Saving Seafood

N.J.’s sinking fishing industry nabs $11M life raft from state

January 29, 2021 — Nearly a year after being approved by federal lawmakers, financial relief is being handed out to New Jersey’s battered fishing industry.

Gov. Phil Murphy and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday that $11.3 million in grants are being distributed to Garden State fishermen, and the businesses that support them.

“Our fishing communities and seafood industries are important parts of our New Jersey identity, and crucial components of our state’s economy,” Murphy said in a statement. “The grants our administration is making to our partners in fishing industries will help the business and communities impacted by this public health emergency. I continue to encourage our New Jersey family to support our fishing industry by buying from local seafood suppliers and enjoying fishing through our local charter boat operations and bait and tackle shops.”

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW JERSEY: Fishing slows to a crawl, new commercial and recreational fluke allocations sought

January 29, 2021 — Fishing has slowed to a crawl as we approach the dead of winter. There are just a handful of party boats are sailing on either daily or limited schedules.

The Jamaica II and Ocean Explorer party boats took patrons out for blackfish a couple of times this week.

After so-so fishing on Monday and skipping Tuesday due to the ocean conditions, Capt. Bobby Quinn reported the blackfish were hungry on Wednesday. The ocean was a bit lumpy from northwest winds but fishable.

One of his fares reeled in a 14-pound blackfish as Quinn said the big fish were really on the feed. He observed a number of fish in the six to 10-pound range get hauled in. He had anglers catch their four-fish limit.

Capt. Ryan Bogan of the Jamaica II sailed Monday.  He bounced around and reported a catch of 17 keeper blackfish on the boat. There was one codfish and one ling landed on the boat.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

NEW JERSEY: How this family-run seafood business banded together to stay afloat for the next generation

January 25, 2021 — Water is everywhere in Cape May County, and land is borrowed space the loan sharks of the Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean periodically reclaim without eviction notice. People who make their livings here—lighthouse historians, funnel cake artists, surf instructors, hotel housekeepers, Coast Guard officers, mackerel processors, marine biologists, barbacks, and shot girls—do so because of and in spite of the water, and the tourism water brings every summer, reliable as the tides that flood and drain the saltwater marshes that stitch together ocean and bay.

Twenty-four-year-old Sara Bright is one of these people. She sells seafood by the seashore, in Wildwood more specifically, a town famous for its rambunctious boardwalk, wide white beaches, and midcentury neon. She lives with her parents in nearby Cape May Courthouse on a seagrass-fringed pond her commercial fisherman father, Bill, dug before she was born. If you told Sara a year ago that she’d be among the 52% of pandemic refugees under 30 that moved back home in 2020, and that she’d be working with her family in the seafood industry, “I would have laughed and said no way, my life is in Colorado.”

Sara and her three siblings—Tess, 26, Sam, 23, and Will, 20—grew up on the Cape’s man-made and moon-made waterways, digging littlenecks, catching crabs, going on fishing trips with Bill, and helping him and their mom, Michelle, run Hooked Up Seafood, the family’s acclaimed dockside food truck. But the mountains and the snow pulled each Bright kid West. After college and a year in New York, Tess moved to Denver for a marketing job with a 48-brand software portfolio. Sara followed her, committed to Colorado but leery of the corporate world. “A lot of my friends were getting jobs but weren’t happy, and I started to panic,” Sara says. “Growing up we were taught to chase adventure, and that life should be anything but boring.”

Read the full story at Fortune

‘You can fish’ our turbines wind energy developer Atlantic Shores tells N.J. fishermen

January 15, 2021 — There are many details to be worked out regarding the Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind’s lease site, which lies 10 to 20 miles off the coast between Barnegat Light and Atlantic City, but the wind energy developer has a message to fisherman: They are welcome to try their luck there.

The clean energy developer assured fisherman Wednesday they won’t be excluded from the roughly 183,000-acre wind farm.

“You’re welcome to fish by the structures; we just ask that you don’t tie up to them,” Doug Copeland, Atlantic Shores’ development manager, told about 75 people who attended a webinar hosted by the developer.

Atlantic Shores, a partnership between Shell New Energies US LLC and EDF Renewables North America, is six years from getting its wind farm up and running, according to its own timeline.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Lund’s Fisheries expands with new executive hires

January 15, 2021 — Lund’s Fisheries has hired four new senior executives and two additional sales and marketing staff, with an eye to growing sales of its Lund’s Fisheries and Sea Legend brands in the retail and food service markets, the company said this week.

“These new hires, in our sales, cold storage/logistics and quality assurance departments, are key to the company’s focus on continued growth of its production capacity and sales of innovative seafood products in the retail and food service sectors,” said Wayne Reichle, president of Lund’s, based in Cape May, N.J.

