Saving Seafood

New Jersey submits striped bass measures to federal commission

December 10, 2019 — At the close of last month, New Jersey submitted a range of striped bass conservation equivalency measures to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, or ASMFC, for review.

Just what those options were, Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the Department of Environmental Protection, didn’t disclose.

The ASMFC recommended states adopt a one-fish bag limit and a 28- to 35-inch recreational limit for ocean fisheries in order to reduce the coastwide harvest by 18 percent. This was on the ASFMC’s findings that striped bass are being overfished.

However, states are free to develop their own option as long as it achieves the required reduction.

Hajan said the ASMFC’s Striped Bass Technical Committee will review the measures and whatever options it approves will be made public and presented to N.J.’s Marine Fisheries Council.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

PRESS OF ATLANTIC CITY: Doubling NJ offshore wind power will require work, cooperation

December 6, 2019 — Gov. Phil Murphy, who already will be remembered for launching New Jersey’s offshore wind energy future, recently more than doubled the state’s commitment to electricity from turbines in the Atlantic Ocean.

In June, when the state picked Ørsted U.S. Offshore Wind to develop its first wind farm off Atlantic City, its goal of producing 3,500 megawatts by 2030 was considered ambitious. Five months later, with climate activist Al Gore at his side, Murphy ordered the state to produce 7,500 MW by 2035. That would be enough to power 3.2 million homes.

The original goal was worthy and very timely, and this one is good too. But don’t assume that scaling up New Jersey’s wind energy will be easy or done well, or even at the reasonable cost of the first 1,100MW Ørsted will deploy by 2024.

Read the full opinion piece at the Press of Atlantic City

New Jersey forms offshore wind working group

December 3, 2019 —  

 

  

 

Read the full story at Windpower Engineering & Development

Shark fin soup may soon be illegal in New Jersey. It’s now up to Murphy.

December 2, 2019 — New Jersey is now one step away from becoming the latest state to outlaw shark fins — a move conservationists say is crucial to help some shark species from going extinct but others warn will unfairly penalize fishermen in the Garden State.

The Democratic-sponsored measure would prohibit the harvesting, sale, trade, distribution, and possession of shark fins in the state.

It’s now up to Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy to decide whether to it sign it into law after both houses of the Democratic-controlled state Legislature passed the measure.

If he does, New Jersey would become the 13th state to enact such a ban.

Supporters say the goal is to cut down on shark finning, in which fishermen cut off a shark’s fin and dump the animal back into the water while it’s still alive. The shark then dies, often slowly.

According to estimates by the Humane Society of America, 72 million sharks die each year because of the practice.

The fins are often used for shark fin soup, a delicacy in China and other East Asian countries for hundreds of generations. It’s frequently served at banquets and weddings and has long been seen as a symbol of status.

Read the full story at NJ.com

Shell shock: Giant invasive mussels eradicated from U.S. ponds

December 2, 2019 — Most Americans know mussels as thumb-sized shellfish that occasionally adorn restaurant dinner plates.

But a colony of mussels as big as the dinner plates themselves has recently been wiped out from a New Jersey pond, where they had threatened to spread to the nearby Delaware River and wreak ecological havoc, as they already are doing in other parts of the world.

Federal wildlife officials and a New Jersey conservation group say they’re confident they have narrowly avoided a serious environmental problem by eradicating Chinese pond mussels from a former fish farm in Hunterdon County.

The mussels, in larvae form, hitched a ride to this country inside the gills of Asian carp that were imported for the Huey Property in Franklin Township and quickly began reproducing. Unlike the little mussels many Americans know, these ones can approach the size of footballs.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WHYY

NEW JERSEY: Legislature Succumbs to Humane Society’s Misinformation Campaign Against Sustainable Shark Fishing

November 25, 2019 — The following was released by the Garden State Seafood Association:

The Garden State Seafood Association (GSSA) is disappointed with the passage of Assembly Bill A4845/S2905 today, which would prohibit the possession, sale, or trade of legally harvested shark fins in New Jersey.

The U.S. Humane Society and environmental organizations have been pursuing this anti- conservation legislation for many years. The bill prohibits the sale and trade of shark fins under the guise of stopping “shark finning.” The commercial sector and U.S. fisheries passed a law nearly 20 years ago making shark finning and the sale of those fins illegal across the country and in all U.S. territorial waters.

GSSA is certain that existing federal laws prevent any sale of illegal shark fins in New Jersey.

“All this legislation does is to penalize legitimate, hard working fishermen of the state,” said Greg DiDomenico, Executive Director of GSSA. “Instead of acknowledging the leadership of our commercial industry, which operates a globally-recognized sustainable shark fishery, those supporting this legislation will penalize New Jersey fishermen, forcing them to discard a natural resource for no purpose.”

“This legislation rewards illegal poachers in underdeveloped and less-regulated nations by removing sustainable harvested fins from the world market,” said Scot Mackey, Legislative Agent for GSSA. “It will only increase the value of the fins these poachers will continue to harvest, while preventing our well-managed and sustainable shark fisheries from utilizing the whole animal.”

New Jersey Beach Walkers – Please Keep an Eye Out for Sea Turtles!

November 18, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The recent cold snap has caused a sudden uptick in the number of cold-stunned sea turtles washing up on beaches in northern, NJ – particularly Sandy Hook and Long Beach Island. We are asking all individuals walking these beaches, and beaches throughout the northeast, to report stranded turtles immediately to our stranding hotline at 866-755-6622. Responders from our Sea Turtle Stranding and Salvage Network are standing by to help!

