Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford fish catch most valuable in U.S.

November 4, 2016 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. – Citing 2015 landings worth $322 million, for the 16th year in a row the city held the top-value title nationwide for its fishing catch, according to NOAA Fisheries. The top ranking was thanks largely to scallops, SouthCoastToday.com reported Oct. 28.

New Bedford’s catch was 124 million pounds, good for 11th in the country.

“We’re reaping the benefits of good, cooperative science, and solid relationships between the regulators, the fishermen and the scientists,” said Ed Anthes-Washburn, port director for the city’s Harbor Development Commission.

The annual catch reports, released by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, showed New Bedford’s catch dipped by about 11 percent last year, falling to 124 million pounds in 2015 from 140 million in 2014. The 2013 catch totaled 130 million pounds.

Read the full story at the Providence Business News 

American Samoa Attorney: Feds Continue To Ignore Local Concerns About Fisheries

November 4, 2016 — PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — Local attorney Marie Alailima says the federal agencies involved in fisheries “continue to ignore” the call from local traditional chiefs, government leaders and residents of American Samoa for meaningful discussions in issues impacting the territory’s resources.

Alailima made the observation in her Oct. 27 comment letter to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration opposing the way NOAA’s National Marine Fishery Service (NMFS) sought public comments, with only one local public hearing held on a proposed regulation for aquaculture program in American Samoa.

She joins Commerce Department director Keniseli Lafaele and Shipyard Service Authority chief executive Moefa’auo Bill Emmesly — both have lodged strong objections in the way NMFS sought public comments and have called for a delay in making any final decision on the NMFS proposal.

In her letter, released yesterday through the federal portal [www.regulations.gov], the local attorney says “no further action” should be taken on NMFS and Western Pacific Fishery Management Council’s intent to prepare a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) to analyze the potential environmental impact of a proposed Pacific Islands Region (PIR) aquaculture management program and alternatives.

The PEIS is intended to support offshore aquaculture development, including appropriate management unit species for aquaculture, reasonably foreseeable types of offshore aquaculture operations, and permitting and reporting requirements for persons conducting aquaculture activities in Federal waters.

She cited various reasons, why no action should be taken and included the fact that notice of Sept. 8’s public meeting in American Samoa was made electronically, but such medium of notification, including in the case at hand — the sending of notice by electronic emails to a “select few” — “erroneously presumes notice through email, the federal register online, through announcement of public hearings on NOAA agency websites is a means readily accessible by the majority of the American Samoa population.”

Alailima argues, “It also erroneously presumes that the subject matter or import of such public meetings can be readily understood from such online notice by a population [that] for the most part lacks access to computers and is still transitioning into fully embracing American culture, its language, its federal procedures, legal institutions and concepts.”

Greater responsibility for providing the American Samoa population with meaningful notice and opportunity to comment must be considered by NMFS and other NOAA agencies, inclusive of all further steps involving the present proposed action, she said.

Read the full story at the Pacific Islands Report

MASSACHUSETTS: Scientists take advantage of rare shark stranding in Orleans

ORLEANS — The corpse lay on its side as scientists honed knives on whetstones in preparation for the first cut.

But the scene at the town transfer station Monday wasn’t a ghoulish Halloween skit intended to frighten the knot of onlookers; it was a necropsy on a 12-foot-long great white shark that washed onto Nauset Beach on Sunday, dying in the sand.

The scientists were there in part to see if there was any obvious reason the 20-year-old male shark had washed ashore and died. But they also were collecting valuable specimens from an animal that can no longer legally be caught and killed, leaving researchers dependent on the rare instances when one washes up on the beach.

“We hate to have sharks strand because we like to have them in the water and healthy, but when they do we maximize what we could possibly learn from them,” said Gregory Skomal, lead shark scientist at the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

Researchers from his agency, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School of Marine Science and Technology converged on the transfer station Monday morning to take advantage of the opportunity.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

HAWAII: Fishermen Catch 11% More Bigeye Tuna Despite Overfishing Status

October 27, 2016 — U.S. commercial fishermen hauled in 2.5 million pounds more bigeye tuna last year than they did in 2014, landing almost all of it out of Honolulu, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

Bigeye landings in 2015 totaled 25.8 million pounds, an increase of nearly 11 percent compared to last year. 

And that tuna was worth a bit more too, averaging $3.17 per pound in 2015, up from $3.08 in 2014, according to the most recent Fisheries of the United States report by the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Overall, U.S. commercial fishermen landed 32 million pounds of seafood last year operating out of Honolulu, the 27th highest nationally by weight. 

But that seafood — mostly bigeye tuna, which fetches top dollar in local sashimi markets and high-end restaurants — was worth $97 million, making it the sixth-highest catch in the country by value. 

Bigeye tuna continues to be subject to overfishing, however. It’s one of 28 stocks on the federal overfishing list. Only 9 percent of fishing stocks monitored by the feds are subject to overfishing, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

Court backs seal protections on climate change grounds

October 25th, 2016 — A federal appeals court ruled Monday that the Obama administration had the right to use climate change to justify federal protections for the bearded seal.

The ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed a lower court ruling from 2014 and upheld the 2012 decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to designate the bearded seal as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

 The ruling is an important victory for the Obama administration and could help build a precedent of using climate change forecasts for decisions like species protections.

The case hinged on an argument from the oil industry and the state of Alaska that the NMFS relied on climate projections that were not reliable for the time period for which the agency used them.

“This case turns on one issue: When NMFS determines that a species that is not presently endangered will lose its habitat due to climate change by the end of the century, may NMFS list that species as threatened under the Endangered Species Act?” the appeals court asked in its ruling, answering in the affirmative.

Read the full story at The Hill 

Climate Change Projections Can Be Used To List A Species As Threatened, US Court Rules

October 25th, 2016 — In a landmark ruling Monday, a U.S. appeals court said that the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) — a federal agency — had acted reasonably when it proposed to list certain populations of bearded seals in Alaska as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act. The decision, which reverses a 2014 ruling by a lower court, could pave the way for other species being accorded protections based on their vulnerability to projected changes in climate.

“This is a huge victory for bearded seals and shows the vital importance of the Endangered Species Act in protecting species threatened by climate change,” Kristen Monsell, attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity — which had, in 2008, filed a petition to list the species as threatened, said in a statement. “This decision will give bearded seals a fighting chance while we work to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions melting their sea-ice habitat and keep dirty fossil fuels in the ground.”

The Pacific bearded seal is one of the two subspecies of bearded seals. Although it is currently listed as “Least Concern” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Center for Biological Diversity and the NMFS estimate — based on data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — that the seals’ winter sea-ice habitat in the Bering and Okhotsk seas off Alaska and Russia would decline by at least 40 percent by 2050, and that the subspecies would be endangered by 2095.

Read the full story at the IBT Times 

Herring fishing shut down along New England coast

October 19, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Herring fishermen are nearing their quota along New England’s coast and the fishery will be shut down until further notice.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says fishermen in the inshore Gulf of Maine have caught about 90 percent of their quota and the fishery was shut down early Tuesday morning. The inshore fishing zone ranges from Cape Cod to the eastern edge of the Maine coast.

Herring are an important bait fish, especially in the lobster fishery. A shortage of the fish in offshore waters caused a bait shortage in New England during the summer.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Daily Progress

Herring Fishing Shut Down Along New England Coast

October 18, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine – Herring fishermen are nearing their quota along New England’s coast and the fishery will be shut down until further notice.

The National Marine Fisheries Service says fishermen in the inshore Gulf of Maine have caught about 90 percent of their quota and the fishery was shut down early Tuesday morning. The inshore fishing zone ranges from Cape Cod to the eastern edge of the Maine coast.

Herring are an important bait fish, especially in the lobster fishery. A shortage of the fish in offshore waters caused a bait shortage in New England during the summer.

Read the full story at Maine Public Radio

Retention Limit of Aggregated Large Coastal Shark and Hammerhead Shark Management Groups Reduced to 25 Sharks per Trip

October 17, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has reduced the retention limit for the commercial aggregated large coastal shark and hammerhead shark management groups (Appendix 1) for directed shark limited access permit holders in the Atlantic region from 45 to 25 sharks per vessel per trip effective 11:30 p.m. October 19, 2016. As agreed upon by the Commission’s Coastal Sharks Management Board (in December 2015), the Commission will follow NMFS for in-season changes to the commercial retention limit, therefore, no more than 25 sharks per vessel per trip may be retained from the aggregated large coastal and hammerhead management groups by a state licensed fishermen effective 11:30 p.m. October 19, 2016. This adjustment is intended to promote equitable fishing opportunities in the Atlantic region.

The retention limit for the large coastal shark and hammerhead shark management groups will remain at 25 sharks per vessel per trip in the Atlantic region (federal and state waters) through the remainder of the 2016 fishing season or until NMFS announces another adjustment to the retention limit or a fishery closure is warranted.

Scientists, fishermen fight to save leatherback sea turtles

October 11, 2016 — Despite strict protections off the West Coast, leatherback turtles are in danger in other parts of the Pacific, scientists and fishermen said at a conference called to celebrate California’s official marine reptile.

The meeting, held in La Jolla last week, offered a status update on the ancient marine species, in advance of California’s Pacific Leatherback Conservation Day on Oct. 15. With populations down by more than 90 percent since the 1980s, the animals are ranked as one of eight marine species at greatest risk of extinction, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

Fishermen and researchers say that U.S. fishing limits designed to keep leatherbacks from getting caught in nets may unintentionally lead to more ensnarement in countries where rules are looser. For the globally roaming species, it will take more than one country’s efforts to stave off extinction.

Leatherbacks are ocean-going leviathans that can weigh up to a ton, and swim nearly 7,000 miles across the Pacific, devouring jellyfish.

Read the full story at the San Diego Union-Tribune