Saving Seafood

Bill Monroe: Oregon seeking expanded sea lion controls following success of steelhead protections at Willamette Falls, Bonneville Dam

October 28, 2019 — Having fended off the threat of extinction of wild winter steelhead over Willamette Falls, Oregon biologists are now joining counterparts in Washington, Idaho and Native American tribes to expand that success.

Tuesday is the deadline set by the National Marine Fisheries Service for comments on a state and tribal proposal to reduce protections for both California and Steller sea lions in the Columbia river and its tributaries.

Changes in federal rules to streamline the control of sea lions have been approved by congress, but the states and tribes must still apply for authorization.

Current permits only allow the capture and killing of specific California sea lions at either Willamette Falls or Bonneville Dam.

The new proposal calls for the lethal take and euthanization of both California and Steller sea lions from anywhere in the Columbia River between the Interstate 205 bridge upriver to McNary Dam and from any lower Columbia tributaries such as the Willamette, Cowlitz and Lewis rivers. While there are no known sea lions upriver from The Dalles Dam (and only rumors of one between there and Bonneville), the area brings key fishing areas into the fold for six Native American tribes.

Read the full story at The Oregonian

ALASKA: Petersburg assembly to ask for hearing on humpback whale critical habitat

October 25, 2019 — Petersburg’s borough assembly Monday voted to seek a hearing in the Southeast Alaska community for proposed habitat protection for some of the humpback whales that frequent the region.

The National Marine Fisheries Service published a federal register notice Oct. 9 for a proposed rule to designate critical habitat for some populations of humpback whales. Those include whales listed as threatened that winter in Mexico and spend part of their year in Southeast Alaska.

Assembly member Bob Lynn thought the rule could have wide impacts starting with crabbers and gillnetters.

“I really do believe we need to have a meeting in Petersburg, let them describe what effects that has on our population,” Lynn said. “I’m very adamant we need to do that because it’s not very specific. But it also affects power lines, it affects a lot of our businesses here in town in addition, like our fishery processors and a few other folks too.”

The mayor and assembly were in agreement on this topic. Assembly member Jeff Meucci also wanted to request a hearing here.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

MAINE: DMR’s answer to whale rules focus offshore

October 24, 2019 — As the battle over how best to protect endangered northern right whales continues to escalate, the Department of Marine Resources is proposing a new set of requirements for lobster gear that the department believes will help reduce injury to the whales without imposing severe, and some say dangerous, restrictions on fishermen.

Last week, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced that after “rigorous scientific analysis,” the department had come up with a new draft plan to address “both the risk to right whales and concerns of fishermen” that is “in keeping with the real risk the Maine fishery presents.”

Last March, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the risk of injuries to right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by at least 60 percent.

To meet that goal, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservation group representatives known as the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended that NMFS require Maine lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical lines used to connect their traps to the surface marker buoys by 50 percent.

The NMFS proposal was based on a scientific model that ostensibly showed the restrictions to be necessary to meet the 60 percent risk reduction goal.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert-Islander

MAINE: DMR floats new gear regs to protect whales

October 23, 2019 — As the battle over how best to protect endangered northern right whales continues to escalate, the Department of Marine Resources is proposing a new set of requirements for lobster gear that the department believes will help reduce injury to the whales without imposing severe, and some say dangerous, restrictions on fishermen.

Last week, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher announced that after “rigorous scientific analysis,” the department had come up with a new draft plan to address “both the risk to right whales and concerns of fishermen” that is “in keeping with the real risk the Maine fishery presents.”

Last March, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced that the risk of injuries to right whales in the Gulf of Maine had to be reduced by at least 60 percent.

To meet that goal, a group of fishermen, scientists and conservation group representatives known as the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team recommended that NMFS require Maine lobstermen to reduce the number of vertical lines used to connect their traps to the surface marker buoys by 50 percent.

The NMFS proposal was based on a scientific model that ostensibly showed the restrictions to be necessary to meet the 60 percent risk reduction goal.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Oyster growers agree to abandon quest to use controversial insecticide in Southwest Washington tidelands

October 22, 2019 — A Southwest Washington oyster growers association has abandoned a quest to use a controversial insecticide that combats burrowing shrimp, a creature that can make tidelands unfit for shellfish farming.

In a settlement reached last week, the Willapa Grays Harbor Growers Association agreed to accept a 2018 state Ecology Department denial of the proposed use of imidacloprid and drop an appeal to the state Pollution Control Hearings Board.

The growers wanted to use the insecticide to spray up to 500 annually of the more than 12,000 acres of tidelands used for shellfish cultivation in Willapa Bay and Grays Harbor. Without the spray, the growers say they lose productive tidelands to the shrimp, which churn up sediment and can cause oysters, as well as clams, to suffocate in the muck.

The proposed imidacloprid spraying was opposed by National Marine Fisheries Service because of risks to other marine life, and it triggered a public backlash led by some high-profile Seattle chefs.

