Saving Seafood

Mid-Atlantic Council Meeting in Avalon, NJ: April 8-11, 2019

March 20, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The public is invited to attend the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council’s meeting to be held April 8-11, 2019 at the Icona Avalon Resort, 7849 Dune Dr, Avalon, NJ 08202, Telephone 609-368-5155.

Meeting Materials: Briefing documents will be posted at http://ww.mafmc.org/briefing/april-2019 as they become available.

Public Comments: Written comments must be received by 11:59 p.m. on March 27, 2019 to be included in the briefing book. Comments received after this date but before 5:00 p.m. on April 4, 2019 will be posted as supplemental materials on the Council meeting web page. After that date, all comments must be submitted using an online comment form available at available at http://www.mafmc.org/public-comment.

Webinar: For online access to the meeting, enter as a guest at: http://mafmc.adobeconnect.com/april2019.

Agenda: Click here for a detailed meeting agenda.

Press Contact: Julia Beaty, (302) 526-5250

NEW JERSEY: ‘It’s incredibly harmful’: Cape May rally against seismic testing draws crowd

March 19, 2019 — Every year, 65,000 people get aboard Capt. Jeff Stewart’s whale-watching boat.

Now, he says, his business may be in jeopardy as plans for seismic testing along the Atlantic Coast inch closer.

“Seismic testing will affect the whales and dolphins, along with the fish they eat,” said Stewart, of Cape May Whale Watchers. “They’ll have to leave the area and go somewhere else. It’ll be a detriment to the tourism industry.”

The widespread opposition along the Jersey Shore to planned seismic testing brought together more than 100 residents, local officials, high school students and even some inflatable dolphins at a rally outside the Cape May Convention Hall.

The protest comes after the Trump administration last year issued five authorizations to advance permit applications for air gun blasting from Delaware to Florida. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will soon rule on the applications, which would allow oil and gas companies to shoot sound waves into the water every 10 to 15 seconds to locate deposits under the seafloor.

“Our beaches, we can’t afford to lose them. This is our lifeblood down here,” Assemblyman Bruce Land, D-Cumberland, told a crowd with waves crashing in the Atlantic Ocean behind him.

In New Jersey, there’s been pushback from environmentalists and both political parties who say the testing — a precursor to oil drilling — would harm marine mammals and the state’s multi-billion dollar fishing industry.

In Cape May alone, commercial fishing was worth about $85 million in 2017.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

New Jersey shark fin ban bill punishes wrong people

March 18, 2019 — A New Jersey assembly committee will vote on a bill Monday that would prohibit the selling, trading, distribution or possession of any shark fin that has been separated from a shark prior to its lawful landing.

The bill is part of a larger national and international movement to crack down on illegal shark finning, but fishing industry members here say this particular bill will also hurt local fishermen not involved in the illegal trade.

While the shark fin bill doesn’t make it illegal for fisherman to have shark fins that were “lawfully-obtained in a manner consistent with licenses and permits,” it puts the burden of proof on the person to demonstrate the fins weren’t separated from the shark prior to lawful landing.

Jim Hutchinson Jr., the managing editor of “The Fisherman” magazine, said the bill will result in unnecessary penalties for fishermen who catch a legal shark and remove the fins in order to clean a shark, a routine practice by fishermen engaged in legal shark fishing.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Thousands of dead fish wash up in N.J. river, bay area over weekend

March 18, 2019 — Thousands of dead fish washed up in creeks that are part of the Shrewsbury River estuary in Monmouth County over the weekend after the large school of menhaden were pursued by predatory fish and depleted the oxygen from the shallow water, state environmental officials said.

The adult menhaden, a species in the herring family, were found near boats in docks in Oceanport Creek, Parker’s Creek and Blackberry Bay in Oceanport early Saturday, the state Department of Environmental Protection said Monday. The fish kill numbered in the “thousands and thousands,” Hajna said.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW JERSEY: The Swap-a-Fish Program That Traded Tilapia for Seafood Contaminated By Agent Orange

March 18, 2019 — AS IT GLINTS IN THE afternoon sunlight, Newark, New Jersey’s Passaic River looks peaceful. But a plaque along the boardwalk has a warning for visitors. “The river remains full of life,” it reads. “Try to spot these creatures, but until the pollution is removed from the river, be careful NEVER to catch or eat any of them.”

There’s been an advisory against eating lower Passaic fish since 1983, when the EPA found they were contaminated with dioxin—chemical waste from local factories, including one that produced Agent Orange, an herbicide the U.S. military used to devastating effect in the Vietnam War. Despite health risks ranging from cancer to developmental issues, people still catch and eat fish from the lower Passaic River.

Researchers don’t know precisely how many people consume fish from the lower Passaic. Elias Rodriguez, an Environmental Protection Agency Public Information Officer, says the EPA hasn’t seen evidence of widespread fishing. According to preliminary results of an ongoing study conducted by the NYU School of Public Health’s Zelikoff Lab, those who do fish the Passaic—including several homeless people who use it as a regular food source—are often food insecure and looking to supplement their diet. Research has shown that low-income anglers are more likely to consume their catches, and Latino anglers are less likely to be informed of the health risk.

Amy Rowe, County Agent at the Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Essex County, says that the vulnerability of populations who fish in the Passaic makes the problem particularly difficult to tackle. But in 2015, Rowe and her team implemented a novel solution: a fish swap.

