September 10, 2025 — The eighth annual Rhode Island Calamari Festival is less than two weeks away.
“This festival has now grown to be one of Narragansett’s biggest events, serving more than 1,500 lbs. of calamari while drawing in thousands of people from across Southern New England,” the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce posted on its website.
January 26, 2022 — Calamari supplier The Town Dock recently expanded and redesigned its retail product line.
The Narragansett, Rhode Island, U.S.A.-based company updated its packaging, including adding a recipe on the back of each box with a QR code taking consumers directly to a recipe video showing step-by-step cooking instructions.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
May 13, 2019 — The US’ two largest squid catchers and suppliers are taking a similar tack when it comes to plans to boost consumption of their species: product innovation at home targeted at millennials, and the recent Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification of their fisheries to open up new markets, particularly in Europe.
The companies –Narragansett, Rhode Island-based The Town Dock and Cape May, New Jersey-based Lund’s Fisheries — recently teamed up to receive MSC approval for the US Northwest northern shortfin squid (Illex Illecebrosus) fishery. This comes nearly a year after obtaining the MSC’s stamp for the US Northeast longfin inshore squid (Loligo pealeii) bottom trawl fishery last year, the world’s first MSC certification for a squid species. The two firms also catch California market squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) and harvest or procure a wide range of other squid and fish species.
Americans don’t consume a lot of squids — in 2015, the average US consumer ate around four ounces per year, roughly equivalent to a serving of fried calamari rings. That’s where the opportunity lies, Jeff Reichle, Lund’s president, told Undercurrent News.
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.
July 11, 2018 — In 40 years of fishing from Point Judith, Rhode Island, and another 12 conducting safety training, Fred Mattera has met many fishermen. Over time, he noticed a change in the crew.
“One of the things I started to see more often was this lack of youth,” said Mattera.
Those he did meet lacked motivation. They didn’t see commercial fishing as a career.
He decided to find some who did. In 2017, he helped launch the Commercial Fishing Apprenticeship Program with $120,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. This year, Real Jobs Rhode Island is providing $150,000 to a class of 16 aspiring fishermen who started training on July 2.
In four weeks, apprentices learn about management, stock assessment, cooperative research, and the business of fishing. They spend three days at sea; handle local species in a biology class at the University of Rhode Island; and practice safety drills, rope mending and diesel maintenance. They’re then guided in choosing among local fisheries, including scalloping, trawling, gill netting, lobster and private charters. Graduates receive foul weather gear, a $1,000 stipend and a job.
Zane Maymon, a 24-year-old member of the 2017 class, said fishing had been in the back of his mind while growing up in Narragansett. After struggling with what to do after high school, he saw an ad for the program and applied.
“I liked how it was a cooperation between URI and the fishermen so we get to see the science and research,” said Maymon.
January 30, 2018 — ARLINGTON, Va. — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has initiated a benchmark stock assessment for American lobster (Homarus americanus) to be completed in the summer of 2020. The goals of the assessment are to evaluate the health of stocks along the U.S. Atlantic coast and inform management of this species. The Commission’s stock assessment process and meetings are open to the public, with the exception of discussions of confidential data, when the public will be asked to leave the room.
The Commission welcomes the submission of data sources that will contribute to the goals of the assessment. This includes, but is not limited to, data on abundance (young-of-the-year, recruits, full recruits), biological samples (sex, maturity, weight, carapace length), life history information (growth, natural mortality, mating, shell disease), stock connectivity (tagging data), catch (harvest, fishing effort) and information regarding the environmental influence on lobster life history. For data sets to be considered, the data must be sent in the required format, with accompanying description of methods, to the Commission by April 13, 2018.
The Data Workshop will be conducted May 14-17, 2018 at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography, 218 South Ferry Road, Narragansett, RI 02874. This workshop will review available data sources for American lobster and identify datasets to be incorporated in the stock assessment.
