Saving Seafood

Scallop & Fishing Industry, Municipalities, Sue Feds to Ensure Seafood Interests Are Considered in NY Bight Wind Energy Project

December 8, 2016 — The following was released by the National Coalition for Fishing Communities:

WASHINGTON — December 8, 2016 – The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), which represents the majority of the limited access Atlantic scallop fleet, is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit seeking a preliminary injunction to delay an anticipated lease sale for the development of a 26-mile long wind farm project approximately 11 miles off the coast of Long Island, scheduled for December 15, 2016. The story was broken today by the Associated Press.

The filing alleges that the leasing process for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) did not adequately consider the impact the proposed New York Wind Energy Area would have on the region’s fishermen. The site chosen for the 127 square mile wind farm is in the waters of the New York Bight on vital, documented scallop and squid fishing grounds, which serves as essential fish habitat and grounds for other commercially important species, including black sea bass and summer flounder. It is also an important foraging area for threatened loggerhead sea turtles and critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The lawsuit argues that fishermen’s concerns regarding the location of the lease area received “virtually no attention or analysis” from government officials ahead of the planned December 15 lease sale, despite fishing stakeholders repeatedly making their concerns known. It further states that BOEM failed to identify the proposed wind farm’s environmental, economic, social, and cultural impacts, and failed to “consider alternative sites in an open, collaborative, public forum.”

Several other members of the National Coalition for Fishing Communities (NCFC)—including commercial fishing organizations, businesses, and communities that depend on the sustainable use of Atlantic Ocean resources—have joined the lawsuit. The suit was filed against Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, BOEM, and BOEM Director Abigail Hopper.

Organizations joining the lawsuit include: the Garden State Seafood Association and the Fishermen’s Dock Co-Operative in New Jersey; the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association in New York; and the Narragansett Chamber of Commerce and Rhode Island Fishermen’s Alliance in Rhode Island.

The City of New Bedford, Massachusetts, the nation’s top-grossing fishing port; the Borough of Barnegat Light, New Jersey; and the Town of Narragansett, Rhode Island have joined as plaintiffs. Also joining are three fishing businesses: SeaFreeze Shoreside, Sea Fresh USA, and The Town Dock.

The New York Bight consists of the waters from Cape May Inlet in New Jersey to Montauk Point on the eastern tip of Long Island, and offshore to the outer edge of the Continental Shelf, where the coasts of New York and New Jersey form an upside-down L around shallow waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

The plaintiffs are represented by the law firm of Kelly, Drye & Warren.  The case will be heard by Judge Tanya Chutkan in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Case No. 1:16-cv-02409.

Press inquiries should be directed to Bob Vanasse at Stove Boat Communications, 202-333-2628.

Read the full legal filing and declarations from the plaintiffs at atlanticscallops.org

Mercury Levels in Gulf of Maine Tuna on the Decline

December 5th, 2016 — There’s some good news for sushi lovers. A new report finds that over an 8-year period, mercury levels in Gulf of Maine tuna declined 2 percent a year — a decline that parallels reductions in mercury pollution from Midwest coal-fired power plants.

Two years ago, Dr. Nicholas Fisher, a professor of marine sciences at Stony Brook University in New York, had a bit of luck — he found out that a colleague had established a collection of 1,300 western Atlantic bluefin taken from the Gulf of Maine between 2004 and 2012.

“They were frozen, wasn’t the entire fish, just about a pound from each fish or so. And then my colleagues and I in New York dissected out muscle tissue from each sample and analyzed it to determine the mercury content of each fish,” he says.

And as they created a timeline for mercury content for each year, taking into account the age and size of each fish sampled, a clear picture emerged.

“There was a fairly steady decline for all ages of fish, and the decline rate was approximately 2 percent per year, which doesn’t sound all that dramatic, but over 10 years it’s about 20 percent. Over two decades its about 40 percent,” Fisher says.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio 

New Giant, Air-Breathing Fish Discovered

December 2nd, 2016 — One of the world’s largest, most endangered, and most mysterious freshwater fish has yielded a new surprise: a likely new species—and possibly several more—have been lurking in the backwaters of the Amazon.

New research published by National Geographic explorer Donald J. Stewart and colleagues L. Cynthia Watson and Annette M. Kretzer in the journal Copeia this week reveals strong genetic evidence for an unknown new species of arapaima that was found at several locations in southwestern Guyana.

Long, narrow giants, arapaimas live in tropical South America. They can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh 440 pounds. They breathe air through a primitive lung, and tend to live in oxygen-poor backwaters. (See photos of arapaimas and other megafish.)