Read the full story at The Seattle Times

NMFS Seeks to Streamline Aquaculture Permitting While a Washington Federal Court Interjects Caution

October 21, 2019 — In October 2019, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) published its Draft Outline for a Work Plan for a Federal Aquaculture Regulatory Task Force (Draft Outline) in the Federal Register Notice. The Draft Outline identifies three goals that NMFS intends to use to improve regulatory efficiency for freshwater and marine aquaculture, as well as streamline regulations and management decisions.

  1. “Improve the efficiency and predictability of aquaculture permitting in state and federal waters.” Some of the objectives identified to achieve this goal include expanding the categories of use for the Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) Nationwide Permit 48 (NWP 48), and NPDES general permits or developing new general permits, creating regional interagency groups and regional permit processes, and establishing federal processes for testing and certifying the human health requirements of aquaculture in federal waters.
  2. “Implement a national approach to aquatic animal health management of aquaculture.” Identified objectives for attaining this goal include collaboration among partners and stakeholders to establish standards or guidelines for aquatic animal and aquaculture health, as well as further clarifying and defining federal agency roles in the import and export of aquatic animals

Read the full story at The National Law Review

ALASKA: Unalaska Mayor Laments ‘Depressing’ Year for Crab

October 16, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — There will be a Bristol Bay red king crab fishery this year, though at an extremely low level, continuing a downward trend that probably hasn’t yet hit the bottom.

“Red crab is not looking well at all, everything is down,” said Miranda Westphal, shellfish management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Unalaska. “There’s not a lot coming into the system.”

The crab season opens Oct. 15, and crab fishermen are busy working around Unalaska docks rigging pots for the red crab. The snow crab season officially opens the same day, but fishermen won’t start targeting the smaller opilio snow crab for several months.

Bering Sea crab quotas were announced Sunday by ADF&G’s Division of Commercial Fisheries. The red king harvest level is set at 3.79 million pounds, down 12% from last year’s 4.3 million, Westphal said.

“I don’t know if it’s ever been this low,” she said.

In one bright spot, at least for this year, the snow crab quota increased by 23%, at 34 million pounds, up from last year’s 27.6 million pounds. But future snow crab populations appear weak, and don’t bode well for upcoming years, she cautioned.

The Tanner crab season is closed in both the eastern and western districts, a “depressing” development, said Frank Kelty, who steps down as Unalaska mayor later this month. Yet despite this year’s closure, Westphal said Tanners appear to have a bright future.

“It’s actually looking the best out of all the stocks,” said Westphal, citing survey results showing large populations of juvenile Tanner crab, especially in the western district.

Two smaller Bering Sea crab fisheries that are frequently closed did not open this year. The St. Matthew’s blue king crab, and Pribilof Islands red and blue king crab fisheries are both closed again.

The quotas are set based on the summer trawl survey of the Bering Sea conducted by the National Marine Fisheries Service in an annual research projects that catches all species with nets, and uses the results to determine the quotas of crab and pollock and flatfish in the various commercial fisheries.

Kelty said he wasn’t surprised by the bad news when the quotas were announced over the weekend.

“This is what I expected,” he said.

Kelty, like Westphal, is also worried about the future of the snow crab fishery. He said warming waters will attract Pacific cod to the area north of St. Matthew’s Island, which he said is the “nursery” of snow crab, and their babies are the “favorite food” of the cod.

Previously, the cod stayed to the south, blocked by a deepwater “cold pool” of seawater, which is now shrinking. And as the water warms in the depths, the cod travel further north. Kelty said he knows cod like baby snow crab from personal experience, “cutting a lot of cod bellies open,” as a former Unalaska seafood worker.

According to NMFS, “In 2017 and 2018 the maximum extent of sea ice in the Bering Sea was the lowest on record. The cold pool was dramatically smaller than usual and large numbers of Pacific cod and pollock were found in the northern Bering Sea in the spring and summer months.”

Meanwhile, another Bristol Bay red king crab survey project is underway in the Bering Sea, this one involving the unmanned wind and solar-power Saildrones, which are tracking acoustic tags attached to the crab during the summer trawl survey.

“All vessels are asked to avoid the saildrones,” which look like red kayaks with big red rigid sails and solar panels.

The Bering Sea Fisheries Research Foundation is conducting the study with the federal agency NOAA Fisheries to “better understand crab movement in the Bering Sea.”

“Any commercial fisherman that captures a tagged red king crab should note the capture coordinates and tag number and quickly release it unharmed in the same location it was captured,” according to a postcard sent to fishermen.

Two representatives from the study attended a recent Unalaska City Council meeting to explain the project, Leah Zacher a NOAA scientist, and Scott Goodman, the executive director of BSFRF. More information is available at bsfrf.org, or facebook.com/BSFRF.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

New York sues NOAA for bigger share of summer flounder quota

October 16, 2019 — The state of New York has filed a federal lawsuit against the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) looking to challenge the 2020-20201 quota allocated in relation to the commercial fluke (summer flounder) fishery.

In the lawsuit, filed Oct. 10 in the US Southern District of New York, Basil Seggos, commissioner of the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, charges NMFS, NOAA and also the parent US agency, the Department of Commerce, with violating the Magnuson Stevens Act and Administrative Procedures Act.

New York’s lawsuit describes how New York’s annual fluke quota is based on a state-by-state allocation formula that was adopted by NMFS in 1993, using landings data from 1980-1989. In the 1980s, the fluke population had been fished to low levels and was centered south of its present location, the state says. The species’ population has since recovered and migrated northward due, in part, to rising water temperatures from climate change.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

American Samoa’s governor warns tuna fishery closure holds ‘severely negative impacts’

October 10, 2019 — The US National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has announced the tuna purse seine fishery in the “Effort Limit Area for Purse Seine” (ELAPS) will close as of Oct. 9.

The rule was passed on Oct. 1, as a result of vessels reaching the 2019 limit on purse seine fishing effort in the ELAPS. “This action is necessary for the United States to implement provisions of a conservation and management measure adopted by the Commission for the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean,” it said.

However, American Samoa’s governor, Lolo Moliga, has written to Michael Tosatto — regional administrator for the NMFS in the Pacific Islands — asking for the rule to be “corrected”.

The cessation of fishing in the ELAPS until the turn of the year will have a negative impact on the tuna-dependent economy of his nation, wrote Loliga.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Researchers and Feds to Address Quality of Science Used to Manage US Pacific Island Fisheries

October 10, 2019 — The following was released by the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council:

Scientists from throughout the Pacific region will meet Oct. 15 to 17, 2019, in Honolulu to address the quality of the data used to manage federal fisheries and other topics. The Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council will convene 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 1164 Bishop St., Suite 1400. The meeting is open to the public.

The lack of sufficient data to manage fisheries has been a continued concern, especially in the US Territories of American Samoa, Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). Federal law requires that annual catch limits (ACLs) be set for each federally managed fish species. Typically, limits are based on stock assessments, but these are lacking for most of the hundreds of coral reef species caught in the islands.

In 2018, based on the Council’s recommendation, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) reduced the number of species requiring ACLs from 205 species or families to 11 in American Samoa, from 227 species or families to 13 in the Mariana Archipelago (Guam and the CNMI) and from 173 species or families to 20 in the Hawai’i Archipelago. The species no longer requiring ACLs are now considered “ecosystem components.” They are being monitored until additional information is available to assess their stock status. By reducing the current need for ACLs to dozens of species, scientists and managers are able to allocate more resources to improving the datasets for those species without stock assessments.

One such effort is a recent review organized by the Council and NMFS on the quality, relevance and performance of the data collection systems in the US Pacific Territories. At the SSC meeting, the co-chairs of the review will report on the recommendations from that week-long effort by a panel of experts in the field. Key among these is the need to collect total catch and effort from fisheries targeting the key species by requiring mandatory reporting from fishers and vendors rather than relying on creel surveys. This recommendation is in line with actions taken by the three governments of the three US Territories to improve available information by instituting or considering mandatory permit and reporting requirements.

Another effort is the ongoing Council-sponsored biosampling studies on O’ahu and Maui by Poseidon Fisheries Research (PFR). From July 2018 to July 2019, PFR measured and weighed 10,256 fish on O’ahu, comprising 69 different “ecosystem component” species and 14 families. On Maui, as of August 2019, PFR measured 407 fish and worked with the marine biology class at Kamehameha Schools on that island to sample 91 fish from five species for life history information, e.g., sex, reproduction, size and age. Due to these efforts, the first life history article on palani (ringtail surgeonfish) and pualu (eyestripe surgeonfish) will be published in a journal.

Other items on the SSC agenda

  • The NMFS Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center’s new stock assessment for the federally managed bottomfish species in American Samoa, Guam and CNMI shows a pessimistic stock status for American Samoa and Guam. The SSC will review the assessment and the Western Pacific Stock Assessment Review panel’s report on it and decide whether this new assessment constitutes the best scientific information available for fishery management decisions.
  • The SSC will review and consider the implications of a new model for loggerhead and leatherback turtle interactions in the Hawai’i shallow-set longline fishery for swordfish.
  • The SSC will review and may make recommendations regarding the stock status ofoceanic whitetip sharks (a species listed under the Endangered Species Act) and blue marlin.

Recommendations made by the SSC on these and other matters will be considered by the Council when it meets Oct. 22 to 24, 2019, at the Tauese P. F. Sunia Ocean Center in Utulei, American Samoa. For agendas and briefing documents for the SSC, Council and related advisory body meetings, go to http://www.wpcouncil.org/public-meetings/ or contact the Council at info@wpcouncil.org or call (808) 522-8220.