Joining the company are Mark Fratiello as its new director of sales and marketing; Mike Wallace and John Fee as national business development managers; Federico Sehringer as compliance officer and quality assurance director; Joshua Farinella as director of compliance and quality assurance; and Gene Taormina as general manager at Shoreline Freezers, located in Bridgeton, N.J.

Fratiello comes to Lund’s with an extensive sales background, including 10 years of experience in seafood sales and marketing. He will lead Lund’s sales team, of Jeff Miller, Mike Wallace, Rick Marino and John Fee, to grow their fresh and frozen scallop, calamari, shrimp, finfish and value-added lines, working with a national broker to drive national sales to broadline distributors, restaurants, wholesale distributors, and retail.

“I’m excited to be with a company that’s looking to expand its reach in volume, sales channels, and infrastructure,” said Fratiello. “It’s great to get in on the ground floor to help build the brands and create new opportunities for the company to grow. Lund’s investments in vessels and shoreside infrastructure provide an incredible foundation to build successful national seafood programs and bring consumers direct to the source.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Lund’s invests heavily in foodservice despite COVID-19 challenges

January 14, 2021 — While many seafood processors are struggling to survive during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lund’s Fisheries is expanding its storage and processing space, and hiring a slate of executives to fuel growth of value-added lines – primarily to foodservice.

The Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based company, which owns 19 fishing vessels and has production facilities in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, will break ground on a 90,000-square-foot cold and dry storage facility to its Shoreline Freezers facility this summer. It also plans on adding processing capabilities at the plant, Mark Fratiello, the company’s new director of sales and marketing, told SeafoodSource.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Giant turbines will generate power at New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm

January 7, 2021 — New Jersey’s first offshore wind farm will also be among the first in the world to be powered by the biggest and most powerful turbines ever built, the project’s developer said.

Ocean Wind, a planned farm about 15 miles off Atlantic City, is due to start operating in 2024, using as many as 99 Haliade-X turbines — giant machines that will tower 853 feet (260 meters) above the ocean’s surface, using blades that are 351 feet (107 meters) long, and can each generate enough electricity to power 16,000 homes.

The technology, built by GE, has a working prototype near the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands, but it hasn’t yet been commercially deployed. The turbines are also scheduled to be used for the planned Skipjack wind farm — much smaller than the New Jersey project — off the coast of Maryland, that is expected to start operating by the end of 2023.

GE says each of the turbines, each with a 12-megawatt (MW) capacity, can generate emissions-free electricity that equates to taking 10,000 cars off the road annually.

Read the full story at the New Jersey Spotlight

New Jersey seafood workers aim to ensure they’ll be among first round of essential workers getting COVID-19 vaccine

December 28, 2020 — A group of New Jersey fishing businesses and organizations sent a letter to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy this month urging him to keep the seafood industry’s workers as a high-priority group for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Seafood employees, like others in the food processing industry, are considered essential workers. According to guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that group falls in Phase 1b, along with public transit employees, first responders as well as teachers and other school staff.

Those federal guidelines, though, stand just as a recommendation as the states will be making the call on who gets priority. New Jersey’s COVID-19 vaccination plan calls for defining the essential workers group in early 2021.

The state says it plans to follow the CDC recommendations, but it’s expected there will be more intended recipients than available vaccines. With that anticipated shortage, officials believe they’ll need to prioritize within the Phase 1b grouping.

Read the full story at KPVI

Extended: Slow Speed Zone Southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey to Protect Right Whales

December 21, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In Effect through January 4

NOAA Fisheries is extending a Slow Zone (voluntary vessel speed restriction zone) southeast of Atlantic City, New Jersey.

On December 20, 2020, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s acoustic array noted the presence of right whales southeast of Atlantic City.

Mariners, please go around this area or go slow (10 knots or less) inside this area where right whales have been detected.

The SE Atlantic City Slow Zone is in effect through January 4 for waters bounded by:

39 25 N
38 44 N
073 44 W
074 36 W

See the coordinates for all the slow zones currently in effect.

Read the full release here

Atlantic Shores, Ørsted apply in new round of offshore wind contracts

December 11, 2020 — Atlantic Shores Offshore Wind and Ørsted said Thursday they have applied to the state in the second round of competition to supply up to 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind power to New Jersey.

In September, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced it would open the application window for the state’s second solicitation of offshore wind development. The window closed Thursday, and a decision is likely to take months.

The current solicitation will award between 1,200 and 2,400 megawatts of offshore wind energy, the BPU said, “potentially tripling the state’s committed capacity from 1,100 MW to 3,500 MW.”

It is part of the board’s work to achieve Gov. Phil Murphy’s goal of creating 7,500 MW of offshore wind energy in the state by 2035, to power 3.2 million homes, the board has said.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City