 fishing year.

Here’s what’s in the framework.

Full-Time Limited Access Fleet

In 2019, vessels with full time limited access scallop permits will be allocated 24 open-area days-at-sea and seven 18,000-pound access area trips:

  • Three trips into Nantucket Lightship West;
  • Three trips into the Mid-Atlantic Access Area; and
  • One “flex” trip that can be fished either in Closed Area I, Nantucket Lightship-West, or the Mid-Atlantic Access Area.

Read the full release here

Vital surf clam harvesting grounds closed by New England Fishery Management Council

December 5, 2018 — Clamming captains, business-owners and attorneys huddled in the lobby of the Viking Hotel on Tuesday sharing disbelief and despair over a decision by the New England Fisheries Management Council that will close vital harvesting grounds.

“A lot of these guys are going to go out of business,” owner and president of Nantucket Sound Seafood LLC Al Rencurrel said. “Obviously the economic impact, they didn’t view that, did they?”

Heading into the meeting, the surf clam industry hoped for the approval of “Alternative 2,” which would continue an exemption in its fishing areas but would modify boundaries including seasonal areas. It also called for increased monitoring with 5-minute vessel monitoring system to locate where the vessels are fishing. The clam industry would also fund a research project that NOAA would undertake to examine the habitat.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishermen backing surf clammers in fight over harvest area

December 4, 2018 — Groundfish stakeholders are supporting the surf clam industry’s efforts to retain fishing rights in pockets of the Great South Channel of the Nantucket Shoals as long as the approved management policy does not prompt “mitigations or further habitat restrictions on the groundfish fishery.”

In a letter to the New England Fishery Management Council, and in a later interview, the executive director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition said the coalition has supported efforts by Gloucester-based Intershell and the rest of the Northeast surf clam industry to keep fishing rights off Nantucket as the final piece of the Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2.

On Tuesday, the New England Fishery Management Council, meeting in Newport, Rhode Island, is expected to decide whether one of the more lucrative fishing grounds for the surf clam fishery — 10 to 20 miles east and southeast of Nantucket — will remain open to surf clamming or restricted or closed as part of a protectionist effort to designate the full area as an essential fish habitat that would be off limits to surf clamming dredging gear.

“During the development of OHA 2, NSC supported the clam dredge industry’s need to preserve access to distinct areas within the larger habitat closure areas under consideration,” Jackie Odell, NSC executive director, wrote to council Chairman John Quinn. “NSC continues to support endeavors to identify areas within the Great South Channel HMA that balances the conservation objectives of OHA2 with the economic realities of the fishery in a manner that is both fair and equitable to the fisheries that already have been impacted under OHA 2.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Upcoming vote could be ‘devasting’ for New England clams

December 3, 2018 — While New Bedford gains its notoriety as the scallop capital of the world, Massachusetts is known for its clam chowder.

A New England Fisheries Management Council meeting in Newport scheduled for Tuesday could affect the latter.

An afternoon agenda item will discuss the possibility of closing an area in Nantucket Shoals, that the clam industry calls vital to its survival.

“If they close this down, it will be devastating to the whole industry,” Vice President of Operations for Nantucket Sound Seafood LLC Michael Costa said.

To prevent the action, the surf clam industry has rallied together and sought the legal services of former New Bedford mayor and attorney Scott Lang.

The coalition consists of Atlantic Capes, Seawatch International, Nantucket Sound Seafood, and Intershell Seafood International.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Concern Grows for Future of Right Whales

November 30, 2018 — A group of 17 North Atlantic right whales was spotted by an aerial survey team 21 miles south of Nantucket early this week, prompting a renewed call for voluntary speed restrictions among mariners and also renewed concern for the future of the critically endangered mammals.

In response to the whale sighting early Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has instituted a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone, also known as a DMA, or dynamic management area, that encompasses Nantucket and extends to the southeastern coast of Martha’s Vineyard and Chappaquiddick. Boaters are asked to limit their speed to 10 knots or less when sailing through the area, which spans latitudinally from 40 degrees, 28 minutes north to 41 degrees, 22 minutes north, and longitudinally from 70 degrees, 39 minutes west to 69 degrees, 29 minutes west. Overall, the rectangular area encompasses approximately 360 square nautical miles.

With only about 400 whales remaining, the North Atlantic right whale is one of the rarest marine mammals in the world. The whales are known to appear around Cape Cod and the Islands around this time of year, fattening up on zooplankton before heading south to breed. Two weeks ago, NOAA reported a sighting of four right whales in a similar location off Nantucket’s south shore. But 17 is an entirely different story.

“That’s a lot of whales,” said Jennifer Goebel, a spokesman for NOAA, speaking to the Gazette Tuesday. “Usually when we set up these dynamic management areas we can do it on anything over three, sometimes four, maybe five. This was 17, so that tells you.”

Read the full story at The Vineyard Gazette

Clam controversy: Prime area may be closed to save fish

November 29, 2018 —  In June, at the Intershell dock on Commercial Street, owners Monte and Yibing Gao Rome launched their new 55-foot surf clam boat, F/V Bing Bing, amid the hoopla and happiness associated with a new Gloucester boat going into the water.

The Bing Bing sitting pretty at the dock that day was the most recent, and perhaps most palpable, reflection of Intershell’s commitment to the surf clam fishery. The metal-hulled boat, built in Mississippi in 1977 and just off a 10-month retrofit, became the third surf clam boat in the Intershell fleet.

But on Tuesday, in a ballroom of the aptly named Viking Hotel in Newport, Rhode Island, Intershell and the other major surf clammers along the Northeast will find out if they still have a surf clam fishery to call home in the lucrative and historically rich Great South Channel of the Nantucket Shoals.

The New England Fishery Management Council, in a trailing action to its Omnibus 2 Essential Fish Habitat Amendment, will decide if a large swath of the current surf clam fishery, 10 to 20 miles east and southeast of Nantucket, will remain open to surf clamming or possibly be closed as part of a protectionist move to designate the full area as an essential fish habitat.

If designated as a full essential fish habitat, the whole Great South Channel would be closed to surf clammers and their hydraulic water-pressure dredging gear, as it already has been to all other types of mobile, bottom tending gear.

The clammers initially got a one-year extension to continue fishing when the council designated the Great South Channel Habitat Management Area. That exemption is set to expire April 9, 2019.

“The Nantucket Shoals are one of the premium, large-scale harvest areas on the East Coast and not an essential fish habitat,” Monte Rome said Wednesday as workers buzzed around the the sprawling Intershell facility in the Blackburn Industrial Park. “We’ve been going to habitat committee meetings and plan development meetings for months and they have constantly revealed that right now there is not anywhere near enough data to make a decision on whether this is an essential fish habitat. They say it might be. We say there is essentially no fish habitat within the area where we have fished for surf clams for the past 30 years.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA extends protective zone to try to help right whales

November 29, 2018 — The federal government is extending a protective zone off Massachusetts to try to keep a large group of endangered whales safe from collisions with boats.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s applying the voluntary vessel speed restriction zone in an area 21 nautical miles south of Nantucket. A group of 17 right whales was seen in the area on Monday.

NOAA says the speed restriction zone will be in effect until Dec. 11. Mariners are asked to avoid the area or go through it at 10 knots or less.

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

MASSACHUSETTS: Nantucket Bay Scalloping Struggling To Say Afloat

November 29, 2018 — The commercial bay scallop season opened on Nantucket at the beginning of November and will run through the end of March, but for bay scallopers, this year’s harvest is already looking to be pretty lean.

Out in Madaket Harbor on the western-most edge of Nantucket, scalloper Blair Perkins is throwing out a test dredge and scanning his catch for the iconic bivalve that seems to be getting scarcer and scarcer in a net full of shells, crabs and Spanish moss.