Stewart, who is also a biology professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in New York, says the team sampled hundreds of the giant fish in the Essequibo and Branco River basins in Guyana, which are part of the Amazon system. They found two sets of fish with highly distinct genetic markers at three locations in the Essequibo.

The genetic markers indicate the fish have not bred across the two groups for a long time and they are likely so different that they represent distinct species, says Stewart. At least one is therefore new to science.

“If you have two types of fish swimming along together but not interbreeding that’s pretty good evidence they are new species,” Stewart explains. “But we still have to work out the details.”

Read the full story at the National Geographic 

The real reason why you’re suddenly seeing whales in N.J. and N.Y. waters

November 28, 2016 — If you’ve spent any time walking the beaches or boating the ocean waters of New Jersey or New York in recent weeks, you’ve likely been treated to spectacle that has been a rarity in these parts for most of the past century or so: whales.

They’ve been seemingly everywhere.

Breaching just past the sandbars in Asbury Park.

Swimming past groups of surfers in Rockaway Beach.

Bumping into boats off Belmar.

And this week’s ultimate cetacean sensation: a humpback whale swam up the Hudson River for a photo op in front of the George Washington Bridge.

Besides inspiring a chorus of oohs and aahs, the increase in sightings is adding a blubbery new wrinkle to a raging debate over a far smaller fish: the Atlantic menhaden. It’s the menhaden, also known as “bunker” — clumsy, multidinous, slow swimming virtual floating hamburgers — that those whales are chasing.

Even as the whales were gulping down bunker along the coast of New Jersey, the ASMFC has been pushing the commercial quotas back up closer to pre 2012 catch levels. Last year, the catch limit was raised 10 percent, with the ASMFC citing data that showed bunker were not being overfished.

And, then, three weeks ago, the council voted to raise the commercial catch limits another 6.5 percent.

That move has been cheered by commercial fishing operations who argue the limits were never necessary and simply jeopardized an industry that employs hundreds of people from New Jersey to Virginia, where the largest menhaden processing operation, Omega Protein Corp, is located.

“The fact that there’s a lot of fish around has nothing do with reducing these quotas,” said Jeff Kaelin, spokesman for Lund’s Fisheries, a Cape May commercial fishing company that sells bunker as lobster bait. The increased number of whale sightings is simply the result of smaller fish growing to a larger size due to “environmental conditions.”

“The stock was not overfished,” he said. “It’s never been.”

Kaelin said the 20 percent coast-wide reduction translated into a roughly 50 percent cut for New Jersey companies that harvest bunker, because it shut down the fishery early in the year and put the state’s crucial fall harvest off limits.

“If the science says we need to cut back we will, but in this case we feel very strongly that we’re underfishing the stock,” he said.

Read the full story at NJ.com

Save the Summer Flounder Fishery Fund Data Proves Anglers’ Concerns

November 28, 2016 — The results of a recent collaborative study between researchers at Rutgers University and Stockton University of New Jersey, the University of Rhode Island, and Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, NY and Cornell University may hold the key to bold new management changes in the summer flounder fishery.

The research project, Sex and Length of Summer Flounder Discards in the Recreational Fishery, NJ to RI, spanned the 2016 summer flounder recreational season beginning May 23 and continuing through September 16. Samples were collected aboard for-hire recreational fishing vessels from selected ports in New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island, and were supplemented by a series of back bay, shallow water trips.

Samples were collected from stations ranging in depth from 5 to 95 feet and spanning a latitudinal range from just off the coast of Delaware to coastal Rhode Island. According to the survey results, sex-at-length data was collected for a total of 2,243 discard-sized fish and 842 legal-sized fish.

Researchers say lab analysis findings confirm prior observations that female summer flounder dominate the recreational catch, although it was also demonstrated that this does not hold below the legal size limit where fish smaller than the legal limit were predominately male. On average, across all ports, dates and depths, the sex ratio approximates 50:50 at 15.35 inches in length, with males dominant in the size classes less than that mark and females dominant above the 15.35-inch (39 cm) mark.

Read the full story at The Fisherman

NEW YORK: Commercial Fishing Boat Runs Aground in Montauk

November 28th, 2016 — A 55-foot commercial a commercial fishing dragger, the Miss Scarlett, based in New London, Conn., ran aground on the beach along Navy Road in Montauk at about 6 a.m. Sunday near high tide.

There were no injuries reported. The crew of the Miss Scarlett remained onboard the stranded vessel until they were picked up by a skiff from another boat around noon.

The stranded vessel, which was located just west of the Port Royal, became a destination for families who flocked to the beach to take pictures of it throughout the morning.

According to the Coast Guard, the boat will be pulled off the beach by salvage vessels if found sound enough once the turbulent waters subside.

