Saving Seafood

Gulf of Maine lobster population past its peak, study says, and a big drop is due

January 23, 2018 — The Gulf of Maine lobster population will shrink 40 to 62 percent over the next 30 years because of rising ocean temperatures, according to a study published Monday.

As the water temperature rises – the northwest Atlantic ocean is warming at three times the global average rate – the number of lobster eggs that survive their first year of life will decrease, and the number of small-bodied lobster predators that eat those that remain will increase. Those effects will cause the lobster population to fall through 2050, according to a study by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the University of Maine and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

Looking ahead 30 years, the researchers predict a lobster population “rewind” to the harvests documented in the early 2000s. In 2002, 6,800 license holders landed 63 million pounds of lobster valued at $210.9 million. By comparison, 5,660 license holders harvested 131 million pounds valued at $533.1 million in 2016.

“In our model, the Gulf of Maine started to cross over the optimal water temperature for lobster sometime in 2010, and the lobster population peaked three or four years ago,” said Andrew Pershing, GMRI’s chief scientific officer and one of the authors of the study. “We’ve seen this huge increase in landings, a huge economic boom, but we are coming off of that peak now, returning to a more traditional fishery.”

Industry leaders have been girding themselves for a decline in landings ever since the recent boom began. While not everybody believes the decline will happen that fast or fall so much, most lobstermen admit the impact that warming water has had on their fishery, said Dave Cousens, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association. It drove up landings by pushing lobsters into the Gulf of Maine, and over time it will drive lobsters out to colder offshore waters or the Canadian Maritimes, he said.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

The lobster catch has crashed in southern New England, but not in Maine. Here’s why.

January 23, 2018 — Scientists who study the warming of the ocean say in a new study that conservation practices have allowed northern New England’s lobster industry to thrive in the face of environmental changes.

The lobster fishery is the backbone of Maine’s economy, and business has been booming in recent years. Southern New England fishermen’s lobster catch, meanwhile, has plummeted. Ocean temperatures have risen in both areas, to levels that scientists have said is favorable for lobsters off northern New England and Canada but inhospitable for them in southern New England.

Scientists led by researchers at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland say differences in conservation practices have contributed to record hauls off Maine and population collapse just a few hundred miles south. Their findings were published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A key difference is that Maine lobstermen worked together decades ago to create a strategy to protect older, larger lobsters and egg-carrying females, said Andy Pershing, a scientist with Gulf of Maine Research Institute and one of the study authors.

Maine lobstermen return big lobsters to the sea, and mark a “v notch” on the tail of an egg-carrying lobster before throwing it back. The notching technique, used in Maine for about a century, provides a sign to other fishermen to leave the fertile lobsters alone. Fishermen in other states use the notch, too, but some got on board only recently; Connecticut established its program in the mid-2000s.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

How many fish are really in the ocean? Some congressmen think federal fisheries can do a better job of finding out

April 26, 2017 — Two years ago, fisheries authorities threw the brakes on catching cobia, a popular game fish and a favorite of recreational fishermen from Florida to Maryland.

Suddenly, anglers could catch fewer fish – and sometimes none at all.

But the reasons for the new rules, it turned out, were flawed.

Now some congressmen hope to enact a new law changing the way saltwater fish stocks are managed. With better use of data, they say, will come better decisions.

“It’s a fairly archaic system,” said Rob Wittman, R-Va., one of the bill’s sponsors. “And there’s a lot of consternation about the lack of good data being used to make decisions that affect watermen.”

Current law calls for rebuilding fish stocks and preventing overfishing. But of the 538 species managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there is data for only 180. And the congressmen contend the information is either wrong or outdated.

NOAA does not comment on proposed legislation, according to John Ewald, the agency’s public affairs officer for fisheries.

He pointed to a National Academy of Sciences study that reported NOAA has made “impressive progress” in its data-collection efforts.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Price spikes for jumbo shrimp blamed on Gulf of Mexico dead zone

January 30, 2017 — Every spring and summer when the low-oxygen dead zone forms off Louisiana’s coastline, the price of jumbo shrimp briefly spikes, affecting Gulf of Mexico fishers, consumers and seafood markets, according to a new study published Monday (Jan. 30) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. And the price for smaller shrimp generally falls.

