Saving Seafood

AQUAA Act Reintroduced in Congress; Bill Aims to Create Standards for U.S. Offshore Aquaculture

October 29, 2021 — U.S. Senators Roger Wicker (R-MS), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Brian Schatz, (D-HI), and Marco Rubio, (R-FL) reintroduced the AQUAA Act which aims to create national standards for offshore aquaculture in the U.S.

The bill was first introduced in September of 2020, with the Senators describing the Act as a complement to former President Donald Trump’s May 2020  Executive Order, “Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth.” The EO focuses on the development of a domestic offshore aquaculture industry which will help create a sustainable seafood source and allow the country to rely more on its own resources.

More specifically, the bill would designate NOAA as the lead agency for marine aquaculture. It would also direct NOAA to “harmonize the permitting system for offshore aquaculture for farms in federal waters, and direct the agency to lead a research and development grant program to spur innovation throughout the industry.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

 

US Government Reviews Atlantic Shark Fishery

October 28, 2021 — The boat rocks gently from side to side as the mid-summer storm starts to roll in. While many boats would head back to shore and call it quits for the day as the rain begins to pelt down, the crew of this vessel instead dons rainjackets and continues their work under the cold water that is now pouring out of the clouds. Such is the life of a fisher.

While many might joke that the ocean is the one who makes all the rules – whether they catch something or not at the end of the day – the true rulemaker is whoever governs that particular body of water. Since this boat is currently sitting in the US Atlantic Ocean, it falls under the jurisdiction of many governing bodies including the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). This federal agency, informally known as NOAA Fisheries, works to conserve, protect, and manage marine resources. And just recently it released a draft report on the state of the highly migratory species in the Atlantic, including sharks.

Read the full story at Forbes

 

Moulton Groundfish Trawl Task Force Receives $500,000 Backing From NOAA

October 26, 2021 — The following was released by the office of Congressman Seth Moulton:

It is an age-old question: how many fish are in the sea? In New England, the livelihoods of 34,000 people depend on the answer. A new federal grant that will fund the work of Rep. Seth Moulton’s Groundfish Trawl Task Force aims to get a more accurate count.

The results of the work have major implications for New England’s commercial fishermen. Government regulations that dictate how many groundfish commercial fishermen can catch are based on estimates of the groundfish population. Those estimates are currently calculated by combining decades of data from two research vessels that sporadically trawl the ocean and judge a species’ health based on what they catch. For decades, commercial fishermen have criticized the method as an archaic, inaccurate approach that leaves their financial security up to chance.

Groundfish are fish that live on or near the ocean floor. They include species like the iconic Atlantic cod, haddock, and flounder which fetch the highest-values for commercial fishermen.

Today, Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) announced a $500,000 federal grant from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that will fund research designed by Moulton’s Groundfish Task Force. The work will lead to new data NOAA, scientists and fishermen hope will be more accurate measurements of the fish population.

Moulton formed the Groundfish Task Force in 2015 in order to build consensus between the scientific community that conducts research which informs commercial fishing regulations and the commercial fishermen who are most affected by those regulations.

“When I took office I was told I had to make a choice: stand with the fishermen or the environmentalists. I thought that was crazy because both want—and fishermen need—a sustainable fishery. So instead, we rallied both groups around getting better science, and that is exactly what this historic partnership has produced,” Moulton said. “This work will protect the livelihoods of thousands of people, it will protect our ocean, and it will preserve New England’s identity as a place where people can make a living fishing.”

Jackie Odell, Executive Director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said: “Working constructively and collaboratively through the Task Force has been invaluable. The upcoming research will make a positive scientific contribution. This research will fill-in gaps and reduce uncertainty with the existing science.”

The new data will influence the commercial fishing industry. Gloucester, in the 6th Congressional district, is the second busiest port in the state.

According to a 2021 report by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, 436 permitted commercial fish harvesters have a Gloucester address and 446 commercial fishing vessels are homeported in the city.

They keep busy. Commercial fishermen landed 63,098,659 pounds of catch in 2018, with an ex-vessel value of $53,210,608. The top-ranked species, by dollar value, landed in Gloucester between 2014-2018 included American Lobster, Atlantic sea herring, and haddock. Herring and haddock are two of the species affected by the grants announced today.

Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said: “As America’s Oldest Seaport, Gloucester has been proud to partner with Congressman Seth Moulton and our fishermen so that we can find common sense solutions to benefit the entire fishing industry. Our partnerships agree that we must continue to collaborate together, especially around sustainable solutions that will benefit us all.”

In December of 2020, with Moulton’s support, the task force sent NOAA several recommendations for ways that the government could improve its research.

In a letter in response to Rep. Moulton and the Task Force, NOAA’s Director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Dr. Jon Hare said: “Thank you for forming the Cod Task Force. The Task Force has broad expertise and has made a number of helpful recommendations to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.” 

It also outlined three recommendations that NOAA will fund.

NOAA selected three of the recommendations for funding. The first will explore whether NOAA can get a better count of how many fish are present in waters fished by commercial fishermen. It will do this by separating the data of the two research vessels NOAA used to conduct the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s trawl survey. The Albatross IV was used between 1963 and 2008, and the Bigelow was commissioned in 2007 and has been used since. NOAA currently combines the data gathered over the last six decades into one dataset in order to assess where and when fishermen can work.

The second will determine how many groundfish are present in the areas of the ocean where they are known to live but can be challenging to sample with traditional approaches such as trawl surveys. This study will use a variety of data sources including NOAA’s longline surveys. Longlining involves long strings of hooks dropped and left on or near the bottom of the ocean at depths beyond the reach of trawling vessels.

Finally, the grants will collect data on how many fish are caught by fishermen and compare that information to the trawl surveys that NOAA conducts. The goal is to determine the degree to which the trawl surveys overlap with where key groundfish stocks are caught in the Gulf of Maine.

The $500,000 grant that will fund these three projects was appropriated by Congress and sent to NOAA’s Cooperative Institute of the North Atlantic Region, which is housed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. The institute divided the work into two parts. One part will fund the first two studies and will be conducted by the Gulf of Maine Research Institute with a subaward to Northeastern University. The third project will be funded through a grant to UMass Dartmouth.

Moulton and his team worked with Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)  to secure funding for the research with an amendment to a Senate appropriations bill late last year. The money is now on the way.

According to NOAA, Cooperative Institutes are NOAA-supported, non-federal organizations that have established outstanding research and education programs in one or more areas that are relevant to the NOAA mission. Cooperative Institutes’ expertise and facilities add significantly to NOAA’s capabilities, and their structure and legal framework facilitate rapid and efficient mobilization of those resources to meet NOAA’s programmatic needs.

 

Huffman, Graves reestablish congressional marine sanctuary caucus

October 22, 2021 — In advance of next year’s golden anniversary for the National Marine Sanctuaries Act, two congressmen representing key fishery regions have joined forces to relaunch a bipartisan caucus to promote and continue protecting habitats crucial for coastal economies.

U.S. Reps. Jared Huffman (D-California) and Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) will serve as co-chairs for the reestablished caucus, which according to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation was first formed 15 years ago. The foundation noted that 30 members have already signed up to join the group.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

NOAA Awards $1.7 Million for Habitat Connectivity Research to Support National Marine Sanctuaries

October 14, 2021 — From a bird’s eye view, the ocean appears to be an endless expanse of blue. Though, if you peek below the surface, the water column and seafloor reveal an active place made up of varying ecosystems that consist of a myriad of organisms and habitats.

Understanding how these different habitats are connected to each other and how fishes, marine mammals, seabirds, and sea turtles use them is the focus of three newly funded projects in Florida Keys, Flower Garden Banks, and Stellwagen Bank national marine sanctuaries. This month, NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science is announcing $1.7 million of an anticipated $5.9 million in funding for research to support the management of national marine sanctuaries.

This newly funded research will focus on how different species are using habitats within marine protected areas (MPAs) by tagging and tracking key species using telemetry in each sanctuary. Scientists and resource managers will use this information to determine if the protected area is working well to support that particular species, and inform future management decisions.

Read the full story at ECO Magazine

 

Legal challenges hanging over federal right whale protections

October 7, 2021 — Later this month, a stretch of federal waters off the coast of Maine will become temporarily off-limits for lobster fishing.

The seasonal closure is part of a new set of regulations aimed at protecting the endangered right whale population.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, there are fewer than 370 right whales left in the world.

The marine mammals are native to Maine waters, traveling between coastal Nova Scotia and New England to feed and breed.

Research shows as many as four out of every five right whales show signs of injury from fishing line entanglement.

Along with the seasonal closure of some federal waters, the new regulations also limit the use of fixed-line lobster traps.

Read the full story at WABI

 

NOAA Fisheries Announces Proposed Rule for Amendment 21 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan

October 5. 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today, NOAA Fisheries published a proposed rule for Amendment 21 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan. The New England Fishery Management Council developed Amendment 21 to adjust the management of the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) as well as the limited access general category (LAGC) individual fishing quota (IFQ) program to support overall economic performance of the fishery while allowing for continued participation in the general category fishery.

Amendment 21 would:

•Account for biomass in the NGOM as part of the Overfishing Limit and the Acceptable Biological Catch to be consistent with other portions of scallop resource management.•Develop landing limits for all permit categories in the NGOM and establish an 800,000 lb NGOM Set-Aside trigger for the NGOM directed fishery.

•Expand the scallop observer program to monitor directed scallop fishing in the NGOM.

•Allocate 25,000 lb of the NGOM allocation to increase the overall Scallop Research Set-Aside (RSA).

•Increase the LAGC IFQ possession limit to 800 lb per trip only for access area trips.

•Prorate the daily observer compensation rate in 12-hour increments for observed LAGC IFQ trips longer than 1 day.

•Allow for temporary transfers of IFQ from limited access vessels with IFQ to LAGC IFQ-only vessels.

For more information, read the proposed rule as filed in the Federal Register. The comment period is open through November 4, 2021. Submit your comments through the e-rulemaking portal.

Questions?

Fishermen: Contact Travis Ford, Sustainable Fisheries, 978-281-9233

Media: Contact Allison Ferreira, Regional Office, 978-281-9103

Risk of oil spills may rise as climate change creates more monster storms

September 30, 2021 — Hurricane Ida left a trail of destruction after slamming into the Gulf Coast, but offshore the Category 4 storm left something else in its wake: oil spills.

Oil spills aren’t uncommon with strong storms, but as climate change pushes up sea levels and creates stronger storms with more moisture, offshore refineries are going to need greater and greater protections.

The Gulf of Mexico is “particularly vulnerable” because of the prevalence of storms, the low-lying geography, sea-level rise, receding shorelines and the presence of oil facilities, Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told ABC News. Since offshore drilling began in the region in 1942, about 6,000 oil and gas structures have been installed in the Gulf of Mexico.

On Sept. 4, the day before Ida made landfall in Louisiana, the Coast Guard announced that cleanup crews already were responding to a large oil spill at an offshore drilling about 2 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

Read the full story at ABC News

 

 

Northern Shrimp Population Collapse Linked to Warming Ocean Temperatures, Squid Predation

September 29, 2021 — An extreme heatwave in the Gulf of Maine in 2012 resulted in the warmest ocean temperatures in the region in decades. By 2013, the Atlantic northern shrimp population in the gulf had experienced a stock “collapse.” That is what fishery scientists call a rapid decrease in numbers that is not a natural fluctuation in stock size. Scientists studying the collapse have found that during this time, warmer temperatures were linked to increases in longfin squid, a major shrimp predator. They arrived in the Gulf of Maine sooner than usual and in more areas where shrimp occur.

”Our results suggest that longfin squid may have been a major player in the collapse of Gulf of Maine northern shrimp during an extreme heat wave event,” said Anne Richards, a biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.

Richards co-authored the study with Margaret Hunter from the Maine Department of Marine Resources Division of Biological Monitoring and Assessment. They recently published their conclusions in the online journal PLOS ONE.

Read the full story from NOAA