Read the full story at The East Hampton Star

NEW YORK: Why researchers think humpback whale swam up the Hudson

November 22, 2016 — The whale spotted in the Hudson River Thursday in Friday was likely led there by food, the head of a local whale research group said.

Photos of the humpback whale showed it “lunge feeding,” said Paul Sieswerda, president of Gotham Whale.

“That’s when they come up and break the surface and consume these bait balls of menhaden,” he said.

Predators drive menhaden, sometimes known as bunker fish, into tight balls. This allows whales to open their mouths and eat them all at once.

Read the full story at NJ.com

NEW YORK: Acoustic buoy now detecting rare, endangered whales in New York Bight

November 17, 2016 — An acoustic buoy recently deployed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and WCS’s (Wildlife Conservation Society) New York Aquarium is making its first near real-time detections of two rare great whale species in the New York Bight, including the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

On November 14th, the hi-tech buoy named “Melville” detected the telltale “up call” of the North Atlantic right whale, one of the world’s highly endangered whale species that numbers only 500 individual animals. It is the second detection of a North Atlantic right whale made by the buoy since October 26th. The acoustic buoy made another rare find on October 31st with the detection of a sei whale, a species that grows up to 65 feet in length and is rarely observed in New York waters.

North Atlantic right whales are particularly vulnerable to getting hit by ships, so any information on the whereabouts of these animals along the coast is important. Researchers from WCS and WHOI report that the North Atlantic right whale detected on October 26th was outside of the New York Harbor Seasonal Management Area (SMA), one of a series of zones along the eastern seaboard established to protect the slow-swimming whales with boat speed restrictions during their migration periods. Vessel speed restrictions for the mid-Atlantic seasonal management areas—including the SMA in New York Bight—runs between November 1st and April 30th.

“Having the ability to detect North Atlantic right whales and other species rarely seen in New York waters is extremely important given their endangered status,” said Dr. Howard Rosenbaum of WCS’s Ocean Giants Program and co-lead of the WCS New York Aquarium-WHOI project. “In particular, our ability to detect North Atlantic right whales in this area near the shipping lanes but outside these seasonal management areas will hopefully help with efforts to safeguard this highly endangered species in the New York Bight.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Can North Carolina’s Local Seafood Movement Help Save its Fishermen?

November 16, 2016 — North Carolina’s commercial fishermen—who work primarily in independent, small-scale operations—landed 66 million pounds of fish last year, but rather than ending up on North Carolina plates, the majority was whisked out of state to markets where it could fetch a higher price.

“I think more New Yorkers eat North Carolina seafood than North Carolinians,” says Ann Simpson, who grew up in a small town on the coast and currently directs North Carolina Catch, a partnership of smaller organizations working to strengthen the state’s local seafood economy.

To fill the void created by the export of its catch, North Carolina—like most states—ships in seafood from abroad. Today, around 90 percent of the seafood Americans eat has been imported from places like China, Thailand, Canada, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Ecuador, and the average fish travels more than 5,400 miles between the landing dock and point of sale.

“People come to the coast looking for fresh seafood, and for the most part, they’re getting seafood from halfway around the world, which they’re eating in a local setting,” says Noelle Boucquey, assistant professor of environmental studies at Eckerd College, who studied North Carolina’s fisheries while at Duke University. Patronize a vendor at the Outer Banks Seafood Festival in Nags Head, and you’ll face the same conundrum.

Read the full story at Civil Eats

NEW YORK: Thousands of dead fish clogged a New York canal. Why?

November 16, 2016 — Residents of Hampton Bays, N.Y., awoke Monday morning to find their local canal clogged with tens of thousands of silvery, dead fish. The bodies were packed together so tightly that it looked as though you could walk across them, one man told the local news channel News12. The air was thick with their noxious smell.

This was a classic fish kill — a massive die-off that occurs when too many fish are in a body of water with too little oxygen. Under ordinary circumstances, fish extract oxygen that has been dissolved in water as it filters through their gills. When the amount of dissolved oxygen is insufficient, the fish become hypoxic — they suffocate and die.

The New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued a statement saying the closing of locks at Shinnecock Canal early Monday inadvertently trapped a large school of Atlantic menhaden — small silvery fish also known as bunker — in the canal. The school of normally saltwater fish had probably been chased into the canal by predators.

“They chased them in here, but unfortunately the locks are closed so it’s just a dead end, they can’t get out,” Chris Paparo, a lab manager at Stony Brook University Marine Sciences Center, told the New York Daily News. “And with the sheer number of fish in here, it just sucks the oxygen out of the water and they suffocate.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post