Saving Seafood

Lobster industry still waiting for precise rules from feds to protect right whales

June 1, 2021 — Maine’s lobster fishermen are anxiously waiting to learn exactly what they will have to change to meet new federal requirements to protect the endangered right whale. On Thursday, the federal agency NOAA Fisheries released their final biological opinion about the threat to right whales, saying there have to be major changes by New England fishermen so whales won’t get tangled in fishing gear and die.

Fishermen have been worrying about and waiting for federal guidelines for more than two years. They had some of their fears confirmed by the latest report from NOAA, but still are waiting to get the needed details.

The big target to protect whales is called risk reduction, primarily by cutting the number of vertical ropes in the water that connect traps to buoy.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, part of NOAA Fisheries, said those ropes pose a big risk of tangling right whales, so they have to be reduced 60 percent right away. How that should happen is one of the details fishermen are waiting to learn, but previous documents from NMFS suggested a primary method should be requiring longer trawls, meaning putting many more traps on each line, in addition to using sections of weaker rope that can break away if snagged by a whale.

Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said Maine is being unfairly penalized for whale deaths actually happening in Canada and those from whales being hit by ships at sea. She said that while lobstermen will have to follow the rules, the industry will continue to pressure NMFS to improve its data and create more fair regulations.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Salmon overtakes lobster as the nation’s most valuable catch

May 28, 2021 — Lobster isn’t number one in the nation anymore.

Salmon is now the United States’ highest-grossing, wild-caught domestic fishery, according to the latest report issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service Office of Science and Technology.

The report, issued last week, shows salmon leaping from third to first, with lobster slipping to number two nationally.

In Maine, lobster still tops the charts, with no serious rivals.

“Lobster is, by far, the most valuable species harvested in Maine,” said Jeff Nichols, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

The new national numbers do not reflect aquaculture-raised salmon. The data covers 2019, the most recent year with complete data. The cash values represent money paid to fishermen at the dock, not consumer retail prices.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Commercial fishermen say they are being ignored on wind power project

May 24, 2021 — For the past three decades, Town Dock fishermen and their counterparts across the Northeast have struggled to stay afloat in the face of strict regulations designed to rebuild depleted stocks of cod, flounder and other species.

Some diversified, turning to so-called underutilized species such as squid and whiting to supplement their declining income, while others retired or left for jobs on land.

But now that many of the species have rebounded and government regulators are increasing the amounts of fish they can land, the fishermen face a new threat: offshore wind power projects.

Last month members of Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, or RODA, a national coalition of fishing industry members, boycotted a meeting with a federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management task force, which is considering auctioning of 800,000 acres of New York Bight — shallow waters south of Long Island and east of New Jersey — to potential wind farm operators. RODA said its members feel they are not being listened to.

On April 6, RODA said 1,665 members of fishing communities in every U.S. coastal state submitted a letter to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, or BOEM, and National Marine Fisheries Service requesting a transparent and balanced national planning process for offshore wind development.

Read the full story at Yahoo News

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford is nation’s top-earning port for 20th consecutive year

May 24, 2021 — The Port of New Bedford was the nation’s highest value port for the 20th consecutive year, the National Marine Fisheries Service announced Thursday.

The agency, better known as NOAA Fisheries, released its report with 2019 fisheries data. New Bedford brought in $451 million with 116 million pounds of seafood in 2019, up from $431 million and 114 million pounds in 2018.

New Bedford’s high value is due in large part to its scallop fishery, the report said. Sea scallop landings account for 84% of the value of landings in the city’s port.

Dutch Harbor in Alaska, which was the highest port in volume, brought in nearly 6.5 times more weight than New Bedford, but only $190 million in value.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Whale activist attempts to intervene in right whale case

May 24, 2021 — With federal officials set to unveil new rules on the lobster fisheries at the end of the month, a well-known animal rights activist made a late attempt to try and stop the industry from being allowed to use vertical buoy ropes.

Richard “Max” Strahan tried to intervene at the beginning of the month in the federal right whale court case that holds the future of the lobster industry in its hands, but the activist’s attempt was rejected by a judge less than a week later.

Strahan filed his motion on May 8 and claimed that the only way the industry would stop using the ropes is by a court-ordered injunction. Without such an injunction, right whales would inevitably go extinct, he claimed.

He sought to prosecute the National Marine Fisheries Service, the agency responsible for the regulations, and other lobster industry groups “for their acting in concert over the course of decades to repeatedly and deliberately engage in conduct prohibited by” the Endangered Species Act, he wrote.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

New Bedford is America’s most lucrative fishing port for 20th straight year

May 20, 2021 — The National Marine Fisheries Service — better known as NOAA Fisheries — released its annual report on the health of the nation’s fishing industry on Thursday, and once again the Port of New Bedford took top honors as the nation’s highest-grossing commercial fishing port.

New Bedford ranked No. 1 for the value of seafood landed at its port for the 20th consecutive year in 2019, with $451 million worth of fish hauled in by its boats. That was up by $20 million compared with the year before, and far outpaced the second-ranked Port of Naknek, Alaska, which had $289 million worth of landings.

NOAA officials said New Bedford’s dominance remains driven by sea scallops, which account for 84% of the value of all landings there.

The city fell from the top spot for nine years during the 1990s, which NOAA attributed at the time to factors including “the 1994 collapse of the New England groundfish fishery and declining numbers of sea scallops.” But New Bedford retook its crown in 2000 and hasn’t given it up since.

New Bedford’s catch leads the nation in value despite placing far from the top when it comes to total volume, ranking only 14th, at 116 million pounds. The top port by that metric has been Dutch Harbor, Alaska, for 23 years. Dutch Harbor is 763 million pounds a year of landings, with pollock the biggest category.

Read the full story at WPRI

States Begin Work on Second Round of COVID-19 Funds as Some First Round Funds Falter

May 17, 2021 — Last year’s $300 million in Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) funding was intended to help fishermen, processors and tribes as the COVID-19 virus disrupted markets, displaced workers and generally created havoc around the globe.

But some of that funding has yet to be distributed, even as a second round of federal funding is pending. An additional $255 million in fisheries assistance funding was provided by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and announced by NMFS in late March.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Feds raise protections for North Atlantic right whales, but sea turtles may suffer

May 17, 2021 — North Atlantic right whales have gained protections and sea turtles are more imperiled under a new federal calendar for harbor dredging that came to light May 14 in a federal lawsuit that seeks to protect sea turtles.

The entire calendar for dredging at some seaports along the East Coast has been modified in an effort to increase protections for North American right whales, according to a federal report with the new calendar. This species has been reduced to a population of some 360 animals.

The change allows harbors to be dredged in warmer months in North Carolina and continuing south through Georgia and Florida, to the islands of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Dredging is routine maintenance and typically involves vacuuming up debris that has filled a shipping channel and impedes ships as they use a port. The process has a history of harming certain sea life.

Read the full story at The Saporta Report

Submission Deadline for Proposals to Conduct Components of the At-Sea Monitoring Training Program Extended to May 24, 2021

May 13, 2021 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC), is extending the submission deadline for proposals to conduct components of the At-Sea Monitoring (ASM) Training Program for the NEFSC. The deadline is extended until May 24, 2021 (previously May 19, 2021). The complete Request for Proposals (RFP) can be found here. For more information, please contact Deke Tompkins at dtompkins@asmfc.org.

NMFS reports right whales increasing use of New England offshore wind areas

May 7, 2021 — Endangered northern right whales that have been arriving earlier in spring and staying longer around Cape Cod have also expanded their presence south and west of Nantucket Shoals, into areas planned for large-scale development of offshore wind power, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Scientists from the NMFS Northeast Fisheries Science Center conducting surveillance flights spotted 57 fight whales March 30 off southeast New England, in and around wind energy areas that have been leased to developers by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.

NMFS officials said those whales included three mother-calf pairs – results from what experts have called the most successful calving season in years for the highly endangered species, with 17 young reported and nine mother-calf pairs sighted in Northeast waters in recent weeks. The entire population was last estimated to number around 366 animals.

Right whales typically appear in Cape Cod Bay during the spring, but in recent years they have been showing up sooner and lingering longer, according to a summary released April 15 by NMFS.

A small portion of the whale population, mostly pregnant females, migrates to waters off Georgia and northern Florida for the winter calving season, according to marine mammal researcher Tim Cole who leads the NEFSC whale survey team.

Read the full story at National Fisherman