For those interested in submitting data and/or attending the American Lobster Data Workshop (space is limited), please contact Jeff Kipp, Senior Stock Assessment Scientist, at jkipp@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.
WASHINGTON — December 1, 2017 — The following was released by the Fisheries Survival Fund:
A coalition of East Coast fishing businesses, organizations, and communities, led by the Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), has taken the next step in its legal challenge to a planned wind farm off the coast of New York. FSF and its co-plaintiffs argue that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) awarded the lease for the New York Wind Energy Area (NY WEA) to Norwegian energy company Statoil without fully considering the impact on fishermen and other stakeholders, in neglect of its responsibilities as stewards of ocean resources.
The plaintiffs outlined their arguments in a brief filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. In the brief, FSF criticizes BOEM’s claim that it is not the agency’s job to resolve conflicts among new and pre-existing ocean users in the NY WEA. In an October filing, BOEM wrote that it is “not the ‘government steward of the ‘ocean commons,’’” a claim that FSF calls “unbecoming.” In fact, BOEM’s own website states: “The bureau is responsible for stewardship of U.S. [Outer Continental Shelf] energy and mineral resources, as well as protecting the environment that development of those resources may impact.”
FSF also writes that the NY WEA, an expanse of ocean nearly twice the size of Washington, D.C., is a poor location for a wind farm, and that BOEM and Statoil have alternately claimed that it is both too early and too late to raise objections to the lease. Statoil previously stated that vacating the lease would “squander the resources and the five years that BOEM has expended to date in the leasing process,” even as BOEM promises it will consider measures to mitigate the impacts of a wind farm later in the process. By then, after more time and resources have been expended, a wind farm “will be all but a foregone conclusion,” FSF writes.
Additionally, FSF argues that evaluating alternatives and considering conflicting ocean uses from the start would ultimately benefit BOEM and energy developers, ensuring they do not expend vast resources developing poorly located wind farms. The brief cites the ongoing debacle over the Cape Wind energy project, an approved wind farm off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, as an example of what can go wrong when BOEM and a developer ram through an agreement and become too invested to turn back. After the project “slogged through state and federal courts and agencies for more than a decade,” delays and uncertainty have jeopardized, if not eliminated, Cape Wind’s financing and power purchase agreements, according to the brief.
The plaintiffs in this case are the Fisheries Survival Fund; the Borough of Barnegat Light, New Jersey; The Town Dock; Seafreeze Shoreside; Sea Fresh USA; Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance; Garden State Seafood Association; Long Island Commercial Fishing Association; the Town of Narragansett, Rhode Island; the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce; the City of New Bedford, Massachusetts; and the Fishermen’s Dock Co-Operative of Point Pleasant, New Jersey.
While the fishing groups hold wide-ranging views about offshore wind energy development, they all agree that the siting process for massive wind energy projects “should not be a land rush, but rather reasoned, fully informed, intelligent, and cognizant of the human environment,” according to the brief.
About the Fisheries Survival Fund
The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) was established in 1998 to ensure the long-term sustainability of the Atlantic sea scallop fishery. FSF participants include the vast majority of full-time Atlantic scallop fishermen from Maine to Virginia. FSF works with academic institutions and independent scientific experts to foster cooperative research and to help sustain this fully rebuilt fishery. FSF also works with the federal government to ensure that the fishery is responsibly managed.
October 3, 2017 — In the commercial fishing industry, a newly created coalition of employers and fisheries experts has teamed up to train the next generation of workers at a time when licensed commercial fishing vessels are struggling to find new employees.
The Commercial Fisheries Apprenticeship Program won $150,000 to train 15 fishing-industry apprentices, state Department of Labor and Training Director Scott Jensen said Monday. It’s among 10 job-training programs to receive a total of $2.6 million in state and federal grant money to train 715 people in the state’s second round of Real Jobs R.I. training grants.
Although the DLT awarded those grants in August, Jensen and Gov. Gina Raimondo celebrated the awards on Monday to coincide with Raimondo’s celebration of her 1,000 days in office. The two joined commercial fishermen at Handrigan Seafoods in Narragansett to learn more about the industry’s search for younger workers.
Afterward, Jensen said many commercial fishermen are finding that traditional ways of passing the business on to the next generation, often to family members, aren’t working. That can make it difficult for a fisherman to sell the business and retire, Jensen said.
September 19, 2017 — US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has recommended that President Trump make significant changes to 10 national monuments, including proposals to allow commercial fishing in a protected expanse off Cape Cod and to open woodlands in Northern Maine to “active timber management.”
Zinke’s recommendations, first reported by the Washington Post, could have significant consequences for New England. Allowing commercial fishing in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which encompasses nearly 5,000 square miles, would undermine the main goals of the controversial preserve, environmental advocates said.
Opponents of the marine monument, which includes most of the commercial fishing industry, hailed the recommendations. They have argued the area was protected with insufficient input from their industry.
“The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was designated after behind-closed-door campaigns led by large, multinational, environmental lobbying firms, despite vocal opposition from local and federal officials, fisheries managers, and the fishing industry,” said Eric Reid, general manager of Seafreeze Shoreside in Narragansett, R.I. “But the reported recommendations from the Interior Department make us hopeful that we can recover the areas we have fished sustainably for decades.”
Grant Moore, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association, added: “There seems to be a huge misconception that there are limitless areas where displaced fishermen can go. Basically, with the stroke of a pen, President Obama put fishermen and their crews out of work and harmed all the shore-side businesses that support the fishing industry.”
March 24, 2017 — It was the best single run of longfin squid anyone on the East Coast had ever seen – and it happened fast and was over fast. In two months last summer, June and July, the East Coast-based squid fleet landed approximately 14 million pounds, with Rhode Island landing more than 50 percent of that quota, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration landing reports.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. The squid just kept coming,” said Point Judith fisherman Jeff Wise of Narragansett. “I’ve never seen volume and catch rates that high before.”
For those two summer months, the fishing port of Point Judith, or Galilee, was the squid capital of the world, the hub of squid commerce. Shore-side activity went nonstop as processors and others tried to keep pace with the volume of squid the fishing vessels carried in from the sea. Approximately 118 vessels, according to state landing reports, from as far south as Wanchese, N.C., used Rhode Island ports to offload their catch.
Although June and July are traditionally peak squid months, with average summer landings (May through August) fluctuating between 3 million and 19 million pounds, it was the high catch rates for those two months that was unprecedented last summer, which for the season saw 18.7 million pounds of landings.
“Though we’ve been seeing an upward trend in [longfin] squid since 2010, [last year was] one of the strongest we’ve seen since the 1990s,” said Jason Didden, squid-management-plan coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the agency, along with the National Marine Fisheries Service, responsible for squid policy.
Local fishermen, many of whom depend heavily on squid, enjoyed the bounty but are warily focused on regulatory issues they fear could bring the good times to a premature end.
Landings the past 30 years have shown peaks and valleys, as levels of squid abundance have changed – but there has been no need for quota cuts.
The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council often works with advisory panels to identify problems within fisheries and to come up with solutions to those problems. It’s a long road, complex and full of red tape, to go from an identified fishery problem to an actual change in the policy. These advisory panels are composed of industry members, recreational anglers, environmentalists and academics.
Three policy issues surfaced in recent months that could affect Rhode Island squid vessels and processors. One concerns managing the number of squid permits allowed, an issue perennially raised by the commercial fishing industry. The other two concern the possible loss of fishing ground – one by proposed wind farms off Long Island, and the other from lobbying pressure for a buffer zone in a key squid area south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.
The buffer-zone issue was raised by a group of recreational fishermen from Nantucket.
“It’s hard to be optimistic right now,” said Wise. “It never seems to stop – we are constantly worried about losing fishing ground [due to] buffer zones, marine sanctuaries and wind farms.”