Saving Seafood

NOAA Fisheries Announces New Habitat Management Measures for New England Fisheries

April 4, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has approved measures of the New England Fishery Management Council’s Omnibus Essential Fish Habitat Amendment 2. This amendment updates the Essential Fish Habitat designations required by the Magnuson-Stevens Act with the latest scientific information, and minimizes the effect of fishing on that habitat while balancing the economic needs of the fishing industry.

The approved measures include:

  • Revisions to the essential fish habitat designations for all New England Fishery Management Council-managed species and life stages;
  • New Habitat Areas of Particular Concern to highlight especially important habitat areas;
  • Revisions to the spatial management system within the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, and the southern New England area to better align with scientific advice on how and where to protect essential fish habitat while balancing the economic needs of the fishing industry;
  • Establishment of two Dedicated Habitat Research Areas, seasonal spawning protection measures, and a system for reviewing and updating the proposed measures.

The approved measures are effective on April 9, 2018.  

Two important notes:

Closed Area I North will remain closed until April 15 to protect spawning. This closure applies to all fishing vessels, except vessels in transit, vessels fishing with exempted gears, vessels fishing in the mid-water trawl exempted fishery, charter and party vessels, private recreational vessels, and scallop dredges.

The Spring Massachusetts Bay Spawning Closure will be closed April 15-30. This closure applies to all vessels, except vessels without a federal northeast multispecies permit fishing exclusively in state waters, vessels fishing with exempted gears or in the mid-water trawl purse seine exempted fishery, scallop vessels on a day-at-sea, scallop vessels in the dredge exemption area, transiting vessels, and charter/party and private recreational vessels.

For more information, read the permit holder bulletin. Also, see the map of the final approved habitat areas below. The dashed lines show the boundaries of the existing closed areas and habitat closures.

Learn more about NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region by visiting the site here.

 

As whales fade, movement they spawned tries to keep up hope

April 3, 2018 — Regina Asmutis-Silvia, a biologist who has dedicated her career to saving right whales, is cleaning out a file cabinet from the early 1990s, and the documents inside tell a familiar story — the whales are dying from collisions with ships and entanglements in commercial fishing gear, and the species might not survive.

Fast forward through a quarter-century of crawl-paced progress, and it’s all happening again.

“It’s a little scary to think if we hadn’t been working on this all these years, would they have been relegated to history instead of Cape Cod Bay?” said Asmutis-Silvia, of Plymouth, Massachusetts-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation. “We’re standing on the cliff and going, ‘It matters, they’re still here, they’re still something to fight for’.”

Despite eight decades of conservation efforts, North Atlantic right whales are facing a new crisis. The threat of extinction within a generation looms, and the movement to preserve the whales is trying to come up with new solutions.

The whales are one of the rarest marine mammals in the world, numbering about 450. The 100,000-pound animals have been even closer to the brink of extinction before, and the effort to save them galvanized one of the most visible wildlife conservation movements in U.S. history.

But the population’s falling again because of poor reproduction coupled with high mortality from ship strikes and entanglement. Scientists, environmentalists, whale watch captains and animal lovers of all stripes are rallying to renew interest in saving right whales, but many admit to feeling close to defeated.

Charles “Stormy” Mayo, director of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, and other scientists have said the species could be extinct as soon as 2041. Mayo, a ninth generation resident of Cape Cod whose ancestors harpooned whales in the 18th and 19th centuries, now leads expeditions to find the animals and try to learn how to save them.

“There’s a fair amount of sadness, dealing with these creatures. They are on the brink of extinction now, and their future is truly in doubt,” he said. “I don’t think any of us are discouraged, but many of us are fearful. I certainly am.”

The decline of right whales dates back to the whaling era of centuries ago, when they were targeted as the “right” whale to hunt because they were slow and floated when killed. They were harvested for their oil and meat, and might have dwindled to double digits until international protections took hold in 1935.

Preserving the whales became an international cause, championed by environmentalists, scientists and the U.S. government, and their population grew to about 275 in 1990 and 500 around 2010. But then things changed.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

NOAA publishes global list of fisheries and their risks to marine mammals

April 3, 2018 — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published the first list of foreign fisheries, detailing the risks that commercial fishing around the world pose to marine mammals.

