Saving Seafood

News for the New England Region

ASMFC Meeting Changes and Postponements in Response to Hurricane Florence

September 11, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Scheduling changes have been made to following meetings and public hearings originally planned for this week in response to Hurricane Florence. We hope that all those in the path of Hurricane Florence stay safe.
 
NO CHANGE: Atlantic Striped Bass Tagging Subcommittee, which is scheduled to meet tomorrow, September 11, is still on and will be held at the Commission’s offices.
 
IN-PERSON MEETING CHANGED TO WEBINAR: Atlantic Striped Bass Stock Assessment Workshop, which is scheduled for September 12 – 14 at the Commission’s offices, will now occur via webinar. Members can register for that webinar at https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/130242117; to join the conference call dial 1-888-585-9008 and enter passcode 110-057-813 when prompted.
 
HEARING RESCHEDULED: NC Public Hearing on the Summer Flounder Commercial Issues Amendment, which was scheduled for September 12th at 6 PM, has been rescheduled for September 24th at 6 PM at the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries Washington Regional Office, 943 Washington Square Mall, US Highway 17, Washington, NC
 
HEARING RESCHEDULED: GA and SC Public Hearing on Atlantic Cobia PID, which was scheduled for September 12th at 6 PM, has been tentatively rescheduled for September 24th or 25th.  We will issue another press release once the details are finalized.
 
HEARING RESCHEDULED: VA Public Hearing on the Summer Flounder Commercial Issues Amendment, which was scheduled for September 13th at 6 PM, has been rescheduled for September 26th at 7 PM at the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, 2600 Washington Avenue, 4th Floor, Newport News, VA
 
HEARING DATE AND LOCATION CHANGED: DE Public Hearing on the Summer Flounder Commercial Issues Amendment, which was scheduled for September 13th at 6 PM, has been rescheduled for September 26that 6 PM at the Dover Public Library, Meeting Room B, 35 Loockerman Plaza, Dover, DE

Atlantic Herring Area 1A Fishery Moving to Zero Landing Days on September 13, 2018

September 11, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

As of September 10, the Area 1A Atlantic herring fishery has harvested 97% of the Trimester 2 allocation. Beginning 12:00 a.m. Thursday, September 13, 2018 the Area 1A fishery will move to zero landing days through September 30, 2018, as specified in the ASMFC Atlantic Herring Fishery Management Plan.

Vessels participating in other fisheries may possess no more than 2,000 pounds of Atlantic herring per trip per day. In addition, all vessels traveling through Area 1A must have all seine and mid-water trawl gear stowed.

For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0740 or mware@asmfc.org.

US East Coast could build nearly 9 GW of offshore wind capacity over next decade

September 10, 2018 — The US East Coast is leading the nation’s charge toward developing an offshore wind industry, and while the country only has 30 MW of offshore wind capacity installed currently, if goals are met and announced projects are built, the East Coast could have nearly 9 GW of offshore wind capacity by the 2030s.

The US has a long way to go in closing the gap with Europe in terms of offshore wind capacity, but with several East Coast states committing to achieve aggressive offshore wind development goals, the country could make considerable progress over the next decade.

Europe had nearly 16 GW of total installed offshore wind capacity at the end of 2017, according to trade group Wind Europe, compared with just one operating facility in the US — Deepwater Wind’s 30-MW Block Island Wind Farm in Rhode Island.

New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts are leading the way when it comes to setting offshore wind development goals. New York has a target to receive 2.4 GW of offshore wind power by 2030 and plans to issue requests for proposals for 800 MW in fourth-quarter 2018.

Not to be outdone, New Jersey has a goal of 3.5 GW of offshore wind generation by 2030. The state’s Board of Public Utilities Wednesday accepted an application from EDF Renewables and Fishermen’s Energy for the small-scale 25-MW Nautilus Offshore Wind project that would be located off the Atlantic City coast and could be generating power by 2021. Building a smaller project first has been touted by the companies as a way to kick start New Jersey’s offshore wind industry.

Read the full story at S&P Global

Warming water drawing whales closer to shore

September 10, 2018 — Rising water temperatures have drawn whales closer to shore this year, experts say.

Several humpback whales, and some minke whales, have been seen close to shore, a paddelboarder caught on video just a few feet away from a humpback whale near Salisbury Beach, Mass., a week ago. A humpback was also caught in fishing gear in Rye a couple days before, and footage of close encounters with whales in New England have been posted all over social media and covered in news reports in recent months.

Tony LaCasse, spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston, said the higher water temperatures, believed to be brought on by climate change, have led to bait fish called menhaden, locally known as “pogies,” appearing closer to shore.

Pogies, he said, eat plankton that have been growing closer to shore because of the higher water temperatures, and several animals including the whales eat the pogies, following them near land. Drone footage of a whale feeding off the coast of Seabrook over Labor Day weekend went viral this week and made news headlines.

LaCasse said whales have been seen close to shore throughout the region this year with sightings in the mouth of the inner harbor in Boston. New England news stations showed footage recently of a whale in Beverly Harbor in Massachusetts lunge feeding, plowing through a school of fish to gulp a couple hundred pogies in its mouth while sending another hundred or so flying through the air, he said.

“They’re going to be close to shore so long as the menhaden are here,” LaCasse said.

He said the menhaden will migrate from the area when the temperature starts to drop.

Read the full story at Fosters.com

Maine to hold hearings on scallop fishery rules

September 10, 2018 — Maine’s scallop fishermen will have a chance to weigh in on a plan to keep the rules governing their fishery about the same in the coming season.

Scallopers would be allowed to harvest the same amount of the shellfish per day under a proposal by state regulators. The hearings are scheduled for Monday in Augusta, Tuesday in Machias and Wednesday in Ellsworth.

The proposal also includes localized closures, which the state uses to allow young scallops to grow.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

Scientists get break finding elusive beaked whales

September 10, 2018 — Scientists have found a reliable gathering place east of Cape Cod for the elusive and little-known True’s beaked whales, following a month’s effort this summer.

“It was huge for us,” Danielle Cholewiak, research ecologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, said. Cholewiak was chief scientist for the trip east of Georges Bank, on the edge of the continental shelf.

Only a dozen sightings of True’s beaked whale had occurred since 1913 when Smithsonian Institution curator Frederick True first identified and named the species from an animal stranded on a North Carolina beach. But the dedicated study in July 200 miles east of Cape Cod yielded dozens of sightings, acoustic recordings, genetic samples and photographs, Cholewiak said.

The repeated sightings of whales during the trip allowed scientists to begin a tracking database. The whales now named Elvis and Trident are the “founding members” of the North Atlantic True’s beaked whale photo identification catalog. With over 300 acoustic detections from a hydrophone towed 24 hours a day across the research area the scientists were able to map out where the animals were living, Cholewiak said. The first-time use on a True’s beaked whale of a suction-cup digital recording tag, for 12 hours, is expected to reveal new information about their movements and acoustic behavior.

“This is a 5- or 6-meter whale that we didn’t know anything about until now,” said Dee Allen, research program officer for the Marine Mammal Commission, who was on the trip. In its oversight role of other federal agencies, the commission wants to make sure that the best available science is used for decision-making. There is great value in new or more information on a species that is little-known, Allen said.

“It shows that it can be done,” Allen said. “We can continue to learn more about beaked whales.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MAINE: Whale seen struggling in fishing net in Gulf of Maine ‘appears to be OK,’ expert says

September 7, 2018 — A whale caught in a fishing net last week appeared fine when seen swimming in the area over the weekend, said Dianna Schulte, research coordinator and co-founder of the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation.

Named “Owl,” the 32-year-old humpback whale “appears to be OK physically,” she elaborated.