Read the full story at Atlas Obscura

NOAA Fisheries Announces 2019 Bluefish Specifications

March 11, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today we filed a final rule approving and implementing the 2019 specifications for the Atlantic bluefish fishery recommended by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in cooperation with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The final 2019 specifications are fundamentally the same as 2018, with only minor adjustments to the final commercial quota and recreational harvest limit to account for most recent full year of recreational catch data (2017), and a 4.0 million lb of quota transferred from the recreational to the commercial sector rather than 3.5 million lb in 2018.

Table 1 (below) provides the commercial fishery state allocations for 2019 based on the final 2019 coast-wide commercial quota, and the allocated percentages defined in the Bluefish Fishery Management Plan. No states exceeded their state-allocated quota in 2018; therefore, no accountability measures need to be implemented for the 2019 fishing year.

Table 1. 2019 Bluefish State Commercial Quota Allocations.

State Percent Share Quota Allocation (lb)
Maine 0.67 51,538
New Hampshire 0.41 31,956
Massachusetts 6.72 517,828
Rhode Island 6.81 524,874
Connecticut 1.27 97,626
New York 10.39 800,645
New Jersey 14.82 1,142,264
Delaware 1.88 144,801
Maryland 3.00 231,426
Virginia 11.88 915,857
North Carolina 32.06 2,471,746
South Carolina 0.04 2,714
Georgia 0.01 732
Florida 10.06 775,558
Total 100 7,709,565

For more details please read the rule as filed in the Federal Register and our permit holder bulletin.

Questions?
Fishermen: Contact Cynthia Ferrio, Sustainable Fisheries Division, 978-281-9180
Media: Contact Jennifer Goebel, Regional Office, 978-281-9175

N.J. fishermen and offshore wind firms learning to coexist

March 7, 2019 — Hunched over a laptop, Jeff Dement pointed to a virtual map showing lease areas for offshore wind off New Jersey’s coast.

He clicked on the legend and added a layer showing where scallop fishing overlaps with potential turbine locations.

“You could do this for days,” said Dement, fish tagging program director for the American Littoral Society, as he gave a tutorial of an online data portal published by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean.

A few anglers gathered behind him inside a conference room in the Ocean County Library, where offshore wind developers and fishers gathered Wednesday evening to discuss how the two groups can lessen proposed wind projects’ disturbance of wildlife.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

MASSACHUSETTS: Governor Baker touts promise of wind power, new technology

March 7, 2019 — New York recently set a long-term goal of generating 9,000 megawatts of energy from offshore wind power, while New Jersey plans to build 3,500 megawatts.

But Massachusetts is seeking to produce just 1,600 megawatts, a target critics say is too modest.

Some environmentalists had hoped that Governor Charlie Baker would announce a loftier goal Wednesday at a forum in Boston about the future of offshore wind power.

Instead, Baker spoke more broadly about his administration’s efforts to bring the nation’s first large-scale offshore wind farm to the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, a project that could begin by year’s end.

He also spoke about the promise of new battery technology that in a few years could make wind and other renewable energy reliable enough to replace fossil fuels.

“There’s a tremendous amount of momentum and enthusiasm about what’s possible with respect to deep-water wind off the East Coast,” Baker said at the forum, which was organized by the Environmental League of Massachusetts and State House News. “It’s a significant opportunity to dramatically improve our environment and to take literally millions of metric tons of emissions off the grid.”

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Lund’s adds former Sea Born owner Lang, customer services pro Pimental

February 22, 2019 — Lund’s Fisheries, the Cape May, New Jersey-based squid, scallop and pelagic species harvester, processor and exporter, announced two new additions to its team this week, both with ties to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Jeffrey Lang, a nearly 30-year seafood veteran who most recently served as the president of Sea Born Products, in New Bedford, has joined the Lund’s sales and marketing squad. He is expected to add a considerable amount of scallop sourcing knowledge while providing retail, wholesale and commodity sales advice.

Lang started Sea Born 18 years ago after working seven years for Seafood Resources, in East Providence, Rhode Island, he told Undercurrent News in an email.

Lund’s also has added Donna Pimental, who it says will be heading a customer service team in New Bedford, while also integrating sales and purchasing with the Cape May corporate office. She “brings a wealth of knowledge in facilitating imports, domestic supply chain logistics and order fulfillment”, the company says.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Environmental groups seek injunction on air gun blasting until lawsuit decided

February 20, 2019 — Eight environmental firms filed for an injunction against the federal government on Wednesday, 20 February, in an attempt to block five companies from conducting seismic air gun blasting in the Atlantic Ocean until a lawsuit on the matter can be settled.

The request comes as the federal government could issue permits for the blasting as soon as 1 March, after NOAA announced in December that five permits could be issued for blasting in the Atlantic Ocean. That would enable companies to begin work, as part of a survey for potential oil and gas drilling, by the end of March.

Last December, the groups filed the lawsuit in a South Carolina federal court seeking to stop the blasting in an area ranging from New Jersey to central Florida. A month later, 16 South Carolina coastal cities, a chamber of commerce and the state’s attorney general filed their own lawsuit to block the permits, claiming the blasting could “destroy coastal fishing industries” in the state.

The two cases have since been combined.

In Wednesday’s filing, lawyers for the environmental groups said they could not reach an agreement that would keep the blasting from starting while the lawsuit worked its way through the court system.

“The harm Plaintiffs seek to prevent will begin as soon as seismic blasting does,” the document stated.

Read the full story at Seafood Source