Saving Seafood

Feds propose new limits on cobia to avoid closing fishery

September 21, 2016 — Regulators have agreed to recommend changes to cobia limits in federal waters for next year that may prevent another near-debacle like this past summer in management of the popular fish.

If approved by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, the new regulations from the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council developed at their meeting last week in Myrtle Beach would be implemented in 2017 in waters beyond three miles from shore from Georgia to New York.

According to a news release from SAFMC, the changes are designed to help extend the season for recreational and commercial fishermen and help ensure stable fishing opportunities for the migratory stock.

Advocates for anglers and charter captains expressed satisfaction with the compromise but cautioned that there may be other restrictions adopted by individual states.

“The regulations for cobia in federal waters that were passed 7-to-6 last week at the SAFMC meeting were a direct result of the fishing community’s engagement in fisheries management,” said Southern Shores resident Billy Gorham, who owns Bowed Up Lures.

The SAFMC recommended that the recreational bag limit be cut to one fish per person, per day, with a vessel limit of six, and the recreational minimum size limit increased to 36 inches measured from the tip of the mouth to where the tail begins to split, known as the fork length.

A commercial trip limit of two fish per person per day, with no more than six fish per vessel per day, whichever is more restrictive, would also be established.

Read the full story at The Outer Banks Voice

MAINE: The ‘lobster capital of the world’ faces a crucial question

STONINGTON, Maine — When Deer Isle lobsterman Jeff Eaton peers into one of his traps, he sees a lot more than snappers and selects, hard-shells and shedders.

The part-time boat builder and avid lobster boat racer sees the heart of a $126 million regional economy that supports an even larger network of trap makers, bait dealers, marine supply shopkeepers and boat builders like himself.

That trickle-down shadow economy has transformed the island, which used to be known best for the granite quarries that built New York and Washington, D.C.’s most iconic buildings, into a thriving lobster economy, now best known as the home to a 300-boat lobster fleet and the town of Stonington, the self-proclaimed lobster capital of the world.

“Up here, the lobster business trickles down a lot further than just us fishermen,” Eaton said. “It feeds the whole economy.”

Although postcard-beautiful, with its neat, century-old houses looking out over its blink-and-you’ve-missed-it downtown, Stonington is a fishing village first and a stomping ground for summer people second. It’s the leader of a regional economy that traps more than a third of all lobsters landed in Maine, and an equal percentage of all the dollars earned from their sale. Last year the value of the state’s catch reached nearly $500 million. This stretch of coastline, and the lobstering islands of Vinalhaven, Isle au Haut and North Haven, landed more lobsters than any other managed zone, and has done so for the last four years.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

NEW YORK: Cuomo signs the Ex-Lax fish bill

September 12, 2016 — Seriously, you read that headline correctly.

Among the bills signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Friday is legislation that would ban the sale of escolar — a fish that causes some cases, uhhh, distressing gastrointestinal effects for diners — by any other name.

Because only Casey Seiler can do such a Tale of Actual Legislation justice, from his report earlier in the year:

Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee and Sen. Tony Avella are the most recent lawmakers to address the problem of the misbranding of escolar — aka walu or the snake mackerel — a fish that while reputed to be rich and delicious can have a rather, well, unpleasant impact on a certain subset of diners.

The justification memo on their bill points to multiple investigations — including a 2011 Boston Globe report that while comprehensive and worthwhile will almost certainly never be made into an Oscar-winning movie — that “revealed significant levels of fraud and species misidentification” on menus.

Read the full story from the Albany Times Union

Rare Great White Nursery Found Off Coast of Long Island, New York

September 1, 2016 — Jaws is back and she’s got babies.

Even though great white sharks have been on this Earth for thousands of years and have held a place in pop culture for decades, there is still little known about these apex predators. Scientists aren’t sure how these animals mate and have never witnessed a great white shark give birth, so recent news of a great white shark nursery in the Northern Atlantic is colossal.

According to Smithsonian, research group Ocearch, led by former Shark Wranglers host Chris Fischer, believes the waters off Montauk, Long Island, in New York may be a sort of baby shark daycare center, after finding and tagging 9 great white shark pups in the area in the last two weeks.

