Saving Seafood

Sen. Wyden introduces bill to expand disaster relief to fisheries harmed by tariffs

June 27, 2019 — U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.), and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, (D-Mass.), recently introduced legislation to expand disaster relief to fisheries harmed by tariffs.

Currently, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) guidelines used to identify the causes of fishery disasters does not explicitly include tariffs. Wyden’s bill would amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Act to require NOAA to evaluate the impacts of duties imposed on American seafood, ensuring the Department of Commerce receives a complete overview of factors affecting a fishery in all fishery disaster declaration designations.

“American businesses are being hit hard by retaliatory tariffs from Trump’s ill-conceived trade agenda,” Wyden said. “Fisheries unfortunately are no exception. West Coast seafood is sought after internationally, and Oregonians earning a living in fisheries should be able to command top dollar on the global market, rather than be ensnared in the cross-fire of Trump’s escalating trade war.”

In March of this year, Wyden and Sen. Jeff Merkley, (D-Ore.), secured $2.1 million in federal disaster recovery aid for coastal fisheries in Oregon. Multiple years of drought in California, parasites within the Klamath River Basin and poor ocean conditions led to low returns of the Oregon Klamath River Fall Chinook Salmon Fishery in 2016 and 2017.

Read the full story at The News Guard

NOAA Fisheries publishes final rule to allow electronic monitoring on some Pacific groundfish vessels

June 27, 2019 — Starting in 2021, fishermen in segments of the Pacific Coast Groundfish Fishery will have the ability to use electronic monitoring devices to record what they catch for reporting purposes.

The measure, published in a final rule last week by NOAA Fisheries, gives the option to midwater trawl vessels in the Pacific whiting fishery and for fixed gear boats in the individual fishing quota fishery. Vessel owners will be able to receive an exemption from the 100-percent observer requirement as long as they use an allowed monitoring system.

“This action is necessary to increase operational flexibility and reduce monitoring costs for vessels in the trawl fishery by providing an alternative to observers,” NOAA Fisheries said in its final rule statement. “Data from the (electronic monitoring) program will be used to debit discards of (individual fishing quota) species from IFQs and mothership cooperative allocations.

It comes after some vessels participated in a pilot program testing the monitoring equipment. That pilot was pushed by some environmental organizations, including the Environment Defense Fund.

Shems Jud, the West Coast director of EDF’s Oceans program, said the rule will help improve conservation efforts.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Helping New England fishing communities adapt

June 26, 2019 — New England fishing communities must adapt or fail. That’s the advice published in a new study co-authored by UMass Dartmouth scientist Dr. Robert Griffin.

Climate change is altering ocean temperatures, as researchers have previously documented, and entire fish populations are migrating further north or into deeper waters in search of cooler environments. For fishing communities, that means the slow disappearance of species that may be integral to the area’s identity.

For example, lobster in southern New England is migrating out, while black sea bass and Jonah crab have become more abundant.

“[Fishermen] all seemed to understand that this is happening,” Griffin said. “They go out and try to continue to catch the fish they’ve been trying to since they started, but it’s much harder.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Rep. DeFazio Applauds Fisheries Decision to Use Electronic Monitoring

June 25, 2019 — Congressman Peter DeFazio is applauding a decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service to allow ground vessels in the Pacific Northwest to monitor their catch restrictions electronically instead of using expensive on-board human observers.

DeFazio said he has been pushing for years to get rid of “onerous restrictions on our coastal fishing industry”. He said lifting what he called “an outdated rule” will finally level the playing field between Pacific Northwest and Alaska fisherman and many of the nation’s other fishers, who are “not subject to the same archaic rules”.

Read the full story at KQEN

NOAA to groundfishermen: Take our survey

June 25, 2019 — As fishing regulators continue to consider changes to current groundfish monitoring programs, NOAA Fisheries is developing a new strategic communications plan to help stakeholders more fully participate in the rule-making process.

Toward that end, NOAA Fisheries is asking groundfish stakeholders to participate in an online survey that focuses on two areas — what information do fishermen need about current groundfish monitoring programs and the best manner for delivering that information.

The survey, which opened Friday and will be available online until July 21, can be found on the website surveymonkey.com/r/GARFO23. It is designed to take five to 10 minutes and can be completed anonymously.

“Our effort is focused on communicating information about monitoring programs, not developing alternatives or making policy decisions,” NOAA Fisheries said in announcing the survey. “We also expect this effort to provide tools and resources that can be applied across programs to improve the clarity and effectiveness of our communications with industry members.”

NOAA Fisheries has contracted with Vision Planning and Consulting to help it develop the new communications strategy and improve its communication about its various groundfish monitoring programs.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NEW JERSEY: Anglers Conservation Network Wrongly Attacks NOAA for Determination on Alewife and Blueback Herring

June 24, 2019 — The following was released by the Garden State Seafood Association:

On Tuesday, June 18, 2019, NOAA announced they found that no populations of alewife or blueback herring (collectively referred to as “river herring”), or any of the four alewife distinct population segments (DPS) and three blueback DPSs along the east coast of the United States were either in danger of extinction nor likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future. Therefore, they determined that listing any of those species under the Endangered Species Act as either threatened or endangered is not warranted at this time.

Almost immediately, the Anglers Conservation Network responded on Facebook, asking the hypothetical question, “What do you do when the federal agency in charge of sustainability fails to not only recognize, name and correctly manage a vital forage fish? [sic].”

They accused NOAA of failing “to do its duty” and of letting “commercial fishing lobbyists carry the day.” They also asked their followers and readers to “please learn more about what the current administration is doing to America.”

This determination had nothing to do with any appointees of the Trump Administration. For the status review of alewife and blueback herring, NOAA formed a team composed of career scientists from NOAA Fisheries, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. The team members have scientific expertise in river herring biology/ecology and/or expertise in population ecology or fisheries management. Their report was reviewed by three independent external experts and by NOAA Fisheries staff.

The team members are:

  • Robert Adams – New York Department of Environmental Conservation
  • Michael Bailey – USFWS, Central New England Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office
  • Ruth Haas-Castro – NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Fisheries Science Center
  • Kiersten Curti – NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Fisheries Science Center
  • Ben Gahagan – Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries
  • Ed Hale – Delaware Division of Fish and Wildlife
  • Tara Trinko Lake – NOAA Fisheries, Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office
  • Bill Post – South Carolina Department of Natural Resources

Not a single team member is an appointee of the Trump Administration. The team members were not contacted by, nor did they interact with, “commercial fishing lobbyists” during their work on the determination. Their work was rigorous, with the final report totaling 167 pages.

The Anglers Conservation Network has a long history of opposing legal, well-managed U.S. forage fisheries. In a case argued by Roger M. Fleming of EarthJustice that failed on appeal in 2016, the Angler’s Conservation Network sued then Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, stating that NOAA unlawfully neglected to manage stocks of river herring and shad in the Atlantic Ocean from New York to North Carolina. The court found that NOAA rationally considered the status of river herring stocks, the fact that they are managed by the Atlantic coastal states where these fish breed, and greatest threats to their populations, including dams and barriers.

NOAA has created a program of bycatch caps in the Atlantic herring and mackerel fisheries to help conserve the stock. Meanwhile, the federal government continues to work with its partners in the states to improve habitat for these stocks. Far from “fail[ing] to do its duty,” as Anglers Conservation Network claims, NOAA has been proactive in helping to restore these important stocks.

Read the full release here

SIMP helping to drive seafood’s blockchain moment

June 24, 2019 — It’s not your imagination. The seafood industry is talking a lot more than usual about Bitcoin these days.

But don’t worry. There’s no effort afoot to launch a new form of seafood-themed cryptocurrency — though “Fishscales” would have a nice ring to it.

Rather, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s implementation of its new Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) requirements is helping to drive a great deal of interest in blockchain, the digital technology that underlies Bitcoin, Sean O’Scannlain, the president and CEO of Fortune Fish & Gourmet, told Undercurrent News in a telephone interview this week.

Besides running one of the US’ largest seafood wholesalers, O’Scannlain is also chairman of the Seafood Industry Research Fund (SIRF), a 55-year-old group that has provided almost $4 million in grants to help create about 400 research papers, all publicly available. Roughly a week ago, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) announced that SIRF would be launching a pilot aimed at enabling the industry to better use blockchain, increasing transparency, optimizing supply chain processes and combating fraud.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

2019 Northeast Sea Scallop Survey Finishes

June 24, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The 2019 Northeast sea scallop survey got underway May 15 aboard the R/V Hugh R. Sharp, first covering stations in the Mid-Atlantic and then on Georges Bank. Operations concluded on June 14.

This survey occurs annually. It uses both a dredge to collect physical samples of sea life and their habitat, and a towed vehicle known as the HabCam. The HabCam is fitted with a number of sampling instruments, including cameras that photograph the ocean bottom. This dual sampling method enriches data available to researchers and helps ensure that information can be collected even if one of the systems fails during survey operations.

2019 NEFSC Sampling Effort

Most of the dredge operations occurred on Georges Bank. Planned dredge stations were completed throughout the Georges Bank area, and additional stations were added in the Great South Channel. Only two dredge stations were planned for the Mid-Atlantic area. These were completed.

HabCam coverage in the Mid-Atlantic was the most comprehensive achieved by the Center survey to date.

On Georges Bank, only the Southern Flank tracks and a small part of the northern Great South Channel were covered—about 30 percent of planned HabCam tracks for Georges Bank. HabCam tracks planned for the Northeast Edge and most of Great South Channel were not completed owing to operational issues with the HabCam vehicle and two days of unworkable weather.

“The sea scallop fishery is among the most valuable in the region, and people who rely on it also rely on us to provide the best possible data,” said Jon Hare, director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “We were able to conduct additional dredge samples in the areas of Georges Bank that HabCam did not cover, and the team on the vessel did an excellent job adapting to the situation.”

Read the full release here

Retention Limit of Aggregated Large Coastal Shark and Hammerhead Shark Management Groups increase to 36 Sharks per Trip

June 24, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

NOAA Fisheries has increased the retention limit for the commercial aggregated large coastal shark and hammerhead shark management groups (Appendix 1, next page) for directed shark limited access permit holders in the Atlantic region from 3 to 36 sharks per vessel per trip effective June 25, 2019. The retention limit will remain at 36 LCS, other than sandbar sharks, per vessel per trip in the Atlantic region through the rest of the 2019 fishing season or until NOAA Fisheries announces another adjustment to the retention limit or a fishery closure via the Federal Register.

As agreed upon by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Coastal Sharks Management Board in December 2015, the Commission will follow NOAA Fisheries for in-season changes to the commercial retention limit, therefore, no more than 36 sharks per vessel per trip may be retained from the aggregated large coastal and hammerhead shark management groups by state licensed fishermen effective June 25, 2019.

The Federal Register regarding the change to the commercial retention limit will be published on June 25 at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/06/25/2019-13483/atlantic-highly-migratory-species-commercial-aggregated-large-coastal-shark-and-hammerhead-shark. Shark landings can be found at: https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/atlantic-highly-migratory-species/2019-atlantic-shark-commercial-fishery-landings-and-retention.

For more information, please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0740 or krootes-murdy@asmfc.org.

A PDF of the announcement ca be found here –http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/5d11021cM19_48AdjustedCommericalRetentionLimits_June2019.pdf.

Record Number of Leatherback Turtles Tagged in North Carolina

June 24, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Despite challenging weather conditions, NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues captured and tagged a record 13 leatherback turtles May 14-22 off Beaufort, North Carolina, continuing a project begun in 2017 to assess the abundance, movements, behavior, and health status of these turtles. It is the second year this team has tagged leatherbacks off North Carolina, where the turtles aggregate in coastal waters during their northward spring migration.

Turtle researchers Heather Haas and Eric Matzen from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory joined NOAA Fisheries Southeast staffers, including team leader Chris Sasso, Larisa  Avens, Annie Gorgone, Blake Price, Jamie Clark and Joanne McNeil during the nine-day field operation.  A team of veterinarians led by Dr. Craig Harms from North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine assessed health status, while Samir Patel and colleagues from the Coonamessett Farm Foundation (CFF) brought several types of suction cup tags for testing. These tags record high-resolution video as well as environmental and movement information.

Research was coordinated with Dr. Matthew Godfrey of the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, who assisted in the field work. Haas and Matzen brought the Woods Hole Laboratory’s research vessel Selkie and an inflatable Takacat raft to provide field support.

Read the full release here