Saving Seafood

High School Students Bring Seafood to Low-Income Consumers

January 6, 2022 — Based in Philadelphia, Fishadelphia is a pilot community seafood program that was awarded a Saltonstall-Kennedy (S-K) Grant in 2020. It was designed to connect low-income consumers in Northern Philadelphia with neighboring New Jersey harvesters. This project promotes improved business practices, increased market demand for U.S. commercial fish species, and keeping working waterfronts viable.

Grants are critical to the fishing industry. Traditional funding can be hard to obtain for smaller seafood programs, but that’s where the S-K program can help. These grants help bridge that gap and support projects that are outside of the mainstream lending arena.

Since 1980, the S-K Grants program has helped turn ideas into reality. In 2018, Dr. Talia Young started this project while a Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University. Her goal was to connect the fishing communities with the eating communities in the city.

“This is a cool project and one that I’m happy to highlight because it supports community participation that contributes to the promotion of U.S. seafood. This provides fresh seafood to underserved communities, and increases the customer base for our working waterfronts, which aligns with the goals of the S-K grant program,” said Nicole MacDonald, Regional S-K Grant Manager at the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office.

Take a Closer Look

Fishadelphia in essence is a de facto retail fish market with students running the show. The whole idea is to make new connections by promoting, developing, and marketing local seafood to low-income people of color. The diverse team consists of middle school, high school, and college students, family, teachers, seafood harvesters, and marine biologists. The program is creative and paves the way for expansion. It serves as a model for other communities struggling to incorporate healthy seafood into their diets. It’s not surprising MacDonald thinks that this project is “cool”—because it is.

Read the full story from NOAA Fisheries

Future of Maine’s lobster industry to be decided in federal court

January 5, 2022 — The new year could bring about big changes for Maine’s lobster industry. Two lawsuits are scheduled to be heard in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., involving a federal proposal to protect North Atlantic right whales. The outcome could determine when, where and how lobstermen can fish off the state’s coastline.

“If you take one of the largest-earning industries away from Maine, we’re already in a position where young people continue to move away because there aren’t enough jobs or good paying jobs and if you go ahead and eliminate more of them, you will lose more and more assets in the state,” says Chris Welch, a full-time lobsterman from Kennebunk.

The 10‐year whale protection plan proposed by the National Marine Fisheries Service would close more than 950 square miles of fishing grounds, about 30 miles off Maine’s coast, to traditional lobster fishing.

The proposed regulations also would require lobstermen to make numerous changes to their gear, and to when and where they are allowed to fish based on when right whales are believed to be in the area.

Read the full story at Spectrum News 1

NOAA Fisheries Completes 5-Year Review of Endangered Southern Resident Killer Whales

January 5, 2022 — Every 5 years, NOAA Fisheries reviews the status of species listed under the Endangered Species Act to make sure they have the protection they need. We have completed our review of endangered Southern Resident killer whales and confirm they should remain listed as endangered.

The review also underscores the work we must still do to recover this declining species. We have made important strides, including:

  • Expanding critical habitat
  • Limiting commercial and recreational Chinook salmon fishing in years of low abundance
  • Releasing more salmon from hatcheries to supplement their prey
  • Funding restoration of habitat essential to the salmon the whales depend on as prey

However, we must work with our partners to do more.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

NOAA sees good ocean conditions for salmon

January 4, 2021 — Ocean conditions look better than they have in years, which could be good news for salmon.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently posted its ocean ecosystem indicators list. The list paints a picture of how the ocean is doing and what kind of world young, ocean-bound salmon are about to enter.

The list looks at a variety of factors, including the abundance of certain minuscule but key prey groups and large climate and atmospheric processes like seasonal upwelling, which brings nutrient-rich water to the surface.

Researchers assign different colors to each indicator: green is good, yellow is fair and red is bad news.

Read the full story at the Chinook Observer

 

Maine joins lawsuit on right whale regulations

January 4, 2022 — The Maine Department of Marine Resources has joined as an intervenor in the Maine Lobstermen’s Association lawsuit challenging NMFS restrictions on lobster gear to protect North Atlantic right whales.

A Dec. 30 announcement from Maine Gov. Janet Mills’ office said “NMFS acted arbitrarily by failing to rely on the best available scientific information and by failing to account for the positive impact of conservation measures already adopted by the Maine lobster fishery.”

