Saving Seafood

NOAA showcases new mapping tool for marine species

April 19, 2022 — NOAA Fisheries is launching a new tool to better track the location and movement of marine fish in U.S. waters. The Distribution Mapping and Analysis Portal reveals that the ranges of many marine species are shifting, expanding and contracting in response to changing ocean conditions. The interactive website will improve data sharing and collaboration, facilitate decision-making about fishery management and science and increase overall knowledge of species distribution for stock assessments.

The portal displays data from NOAA Fisheries bottom trawl surveys for five regions (Northeast, Southeast, Gulf of Mexico, West Coast and Alaska) and includes a map viewer and graphing capabilities for over 800 marine fish and invertebrate species caught during the surveys. Understanding how species are distributed in space and time, and the factors that drive patterns, are central questions in ecology and important for species conservation and management.

“Our climate and oceans are changing, and these changes are affecting the distribution and abundance of living marine resources in our waters,” said Rick Spinrad, Ph.D., NOAA administrator. “Changes in fish stocks can have significant economic and cultural impacts for communities and businesses across the U.S. The visualization capabilities of this new tool boost our ability to turn the data NOAA collects into robust decision-making resources for the entire fishery management community, helping build a Climate-Ready Nation.”

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

LSU Sea Grant’s Director Julie Lively Balances Organization’s Mission With Seafood Community’s Hurricane Recovery

April 18, 2022 — Sea Grant’s mission is to enhance the practical use and conservation of coastal and marine resources in order to create a sustainable economy and environment.  With four hurricanes in two years, Julie Lively, the executive director of Louisiana Sea Grant at LSU, has had to balance the organizational mission with that of assisting the state’s seafood community’s recovery from the storms.

“I have been on a lot of calls with the EDA, FEMA, NOAA and other government organizations,” said the director who is also sits as a member of the Louisiana Fishing Community Recovery Coalition (LFCRC).  “On one of them I was asked to provide a rough list of bulleted items caused by the storms.  Marine debris in the water topped my list. Several members on the call were like, ‘who did a bad job at cleaning up?’ We just all stopped on the call and went “like what”, and they asked again. ‘Who didn’t do a very good job when they cleaned it up?”

Read the full story at the Gulf Seafood Foundation

 

US Sanctions on Russia’s Seafood Have a Big Loophole: China Processors

April 15, 2022 — A U.S. ban on seafood imports from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine was supposed to sap billions of dollars from Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

But shortcomings in import regulations mean that Russian-caught pollock, salmon and crab are likely to enter the U.S. anyway, by way of the country vital to seafood supply chains across the world: China.

Like the U.S. seafood industry, Russian companies rely heavily on China to process their catch. Once there, the seafood can be re-exported to the U.S. as a “product of China” because country of origin labelling isn’t required.

The result is that nearly a third of the wild-caught fish imported from China is estimated to have been caught in Russian waters, according to an International Trade Commission study of 2019 data. For pollock and sockeye salmon, the rate is even higher — 50% to 75%.

“China doesn’t catch cod. They don’t catch pollock. But yet, they’re one of the largest exporters of these whitefish in the world,” said Sally Yozell, a former policy director at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who now is a senior fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington. “Having it labeled as a Chinese product is really not fair to the consumers and to restaurants.”

Read the full story at NBC New York

New advisors for NOAA marine fisheries

April 13, 2022 — Seven new members from fisheries and environmental groups were recently appointed to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Fisheries Advisory Committee.

The new appointments by Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo brings the panel up to its full complement of 21 members, who advise the Department of Commerce and NOAA on living marine resources.

The seven new members are:

• Natasha Hayden, Kodiak, Alaska: Vice President of Lands & Natural Resources, Afognak Native Corporation

• Meredith Moore, Washington, D.C.: Director, Fish Conservation Program, Ocean Conservancy

• Linda O’Dierno, Somers, N.Y.: Fish and seafood development specialist

• Jocelyn Runnebaum, Ph.D., Bath, Maine: Fisheries Project Manager, Nature Conservancy

• Sarah Schumann, Warren, R.I.: Owner/principal, Shining Sea Fisheries Consulting, LLC

• Clayward Tam, Kailua, Hawaii: Cooperative Fisheries Research Coordinator, Pacific Islands Fisheries Group

• Brett Veerhusen, Seattle, Wash.: Principal, Ocean Strategies, Inc.

“These new members have such a rich and diverse background working across a wide range of fisheries, seafood, and marine resource issues,” said Janet Coit, assistant administrator of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Dealers scramble to supply lobstermen ahead of gear change deadline

April 12, 2022 — May 1 is the deadline for commercial lobstermen in Maine to trawl up, use weaker rope or insert weak links and mark gear with the state color purple. But will they be ready? 

The new federal gear requirements enacted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are aimed at reducing right whale entanglements with vertical trap lines. Weaker rope or weak links will allow whales to break free of the rope, while the state-specific gear colors will help determine where a whale was entangled.  

“Everyone’s hoping for a good year, hoping for a good price,” said Virginia Olsen, a Maine Lobstering Union Local 207 member who fishes out of Stonington. “We’re just going to do what we do. We’re gonna go to work.” 

But first, enough rope and weak links must come into local fishing gear stores to supply the approximately 4,500 commercial lobstermen in Maine, each of whom can haul up to 800 traps. 

That equals a lot of rope or links – even with the requirement to attach more traps per vertical line than before, depending on the lobster zone and whether the grounds are in federal or state waters. While NOAA has specified approved gear types and brands, many local lobstermen are on waiting lists at gear shops.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

NEW JERSEY: Fishermen say Ørsted boats destroying traps

April 11, 2022 — Several commercial fishermen claim survey boats hired by wind turbine developer Ørsted inadvertently cut their lines causing their lobster and conch traps to be lost in the ocean. At issue: being reimbursed from Ørsted for the lost gear and income

Lobster fisherman Joe Wagner, a second-generation fisherman of lobster, sea bass and conch, said last year he lost 157 lobster traps to Ørsted, which is partnering with PSEG on the Ocean Wind 1 project that aims to bring up to 99 massive wind turbines to an area 15 miles off the coast of Cape May and Atlantic counties.

“They only paid me for a handful of them because they say it wasn’t their boats,” he said.

Wagner said Ørsted made that claim based on tracking data of the survey boats. He said he caught the survey boats frequently turning off their tracking devices.

Last year his father lost 100 lobster pots to Ørsted survey boats, Wagner asserted, again with Ørsted claiming their boats were not to blame. The cost of lobster pots is $180 to $220 each with a possible two-year delay to receive all the replacements due to supply chain issues, he said.

He said Ørsted sends a weekly email to fishermen with a photo of their leased areas stating “our vessels might be in your area” but doesn’t give exact coordinates.

Read the full story at Ocean City Sentinel

 

ANALYSIS: 2022 Scallop Season Expectations

April 5, 2022 — April 1, 2022  marks the opening of the 2022/2023 Atlantic sea scallop fishery that operates along the Atlantic coast from the Mid-Atlantic region, up to the U.S.-Canadian border. Framework Adjustment 34, which namely projects 34 million pounds of Atlantic sea scallops to be landed this season, was approved by New England Fishery Management Council back in December, and passed along to NOAA for final approval and implementation.

Harvest projections of 34 million pounds is a 15% reduction to the 40 million pounds projected last year, almost half of the 62.5 million pounds projected just three years ago in 2019, and the lowest level since 2014.

Read the full story at Seafood News

 

Salmon travel deep into the Pacific. As it warms, many ‘don’t come back.’

March 30, 2022 — During a typical fall, almost a million chum salmon pour into Alaska’s Yukon River, a torrent of wild fish that has sustained the economy and Indigenous culture in the far north for generations. Last year, that run collapsed, with salmon trickling upstream at a 10th of normal levels, forcing the state to airlift frozen fish from other regions to feed the population.

About 400 miles to the south, in Bristol Bay, the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery set a record last year, with more than 66 million salmon returning to the rivers in the watershed. That total is expected to be broken again this year.

Salmon in the Pacific Ocean face dramatically different fates from one river system to the next. As the planet warms, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, scientists say changes in ocean conditions are helping drive these wild swings and collapses of key stocks. These North Pacific fish account for most of the world’s wild-caught salmon, and their survival has implications for economies and cultures around the Pacific Rim.

During her three decades as a government scientist, as climate change has intensified, Laurie Weitkamp has watched these fluctuations in salmon numbers become bigger and the models that predict how many salmon will return from sea become more unreliable.

“Salmon will go out, in what we think is a really good ocean, and then it collapses,” said Weitkamp, a fisheries biologist with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration based in Oregon. “They don’t come back.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Meet Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator

March 30, 2022 — To wrap up Women’s History Month, we sat down with Janet Coit, NOAA Fisheries Assistant Administrator, to find out more about her career path, passions, and perspective on leading NOAA Fisheries. Explore her answers below.

Tell us a little about yourself. What are a few words that describe you?

I am a mom, wife, daughter, and sister. A reader. A conservationist, who has always loved nature and learning. I am an extrovert, drawing energy from people. But I need time to myself and like to restore my soul in nature. The older I get, the more I realize the importance of spending time with friends and loved ones. I am also super passionate about making a difference in the world.

Where did you grow up?

Little known fact: I did not grow up on the coast! I grew up in Syracuse, New York, the hub of New York State. I fell in love with nature at my family’s very rustic camp—or cabin—in the Adirondacks. We have a place you can get to by boat with no electricity and no plumbing! Yes, that means an outhouse. But this place was a North Star in my life. It’s still “off the grid,” and helped me appreciate wild places. That connection to a natural place seems to be at the heart of many careers in conservation and environmental policy. For those in the fisheries world, maybe that’s out on an estuary or on the open ocean. I still visit the cabin and feel every cell expand when I’m there. My children have grown up there, too.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

NOAA ship leaves Hawaii for historic deployment

March 30, 2022 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) ship Rainier has finally departed on the farthest journey of its 52-year history.

Originally planned for 2020, the ship is on a 3,307-nautical mile expedition to the Western Pacific to map the waters and survey the reefs. The ship set sail from Honolulu, Hawaii, on March 26.

This is Rainier’s first multidisciplinary expedition to Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. A team of scientists on board will map the waters from shore to almost 2,000 meters deep. The data collected from this trip will support safe navigation as well as coral habitat and fisheries conservation; it will also support storm surge and tsunami modeling.

Read the full story at KHON2