“The [List of Foreign Fisheries] is an important milestone because it provides the global community a view into the marine mammal bycatch levels of commercially relevant fisheries,” according to a statement published on the NOAA Fisheries website.

“In addition, it offers us a better understanding of the impacts of marine mammal bycatch, an improvement of tools and scientific approaches to mitigating those impacts, and establishes a new level of international cooperation in achieving these objectives,” the statement says.

The register is a step toward meeting specific requirements in the Marine Mammal Protection Act on the sources of fish imported into the U.S. It includes nearly 4,000 fisheries across some 135 countries. These fisheries have until 2022 to demonstrate that the methods they use to catch fish, as well as other marine animals such as coral, crabs, lobsters and shellfish, either aren’t much of a danger to marine mammals, or they employ comparable methods and mitigation measures to similar operations in the United States.

Fishing nets can exact a high toll on animals that fishers don’t intend to catch. Nets themselves can trap dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions as bycatch. In Mexico, a fishery targeting the totoaba for its swim bladders that fetch high prices in Asian markets has decimated the tiny porpoise known as the vaquita (Phocoena sinus). Perhaps as few as 12 remain in the wild.

The lines from traps, pots and nets can also ensnare even the largest animals in the ocean. Recent research has shown that almost every one of the estimated remaining 451 North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) either is toting errant fishing equipment around or it bears the scars of entanglements with gear. These ropes can cause injuries to right whales and other animals that can lead to infection or death. And towing pieces of gear that can be longer than the whale’s body causes what scientists call “parasitic” drag that can interfere with the ability to find food.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

Rise in reports of abandoned fishing nets washing up in Hawaii

April 3, 2018 — HONOLULU — Organizations are dealing with a surge in reports of abandoned fishing nets washing up along Hawaii’s coastlines.

The nets pose a entanglement threat to marine life and can also destroy coral reefs.

“A lot of the debris accumulation is due to our geographic location in the North Pacific,” said Mark Manuel, Pacific Islands Regional Coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program. “We’re just prone to having high levels of debris accumulate on our shorelines and coral reef environments.”

POP Fishing & Marine maintains a drop-off bin for derelict nets at Honolulu Harbor’s Pier 38 as part of Hawaii’s Nets-to-Energy Program.

“In the past several months, there’s been a large uptick, a large volume of nets and debris washing up, probably due to ocean current conditions. We’ve never seen this much volume in such a short period of time,” said Neil Kanemoto of POP Fishing & Marine.

The marine debris is taken to a scrap metal recycling facility where it is chopped into small pieces. The fragments are then sent to the city’s H-POWER facility to be burned, producing steam that drives a turbine to generate electricity.

Last month, the Hawaii Wildlife Fund sent 11.6 tons of marine debris from the Big Island to Oahu in a Matson container. The non-profit is now working with its partners to start removing a massive pile of netting from Kamilo Beach.

Read the full story at KFVE

 

Changes could be coming to America’s flounder harvest

April 3, 2018 — BOSTON — Interstate fishing managers are considering changing the rules governing the fishery for a popular species of flounder.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says managers are seeking comments about possible changes to the summer flounder fishery. The fish has been brought to land from Maine to Florida over the years and the catch was worth more than $30 million in 2016.

An entry in the Federal Register about the proposal says it concerns revisions to commercial and recreational quotas for the fish. Comments are due by April 30.

Fishermen caught a little less than 7.8 million pounds of summer flounder in 2016. That was the lowest total since 1972.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Greensboro News & Record

 

State files petition with federal bodies that set commercial fluke fishing quotas

April 3, 2018 — Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned the U.S. Secretary of Commerce in October that if changes weren’t made to fluke quotas to be fair to New York’s economy and commercial fishing families, the state would take legal action.

Last week, that threat became more real as the governor and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the filing of a petition with the federal government to establish fair quota allocations for the state’s commercial harvest of fluke, or summer flounder.

In a March 23 statement, Mr. Cuomo said the federal government can’t rely on “decades-old data to uphold the fluke quotas, which put New York at a disadvantage compared to other states.”

“New York’s commercial fishing industry has been held back by archaic federal restrictions for too long, and by taking action to defend fair treatment of our fishers, we will help this valuable industry reach its full potential,” he said.

The state Department of Conservation petitioned for revised allocations with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service and the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council.