“[This is] definitely the nursery, likely the birthing site,” Fischer tells Jeff Glor of CBS This Morning. “Probably the most important significant discovery we’ve ever made on the ocean.”

Read the full story at People

New York governor sparks anger after killing threatened shark

August 29, 2016 –The New York state governor, Andrew Cuomo, and his news anchor brother Chris have been criticised by conservationists and constituents after posing beside a threatened shark they killed on a fishing trip.

The governor tweeted two photos of himself and friends standing next to the bloodied shark as it hung from a marina-side gantry.

“Today’s catch: A 154.5-lb [70kg] Thresher shark off the south shore of Long Island,” Cuomo tweeted.

All three species of thresher shark are listed as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) because of their declining populations. Fishing for them is regulated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration but it is not illegal.

Despite its legality, the UN’s patron of the oceans, Lewis Pugh, said the killing and subsequent photos were “abhorrent” and worked against those trying to conserve dwindling shark numbers.

“The environment is the primary issue on the global agenda, so it is extraordinary that a senior politician could be so ignorant about it,” he said.

Read the full story at The Guardian

A Restaurant’s Sales Pitch: Know Your Lobster

August 25, 2016 — It was a steamy summer day in New York in 2009 when Luke Holden, an investment banker, had a craving for a lobster roll. Not just any lobster roll, though. He longed for the “fresh off the docks” taste he enjoyed growing up in Cape Elizabeth, Me.

After an exhaustive search on New York’s streets, he came up dissatisfied and disappointed.

“Every lobster was served over a white tablecloth, extremely expensive, drowning in mayo and diluted with celery,” he said. “I wondered why all the great chefs in this city had screwed this up so badly.”

So that year, Mr. Holden decided to open an authentic Maine lobster shack in Manhattan. To replicate that fresh taste that he remembered, he would need to oversee, track and, where possible, own every step in the process.

Today, he owns 19 Luke’s Lobster restaurants, two food trucks and a lobster tail cart in the United States, and five shacks in Japan.

He holds an ownership stake in a co-op of Maine fishermen, which allows him to track where and how the lobsters are caught, and control the quality, freshness and pricing. He also owns the processing plant, Cape Seafood, that packages and prepares the lobsters for his restaurants.

“We’re able to trace every pound of seafood we serve back to the harbor where it was sustainably caught and to support fishermen we know and trust,” Mr. Holden said. “There’s no middleman in that whole chain.”

This might seem obsessive. But in business, it’s called a vertical integration strategy.

Read the full story at The New York Times

REP. LEE ZELDIN: To Protect the Antiquities Act, Don’t Abuse It

August 25, 2016 — The Antiquities Act was passed by Congress in 1906 and signed into law by President Teddy Roosevelt in an effort to preserve American land after the pillage and destruction of a number of Native American and archaeological sites in the Southwest United States. The Antiquities Act is one of the most important pieces of conservation legislation in our nation’s history, providing the President with the sole power to declare National Monuments on federal land for the purposes of historical and natural preservation and waters. These sites often become part of the National Parks Systems under the care of the National Parks Service which is tasked with the protection of all of our valuable monuments.

Throughout its history, the Antiquities Act has had bipartisan support and has been used by 13 Presidents. The preservation of the Statue of Liberty, Death Valley and Grand Canyon are just a few of the monumental and historic American sites that were saved through the Antiquities Act. However, for fishermen on Long Island and nationwide, the current administration’s overzealous and overly broad interpretation of this law is causing great concern.

Recent Marine Monument designations proclaimed by the Obama Administration have been the largest in U.S. history, locking out fishing in perpetuity—a severe departure from the original intent of the Antiquities Act to preserve historical sites and archeological treasures. In 2014, President Obama declared a 490,000 square mile area of water in the Pacific Ocean as a National Marine Monument after receiving little public input and through a process where transparency was severely lacking. As a result of this new monument, recreational fishing was severely limited and commercial fishing was completely banned, hurting fishermen in the Pacific Ocean. Now, important fishing areas in the Northwest Atlantic, where fishermen from Greenport, Montauk, and throughout the entire New York and New England region have worked for centuries, are under consideration for a National Marine Monument designation by the current administration. As the President is pushing to apply this power to large areas of ocean in the Northwest Atlantic, he is threatening to shutdown thousands of square miles of ocean from Long Island fishermen through abuse of the Antiquities Act.

Read the full op-ed at Rep. Lee Zeldin’s House Website

Warren Elliott elected Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council VP

August 22, 2016 — VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — G. Warren Elliott of Chambersburg has been elected vice-chairman of the Mid Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

The council is responsible for the management of marine fisheries in the United States waters from three to 200 miles offshore from New York to North Carolina.

Elliott was appointed to the council by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in 2010 and is serving his second term.

Elliott chaired the Ecosystem and Ocean Planning Committee for five years, and led the effort to protect deep sea corals across 39,000 square miles, the single largest protected area in the Atlantic Ocean.

“Warren Elliott has quietly established himself as a leader in ocean issues and policy, and I cannot think of anyone better to succeed me,” said outgoing vice-chairman Dr. Lee Anderson of Delaware.

Anderson was an original member of the council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee organized in 1978. He is a professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware.

The 25-member fishery council develops fishery management plans and measures – such as quotas, seasons and closed areas – for 13 species of fish and shellfish, including bluefish, summer flounder, black sea bass, surfclams, ocean quahogs and monkfish.

Read the full story at Public Opinion

OCEARCH Tags and Releases Great White Shark Pups For The First Time Off Long Island

August 22, 2016 — MONTAUK, N.Y. — Meet Montauk and Hudson, two young-of-the-year great white sharks just tagged and released off Montauk, NY by OCEARCH and its collaborative team of multi-disciplined scientists.

“This is an exciting marine conservation event right here in our New York seascape,” said Jon Forrest Dohlin, Director of WCS’s New York Aquarium.

“We’ve learned a lot about the adult sharks in recent years, but the pups are still a complete mystery,” said Tobey Curtis, lead scientist and Fisheries Manager at NOAA Fisheries. “Tagging these baby white sharks will help us better understand how essential Long Island waters are for their survival.”

Montauk, a 50-pound, 4-foot female white shark, and Hudson, a 67-pound, 5-foot male white shark, are the first two white sharks tagged by the shark-tagging partnership in New York waters. The tags on these young-of-the-year sharks will allow scientists to track their movements up and down the coast for the next several years.

The team, which includes researchers from WCS, NOAA Fisheries, South Hampton Schools, Florida Atlantic University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, and Stony Brook University, collected blood samples, fin clips, parasites, muscle sample and took measurements of the sharks. Each sample provides baseline data previously unattainable for great white sharks in this initial phase of life.

Read the full release at Marketwired

MAINE: Pogy fishery reopens with strict new rules

August 16, 2016 — Maine made bait fishermen and lobstermen happy Monday when it reopened its pogy fishery after concluding there is still enough menhaden left in the Gulf of Maine to keep the population healthy.

Those who hunt for nearshore schools of the flat, oily-fleshed silver fish – the second most popular lobster bait in Maine after herring – must follow strict new rules to prevent unusual damage or imminent depletion of the Atlantic menhaden. If they limit their fishing days to three and their catch to no more than 120,000 pounds a week, Maine fishermen can use up the remaining 2.3 million-pound quota allotted to Maine, Rhode Island and New York during a so-called “episodic” fishing event, when pogies are deemed unusually plentiful in New England waters.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources closed the traditionally quiet fishery on Aug. 5 after initial landing reports indicated the state had used up its usual pogy quota of 166,000 pounds a year and was racing through an extra 3.7 million “episodic event” pounds given to qualifying New England states much faster than expected. With the herring shortage already creating a tight bait market, DMR didn’t want to risk running out of pogies just as the lobster season peaks, when the state’s biggest commercial fishery, with a value of nearly $500 million in landings, need them most. Any overage could also trigger severe federal penalties.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald