Saving Seafood

Seaweed matters: Eat your vegetables

April 26, 2019 — When I sat down at a Portland kombucha bar to attend a local Seaweed 101 session, I fully expected a love story about wild, vegan kelp and how we can change the world by eating more sea vegetables. What I didn’t expect was an in-depth exchange about federal fishery management and how it has decimated the industry’s communities in New England.

VitaminSea owner, and host of the session, Tom Roth was a commercial tilefish captain out of New Jersey a lifetime ago. He transitioned into New York Harbor tugboats as the industry declined, and started diving for kelp in his spare time from his home base in southern Maine about 15 years ago.

These days he goes out in a 40-foot boat that carries three other divers, two wooden skiffs and two Zodiacs. Each diver takes a small craft out on his own; they spread out, harvest, then meet back at the boat to help each other unload.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Omega Protein: New York menhaden law a ‘feel good’ for environmentalists

April 26, 2019 — Omega Protein says it won’t be hurt by a new law that blocks it from fishing for menhaden in New York state waters in order to preserve the forage fish for whales and other wildlife because it never goes there.

Rather, it’s “feel-good legislation for the environmental community, but it will have zero impact on the company’s operations”, commented Ben Landry, director of public affairs for the Houston, Texas-based division of Canada’s Cooke, when called by Undercurrent News Tuesday for a response.

The legislation passed unanimously, 61-0, by New York’s Senate in February (companion bills S. 2317 and A. 2571) went into effect immediately upon being signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday. The new law, which was sponsored by Democratic senator Todd Kaminsky and assembly member Steve Englebright, prohibits the taking of menhaden with the use of purse seine nets within three miles of the state’s coast.

Because menhaden are sensitive to oxygen levels in the water and can die off by the thousands when large schools become too confined in one area during hot weather, the law allows the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue a temporary order to allow purse seiners to reduce the population.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Amazon, Walmart lead new pilot e-commerce program in US

April 24, 2019 — Amazon and Walmart are participating in a United States government pilot program that allows Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients to buy groceries online.

The two-year test, which recently launched in New York, allows online purchasing by SNAP households with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards issued in New York.

Amazon and Walmart will participate in the initial pilot launch on 23 April with ShopRite joining early next week. ShopRite and Amazon are providing service to the New York City area and Walmart is providing online service in upstate New York locations.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

As wind giants set sights on NY, fishermen demand a role

UK fishermen tell locals of their experiences in Europe with offshore wind farms and how to organize.

April 10, 2019 — As global wind-energy interests set their sights on more than a dozen offshore U.S. energy areas, two longtime British fishermen who act as go-betweens to the offshore wind industry and the fishing community advised Long Island fishermen to stay vigilant and demand a seat at the table when waters are divvied up.

Two dozen Long Island fishermen gathered in Montauk Monday to hear how two veterans of Europe’s maturing offshore wind industry worked to bring their industry into discussions on siting projects in waters that have traditionally been their workplace. It hasn’t been easy, and successes have come only recently, they said.

Colin Warwick, chairman of the Fishing Liaison Offshore Wind and Wet Renewables, Crown Estate, said U.K. fishermen were initially caught flat-footed when wind-energy developers first started planning turbines for their fishing grounds. It’s taken time for fishermen to demand a seat at the table so that prime harvest grounds aren’t lost, and so that fishermen can be compensated if even temporary work limits access to those grounds.

“We had to find a way to bring the fishing industry into the discussion,” said Warwick. “Most importantly, you have to be organized.”

Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, said challenges continue. “We’re fighting on everything and we’re united as a group, but we can’t seem to get teeth in because wind farm companies keep saying, ‘I can’t hear you.’ ”

Read the full story at Newsday

 

International Collaboration Sheds Light on Ocean Acidification’s Impact on Shellfish

April 10, 2019 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Emilien Pousse has been fascinated by the sea since learning to scuba dive with his father. He wasn’t always as keen on computer programming.

Yet here he is, a post-doctoral researcher from France, working to calibrate a computer model that describes the energy budgets of two commercially important shellfish – oysters and surfclams.

But first, he must know more about the consequences of ocean acidification on the metabolism and shell development of these creatures. He’s in the process of conducting those experiments with shellfish experts at the NEFSC Milford Lab.

Back in France, Emilien pursued his master’s degree with a math professor who required students to learn computer modeling skills. While some students enjoyed it, initially Emilien did not. Despite this, his internship advisor convinced him to apply for a Ph.D. project in the marine ecology doctoral program at Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest, France, though the project also involved modeling.

After conducting experiments for his dissertation, Emilien persevered in learning computer programming and discovered the dynamic energy budget theory on which his shellfish model is based.

“Little by little, I understood computer modeling,” Emilien says. When he began to see it as a tool to understand how oysters function, learning became easier. “I needed to learn some new skills to understand computer modeling, but it allowed me to learn more about the physiological processes of oysters and other marine animals,” Emilien reflected.

Oysters are a major industry in France. In 2012, a large bloom of Alexandrium minutum, a toxic algae known to cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, caused the oyster fishery in the Bay of Brest to close for several weeks during the summer and led to considerable economic disruption.

This algal bloom inspired Emilien’s doctoral work, which focused on modeling the accumulation of paralytic shellfish toxins in oysters. His dissertation was part of a multidisciplinary project, which engaged marine biologists, policy experts and researchers studying food safety.

While he was wrapping up his dissertation, a group of collaborators from the Milford Lab, led by lab director and shellfish expert Gary Wikfors, visited the university to conduct an experiment. The lab has a 25-year long (and counting) collaborative relationship with researchers in France. A colleague who had previously conducted research in Milford introduced Emilien to the group. Research chemist Shannon Meseck mentioned that she was looking for a post-doctoral researcher to work on a modeling project with shellfish, which was exactly the opportunity that Emilien had been looking for.

While driving home from that meeting, he weighed whether to apply for the job. The opportunity would mean moving thousands of miles away from home for two years. Ultimately, the excitement of coming to the United States and working with scientists in Milford won out. Emilien knew the project would allow him to grow as a researcher, flex his computer modeling skills, and expand his knowledge to understand the effects of ocean acidification. He was also excited to experience American culture and live close to New York City.

Although Emilien is currently studying the Eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, a native of the US East Coast, he admits his favorite oyster to eat is the European flat oyster, Ostrea edulis. No matter the species, he likes to eat oysters on the half shell, with a little bit of vinegar and shallots. Emilien hopes the results of his research will help shellfish growers plan and be resilient in the face of a changing ocean.

Story originally posted by NOAA Fisheries 

Equinor to support New York Bight whales monitoring

April 10, 2019 — Offshore wind power developer Equinor Wind US is entering a joint project with conservationists and scientists to deploy two new acoustic buoys to expand detection and monitoring of whales in the New York Bight.

To be operated with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, the buoys will provide near real-time monitoring of species including sei, fin and humpback whales, and the extremely endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The buoys will become a broader network with a previously deployed acoustic buoy, funded by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Flora Family Foundation, now on station about 22 miles off New York.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

NOAA maintains East Coast bluefish catch rules for this year

April 4, 2019 — Federal fishing regulators say catch quotas and regulations for Atlantic bluefish will be about the same this year as they were in 2018.

Bluefish is an oily fish that is popular with some seafood fans on the East Coast, where it is fished commercially. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says rules for this year are only experiencing minor adjustments, in part because no states exceeded their quota allocations last year.

Fishermen will be able to harvest more than 7.7 million pounds of bluefish from Maine to Florida this year. The states with the most quota are North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Virginia, Florida and Massachusetts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the San Francisco Chronicle

NEW YORK: New measures to protect striped bass being eyed for the fall

March 28, 2019 — A steady drop in the population of spawning-aged striped bass is leading fisheries regulators to consider new measures to limit fishing impacts on that vital East Coast species as soon as this fall, state regulators said at a meeting this week.

Fishermen were given the floor at a meeting of the civilian Marine Resources Advisory Council in Setauket to suggest and opine on measures to limit so-called discard mortality — essentially the unintended killing of fish that are too small or over the limit of the one fish at 28 inches that anglers are allowed to keep in a season that starts April 15 through December 15. Any new measures would apply to recreational, not commercial, striped bass fishing.

Suggestions included everything from banning surfcasting and commercial fishing nets to requiring hooks that limit damage to fish. The measures were alternately greeted by heckles or applause from the standing-room-only crowd of chiefly fishing boat captains and anglers from across Long Island.

Read the full story at Newsday

Gas pipeline would ‘rip up the clam beds’ in New Jersey for New Yorkers’ sake, foes say

March 27, 2019 — Richard Isaksen has been clamming and crabbing in Raritan Bay and fishing lower New York Bay for 50 of his 63 years. It’s a hard life, but it’s the only one he knows, and all he wants for himself and his fellow fishermen is to be able to keep plying those waters.

“We ain’t asking for nothing,” said Isaksen, of Middletown, who’s the skipper of the 65-foot fishing boat Isaetta and president of the Belford Seafood Coop in Monmouth County. “We just want to make a living.”

But that could much tougher, Isaksen said, if state regulators join federal counterparts in approving the so-called Rarian Loop, a 23-mile underwater natural gas pipeline that would run along the sea floor across Raritan Bay and Lower New York Bay to Brooklyn.

“They’re going to interrupt everything in the bay,” said Isaaksen, whose Monmouth County fishing cooperative belongs to a coalition of environmentalists, fishermen and elected officials opposed to the project. “They’re going to rip up the clam beds. They’re going to destroy the crab beds where the crabs bed down. And then it goes out to Brooklyn, south of the Rockaways, right? That’s where we do our fluke fishing.”

The Williams Companies, Inc., a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company, has already been granted permits by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for the Raritan loop, part of Williams’ Northeast Supply Enhancement project, a $1 billion expansion of the 10,000-mile Transco Pipeline network stretching from Texas to New York.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NOAA official talks ‘damage’ to scallop industry from offshore wind

March 25, 2019 — The federal fishing administrator for the Greater Atlantic region told The Standard-Times Wednesday that although offshore wind will not threaten the overall sustainability of the scallop industry, the damage to it could be significant, especially for fishing grounds off New York. But later in the day, he clarified his comments, saying the “damage” remark does not accurately reflect his position.

Michael Pentony’s initial comments came when asked in an editorial board meeting if offshore wind gives the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cause for concern about the sustainability of the scallop industry, particularly with regard to wind turbines off New York.

He began, “I think it’s difficult to say that we have concerns about the sustainability of a three-to-five-hundred-million-dollar-a-year fishery.”

Asked specifically about damage to the industry, he said, “The damage could be significant, and we definitely have concerns about that. I’m less concerned about the overall long-term sustainability of the fishery, but certainly, we have concerns about the impacts of that particular area and how that could … play out.”

Read the full story at The New Bedford Standard-Times