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association lawsuit in Washington, D.C, federal court challenges the NMFS biological opinion on right whales issued in May 2021, the agency’s response to federal court rulings that whale protections so far have failed to meet requirements of endangered species and marine mammal laws.

NMFS has put on new regulations for using lobster traps and their vertical floating lines to buoys that the agency and whale experts see as a serious threat to the survival of the right whale population, estimated at around 360 animals.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NMFS set to reduce red grouper quota for Gulf of Mexico commercial fishermen

December 23, 2021 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced in mid-December that on Jan. 1 the agency would withhold 600,000 pounds of IFQ red grouper allocation from commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico. The current commercial catch target is 3 million pounds.

A late-2019 stock assessment indicated that red grouper were neither overfished nor undergoing overfishing but that their population was “below a level that could support the optimal harvest,” said NOAA. “Additionally, there is evidence the red grouper population has been hurt by recent red tide events along the west Florida shelf.”

The size of the commercial cut correlates with a change in the fishery’s historical commercial/recreational allocation that the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council had passed in June 2021; Reef Fish Amendment 53 reduced the commercial share of the fishery from 76 percent to 59.3 percent and increased the recreational share from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

4 Key Takeaways From NOAA’s COVID Impact on Fishing and Seafood Industries Report

December 22, 2021 — This month NOAA Fisheries released a report analyzing the impacts that COVID-19 had on the U.S. seafood and for-hire fishing sector in 2020. The report looked at wild harvest and aquaculture, as well as the recreational charter/ for-hire sectors. And according to NOAA, their analysis showed that the COVID-19 public health crisis “created a turning point for the U.S. and the global seafood industry.”

Here are 4 key takeaways from the report:

Commercial Fishing Landings Revenue Declined in 2020

Regional landings revenue from March to December 2020, relative to the 5-year-baseline (2015-2019), declined 15% in the Atlantic HMS, 18% in the Northeast, 27% in the Southeast, 29% in Alaska and the West Coast; and 36% in Hawaii. There was no increase in monthly landings revenue relative to the baseline until October 2020. At that point the Northeast posted a 4% increase. The following month the Atlantic HMS fishery posted a 21% increase.

Read the full story at Seafood News

NOAA Releases 2021 Ecosystem Status Reports for the Eastern Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands

December 21, 2021 — These reports are a compilation of inputs from our own research and the work of many contributors from fishing, coastal and Alaska Native communities, academic institutions, the State of Alaska and other federal agencies.

Today, NOAA Fisheries released three key reports on the state of Alaska’s marine ecosystems. For more than two decades, Alaska has been using this ecosystem information to inform fisheries management decisions. To assess the status of Alaska’s marine ecosystems, scientists look at a variety of indicators.

For instance, they monitor oceanographic conditions. These include sea surface temperatures and temperatures near the sea floor, plankton, and wind and weather patterns in the Bering Sea, Gulf of Alaska, and Aleutian Islands annually and over time.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

 

Covid-19 drove down landings revenue 22 percent in 2020

December 21, 2021 — An updated analysis of the covid-19 pandemic’s effect on the U.S. fishing and seafood industry shows an across-the-board 22 percent decline in commercial landings revenue during 2020 compared to the previous five-year average, NMFS experts said.

The previously growing aquaculture sector “continued to struggle despite the incremental re-opening of restaurants beginning in May 2020,” while the recreational sector saw a 17 percent decline in trips during 2020, the NMFS report states.

“Our analysis shows that the covid public health crisis created a turning point for the U.S. and the global seafood industry,” agency officials said in releasing the new report, updating the original analysis from January 2021. “It created new long-term challenges to expanding our sustainable domestic seafood sector.”

Food service sales fell 40 percent in the “first quarter of covid-19,” defined as March through May 2020, relative to average sales in the three preceding quarters, the report states.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

COVID-19 Impacts on U.S. Fishing and Seafood Industries Show Broad Declines in 2020

December 17, 2021 — NOAA Fisheries released an updated report, U.S. Seafood Industry and For-Hire Sector Impacts from COVID-19: 2020 in Perspective. It provides an economic assessment of COVID-19 effects on the U.S. fishing and seafood industry in 2020. This includes analyses of the wild harvest, aquaculture, and the recreational charter/for-hire sectors. Our analysis shows that the COVID public health crisis created a turning point for the U.S. and the global seafood industry. It created new long-term challenges to expanding our sustainable domestic seafood sector. The pandemic also created significant challenges for the U.S. recreational for-hire industry.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries