May 9, 2016 — The Dock-U-Mentaries Film Series continues on Friday, May 20th at 7:00 PM with Fishing for Knowledge: Cooperative Research for Sustainable Fisheries in New England. Dock-u-entaries is a co-production of New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, and the Working Waterfront Festival. Films about the working waterfront are screened on the third Friday of each month beginning at 7:00 PM in the theater of the Corson Maritime Learning Center, located at 33 William Street in downtown New Bedford. All programs are open to the public and presented free of charge.
Atlantic herring rules change proposed
May 9, 2016 — Portsmouth, N.H. — Rules for Atlantic herring are being proposed by New Hampshire Fish and Game to help sustain the populations.
The rules are proposed to get New Hampshire into compliance with Amendment 3 to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Interstate Fisheries Management Plan for Atlantic herring.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is a deliberative body that coordinates the conservation and management of the 15 Atlantic coast states’ shared near-shore fishery resources for sustainable use.
Long Island lobstermen decry new federal rules on closures
May 9, 2016 — Long Island lobstermen, already straining under the weight of a seasonal closure of the Long Island Sound and sharply reduced lobster populations, face the potential for more closures as federal regulators work to rebuild a depleted stock.
Local lobstermen oppose closures, and question how regulators are making their decisions.
At a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission last week, the American Lobster Management Board agreed to review a series of new measures to address what they called the continuing decline in the Southern New England lobster fishery, which includes the Long Island Sound. The fishery has been affected by environmental factors and fishing activity, the board said.
“Our most recent [2015] assessment showed that the stock has continued to decline and we’re at record low abundance right now,” said Megan Ware, fishery management plan coordinator for the commission.
The scallop harvest in Maine has grown to 3 million pounds a year — and the price is growing too
May 9, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Maine’s rebuilt scallop fishery is enjoying high demand from the culinary world for its prized meaty mollusks, and the 2016 season that ended last month is likely to go down as another strong year.
All sea scallops have been growing in value over the past 15 years, and while Maine’s catch is a small fraction of the national total, they are a premium product for which restaurants and consumers pay top dollar.
The Maine scallop fishery dwindled to just about 666,000 pounds in 2009 before rebuilding to more than 3 million pounds in each of the last three years. State fishing managers credit new regulations, including a rotational management system that protects localized areas from being too heavily fished.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Providence Journal
SALEM NEWS: A small victory for at-sea monitoring
May 9, 2016 — New England fishermen got some good news last week when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced plans to scale back the amount of on-board monitoring required of the commercial fleet. However, there is still work to be done.
Late last week, NOAA said it will cut monitoring to 14 percent of all vessel trips for the season that began May 1. That’s down from about 24 percent of trips in 2015.
“Fishermen appreciate the changes and the evolution of the at-sea monitoring program,” Jackie Odell, executive director of the Gloucester-based Northeast Seafood Coalition, told reporter Sean Horgan. “We think what they’ve done is prudent and responsible.”
Misunderstood pollock a key to New England seafood’s future
May 9, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — It might not be time yet to rechristen Cape Cod as Cape Pollock, but the humble fish is staking its claim.
The Atlantic pollock has long played a role in New England’s fishing industry as a cheaper alternative to cod and haddock, but the fish’s place in America’s oldest fishing industry is expanding as stocks like cod fade.
But the fish has an image problem.
While considered a whitefish, its uncooked gray-pinkish color looks drab compared to the snow-white cod fillets consumers are used to seeing on seafood counters. And many confuse it with the very different Alaska pollock, which is the subject of a much larger industrial fishery that provides fish for processed food products such as the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish.
A loose consortium of fishermen, processors, restaurateurs and sustainable seafood advocates wants to change all that. They’re trying to rebrand Atlantic pollock as New England’s fish, and the push is catching on in places like food-crazy Portland, where food trucks offer pollock tacos to eager crowds.
Maine lobster suppliers strategize to foil EU ban
May 9, 2016 — Maine lobster suppliers met behind closed doors with dealers from some of Europe’s biggest lobster importing countries in Brussels last week to discuss a pending ban on importing live North American lobsters into Europe.
The six Maine companies joined their Massachusetts and Canadian peers, as well as national trade officials, to discuss the proposed ban with buyers and trade officials from eight European countries, including the three biggest importers of Homarus americanus: France, Italy and Spain. The meeting occurred at the world’s largest seafood industry trade show, said spokesman Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute, an American seafood industry trade group.
About 75 people met for 90 minutes to talk about how to avoid the all-out ban that Sweden asked the European Union to adopt in March after finding North American lobsters in European waters.
“Brussels was productive,” Gibbons said. “Unnecessarily excluding live North American lobsters from that market would have real impacts on both sides of the Atlantic, sales and jobs. So, no one is taking this lightly.”
In March, Sweden petitioned the European Union to declare the North American lobster an invasive species, which would ban live imports to the EU’s 28 member states. It based its petition on an 85-page risk assessment that claims the discovery of a small number of North American lobsters in the waters off Great Britain, Norway and Sweden over the last 30 years, including one female lobster carrying hybrid eggs, proved cross-breeding had taken place. The Swedish scientists say a ban would protect the European lobster from cross-breeding and diseases carried by the North American lobster.
MASSACHUSETTS: Hometown team running new fish plant
May 9, 2016 — Gloucester Seafood Processing Inc. is based in Gloucester. It is a stand-alone subsidiary of Mazzetta Co., which is not.
Problem?
Well, this is Gloucester, where life tends to be a tad provincial, as you might expect from a city that coined the phrase “up the line” to deal with the remainder of the North American continent.
It’s not surprising then that the arrival of Gloucester Seafood Processing about a year ago at the former Good Harbor Filet plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park was greeted with a measure of uncertainty and — in some quarters — downright suspicion and veiled whispers of carpet-bagging.
“The whole thing, while the place was being set up, was that we wanted it run by local people,” said Dave Fitzgerald, the New Zealander brought in by Highland Park, Illinois-based Mazzetta for the plant’s startup. “You see some of those comments about, ‘Here’s that company from Chicago’s going to take everything out of here.’ It’s not that. It’s a locally run company.”
Fitzgerald, as he uttered those words, sat at the head of a table in a conference room inside Gloucester Seafood Processing’s administrative offices, surrounded by front office colleagues, all of whom are sons and daughters of Gloucester.
Regulation Change May Keep Cape Scallop Fishermen in Local Waters
May 9, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Local small boat scallop fishermen will be able to fish an area of local waters that has been closed since 2014.
The New England Fishery Management Council has changed regulations to allow for scallop fishing in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area which is about 65 miles southeast of Cape Cod.
Council scientists have assured there will not be any conservation concerns from allowing limited amounts of fishing.
“They decided it doesn’t warrant an entire opening for the whole fleet,” said Bob Keese, a scallop fisherman out of Chatham on the F/V Beggar’s Banquet. “But there are plenty of scallops out there right now to warrant an opening for a small-boat fleet.”
The reopening of the Lightship area will also allow for the depleted near shore waters a chance to replenish, Keese said.
Fishery Board Considers Ideas To Protect Southern New England Lobsters
May 6, 2016 — The health of Southern New England’s American lobster population remains a concern for fishermen, scientists and regulators. Ideas for how to help replenish lobsters are still making their way through a long process.
This week the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s lobster management board offered ideas on how to improve the health of the declining lobster populations in areas critical to southern New England fishermen.
Mark Gibson, a board member representing Rhode Island and chief of the fisheries division at the state Department of Environmental Management, said they are just that: ideas.
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