The positive effect of the price increase on jumbo shrimp for Gulf commercial shrimpers are fleeting, however. That’s because the rise often triggers increased imports of large shrimp from foreign producers, including farm-raised shrimp, which quickly drive down prices.

Read the full story at The New Orleans Times-Picayune

Survey names top five best-managed fisheries

January 23, 2017 — A survey of 28 countries, including the 20 countries that catch the most fish globally, found New Zealand, the United States, Iceland, Norway and Russia had the five best-managed fisheries.

The study was completed by Michael Melnychuck, a research scientist at the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, and three co-authors, and was published by Washington’s National Academy of Sciences.

The study found the three most important characteristics of a thriving fishery were the scientific assessment of the stock, limiting fishing pressure, and enforcing regulations.

Seafood New Zealand Chief Executive Tim Pankhurst said the study confirms his belief that New Zealand’s fisheries are properly managed.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Here’s How the Number of Fish in the Ocean Could More Than Double by 2050

March 31, 2016 — Fish populations around the world have been decimated by overfishing — but new research suggests that this could soon change if the world got its act together.

Fishermen around the world could haul around 16 million more metric tons of fish than they do today and generate $53 billion more in profits while more than doubling the amount of fish left in the oceans by 2050 if they adopted sustainable fishing practices, according to a report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Those practices would involve a so-called “catch share” model of fisheries management. In catch share systems, regulators figure out the maximum number of fish that can be hauled from the sea without hurting future fish populations. The regulators then divvy up that amount of fish into shares that are distributed to individual fishermen. Each fisherman has a set amount of fish they are can catch in the year.

“If you can reform fisheries and eliminate their competitive nature, there’s enormous room for profits, catch, and abundance,” said Ray Hilborn, a professor of marine biology and fisheries science at the University of Washington who co-authored the study with researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the Environmental Defense Fund.

Read the full story at VICE News

Study: Program To Protect Fish Is Saving Fishermen’s Lives, Too

February 16, 2016 — A program used in many U.S. fisheries to protect the marine environment and maintain healthy fish populations may have an immensely important added benefit: preserving the lives of American fishermen.

That’s according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found that catch share programs (where fishermen are allotted a set quota of the catch) reduce some of the notoriously risky behavior fishermen are known for, such as fishing in stormy weather, delaying vessel maintenance, or heading out to sea in a boat laden with too much heavy fishing gear.

Traditional fishery-management programs open and close fishing seasons on specific days. By contrast, catch shares work on a quota system, under which fishermen have a longer window to harvest their predetermined share. That gives fishermen the luxury (and perhaps the life-saving option) of time.

The findings don’t surprise Scott Campbell Sr., who spent most of his 35-year career fishing the Bering Sea for king crab the way it used to be done: derby-style. Crab season would open, and regardless of weather, Campbell and his crew would be on the water, hoping to nab enough crab during the season’s brief window to keep his business afloat.

“If you can picture a four-day season for crab — and that’s the only four days you’re going to get — and a 50-knot storm blows in for 24 to 48 hours of that four days, well, a lot of boats didn’t stop fishing, because that was their only revenue stream for the whole year,” says Campbell. “It forced us to take unnecessary risks for financial survival.” (His son, Scott Campbell Jr., is a former star of Discovery Channel’sDeadliest Catch, about the hazards of the fishing industry.)

That kind of risk-taking has historically made fishing one of the nation’s most dangerous professions, with a fatality rate more than 30 times the U.S. average, according to the new report.

Today there are approximately two dozen state and federal catch share programs in the U.S. Most launched in the last decade. However, derby-style fishing still exists in many U.S. regions, including the Pacific and Atlantic swordfish fisheries, the Northeast’s monkfish and herring fisheries, and the West Coast dungeness crab fishery.

Plenty of studies have looked at the environmental benefits of catch share programs — such as the reduction of bycatch, the ability to maximize the value of the catch, and direct impacts on the way fisheries are managed. But what makes this paper innovative is that it’s looking at actual risk-taking data, says the study’s author, Lisa Pfeiffer, an economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Pfeiffer examined the impact a catch share management program had on fishing safety by looking at the particularly data-rich West Coast sablefish fishery.

Read the full story at National Public Radio