Saving Seafood

Efforts with scallops and oysters paying off in NJ

August 19, 2019 — Fisheries management has provided a model for how people can adjust their impact on the natural world to benefit themselves and the environment. Scallops have made New Jersey a leader in East Coast seafood landings, with Cape May the region’s No. 2 port behind New Bedford, Connecticut. And oysters, while slowly growing into a robust and lucrative industry, now also promise to clean coastal waters and help reduce flooding.

Years of federal fisheries managers allowing Atlantic sea scallops to thrive by limiting their harvest have yielded an abundance of this shellfish delicacy.

New data shows their harvest last year reached more than 58 million pounds, the highest since 2011 and the fifth highest since record keeping began in 1945.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

2°C: Beyond the Limit: Extreme climate change has arrived in America

August 14, 2019 — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course.

In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond.

“These winters do not exist anymore,” says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation.

That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

NY spending $2M to study offshore wind impact on waterways, fishing

August 9th, 2019 — New York State said Thursday it will spend more than $2 million for five studies to examine ways to reduce offshore wind farms’ impact on marine environments and commercial fishing.

The studies, awarded by the state Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, followed Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s announcement of the first two large offshore wind projects for the state power grid.

The projects will produce 1,700 megawatts of a potential 9,000 megawatts planned by the state by 2040. Hundreds of turbines upward of 800 feet high will spin in waterways off Long Island, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

Another project by Norway-based Equinor for 816 megawatts will be located as close as 15 miles offshore from Long Beach.

Read the full story at Newsday

Dramatic Increase in Whales in NJ/NYC Raises Safety Concerns

August 9th, 2019 — The number of humpback whale sightings in New York City and northern New Jersey has increased dramatically in recent years, by more than 500 percent, as a result of warmer and cleaner waters, raising the risk of dangerous interactions between the huge marine mammals and humans, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick researcher.

The increase in sightings near one of the world’s busiest ports is a safety concern for both whales and humans, especially with a new wave of migration headed close to shores this fall, said Danielle Brown, a doctoral student in ecology and evolution in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biology Sciences and the lead humpback whale researcher and naturalist for Gotham Whale, a New York-based nonprofit that studies and advocates for whales.

Since Gotham Whale started documenting humpback whale sightings in the New York Bight apex – the Atlantic Ocean area from New York harbor east to Fire Island and south to the Manasquan Inlet– the number has increased to 272 last year up from five in 2011. Many of the sightings have occurred less than two miles from the shore.

Read the full story at Rutgers Today

New Jersey builds up man-made reef off Atlantic City

August 5, 2019 — New Jersey has found a new use for an old U.S. Navy lock gate: leaving it to the fish.

The state Division of Fish and Wildlife last week added a more than 100-foot-long and 40-foot-high caisson gate to an artificial reef about 8.8 miles off the coast of Absecon Island. Caisson gates are made of heavy gauge steel and are used to dam off the open end of dry docks.

The reef is one of 17 similar projects encompassing 25 miles of the sea floor in waters across the state under the Bureau of Marine Fisheries’s Artificial Reef Program. They are created to provide additional habitat for marine life, grounds for anglers and underwater structures for scuba divers.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

NEW JERSEY: New sharks could be visiting the Jersey Shore thanks to climate change

July 31, 2019 — While sharks off the Jersey Shore are nothing new, experts who study the ocean predators say New Jersey’s waters are becoming an increasingly popular destination for unlikely species of sharks.

Ocean-warming climate change is already bringing sharks typically found in southern waters, like bull sharks and blacktip sharks, to New Jersey on a more frequent basis said Thomas Grothues, an associate research professor at Rutgers who studies sharks (he just happens to be a past Shark Week star.)

As the planet continues to warm, this trend is likely to continue, Grothues said.

Read the full story at NJ.com

New Jersey weighs measures to protect lobsters as harvests shrink

July 25, 2019 — The US east coast state of New Jersey is undertaking a “full review of its lobster management” practices, including possible changes to the minimum size, following a continued drop in landings, the New Jersey Evening Post reports this week.

The state landed just 193 metric tons in 2018, down even from the 268t harvested in 2011, according to the newspaper. However, lobster remains New Jersey’s most valuable commercial species, with its landings accounting for about half of the fishing fleet’s annual income.

That was $190.5 million in 2017, down from $193.0m in 2017, according to the latest available data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The current review is looking at all management measures and has had input from scientists and fisheries managers in  European countries, according to the newspaper, which notes that several harvesters have been taken to court recently for exceeding minimum catch sizes.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Capacity issues loom for East Coast wind developers

July 17, 2019 — Off the New Jersey coast, the bright red hull of the Fugro Enterprise has become a familiar sight to commercial fishermen who pull shellfish dredges and tend gillnets.

Plodding along at around 4 knots, the 170’x40’x11′ survey vessel is making detailed geotechnical surveys for the Ocean Wind energy project, planned by Ørsted to accommodate towering wind turbines that would supply New Jersey with its first 1,100 megawatts of renewable energy generated by offshore wind.

To New Jersey’s renewable power advocates and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, the work is a welcome sight. It’s the first step toward building what they hope will be 3,500 MW of offshore power by 2030.

For people in the state’s seafood industry — including the long-established and profitable scallop and surf clam fleets — the big red boat portends a new struggle to stay in business.

“The impact to New Jersey will be devastating if the commercial fishing industry is displaced at all,” warned Brick Wenzel, a captain who fishes out of Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., as state utility regulators prepared measure so Ørsted and other companies could bid for power contracts.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Coast Guard have put wind developers on notice that they will need to plan for wide, safe vessel traffic lanes through future turbine arrays.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

Van Drew co-sponsors fisheries bill

July 12, 2019 — Congressman Jeff Van Drew, D-2nd, joined Alaskan Congressman Don Young, a Republican, to introduce a bill  reauthorizing the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery and Conservation Management Act on Thursday.

But the bill would make changes to the law that some environmentalists fear may result in taking more fish than is sustainable.

Among other things, the reauthorization would change how fishery councils determine fishery stock rebuilding timeframes, giving the public a greater role in the development of science and fishery management plans.

The fisheries legislation was first written by Young in 1975, according to Van Drew’s office, and was last reauthorized in 2006.

In a statement, Van Drew said H.R. 3697 “ensures that we have healthy fisheries, keep anglers in the water and keep fishermen fishing.”

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Trump offshore drilling plan frightens NJ business, environmentalists

July 3, 2019 — Environmentalists and business advocates, who are often divided over issues affecting the Jersey Shore, joined together Tuesday to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to allow drilling for oil and gas in the Atlantic Ocean.

Standing on the Pier Village boardwalk overlooking a stretch of sand filled with sunbathers and beach umbrellas, U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone Jr., D-N.J., said New Jersey residents must continue to fight efforts to open this region to oil and gas exploration.

The issue has divided President Donald J. Trump’s administration and politicians in coastal states.

Pallone said such activity would threaten $700 billion worth of coastal property in the Garden State and the half-million jobs that depend on a healthy tourism industry.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press