Please keep pets away from these turtles since they are in a severely distressed state. If possible, please move them above the high tide line and cover lightly with seaweed and stand by the animal until a trained responder arrives. We greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us save these endangered animals.

Striped bass fishers in New Jersey eyeing new regulations with caution

November 12, 2019 — George Bucci has been fishing the waters off New Jersey’s coast for about 30 years, and says the striped bass population has taken a sharp dive in recent years.

He remembers boom times after a moratorium on the fish ended in the late 1990s.

“I would go in the ocean in ’98 and just see miles and miles of striped bass,” Bucci said.

But overfishing has brought it back to critical levels.

“I almost strictly target striped bass,” said Bucci, 52, of Northfield. “In the last five years, I’ve seen the decline in the population. I wouldn’t call it a steady decline, I would call it a sharp decline. … The biomass has shrunk to the point where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze almost.”

The dwindling population led the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board in October to amend the rules for commercial and recreational fishers alike.

The commission, in amending the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic striped bass, is aiming for an 18% reduction in commercial removal of the popular fish from 2017 levels, according to a release from the organization.

Read the full story at The Press of Atlantic City

PSEG subsidiary contemplates bigger stake in offshore wind

November 7, 2019 — PSEG Long Island’s sister power company is contemplating a second major offshore wind initiative with Danish energy giant, Orsted, in which it could acquire a stake in a massive New Jersey project, even as the company works to help implement separate Orsted wind farms for the South Fork and New York State.

PSEG Power announced last week that it had begun to seek approvals and analyze the prospect of acquiring a 25% stake in a 1,100-megawatt offshore wind farm for New Jersey called Ocean Wind. PSEG Power already had already been working to support the project. And it has a partnership with Orsted predecessor Deepwater Wind for a separate project in waters off New Jersey south of the planned Ocean Wind farm.

Deepwater Wind is the company that successfully bid for an originally 90-megawatt wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Massachusetts that will provide energy to the South Fork. The project was later expanded to 130 megawatts. PSEG Long Island’s power markets group provided the analysis that led to the recommendation of that project, which LIPA’s board approved in January 2017, after nods from town governments in East Hampton and Southampton.

Read the full story at Newsday

Weakfish Assessment Update Indicates Stock is Depleted

November 4, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The 2019 Weakfish Assessment Update indicates weakfish continues to be depleted and has been since 2003. Under the reference points, the stock is considered depleted when the stock is below a spawning stock biomass (SSB) threshold of 30% (13.6 million pounds). In 2017, SSB was 4.24 million pounds.  While the assessment indicates some positive signs in the weakfish stock in the most recent years, with a slight increase in SSB and total abundance, the stock is still well below the SSB threshold. Given the weakfish management program is already highly restrictive with a one fish recreational creel limit, a 100-pound commercial trip limit, and a 100-pound commercial bycatch limit, the Board took no management action at this time.

The assessment indicates natural mortality (e.g., the rate at which fish die because of natural causes such as predation, disease, and starvation) has been increasing since the early 2000s. Fishing mortality was also high during the mid-to-late 2000s. Therefore, even though harvest has been at low levels in recent years, the weakfish population has been experiencing very high levels of total mortality (which includes fishing mortality and natural mortality), preventing the stock from recovering.

To better address the issues impacting the weakfish resource, the Technical Committee recommends the use of total mortality (Z) benchmarks to prevent an increase in fishing pressure when natural mortality is high. The assessment proposes a total mortality target of 1.03 and a threshold of 1.43. Total mortality in 2017 was 1.45, which is above both the threshold and target, indicating that total mortality is too high. Fishing mortality has increased in recent years but was below the threshold in 2017.

Weakfish commercial landings have dramatically declined since the early 1980s, dropping from over 19 million pounds landed in 1982 to roughly 180,560 pounds landed in 2017. The majority of landings occur in North Carolina and Virginia and, since the early 1990s, the primary gear used has been gillnets. Discarding of weakfish by commercial fishermen is known to occur, especially in the northern trawl fishery, and the discard mortality is assumed to be 100%. Discards peaked in the 1990s but have since declined as the result of management measures and a decline in stock abundance.

Like the commercial fishery, recreational landings and live releases have declined over time. It is assumed that 10% of weakfish released alive die so that total recreational removals are equal to the number of weakfish landed plus 10% of the weakfish released alive. The assessment update used the new time-series of calibrated estimates of landings and live releases from the Marine Recreational Information Program. These estimates were higher than the values used in the 2016 benchmark assessment but showed the same overall trend. Total recreational removals peaked in 1987 at 20.4 million pounds and have declined since then to slightly less than 500,000 pounds in 2017. The proportion of fish released alive has increased over time; over the past 10 years, 88% of weakfish were released alive. Most of the recreational catch occurs in the Mid-Atlantic between North Carolina and New Jersey.

The Assessment Update and a stock assessment overview will be available on the Commission’s website, www.asmfc.org, on the Weakfish page under Stock Assessment Reports. For more information on the stock assessment, please contact Katie Drew, Stock Assessment Team Leader, at kdrew@asmfc.org; and for more information on weakfish management, please contact Dr. Mike Schmidtke, FMP Coordinator, at mschmidtke@asmfc.org.