Saving Seafood

Fishermen worry about plan for wind farm off New York coast

June 20, 2016 — MINEOLA, N.Y. — A long-stalled plan to build a forest of power-producing windmills off the coast of New York may finally be gathering momentum, and that is sparking concern among commercial fishermen who fear the giant turbines will ruin an area rich with scallops and other sea life.

Federal officials announced earlier this month that they would auction off the rights to build the wind power farm on a 127-square-mile wedge of the Atlantic Ocean.

The tip of the wedge begins about 11 miles south of Long Island’s popular Jones Beach and spreads out across an area, sandwiched between major shipping lanes, where trawlers harvest at least $3.3 million worth of sea scallops each year, as well as smaller amounts of mackerel, squid and other species, according to a study commissioned by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

“There’s got to be a better place,” said Eric Hansen, a scallop fisherman based in New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Groups including the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association and the Fisheries Survival Fund and a seafood company in Rhode Island have already voiced objections about damage to the fishing ground and potential navigation hazards for vessels traversing the area.

“We’ll fight it every step of the way,” said Drew Minkiewicz, an attorney representing the Fisheries Survival Fund, although he stopped short of threatening legal action. He said scallop fishermen don’t object to all wind farms, but are angry the New York site was chosen without their input.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Times Union

North Carolina shrimp was a really big deal

June 19, 2016 — Rested, ready and eager to get going after what some people down this way refer to as “white gold,” owners and operators of a large fleet of boats will be shoving off from various coastal points … in search of the wily shrimp that are now beginning to move in commercial quantities in State-controlled waters.

The shrimpers, who run into the hundreds, are quite naturally hopeful as they prepare to sally forth into the sounds and coves after the shrimp that usually find ready markets to the north as well as in the Tar Heel State. …

Numerous buyers, especially from the New York area, are always on hand to buy the bulk of the the shrimp catch. The shrimp that go to northern markets are iced and rushed northward on trucks.

Read the full story at The Post and Courier 

Public Meetings on New York Offshore Wind

June 16, 2016 — The following was released by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management:

On June 2, 2016, Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) Director Abigail Ross Hopper announced the proposed lease sale and Environmental Assessment (EA) for commercial wind energy leasing on 81,130 acres offshore New York.

BOEM will hold five public meetings in June to provide an overview of the EA findings regarding potential site assessment (e.g., placement of meteorological and oceanographic survey equipment), and site characterization surveys (e.g., cultural and natural resource surveys), and offer additional opportunities for public comments. The meetings will begin at 6:00 p.m. in an open house format with a brief presentation starting around 6:30 p.m. The meetings will be held at the following locations:

Monday June 20, 2016

Long Branch Middle School (Auditorium)
404 Indiana Avenue

Long Branch, New Jersey 07740
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Tuesday June 21, 2016

Hofstra University (MPR Room)

900 Fulton Avenue

Hempstead, New York 11549
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Westhampton Beach Elementary School

379 Mill Road

Westhampton Beach, New York 11978
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Thursday, June 23, 2016

University of Rhode Island, Narragansett Bay Campus

Coastal Institute Building (Hazard Rooms A & B)

215 S Ferry Road

Narragansett, Rhode Island 02882
6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Monday, June 27, 2016

Waypoint Event Center at Fairfield Inn & Suites

Sea Loft Room

185 MacArthur Drive

New Bedford, Massachusetts 02740

6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

In addition to the EA meetings, BOEM will host an auction seminar in New York City to describe the auction format, explain the auction rules and demonstrate the auction process through meaningful examples. It will be followed by a public meeting on BOEM’s planning and leasing efforts regarding New York offshore wind energy activities. The public seminar and public meeting will be held at the following location:

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

TKP New York Conference Center, Empire A Room

109 W 39th St.

New York, NY 10018

Auction Seminar:12:30 – 3:30 p.m.

Public Meeting:    5:00 – 8:00 p.m. (with an overview presentation at 5:30 p.m.)

Auxiliary aids and services will be provided upon request. Please email your request to me as soon as possible via the address below (please request by June 22 for the June 29 auction seminar and public meeting). For more information about offshore wind planning efforts for New York go to http://www.boem.gov/New-York/.

Long Island a Possible ‘Breeding Ground’ For Great White Sharks, Experts Say

June 13, 2016 — Ever since the blood-curdling screams of an ill-fated skinny dipper, who met her famous demise in the opening scene of “Jaws,” generations of beach-goers have approached the water with bone-chilling trepidation.

Now, a leading shark research team has said it suspects Long Island might be a breeding ground for great whites and has launched a tagging expedition to be able to determine potential birthing sites.

But the news isn’t reason to panic: Experts agree that swimmers have a greater danger of being killed by a faulty toaster oven — or driving on the Long Island Expressway, for that matter — than being devoured by a shark.

According to OCEARCH Chief Operating Officer Fernanda Ubatuba — OCEARCH is a nonprofit organization dedicated to shark research — if you look at a global shark tracker, five mature female great white sharks have been tagged in the past three to four years, and it seems that “there is certain activity in that region.”

Great white sharks, she said, travel from Florida to Canada, “and you can see their activity sometimes overlaps around Long Island.”

OCEARCH has launched a Kickstarter campaign to tag and research great white sharks in the North Atlantic; that research might help to investigate sample sites and ultimately determine definite breeding sites around Long Island, Ubatuba said.

The team will tag juvenile great whites in New York waters, the campaign site says.

Technology utilized by OCEARCH aims to allow people to see, in real time, “breeding and mating sites for the first time in history. It’s amazing,” she said.

Read the full story at Patch

As Long Island Sound warms, its fish species are changing

June 13, 2016 — During a day of fishing on Long Island Sound earlier this month, Richie Nickerson of Niantic caught 10 legal-sized scup, a black sea bass and a northern kingfish — all species he wasn’t likely to land when he first started angling in these waters 30 years ago.

Tony Murphy of Berlin, who fished from the Black Hawk charter boat with Nickerson, also reeled in a haul of scup, also called porgies, as did most of the other 38 fishermen on board that day.

“It used to be we’d strictly catch bluefish and striped bass,” Murphy said. “But now, there are just so many porgies.”

Scup, black sea bass and northern kingfish are just three of the species once more prevalent in warmer mid-Atlantic waters that are now becoming abundant in Long Island Sound.

As the warmer-water species move in, they compete for food and habitat with cold-water species, such as winter flounder and cod, that are now becoming scarce.

“Everything’s changing,” said Greg Dubrule, owner and captain of the Black Hawk, which takes daily boatloads of anglers into the Sound from its docks on the Niantic River.

“There’s no question that, because of the warmer water, we’re seeing more scup and black sea bass, which had always been a New Jersey and southern Long Island fish,” he said.

“Our mainstay used to be winter flounder and cod, but now it’s sea bass, scup and fluke,” he added, “and we’re catching a lot of trigger fish, which we never used to see.”

Read the full story at The Day

Rep. Zeldin’s Bill for Long Island Fishermen Passes House of Representatives

June 13, 2016 — On Tuesday, June 7, 2016, Congressman Lee Zeldin’s (R, NY-1) EEZ Transit Zone Clarification Act (HR 3070) unanimously passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. You can watch passage of the bill here. The Congressman’s bill, which passed the House Natural Resources Committee with unanimous support on Wednesday, March 15, 2016, would clarify federal laws governing the management of the striped bass fishery in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Montauk, New York, and Block Island, Rhode Island, permitting striped bass fishing in these waters.

Between New York State waters, which end three miles off of Montauk Point, New York, and the Rhode Island boundary, which begins three miles off of Block Island, there is a small area of federally controlled water that is considered part of the EEZ. The EEZ, which extends up to 200 miles from the coast, are waters patrolled by the Coast Guard, where the United States has exclusive jurisdiction over fisheries and other natural resources. Striped bass fishing has been banned in the EEZ since 1990. Congressman Zeldin’s EEZ Transit Zone Clarification Act would authorize the Secretary of Commerce to open this area to striped bass fishing.

Read the full story at Long Island Exchange

NEW YORK: For The First Time In Decades, Herring Are Spawning In A Hudson River Tributary

June 13, 2016 — Herring are spawning in a tributary to New York’s Hudson River for the first time in 85 years after a dam was removed from the tributary’s mouth.

The spawning in the Wynants Kill tributary is seen as an environmental success, as NPR’s Nathan Rott tells our Newscast unit. He says it was previously “closed off to fish by a 6-foot dam at the side of an old mill there.” Nate explains:

“With the removal of the dam earlier this month, river herring and other ocean-going fish are making their way up the tributary to spawn. Those fish spend the bulk of their life at sea, but need smaller tributaries off of rivers like the Hudson to spawn and reproduce.”

There are more than 1,500 dams affecting Hudson River tributaries and “there’s a wider push to remove ones that no longer serve their intended purpose,” Nate adds.

“Every dam should have an existential crisis,” said John Waldman, a biology professor at Queens College, tells The Associated Press. “These are artifacts of the Industrial Revolution that are persisting and doing harm.”

Read the full story at NPR

Monkfish Money to Allow Study of the New England Fishery

June 13, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — The federal government says two projects designed to improve the future of the monkfish fishery will receive more than $3.7 million in grants.

The grants are going to the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth School for Marine Science and Technology and Cornell University Cooperative Extension.

The monkfish fishery was worth more than $18 million in 2014. It is based in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Fishermen also land monkfish in other states including New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and Maine.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network

US Department of the Interior Approves New York City Offshore Wind Project, Commercial Fishermen Oppose

June 10, 2016 — The Offshore Wind Project in New York City is given a go signal by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) last week. On the other hand, the commercial fishermen disagree in building windmills on pylons within approximately 329 square kilometers of the New York Bight.

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said that the department took a major step in broadening the nation’s energy portfolio, channeling power near population centers on the East Coast. The Offshore Wind Project is a public-private collaboration by Con Edison, Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) and New York Power Authority (NYPA).

Read the full story at Science World Report

Sen. Schumer: Closing Black Sea Bass Fishing Season Even Though Stocks Are Thriving May Dramatically Hurt LI Fishing Industry

June 6, 2016 — WASHINGTON — U.S. Senator Charles E. Schumer today called on federal fishery commissions, including the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, to update outdated and inflexible regulations and New York State DEC to re-evaluate New York’s black sea bass fishing season and consider opening it in June.

Schumer explained that New York’s black sea bass fishing season just closed on May 31st and will not begin again until July 1st. Schumer, today, said forcing the black sea bass fishing season to close – despite healthy stocks – without re-evaluating landing numbers could hurt Long Island’s commercial fishing industry, which supports direct and indirect jobs across the island.

Schumer pointed out that New York is already hurt by poor federally-generated yearly quota allocations, and said that losing out on any of the black sea bass quota due to a June closure would drastically hurt Long Island’s black sea bass commercial fishing industry.

“The black sea bass stocks are thriving and the industry is well below its allowable quota so it makes sense to keep open this fishery in June rather than close it,” said Senator Schumer. “We also must change the arbitrary and outdated federal regulations that hamstring the state DEC so we can more coherently and fairly manage the black sea bass fishery.”

Schumer continued, “Our Long Island fishing community is already reeling from low federal allotments, a closure and potential loss of black sea bass quota will throw it overboard. After a slow start to the black sea bass season, mostly due to weather, our Long Island commercial fishers are ready to bounce back and access the plentiful supply of sea bass, but instead they might fall flat if the feds and the state don’t throw them a line and let them do what they do best—fish. That’s why we should re-evaluate the current black sea bass season and consider opening it in June to help our Long Island fishing communities prosper in a way that is in balance with fishery management.”

Read the full story at LongIsland.com