Saving Seafood

MAINE: Two seafood companies team up to fund UMaine lobster research

June 4, 2019 — A $75,000 gift from two seafood companies will fund a fourth field season for a University of Maine deep-water lobster settlement monitoring program.

The deep-water research is an extension of the American Lobster Settlement Index, which was initiated in 1989 by Rick Wahle, a research professor in the School of Marine Sciences who was named director of the Lobster Institute last fall. The index includes collaborators and monitoring sites from Rhode Island to Newfoundland.

The original surveys were conducted by divers, which confined data collection to shallower waters. In 2016, Wahle expanded monitoring to include greater depths with a novel collector deployed from fishing vessels. The addition of this data helps scientists evaluate how temperature affects the nursery potential of seabed for larval lobsters, and subsequent bottom movements by older juveniles.

Maine Sea Grant sponsored the first two years of deep-water monitoring in collaboration with Ready Seafood Co. of Portland and the Maine Department of Marine Resources. When the Maine Sea Grant project ended, Ready Seafood stepped in with a $75,000 gift to support a third research field season in 2018.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

After Many Decades Away, Humpback Whales Are Back In Long Island Sound. This Small Fish Could Be The Reason Why.

October 29, 2018 — One of the smallest, oddest and least-studied fishes in Long Island Sound may be playing a role in attracting one of the world’s largest ocean creatures to the waters along Connecticut’s coastline.

The tiny fish is called a northern sand lance or sand eel, and experts say it could be one of the reasons why massive humpback whales have returned to the Sound in recent years.

Sand lances, at 3 to 6 inches in length, are true fish but look like little silvery eels. They are also a favorite food of humpbacks, which can reach up to 60 feet in length and weigh as much as 40 tons.

“Most people don’t even know their name,” David Wiley, the research coordinator for the Stellwagon Bank National Marine Sanctuary off Cape Cod, said of sand lances. “But they’re extremely important.”

After many decades of absence, humpbacks returned to the Sound beginning in 2015 and at least a few have been recorded feeding in the waters between Connecticut and Long Island or off New London every year since.

Marine scientists believe the sand lance is far from the only reason why humpbacks have been returning to the Sound. They point out that other prey species favored by humpbacks, including menhaden and herring, have also been on the increase in the waters off Connecticut’s shoreline and are likely key to the humpbacks’ return.

Read the full story at the Hartford Courant

 

Where do female lobsters release their eggs?

November 10th, 2016 — The decline of the American lobster population from the southern edge of its range in Long Island Sound stands in stark contrast to to the explosion in the number of landed lobsters in the colder Gulf of Maine waters the past few years.

Scientists are wondering what is going on with the important fishery, particularly as greenhouse gas emissions are blamed for a warming of ocean water. Are lobsters heading to colder water to hatch their young?

A study just funded by the Wildlife Heritage Foundation of New Hampshire will look at the issue off the Isles of Shoals, next summer. Starting next June, eight to 14 egg-bearing lobsters will receive hydroaccoustic tags and be tracked as they carry eggs and hatch them. The study will be off the Isles of Shoals.

Joshua Carloni, biologist in the marine division of New Hampshire Fish and Game, said it has been traditionally thought that female lobsters move to warmer water with their eggs in spring and release them there. But a 2012 study suggested they are moving to deeper water to hatch their eggs.

“Why that is we don’t know,”said Carloni. “We believe, historically this is what they have done, but it have not documented. The implications with warming water are known.” This study could possibly provide “concrete evidence that lobsters are moving to deep water once their eggs begin to hatch.”

Read the full story at WMUR 9 

MASSACHUSETTS: SMAST celebrates expansion with topping off ceremony, hardhat tours and bay views

September 27th, 2016 — Officials from across the state talked about what a game-changer the new marine sciences expansion will be for UMass Dartmouth and the region during a topping off ceremony in the South End on Monday.

The 76,000-square-foot building will double the capacity of the School for Marine Science & Technology on South Rodney French Boulevard and create a marine campus for the state when it opens next year. It will continue to provide responsible research to support fisheries, marine life, environmental stewardship and confront issues related to climate change, officials said.

The event represented the completion of the steel framework with the unveiling of the final beam signed by several in what Dean Steven Lohrenz called “a unique partnership.”

The $55 million project is on track and and under budget, he said, thanks to the cooperation between the the UMass Building Authority (UMBA), project manager Hill International, construction manager Bond Brothers, architect Ellenzweig Associates, and the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) that will have space on the third floor.

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times

Fisherman appeals case over monitoring costs

September 23, 2016 — New Hampshire fisherman David Goethel is looking to the federal appeals court to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that allows NOAA Fisheries to impose the cost of at-sea monitoring on Northeast groundfish permit holders.

Goethel, represented by lawyers from the Cause of Action watchdog group, has filed an appeal with the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, hoping to reverse U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Laplante’s July 29 ruling in Goethel’s lawsuit that granted summary judgment to the federal government.

“NOAA lacks the authority to require industry funding for at-sea monitors. Its decision to do so violates federal statutes and the Constitution,” said Alfred Lechner Jr., president and chief executive officer of Cause of Action as well as a former federal judge. “Our clients had a legal right to their day in court at the time they filed suit. The decision holding otherwise is an error. An appeal from the decision of the district court has been filed.”

The original lawsuit, filed by Goethel and the South Dartmouth-based Northeast Fishing Sector 13 last December in U.S. District Court in Concord, New Hampshire, claimed the federal government violated fishermen’s constitutional rights by mandating they pay for the at-sea monitoring coverage designed to make sure fishermen are adhering to the intricacies of the federal fishery management regulations.

Read the full story at the Newbury Port Daily News

Obama’s Marine Monument Could Spell Disaster for New England Fishermen

September 19th, 2016 — America is well-known for its glorious and plentiful national parks, and at a conference taking place in Washington, DC this week, President Obama made the dramatic declaration that he was signing an executive order to create the very first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean. The almost-5,000-square-mile area—called the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument—lies off of Cape Cod, Massachusetts and has been dubbed an “underwater Yellowstone.”

But although conservationists are hailing the president’s move as “phenomenally exciting,” fishermen in the area are not so psyched. To say the least. They’re accusing Obama of legislating from the White House—a power, the lobstermen and crab fishers of Massachusetts say, he simply doesn’t have. There’s also the very real concern among the community that the administration is selling out hundreds and hundreds of sustainable fishermen in favor of environmental grandstanding that ignores the real culprits.

The area in question is a phenomenal expanse of extinct volcanoes, underwater forests, canyons, and reefs filled with endangered and exotic species. But it is also a place that has provided a livelihood for generation after generation of fishermen, especially those focused on red crab and lobster. If all goes according to plan, the area will be off limits to them in seven years and the good times will be over.

MUNCHIES spoke with Bob Vanasse of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities, who said about the designation, “I don’t know anybody in the fishing community who is in favor of it.” Vanasse said that the local fishermen believe their point of view was wholly ignored before the order was enacted. He believes that by creating the monument in an executive order, President Obama sidestepped the process of running the idea through Congress, which would have entailed a “consultative process where environmentalists, the industry, and regulators are involved and what comes out is reviewed by an agency for a year or more before it gets published in the Federal Register. This executive order is a short circuit around all of that—and that’s the reason it’s frustrating.”

Read the full story from VICE 

Prosecutors dismiss charges against bookkeeper for indicted fishing magnate Carlos Rafael

July 26, 2016 — BOSTON — Federal prosecutors moved Monday to dismiss the charges against Dartmouth resident Debra Messier, the longtime bookkeeper for indicted fishing magnate Carlos Rafael, after her case had sat largely idle since her February arrest.

The motion likely clears Messier of potential penalties — pending a judge’s ruling — ahead of Rafael’s federal trial, slated for January 2017 at U.S. District Court in Boston.

Rafael and Messier were arrested Feb. 26 on charges of conspiracy and submitting falsified records to the government, after federal authorities raided the Carlos Seafood building on New Bedford’s waterfront.

Messier was released from custody the same day on a $10,000 bond. Prosecutors said Monday’s dismissal motion was filed “in the interests of justice.”

Prosecutors allege that Rafael, for years and with Messier’s help, lied to federal authorities about the amount and kinds of fish caught by his New Bedford-based fleet, in order to evade federal fishing quotas.

Rafael, a 64-year-old North Dartmouth resident, remains released on bond totaling $2 million. Collateral includes his home; his Carlos Seafood building; and one of his fishing vessels, the Dinah Jane, along with its attached fishing permit. Prosecutors have said Rafael has citizenship both in the U.S. and his native Portugal. His bond conditions require him to wear electronic monitoring equipment and to return home by 8:30 p.m. nightly, while he continues to work on the docks.

He faces 27 counts of federal charges, including conspiracy, false entries and bulk cash smuggling. Also facing trial then is alleged smuggling accomplice Antonio M. Freitas, a 46-year-old Taunton resident and Bristol County Sheriff’s Office deputy, suspended without pay. Freitas faces two federal counts, one for bulk cash smuggling and one for international structuring.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times