“It’s been a terrible season. I’ve been scalloping for 30-odd years, since the 80s off and on, and this is the worst year I’ve seen it, ever,” Perkins said.

Bay scalloping has never been an easy job. To do it right requires a fisherman to be out on the water during the coldest time of the year, and it’s a lot of physical work for, sometimes, not much reward. Perkins drags a mesh bag attached to a string into the water and will pull it up periodically to dump out the catch. Usually, he’ll pull up about 20 scallops in each dredge, but since the season opened this month, he’s pulling up closer to 10 to 15 in a catch. While at its peak in the 1980s, bay scallopers would bring in about one hundred thousand bushels of scallops a season. By comparison, this season’s catch is predicted to be around five thousand.

These scallops are particularly sensitive to water quality changes, and most importantly, they rely on the harbor’s eel grass for their spawn to grow. Scientists credit water pollution, which has stifled eel grass, as a primary reason for the decline in bay scallops.

“So the pressures are additional nutrients in the water, septic systems overloading, increased ferry traffic. All these things come down to water quality,” said Nantucket town biologist Tara Riley.

The town has been working to restore eel grass habitats around the island, but Riley is still worried that the tradition of bay scalloping, something Nantucketers have done over the winter since the 1800s, is drawing less fishermen today.

“There aren’t a lot of young people that are getting involved,” Riley said. “It’s not a dependable way to make your income in the winter, so you have to have options. You can’t just put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to the bay scallop fishery.”

Read the full story at WGBH

Coast Guard airlifts sick fisherman from New Bedford vessel

November 14, 2018 — A Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod helicopter crew medevaced a sick 54-year-old man from the 87-foot fishing boat Generation Sunday night 42 miles off Nantucket. The captain of the Generation contacted the Coast Guard at approximately 5:20 p.m. and requested assistance for his sick crew member.

In a press release from the United States Coast Guard, an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew arrived on scene and hoisted the patient to the helicopter. The aircrew flew the man to Massachusetts General Hospital for further care.

The patient was reported to be in stable condition at the time of the transfer.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Fishermen divided on plans for more offshore wind

November 13, 2018 — Commercial fishermen and sport fishermen are split over the benefits of offshore wind facilities.

Commercial fishermen say the wind-energy projects planned for southern New England, such as the South Fork Wind Farm, are the latest threats to their income after decades of quotas and regulations.

“I don’t like the idea of the ocean being taken away from me after I’ve thrown so many big-dollar fish back in the water for the last 30 years, praying I’d get it back in the end,” said Dave Aripotch, owner of a 75-foot trawl-fishing boat based in Montauk, N.Y.

In the summer, Aripotch patrols for squid and weakfish in the area where the 15 South Fork wind turbines and others wind projects are planned. He expects the wind facilities and undersea cables will shrink fishing grounds along the Eastern Seaboard.

“If you put 2,000 wind turbines from the Nantucket Shoals to New York City, I’m losing 50 to 60 percent of my fishing grounds,” Aripotch said during a Nov. 8 public hearing at the Narragansett Community Center.

Dave Monti of the Rhode Island Saltwater Anglers Association said the submerged turbine foundations at the Block Island Wind Farm created artificial reefs, boosting fish populations and attracting charter boats like his.

“It’s a very positive thing for recreational fishing,” Monti said. “The Block Island Wind Farm has acted like a fish magnet.”

Offshore wind development also has the support of environmental groups such as the National Wildlife Federation and the Conservation Law Foundation, which view renewable energy as an answer to climate change.

“Offshore wind power really is the kind of game-changing large-scale solution that we need to see move forward, particularly along along the East Coast,” said Amber Hewett, manager of the Atlantic offshore wind energy campaign for the National Wildlife Federation.

Read the full story at National Wind Watch