Saving Seafood

NOAA’s red grouper reallocations affirmed by federal judge

January 9, 2023 — NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service’s implementation of Amendment 53 will move forward after a federal judge upheld the U.S. agency’s management plan for reef fish in the Gulf of Mexico.

Read the decision here

The Gulf Reef Fish Shareholders Alliance and allied fishermen had sued NMFS to stop the implementation of Amendment 53, part of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council’s reef fish management plan. The plan, announced by NOAA on Monday, 2 May, 2022, will reduce the commercial allocation of red grouper caught in the Gulf of Mexico to 59.3 percent, down from 76 percent, while increasing the recreational fishing sector’s allocation from 24 percent to 40.7 percent.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Fishermen facing climate change: crab crashes and wind power threats

January 9, 2023 — Five thousand miles apart on their own oceans, New England trawlers and Alaska crabbers say they are up against twin threats from climate change: warming waters changing the marine environment, and hasty, risk-filled decisions in response from U.S. policy makers.

“I’m not sure which is going to get me first, climate change or the solution to it,” said Chris Brown, a Point Judith, R.I., captain, president of the Seafood Harvesters of America and a 2022 National Fisherman Highliner.

Brown expressed a general consensus among panelists during a Jan. 5 online webinar hosted by Fishery Friendly Climate Action, an initiative campaign that is organizing fishermen and industry groups to “advocate for robust climate solutions that work for U.S. fisheries and not at their expense,” as coordinator Sarah Schumann says.

“These issues are moving so fast,” said Schumann. “We as an industry have to improve our game.”

A series of winter webinars organized by Schumann aims to bring in fishermen from all U.S. regions to work together on climate issues. The collapse of Alaska’s Bering Sea snow and king crab fisheries –  a potential $500 million loss to the industry and dependent communities –  has snapped the issue into sharp focus.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Panel: Fishing plan can rebuild long lost cod stock by 2033

January 5, 2022 — Federal ocean regulators say a new fishing plan has a chance to rebuild the New England cod stock, which is a goal even many commercial fishermen have long regarded as far fetched.

Atlantic cod were once a cornerstone of the New England economy, but the catch has plummeted after years of overfishing, environmental changes and restrictive quotas. Most of the cod sold in the U.S. comes from overseas because many American fishermen avoid the fish-and-chips staple altogether.

But the regulatory New England Fishery Management Council has approved a new strategy that it said has a 70% chance of rebuilding the stock by 2033. The proposal, which is awaiting final approval from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would use 10 years of low catch limits to try to rebuild the cod population in the Gulf of Maine.

The council said in a statement that the new plan will lower the fishing mortality rate for the fish over the next decade to “offer more protection for Gulf of Maine cod and give the stock a better chance of rebuilding.” But some fishermen are unconvinced cod are ever coming back.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

 

New protections for endangered whales off California

January 5, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations agency that governs safety and environmental standards for shipping worldwide, has adopted a U.S. proposal to increase protections for endangered blue, fin and humpback whales off the California coast. The proposal takes effect this summer and expands areas that vessels should avoid to give whales more space, and extends vessel traffic lanes west of, in and around NOAA’s Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Photo: The combination of high cargo ship traffic, feeding areas and migratory whale routes result in a marked increased risk of ship strikes to whales that can result in serious injury or death to whales. (Credit: John Calambokidis/Cascadia) 

The Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council’s Marine Shipping Working Group originally recommended the modifications in 2015. NOAA partnered with the U.S. Coast Guard to submit the proposal to the IMO in 2022.

“The IMO’s decision will enhance navigation safety and improve protection of whales,” said John Armor, director of NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries. “These adjustments demonstrate a successful collaboration between the United States, the IMO and the global shipping community.”

The U.S.-recommended adjustments will enhance navigation safety and protect whales from ship strikes in an area containing some of the highest densities of commercial maritime traffic in the world. 

Map: The International Maritime Organization recently approved changes to vessel traffic lanes in and around NOAA’s Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The changes take effect summer 2023. (Credit: NOAA)

A 13-nautical-mile extension of vessel traffic lanes, known as the “traffic separation scheme,” will result in vessels lining up for port entry farther west and away from the continental shelf, in deeper waters where there are lower concentrations of whales. The area to be avoided by vessels is expanding by more than 2,000 square nautical miles, and will cover, in total, approximately 4,476 square nautical miles of important whale feeding habitat off Point Conception and Point Arguello in Santa Barbara County, California. 

Blue, fin and humpback whales are protected by the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Act and National Marine Sanctuaries Act.

Accurately Accounting for the Economic Value of Marine Ecosystems

January 5, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Marine ecosystems provide myriad benefits to humans—from supplying food to tempering our climate to regulating the air we breathe. To use our oceans wisely, we need to understand the economic value of these “ecosystem services.”

A new nationwide NOAA study is the first to assess the validity of published studies that assigned economic values to U.S. marine ecosystem services based on public opinion surveys.

Economists use stated preference methods to derive economic values from how people respond to carefully worded questions in interviews or surveys. These methods are frequently used to estimate the value of ecosystem services that are not bought or sold in markets. The goal of the study was to evaluate the reliability of these estimates in the existing literature for use in fisheries and ecosystem assessments.

“For effective ecosystem-based fisheries management, we need to better understand the role of human activities and their associated economic values. We need to know that these values are valid to weigh the tradeoffs involved in different uses of the ocean. Our research contributes to this understanding,” said study leader Dan Lew, economist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “But our findings have far broader applications. Many decisions by natural resource managers and policy-makers must be made quickly based on economic valuation data in the existing literature. They need to know if that literature is reliable.”

Read the full release at NOAA Fisheries

New federal law phases out large-mesh drift gillnets for California swordfish

January 5, 2022 — For years large-mesh drift gillnets used in the California swordfish fishery have faced scrutiny from government regulators and environmental groups for historically high bycatch rates. Now with the passage of the federal Driftnet Modernization and Bycatch Reduction Act, the gear type is set to be phased out over the next five years.

The act was passed as part of $1.7 trillion federal omnibus spending bill signed into law by President Joe Biden in the final days of 2022.

A federal ban was first passed by both chambers of Congress as a standalone bill in 2020 but was subject to the final veto of Donald Trump’s presidency. The bill was reintroduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) in 2021 and was included in the 4,155-page spending bill that will finance the federal government through September.

The legislation also includes grants to the remaining large-drift gillnet permit holders to cover the cost of permits, the forfeiture of existing fishing gear, and the acquisition of alternative fishing gear, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The large-mesh drift gillnets have been on the decline for decades, peaking in 1988 and 1989 with 10,000 sets made each year with more than 200 active permits, according to NOAA Fisheries. But in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 season just seven large-mesh drift gillnet permits—out of a total of 25 federal permits—were active. Large-mesh drift gillnets are only allowed off the coast of California and Oregon and are prohibited everywhere else in United States waters over environmental concerns.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

 

NOAA announces major SIMP expansion proposal

January 4, 2022 — Officials with NOAA Fisheries have announced a plan to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), with a proposal that would more than double the number of species it targets.

SIMP was created six years ago to block the import of select seafood products that had been mislabeled or harvested through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. It requires importers to show detailed information to inspectors upon entry at a U.S. port for 13 species or species groups that include about 1,100 individual species, according to a release from the agency.

Read the full article at the SeafoodSource

Baffling find made on seafloor 100 miles off Maine, NOAA says. ‘What are the odds?’

January 3, 2022 — Scientists often find oddities on the seafloor, but NOAA researchers were baffled when a camera dropped off Maine landed on top of a large propeller 100 miles from shore.

No shipwreck, mind you. Just the propeller “lying among the rocks, sea stars, and sea anemones.”

The mystifying discovery was made in the Gulf of Maine, as the fishing vessel Mary Elizabeth was participating in a NOAA Fisheries seafloor survey.

Read the full article at Miami Herald

Farming Sea Scallops in Maine

December 30, 2022 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Fishermen are facing numerous threats, including climate change. Aquaculture offers a solution. Maine’s wild fisheries have become very focused on the lobster industry. Farming sea scallops in Maine offers an opportunity to diversify the seafood harvesting business and increase resiliency for coastal communities built around seafood production.

The sea scallop aquaculture community is unique to Maine and composed of a variety of people and organizations, including fishermen farmers, marine extension programs, community development financial institutions, and research and outreach foundations.

NOAA Fisheries and Coastal Enterprises, Inc. recently visited with Marsden and Bob Brewer, operators of PenBay Farmed Scallops, and Andrew Peters, co-owner of Vertical Bay Scallops. CEI is a community development financial institution in Maine that has a long history of supporting fishing and aquaculture. Both of these aquaculture farms are examples of opportunities for marine livelihoods that shellfish farming is providing in Maine.

Read the full release at NOAA Fisheries

US Ignored Own Scientists’ Warning in Backing Atlantic Wind Farm

December 30, 2022 — US government scientists warned federal regulators the South Fork offshore wind farm near the Rhode Island coast threatened the Southern New England Cod, a species so ingrained in regional lore that a wooden carving of it hangs in the Massachusetts state house.

The Interior Department approved the project anyway.

The warnings were delivered in unpublished correspondence weeks before Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management authorized the 12-turbine South Fork plan in November 2021. And they serve to underscore the potential ecological consequences and environmental tradeoff of a coming offshore wind boom along the US East Coast. President Joe Biden wants the US to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by the end of the decade.

Concerns about South Fork, the 132-megawatt project being developed by Orsted AS and Eversource Energy, focused on its overlap with Cox Ledge, a major spawning ground for cod and “sensitive ecological area that provides valuable habitat for a number of federally managed fish species,” a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assistant regional administrator said in an October 2021 letter to Interior Department officials. Based on in-house expertise and peer-reviewed science, the agency said “this project has a high risk of population-level impacts on Southern New England Atlantic cod.”

The Interior Department took some steps to blunt impacts on Atlantic cod, including by carving out some areas of Cox Ledge from leasing. Developers, who are required to monitor cod activity at the site from November through the end of March, plan to adjust work plans to avoid any spotted spawning areas. And the final South Fork plan was scaled down from 15 turbines to 12 after warnings from NOAA.

Still, the oceanic agency faulted the Interior Department for shrugging off other recommendations to protect cod, saying the bureau had based some decisions on flawed assumptions not supported by science. That includes a decision to not block pile driving at the very start of the spawning season in November, even though NOAA said the noise could deter the activity and force some cod to abandon the area.

Read the full story at Yahoo Finance