Saving Seafood

DAILY ASTORIAN: Fishing essential in monetary and cultural ways

November 1, 2016 — For fishing communities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual publication about commercial landings makes great reading. As we’ve observed in the past, “Fisheries of the United States” is interesting here in much the same way crop reports are a topic of fascination for farmers.

Make no bones about it: Irrespective of decades of impressive economic diversification, the Lower Columbia and nearby places like Garibaldi, Newport, Willapa Bay and Westport, Washington, are fishing communities in essential cultural and monetary ways. Fishing dollars bounce around coastal towns and bolster the business climate in much the way fish fertilizer makes plants prosper.

Analysis of multiyear trends points out some disturbing news about the strength of commercial fisheries on the Lower Columbia. The 2015 edition of the annual fisheries compendium from the National Marine Fisheries Service (tinyurl.com/2015FishReport) finds Astoria-area landings at something of a low ebb.

With about 92 million pounds of landings, we were in 13th place nationwide in terms of volume in 2015. Reflecting the relatively low price of some local harvests — such as hake and sardines — we were in 27th place nationwide in the value of landings — about $38 million. In our vicinity, we were far behind Westport, Washington, in terms of value of the 2015 catch — Westport was 12th in the U.S. with a 2015 total of $65 million.

More important than annual “horse race” statistics between ports is how well fishing fleets succeed over time. In Astoria’s case, current trends are worrisome. Despite the superficial pleasure of remaining the mainland West Coast’s No. 1 fishing port by volume, other 2015 indicators exhibit a troubling descent from recent heights.

Read the full editorial at the Daily Astorian

Lobster fishermen face a monumental problem

October 3, 2016 — NEWPORT, R.I. — The Newport-based fishing vessel Freedom has been Marc Ducharme’s home away from home since it was built in 1984.

And for the better part of those 32 years, Ducharme, the boat’s captain, and his crews of four to five men have spent their time pulling lobster traps from the waters around three underwater canyons near the edge of the continental shelf, about 125 miles southeast of Nantucket. The crew makes 25-30 runs a year — each lasting about a week — to the lucrative lobster grounds formally referred to as the Northeast Canyons on George’s Bank.

Each trip nets them about 6,000 pounds of lobster, Ducharme said Wednesday, standing in the cockpit of the 72-foot-long vessel docked at the Newport state fishing pier.

“I’ve probably spent more time out there in those canyons than I have on land,” Ducharme said, pointing to the fishing area on a nautical chart.

The time he spends in the 25-mile area where his 1,800 lobster pots are located is growing short, and not just because, at 58 years old, Ducharme is nearing retirement from his sea-faring livelihood.

Using executive authority established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Barrack Obama on Sept. 15 designated a 4,900-square- mile area the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. That area includes the sea canyons, where Ducharme plies his trade. The designation will eventually prohibit all commercial fishing there.

In a last-minute compromise, the Obama administration reduced the proposed size of the monument site and granted a seven-year exemption for lobster and red crab fishermen in the monument area.

Even though he is likely to retire before then, Ducharme is not happy about the eventual ban.

“This is exclusively where I fish, because it’s good,” said Ducharme, who added he catches more than 150,000 lobsters a year. “This (area) has been my life. It’s how I earned my living, how I supported my family. I’m more against the way they went about this.”

Read the full story at the Newport Daily News

National monument in waters off Cape Cod causes rift

September 16, 2016 — The establishment of the first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean drew mixed reactions Thursday, with environmental groups hailing the new protections that some New England fishermen denounced as a threat to their livelihood.

The designation bans commercial fishing in an expansive ecosystem off Cape Cod in a concerted effort to protect the area from the impact of climate change, President Obama said as he announced the designation at the Our Ocean Conference in Washington, D.C.

But fishermen said the area should remain open, asserting that decades of commercial fishing have not damaged the ecosystem. They accused the Obama administration of ignoring their recommendations for compromise measures.

One proposal would have allowed fishing in the area as far down as 450 meters and kept the area open to red crab fishing, said Grant Moore, president of the Atlantic Offshore Lobstermen’s Association. An average of 800,000 pounds of lobster are taken from the monument area every year, he said.

Denny Colbert, who runs Trebloc Seafood in Plymouth with his brother, said he sends two vessels to the area to catch lobster and Jonah crabs.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I’m going to have to find another place to go.”

Bill Palombo, president of Palombo Fishing Corp. in Newport, R.I., said lobster and red crab are plentiful in the area.

“It’s going to be devastating for us,” said Palombo.

The designation prevents access to the main source of red crab in New England, said Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. “The red crab industry is primarily fished in these canyons,” she said. “I don’t see them going anywhere else. That’s where it is.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

RHODE ISLAND: Newport lobsterman opposes plan for marine national monument

September 14, 2016 — In a move that will rile at least one Newport lobsterman, President Obama is expected to designate the first marine national monument Thursday in a bid to preserve underwater mountains, canyons and ecosystems about 150 miles off the New England coast.

The president is expected to announce the creation of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument at the third annual Our Ocean Conference, hosted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Washington D.C., according to the White House.

The offshore monument aims to protect 4,913 square miles of ocean ecosystems. The protected area includes three underwater canyons deeper than the Grand Canyon.

It also encompasses four underwater mountains known as “seamounts,” which “are biodiversity hotspots” and home to many rare and endangered species, according to the White House.

The “designation will help build the resilience of that unique ecosystem, provide a refuge for at-risk species, and create natural laboratories for scientists to monitor and explore the impacts of climate change,” says a press release.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

NOAA ship back after extensive trip

September 6, 2016 — NEWPORT, RI — Research scientists recently had the first confirmed sighting of a True’s beaked whale that was combined with a verified recording of the whale’s sounds.

“The whales are very far offshore and can spend one to three hours below the surface without coming up,” said Debra Palka, a research biologist with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Mass. “The whales are not seen very often.”

Palka was among a team of scientists that just completed a 54-day trip at sea aboard the 209-foot National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel Henry B. Bigelow, which was welcomed back home Friday at a ceremony that featured U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Rear Adm. Anita Lopez, deputy director for operations in NOAA’s Office of Marine and Aviation Operations; and Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Taylor, Bigelow’s commanding officer, as the speakers.

Reed announced in April that Bigelow’s new home port would be Newport, moving here permanently from Woods Hole. He lobbied for several years to have the ship here because the waterfront at Naval Station Newport is an integral part of operations for both NOAA and Coast Guard vessels, he said.

Read the full story at The Westerly Sun

Scientists looking to understand future ocean acidification effects on commercial fishing

August 26, 2016 — NEWPORT, Ore. — The future is now at the Hatfield Marine Science Center.

In the facility’s laboratories scientists are creating conditions to resemble ocean conditions years from now. The goal is to find out how sea life will react to higher levels of ocean acidification that climate change scientists predict will occur in the not-to-distant future.

Since the Industrial Revolution, humans have been pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs a lot of this CO2, raising its level of acidity. It is feared an ocean that is more acidic will negatively affect sea life, including commercial fishing.

So for those whose livelihoods depend on commercial fishing the scientists’ work is important in understanding what ocean acidification will mean to the fish stocks of the future.

“There is a lot of general concern about the fact that we don’t know a lot about this,” said Lori Steele, the executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association, which is based in Portland. “It’s potentially having an impact, and it’s going to have a much more significant impact, and unless we can really get a handle on it, there’s a potential that fisheries managers aren’t going to be able to do a lot besides controlling fishing.”

Read the full story at KATU

Life on the Line: OSU scientists track effects of a changing ocean on tiny sea life

July 22, 2016 — NEWPORT, Ore. — In a cold mist under gray skies, the Pacific Ocean heaved against the boat as two scientists from Oregon State University pulled a net full of life from the deep.

It was a July day, but it felt like a day in December.

In the net life swarmed, much of it too small to be seen with the unaided eye. The net held the keys to help scientists unlock how creatures of the sea are affected by changing ocean conditions and those effects on the aquatic food chain. And more specifically, the effects to salmon, a fish of much importance to humans.

For 20 years scientists have made bi-monthly trips on what is called the Newport Hydrographic Line, which takes them to the same seven sampling stations along a 25-mile path perpendicular to the coast. The stations are physical points on a map. There are no buoys or other structures that mark their locations. The scientists find them using GPS.

They launch their research vessel, the R/V Elakha, from a dock in Yaquina Bay that sits along a jagged bulge of land on which OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center resides. The trips have amassed an extraordinary amount of data about the sea and the life within it. The data is routinely posted on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center website and is used primarily to help forecast salmon runs. But the data has also told the story of changing ocean conditions and its impact on the food chain.

“We can also look at the changes in the bioenergetics of the food chain across the whole 20-year time series,” says OSU research assistant Jennifer Fisher. “It doesn’t just relate to salmon; it relates to sardines and (other) fish. It gives us an idea of ocean acidification, toxic algae – lots of things.”

Fisher has been going on these trips to sea for five years aboard the 54-foot research vessel owned and operated by OSU.

On this day, Fisher, OSU lab technician Tom Murphy and deckhand Dave Weaver use two different cone-shaped nets to capture organisms that live in the sea and that form the basis of the oceanic food chain.

Fisher’s primary interest in the day’s catch is in a tiny crustacean called a copepod. These creatures feed on the sea’s phytoplankton. Copepods are animals with large antennae and are only a millimeter or two in length. Under a microscope their bodies are an elongated oval protected by an exoskeleton. But they are nearly transparent. And inside their bodies scientists have discovered a lipid sac, or stored fat.

Read the full story at KVAL

Survey delay might hurt fish population research

May 12, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a story published today by the Boston Globe.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Even before mechanics found deeply pitted bearings near crankshafts in its generators, problems that could have led to catastrophic engine failure, the Henry B. Bigelow was running more than a month behind.

Now, the government research vessel is embarking on its annual spring voyage later than ever before, a delay that could have serious consequences for scientists’ ability to assess the health of some of the 52 fish stocks they survey, from the waters off North Carolina to the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Maine.

Fish migrate and change their feeding patterns as waters warm, which might make it difficult for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to compare this spring’s survey of fish populations with previous counts.

The prospect of skewed data could complicate efforts for policy makers to set proper quotas, potentially leading either to overfishing or unnecessarily strict catch limits.

“I worry that this will create statistical noise and more uncertainty,” said Gary Shepherd, a fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, where he and other scientists recommend quotas based on what the Bigelow catches, along with other data.

As the waters warm, some of the fish, such as herring, migrate out of the survey area and into the region’s rivers. Other species, such as squid, which are short-lived, might not survive in representative numbers through June, when the Bigelow is now scheduled to finish its survey.

“If the survey had started at its normal time, it would have found squid on the continental shelf,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry. “But now it won’t because the survey doesn’t sample Nantucket Sound.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

NOAA Research Vessel Now Homeported in Newport

April 13, 2016 — NEWPORT, RI — Today marks the first day that the 209-foot research vessel Henry B. Bigelow is officially homeported here in Newport, marking a “victory for the Ocean State,” according to U.S. Sen. Jack Reed.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association fisheries research vessel has a primary objective of studying and monitoring Northeast Marine Fisheries throughout New England and has nets that trawl as deep as 6,000 feet.

The Bigelow collects data used for stock assessments that ultimately influences catch limits and fishing quotas as well as help scientists understand changes to the fishery.

Reed said that he has been lobbying for years for the ship to be homeported here in Rhode Island to save taxpayers money.

NOAA officials said that change is based on a study that included another vessel, the Okeanos Explorer, a deep sea exploration ship homeported at Quonset Point at the Port of Davisville in North Kingstown.

See the full story at the Newport Patch