Saving Seafood

US to ban port access to Mexican boats fishing in the Gulf of Mexico

January 18, 2022 — Starting in February, NOAA Fisheries will enact a ban prohibiting port access for all Mexican fishing boats that operate in the Gulf of Mexico.

The federal agency said in a statement that the move, which will become effective Monday, 7 February, comes as the U.S. issued a “negative certification” against its southern neighbor for illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in a report to Congress last August. American officials noted that they made the determination in 2019 after making similar determinations in 2015 and 2017.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

SCEMFIS: New Survey Will Help Fill Gaps in Menhaden Count in New England, Mid-Atlantic

January 14, 2022 — The Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) highlighted a new project that will look to count a population of menhaden that could help inform not only a local New Jersey fishery but other fisheries in New England and the Mid-Atlantic region.

A team from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries are on the verge of launching a winter population survey of menhaden, specifically off the coast of New Jersey, SCEMFIS said.

That area is home to a growing winter bait fishery but because there hasn’t been much work to survey the population that far north, there is not a strong enough count of how many fish are in that area.

The survey, which will launch from Cape May, New Jersey, will use sonar equipment to estimate the number of menhaden schooling in the area, and will collect additional information to estimate age, size, and weight, data that will be important for managing the fishery, per SCEMFIS.

Read the full story at Seafood News

Growing fishery? NOAA to work on winter survey of menhaden off N.J. coast

January 14, 2022 — The surprising news last weekend was not just the striped bass bite on the Ocean County beaches, but the numbers of menhaden off the coast here in January. NOAA has also taken notice of the baitfish and is collaborating on a survey of their winter population here.

The researchers that are working on it are from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries. The winter population survey of menhaden will specifically look at the menhaden spending the season off the coast of New Jersey.

According to the Science Center for Marine Fisheries in Virginia which released a statement on the survey, the researchers believe New Jersey is home to a growing winter bait fishery but there have been few attempts to survey menhaden this far north and there is currently not a good count of how many menhaden are in the area. Data is also lacking on measurements like age and weight compositions.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Glaciers’ retreat could open new Alaska salmon habitat

January 12, 2022 — Melting glaciers in Alaska and British Columbia could open up new stream habitat for Pacific salmon – conceivably almost equal to the length of the Mississippi River by 2100, under one scenario of “moderate” climate change.

But on balance a warming climate will continue to take its toll on salmon populations on the U.S. Pacific coast.

Researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and the NMFS Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle, Wash., published their findings from modeling glacier retreat in the journal Nature Communications, looking at how new salmon spawning streams might appear as ice melts, bedrock gets exposed and new streams thread over the exposed landscape.

“We predict that most of the emerging salmon habitat will occur in Alaska and the transboundary region, at the British Columbia – Alaska border, where large coastal glaciers still exist,” lead author professor Kara Pitman of Simon Fraser University says in a NMFS summary of the findings.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New Acoustic Survey Will Investigate Previously Uncounted Menhaden

January 12, 2022 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

Despite being one of the largest and most high-profile fisheries on the East Coast, there are still gaps in our understanding of Atlantic menhaden. This is especially true in their northern range, in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. But this winter, a new project will look specifically to count menhaden in these areas, shedding new light on an important but underexamined portion of this species.

A team from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s (UMCES) Chesapeake Biological Laboratory and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries, is about to launch a winter population survey of menhaden, specifically of menhaden spending the season off the coast of New Jersey. The area is home to a growing winter bait fishery, but because there have been few attempts to survey menhaden this far north, there is currently not a good count of how many menhaden are in the area, as well a lack of good data on measurements like age and weight compositions.

The survey, which will launch from Cape May, New Jersey, will use sonar equipment to estimate the number of menhaden schooling in the area, and will collect additional information to estimate age, size, and weight, data that will be important for managing the fishery.

“Right now, having a full picture of menhaden is limited by the lack of available information on the northern part of the stock,” said Dr. Genny Nesslage, a professor at UMCES and one of the lead researchers on the project. “Surveying this part of the population will hopefully give regulators the data they need to make informed decisions on how to manage menhaden coastwide.”

Atlantic menhaden are a coastwide species, with a range spanning from Maine to Florida. But most of our knowledge of the stock comes from data collected from purse seine fisheries in the Mid-Atlantic and around the Chesapeake Bay. Because older, larger menhaden are more likely to be found in northern waters, an entire segment of the menhaden population is not fully counted by current data collection methods.

As it is increasingly clear that there are significant numbers in this northern portion of the menhaden stock, surveys like these will be important in providing a fuller picture of the population, benefitting both the regional bait fishery and other, existing menhaden fisheries.

“Getting a better count of menhaden in the north is critical in improving our understanding of the fishery coastwide, and validating the population estimates that come from our current assessment models,” said Dr. Nesslage. “The more diverse sources of data we have on menhaden, the more confident we can be in our decisions on how to manage it.”

The survey was funded by the NOAA Fisheries Saltonstall-Kennedy Competitive Grants Program and its design was funded by a grant from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), which connects marine scientists with members of the fishing industry to fund needed research for finfish and shellfish.

Biden Clean Power Push Hits New York With Offshore Wind Sale

January 12, 2022 — The Biden administration is preparing to sell offshore wind rights near New Jersey and New York, a down-payment on its bid to decarbonize the U.S. power grid and generate renewable electricity from nearly all U.S. coasts.

Under the auction, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday, the U.S. government aims to sell leases to install wind turbines in shallow Atlantic waters between New Jersey and New York’s Long Island, with the potential to generate some 7 gigawatts of carbon-free electricity.

As a sign of the opposition, a conservation group on Monday sued the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, asking a federal court to reverse the agency’s March 2021 decision to recommend five areas for offshore wind projects in the New York Bight.

Save Long Beach Island told the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia that the bureau failed to study the effects the projects would have on the environment. The group also faulted the agency for failing to consult with the National Marine Fisheries Service to determine if any wind project would affect North Atlantic right whales or other protected species.

Separately Tuesday, groups representing fishing interests, including the Responsible Offshore Development Association, urged the bureau to take more steps to limit the impacts of offshore wind development, including by developing formal benchmarks to assess projects.

Read the full story at Bloomberg

 

Good ocean conditions could be good news for salmon, NOAA says

January 10, 2022 — Fish swimming out to sea over the past year have lucked into some of the best water temperatures and food abundance along the West Coast in the last 24 years, according to an analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began monitoring ocean conditions.

That could be good news for salmon and steelhead over the next few years, biologists said.

The welcoming waters in 2021 appear to be the second most favorable for fish since scientists with NOAA began monitoring ocean conditions, said Brian Burke, research fisheries biologist at NOAA Fisheries.

“It’s sort of been this growing picture of, ‘Wow, things are really looking good right now across the board,’” Burke said.

“The upwelling created a really productive coastal system,” Burke said.

That productivity has built slowly over several years, Burke said, after a string of hard years for ocean-dwelling fish.

Read the full story at Oregon Public Broadcasting

 

NMFS Revises TAC Amounts For Gulf of Alaska Pollock, Pacific Cod

January 6, 2022 — The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) revised the 2022 total allowable catch (TAC) amounts for pollock and Pacific cod in the Gulf of Alaska. The changes, which increases the pollock TAC and decreases the Pacific cod TAC, were put into effect at 12 noon Alaska local time on January 1, 2022.

According to NMFS, the pollock TAC will increase from 99,784 metric tons (mt) to 141, 117 mt. The TAC for Pacific cod decreased from 27,961 mt to 24,111 mt.

Read the full story at Seafood News

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