Saving Seafood

Atlantic Lobster Board Moves Toward Reducing Rope In Effort To Save Right Whales

February 6, 2019 — A consortium of Atlantic states fisheries managers is calling for broad changes to the gear lobstermen use, in an effort to reduce risks posed to the endangered North Atlantic right whale and to ward off potential federal action that could be even more challenging for the industry.

There are roughly 410 right whales left in the world, and they are at risk of potentially fatal entanglements with vertical rope lines lobstermen and other marine harvesters use to position and haul their traps. At a meeting of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Council in Virginia, its lobster board voted unanimously to set in motion the process that could lead to major changes in the East Coast’s lobster industry.

“I don’t want NOAA making decisions on what this lobster fishery is going to look like in the future,” says Patrick Keliher, commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources for Maine, home to the country’s dominant lobster fishery, which landed some 110 million pounds of lobster in 2017 worth more than $450 million at the dock.

Keliher says that the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration is developing a “biological opinion” that could include a formal “jeopardy” finding for the right whales, which under the federal Endangered Species Act could lead to severe restrictions on the state’s harvest.

Read and listen to the full story at Maine Public

 

Rifts Repaired Between Canada and the U.S. at the International Pacific Halibut Meeting

February 5, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — In an eleventh-hour breakthrough in negotiations, both Canadian and American commissioners on the International Pacific Halibut Commission found common ground on two contentious halibut issues last Friday — bycatch and apportionment — while adopting catch limits that split the difference between the two advisory bodies.

With persistently stable populations at low levels, the coastwide stock has yet to show significant signs of recruitment, or younger year classes coming into the commercial fishery. Those two dynamics: stable but relatively low stock size and little sign of recruitment, make even a one or two percent difference in quota impact both the sustainability of the resource and the economic sustainability of certain coastal areas.

U.S. Commissioner Chris Oliver, who is also the Assistant Administrator of NOAA Fisheries, told the gathering the commissioners had agreed to an F47 SPR (spawning potential ratio) which is an indication of the intensity of fishing pressure on the resource. A higher F number means a lower catch limit.

“An F47 SPR is slightly more conservative than F46,” Oliver said as he made the motion everyone had been waiting for all week.  F46 is the fishing intensity level adopted last year.

“There is a little bit greater uncertainly in the stock dynamics this year, so a slightly more precautionary approach is warranted,” Oliver said. He noted the small level of young fish from the year class 2011 and 2012 that showed up in the IPHC survey last summer. That appearance is only one data point now, not reliable enough to count on. However, if they continue to show up in 2019, 2020 and beyond, the scientists would have more certainty of recruitment size and age.

Regarding the portion of quota agreed to for Canada, Oliver said, “For 2B, we’re using a share based calculation that will put 70% emphasis on historical share and 30% on SPR value, for the three years, beginning in January 2020. For this year, Area 2B will get a 17.7% share.”

Over the years, the Canadian and U.S. commissioners have struggled with how to bridge the gap between the 20% of the coastwide total Canada received prior to a coastwide assessment and the 12.3% of the geographic coastwide range. Canada has never recognized ‘apportionment’ — a word rarely used any more — and has accommodated for that by routinely taking higher catch limits.

Discussion have ranged from applying a 50:50 or equal emphasis to the B.C. number or heavily weighting one or the other. This agreement answers the question for the next four years.

IPHC’s two advisory bodies, one representing fishermen and one representing processors, recommented total catch limits that were less than 2 million pounds apart.

In the end, the Commissioners agreed to a coastwide total mortality of 38.61 million pounds of halibut, just below last year’s take of 38.7mlbs.  The Total Constant Exploitable Yield or TCEY (all removals: commercial, recreational, wastage, etc.) by regulatory area for 2019 are listed below in millions of pounds.

2A 1.65

2B 6.83

2C 6.34

3A 13.5

3B 2.90

4A 1.94

4B 1.45

4CDE 4.00

38.61  Total TCEY

The Fishery CEY catch limits (in million pounds) are:

2A   1.50

2B   5.95

2C   4.49

3A 10.26

3B   2.33

4A   1.65

4B   1.21

4CDE   2.04

29.43   Total FCEY

These numbers pose little risk to the resource falling to trigger reference points, but they do pose a greater chance of next year’s quota being lower, and 2021’s lower still if nothing changes.

The Conference Board, the fishermen’s advisory group, recommended 39.6 million pounds of TCEY for 2019, and the Processor’s Advisory Board recommended 37.63 million pounds. Most of the Commissioners agreed total catch limits should drop this year.

The Commission and the advisory bodies also agreed that an exception should be made for Area 2A. Washington state’s treaty tribes, with support from the state and others, proposed a minimum FCEY in that area of 1.5 milion. The IPHC granted that, albiet for an interim, three-year basis.

Another big hurdle in the impasse last year, besides the portion of the halibut that goes to Canada, was accounting for all sizes of halibut bycatch in the Bering Sea.

On Friday, the Commission recommended that staff evaluate and redefine TCEY to include the under-26-inch (U26) halibut that make up part of discard mortalities, including bycatch. The intent is for each country to be responsible for counting its U26 mortalities against its collective TCEY.

The change would, for the first time, include fish that are too small to be caught in the IPHC’s setline survey or for that matter on a commercial hook. They are caught in trawls, however, and currently accounted for by weight based in large part on observer data.

But inclusion of U26 mortalities in bycatch will not further reduce the amount of halibut available for the directed halibut fleet in the Bering Sea to catch, since it is sublegal and not targeted by halibut fishermen.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Big sea, bigger data: How analytics are making peace between fishermen and turtles

February 5, 2019 — The ocean is complicated. Our tools to manage it are blunt.

We often approach the ever-changing ocean as if it were a stationary valley in a national park. We close entire coastlines and restrict fisheries to protect single species. We’re flummoxed by wide-ranging mobile marine life and unprepared for climate change.

But a new generation of data-driven tools balances the needs of fish and fishermen and adapts automatically as the environment changes.

With the government’s towering stockpiles of ocean data, scientists can use weather and ocean chemistry to predict where fishermen are likely to catch their intended targets, including swordfish or tuna, and avoid protected species, such as marine mammals, sharks or manta rays.

Google and Facebook analyze data to predict our behavior with unnerving precision. With dynamic ocean management, scientists use similar strategies to protect the areas where turtles, albatross or whales are most likely to congregate in a given day or hour.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

ASMFC Seeks Proposals for Shellfish Aquaculture Consortia Projects Proposals Due March 15, 2019

February 5, 2019 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (Commission), in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is seeking proposals to form regionally focused research consortia that will address critical research needs surrounding shellfish aquaculture. While oysters are a priority species, proposals for any shellfish species will be accepted.

For FY19, Congressional funds are available to support ongoing research for off-bottom shellfish production in coastal areas. Research should focus on shellfish genetics, disease, seed production and transport, environmental interactions and impacts, regulatory challenges, and socioeconomic modeling. Additionally, regional partnerships are encouraged to classify and preserve natural genetic variation in shellfish.

NOAA Fisheries, through the Commission, is making $880,000 available for the funding period of August 1, 2019 to July 31, 2020. The Commission plans to award funding to support up to two consortia that can justify and demonstrate the greatest collaborative efforts with various investigators and stakeholders. Any consortium seeking support for this period must submit, as a single file, an electronic proposal by email no later than 5:00 p.m. EST on Friday, March 15, 2019. Please see the Request for Proposals (RFP) for complete proposal details, qualifying requirements, and submission instructions. The RFP is available here.

The Gulf and Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commissions have also issued similar RFPs seeking consortia proposals relevant to their respective regions.

For more information, please contact Dr. Louis Daniel at ldaniel@asmfc.org or 252.342.1478.

ALASKA: NOAA closes Bering Sea cod fishery as trawl catchers approach TAC

February 4, 2019 — US fishing regulators have closed the directed fishery for trawl-caught Pacific cod in Alaska’s Bering Sea for trawl catcher vessels after harvesters met their A season allocation quicker than they did last year.

The closure order from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, which takes effect at noon today, Feb. 1, brings the season to a close after only 13 days of fishing effort.

During the season, which began Jan. 20, trawl catchers caught 13,507 metric tons of cod in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands as of Feb 1, the latest date for which data is available. Trawl catchers were allocated a total allowable catch (TAC) of 26,388t for the season, including a 5,000t set-aside for delivery to shore-plants in the Aleutian Islands and 388t for halibut protected species catch.

“This action is necessary to prevent exceeding the Pacific cod allocation of the total allowable catch for the Bering Sea Trawl Catcher Vessel A-Season Sector Limitation in the Bering Sea subarea,” NOAA said in a press release.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

California has a weird new desert. It’s in the Pacific Ocean.

February 4, 2019 — Six years after it was stricken by a wasting disease off the northern California coast, the sunflower sea star — one of the most colorful starfish in the ocean — has all but vanished, and the domino effect threatens to unravel an entire marine ecosystem.

The cause of the sea star’s demise is a mystery, but it coincided with a warming event in the Pacific Ocean, possibly tied to the climate, that lasted for two years ending in 2015. It heated vast stretches of water in patches, and likely exacerbated the disease, according to a new study released Wednesday.

“I’ve never seen a decline of this magnitude of a species so important,” Drew Harvell, the lead author of the study, published in the journal Science Advances, that documented the sunflower sea star’s retreat into possible extinction off California and Oregon.

If the study had a purpose, she said, it was to call attention to the sea star’s demise so that federal officials would take action to list it as endangered and work to save it, possibly with a breeding program using sunflower stars that are surviving in parts of Washington, Alaska and Canada.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Ocean heat waves like the Pacific’s deadly ‘Blob’ could become the new normal

February 1, 2019 — When marine biologist Steve Barbeaux first saw the data in late 2017, he thought it was the result of a computer glitch. How else could more than 100 million Pacific cod suddenly vanish from the waters off of southern Alaska?

Within hours, however, Barbeaux’s colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Seattle, Washington, had confirmed the numbers. No glitch. The data, collected by research trawlers, indicated cod numbers had plunged by 70% in 2 years, essentially erasing a fishery worth $100 million annually. There was no evidence that the fish had simply moved elsewhere. And as the vast scale of the disappearance became clear, a prime suspect emerged: “The Blob.”

In late 2013, a huge patch of unusually warm ocean water, roughly one-third the size of the contiguous United States, formed in the Gulf of Alaska and began to spread. A few months later, Nick Bond, a climate scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, dubbed it The Blob. The name, with its echo of a 1958 horror film about an alien life form that keeps growing as it consumes everything in its path, quickly caught on. By the summer of 2015, The Blob had more than doubled in size, stretching across more than 4 million square kilometers of ocean, from Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula to Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Water temperatures reached 2.5°C above normal in many places.

Read the full story at Science Magazine

Court Denies California’s Attempt to Delay Whale Entanglement Case

February 1, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A federal court has rejected the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s bid to delay a lawsuit alleging it’s not doing enough to prevent its commercial Dungeness crab fishery from entangling whales and sea turtles in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act.

The Center for Biological Diversity sued the department in October 2017 after whale entanglement numbers broke records for three straight years.

“This is an important win in our fight to protect whales and sea turtles from suffering and dying in crabbing gear. It’s time for California regulators to stop delaying and take action,” Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center, said in a press release. “The court recognized that it can’t just sit on the sidelines while state officials have no plan to prevent entanglements. Talking and holding endless meetings isn’t enough.”

U.S. District Court Judge Maxine Chesney denied the department’s motion to stay the case for two and a half years while it applies for an ESA Section 10 federal permit, which would require preventive measures. California sent a letter to NOAA last year, indicating the agency’s plans to formally file for the permit.

In the meantime, California has taken steps to avoid whale entanglements. The Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group published a best practices guide for fishermen It also established the Risk Assessment and Mitigation Program (RAMP) to support the state in working collaboratively with experts (fishermen, researchers, NGOs, etc.) to identify and assess elevated levels of entanglement risk and determine the need for management options to reduce risk of entanglement. Working with federal scientists, the group also solicits periodic flyovers to find concentrations of gear and concentrations of whales. With that information, fishermen can voluntarily get their gear and/or try to avoid whale interactions.

The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations filed as an intervenor in the lawsuit and continues to support the industry in its efforts to avoid whale entanglement.

“No commercial fisherman wants to entangle whales or sea turtles in their fishing gear – doing so is not only a public relations disaster, but will likely destroy that gear, can damage their boats and can even be life-threatening,” the PCFFA states in its Memorandum in Support of Motion for Intervention in March 2018. “Many commercial fishermen voluntarily participate in programs to identify and rescue marine animals (especially whales) from entanglements in commercial fishing gear, often at great personal peril.”

On Feb. 22 the court is scheduled to consider the Center’s motion for summary judgment, the Center said in a press release.

In 2016 federal officials confirmed that the California commercial Dungeness crab fishery entangled at least 23 animals. As of late November, at least 36 whale entanglements had been reported off California in 2018, including at least five humpback whales entangled in California commercial Dungeness crab gear, the Center said in the statement.

California’s attention to this issue a few years ago has resulted in several gear workshops that included researchers, developers and fishermen coming together to try to solve or mitigate whale entanglement issues on the entire West Coast. Both Oregon and Washington now have their own gear/entanglement groups, working on problems and proposing incremental steps to prevent entanglements. Washington also has notified NOAA it intends to apply for an ESA Section 10 permit for its Dungeness crab fishery.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Four newborn right whales spotted early in 2019 breeding season

February 1, 2019 — The end of 2018 contained more dark news for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale, as scientists finding that the species decline had quickened.

An estimate by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) brought the total population count of the species to a maximum total of 411 individuals remaining, with as few as 100 of those remaining being females of breeding age. That news came on top of already grim finding that no new calves were born during the 2017-2018 breeding season.

But on 22 January, three new calves were reported by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. And on 25 January, the agency recorded a spotting of a fourth right whale calf off the coast of Georgia.

The North Atlantic right whales, one of the world’s three right whale populations, spend much of the winter in the warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Florida and Georgia before migrating to New England the Canadian Maritimes for the summer. There, they face the danger of entanglement in fishing lines used in lobster and crab fishing.

In 2017, 17 right whales died from ship strikes or entanglements in fishing gear. In 2018, an additional three right whales died, with one of the deceased right whales found to have died from entanglement in snow crab gear used in Canada.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Pentony’s NOAA shutdown update: Herring limits got action; permits piled up

January 31, 2019 — Some of the cost of the US federal government’s partial 35-day shutdown must now be borne by New England’s commercial fish and shellfish harvesters waiting for their permits to be renewed, but earlier this week Michael Pentony described how his staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was trying to mitigate the pain.

In a briefing provided to the New England Regional Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) at their meeting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday, Pentony, the director of NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO), said his team was prioritizing the backlog of new fishing permit requests as well as renewal requests that didn’t get attention. (Undercurrent News has been  provided a recording of the comments.)

Fishing vessel permits begin to expire on March 1 for several species, including red crab, squid and butterfish, and scallop permits expire on April 1, he noted. Permits for several other species expire on May 1.

The backlog of permit renewals “was the thing that really kept me up at night as the shutdown dragged on and on with no end in sight for a while”, Pentony told the NEFMC.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News