Owl was entangled in the fishing net deployed off a “purse-seiner” vessel Aug. 30 off the Isles of Shoals, a small group of islands straddling the border between Maine and New Hampshire, according to multiple witnesses. The witnesses included 85 people aboard a Granite State Whale Watch tour, led by captain Peter Reynolds.

Reynolds said Friday that Owl was one of 12 humpback whales in the area at the time, that the fishing net was intentionally set in spite of them and he thought Owl was going to die while trapped and thrashing in the net for about 50 minutes. He said the fishing crew continued to try to haul the net while Owl was caught and “in obvious distress,” while his passengers watched and were “horrified.”

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Regulators weigh health of shrimp fishery

September 7, 2018 — Fishery managers will move closer to deciding the fate of the Gulf of Maine’s northern shrimp fishery when they meet in October to review the latest assessment of the imperiled stock.

The review is one of the final steps leading to a decision whether to reopen the fishery to commercial fishing for the 2019 season for the first time in six seasons.

It does not look good.

The popular winter fishery has been shuttered since the beginning of the 2014 season to all but research-related shrimping because of historically low abundance and biomass numbers that reflect a stock in free fall.

The 2017 benchmark assessment — which led regulators to close the fishery for the 2018 season — showed no signs of improvement from previous years and regulators seem to expect the same outcome from the 2018 stock assessment.

“The trends are similar,” Megan Ware, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates the fishery, said Thursday. “We’re still seeing the low trends that we’ve seen in the past five years.”

The 2017 stock status report made for sobering reading.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

How New England’s Jonah Crab Turned From Garbage To Delicacy

September 6, 2018 — The Jonah crab is a medium-sized crab, ranging from brownish to reddish to greyish, boasting big claws tipped with black. During the winter, when most of the year’s crabs are caught along the Atlantic coast from Maine down to Rhode Island, it has an exceedingly hard shell, requiring a hammer or a saw to open. It’s mostly served as a plate of the large claws, with someone else taking care of scoring and cracking them open for the customer.

If this reminds you of Florida’s famed stone crab, which sells for about $30 a pound, you’re on the right track; the two species are very similar in appearance and even flavor. And yet until just a few years ago, the Jonah crab cost about $0.50 a pound. Or it was free. “Lobstermen would pull them up and in most cases have no idea what to do with the things, so they’d usually just throw them back,” says Bryan Holden, a partner at Luke’s Lobster who’s been right at the forefront of the Jonah crab’s transformation. (Luke is his brother.)

Jonah crabs are attracted to the same bait as lobsters, and are equally as flummoxed by lobster traps, so for decades, they were simply a bycatch. Maybe the lobstermen would bring them home themselves, or sell them for basically nothing to the small seafood shacks that spring up along any coast. Until about four years ago, there was no Jonah crab industry: few were processing it, and hardly anyone besides those who make their living from the sea in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Maine had even heard of it.

Read the full story at Modern Farmer

Quotas up for most key Northeast groundfish stocks

September 6, 2018 — At the start of 2018, regulatory changes triggered substantial quota increases for several commercially important groundfish stocks, including Georges Bank cod, Gulf of Maine cod, Gulf of Maine haddock and pollock — as well as smaller increases for a few choke stocks.

“The stocks themselves are in good shape, with plenty of fish to catch,” said Bert Jongerden, general manager of the Portland Fish Exchange, a wholesale fish auction in Maine.

Catch limits for other groundfish decreased from 2017 limits, and fishermen still face challenges with non-allocated stocks, such as windowpane flounder.

“Overall, however, the 2018 quotas provide a number of groundfish fishing opportunities on healthy resources,” said Janice Plante, public affairs officer for the New England Fishery Management Council.

Despite a Gulf of Maine cod quota increase, the catch limit remains depressed for fishermen trying to work on healthy stocks. Wholesale auction prices for gulf cod were averaging at $2.52 for large cod in late July. However, added Jongerden, “dabs are the choke species for cod, and boats have to buy allocation in order to go fishing.”

Georges Bank haddock continues to be one of the healthiest stocks — and markets support it.

Read the full story at National Fisherman