“New York’s commercial fishing industry deserves a fair shake — not the back of the hand — from the federal government,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “Federal law requires that our nation’s marine fisheries be managed according to the best available science, and in a fair, efficient, and safe way. Simply put, perpetuating New York’s undersized, outdated share of the commercial summer flounder fishery does not meet the requirements of the law.”

Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Basil Seggos also said changes need to be made.

Local fishermen have long felt they’re left short-changed while other East Coast states have higher quotas. Some are skeptical of what will come next, as they’ve dealt with restrictions on fluke fishing since 1992, which state officials and fishermen say were based on inaccurate or outdated data on the fish population.

Read the full story at the Suffolk Times

 

Word of Gloucester Seafood Processing reopening catches city leaders by surprise

April 3, 2018 — The comments last week by the founder of the Mazzetta Company that the seafood processor will resume processing fresh fish at its largely dormant Gloucester Seafood Processing plant caught many by surprise — including city officials.

Tom Mazzetta, the chief executive officer of the Illinois-based seafood conglomerate that bears his family’s name, told a respected fishing website that the Gloucester Seafood Processing plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park will resume operations before the year is out.

“We’ll be processing the finest fish in New England before the end of the year,” Mazzetta was quoted as saying in the Undercurrentnews.com piece.

On Monday morning, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said the city has not heard a peep from anyone at the Mazzetta Company about re-firing daily operations at Gloucester Seafood Processing which the company unexpectedly — and without explanation — shuttered in December 2016, a little more than a year after it first opened.

“We haven’t heard a word, not from anyone in Illinois or from anyone associated with the plant here,” Romeo Theken said during an event Monday with NOAA Regional Administrator Mike Pentony at the city’s alewife fishway in West Gloucester.

According to the online story posted late last week, Mazzetta declined to expand on the company’s plans beyond his simple statement.

He wouldn’t say if Gloucester Seafood Processing also would be processing lobsters, as it did when it first opened in 2015, or what the size and composition of the new work force will be following the re-opening.

He didn’t reveal whether the property at 21-29 Great Republic Drive, which was listed online for sale last December (with an asking price of $17 million) will be coming off the market. He also refused to shed any light on why Gloucester Seafood Processing was closed in the first place.

Mazzetta did not respond Monday to phone calls from the Gloucester Daily Times seeking clarification and amplification on his comments to the website.

Mazzetta, with the assistance of city and state tax sweeteners, bought the former Good Harbor Fillet property in the industrial park for about $5 million in 2014 from High Liner Foods.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

Sustainable shark bill nets solutions for overfishing

April 2, 2018 — A new bipartisan bill introduced in U.S. Congress this month encourages a science-based approach to significantly reduce the overfishing and unsustainable trade of sharks, rays and skates around the world and prevent shark finning.

The Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act of 2018 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Daniel Webster, R-FL, and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-CA, along with co-sponsors Rep. Bill Posey, R-FL, Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-MO, and Rep. Walter Jones, R-NC.

The Act would require that shark, ray and skate parts and products imported into the U.S. be permitted only from countries certified by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as having in place and enforcing management and conservation policies for these species comparable to the U.S., including science-based measures to prevent overfishing and provide for recovery of shark stocks. A comparable prohibition on shark finning — the wasteful and inhumane practice of cutting off a shark’s fins and discarding the carcass at sea — would also be required.

Scientists recognize more than 1,250 species of cartilaginous fishes — sharks and related skates and rays. Of these, as many as one-quarter are estimated to be threatened with extinction, and the conservation status of nearly half is poorly known. These fishes play important ecological roles in their marine and freshwater ecosystems, and many species are culturally and economically important. These fishes are particularly vulnerable to over-exploitation — most grow slowly, mature late and produce few young. Overfishing, through targeted fisheries and incidental catch, is the primary threat to sharks and their relatives, which are harvested for fins, meat, oil, cartilage and other products.

Mote Marine Laboratory Senior Scientist Dr. Robert Hueter served as a scientific reviewer for the Sustainable Shark Fisheries and Trade Act text, providing feedback based on published research and his decades of experience as a shark scientist to inform policymakers who ultimately determined the content of the legislation.

Read the full story at Longboat Key News

 

Don Cuddy: Proposed Magnuson Stevens changes are reasonable

April 2, 2018 — I am wondering how much commercial fishermen know about acting? At a guess I’d say probably as much, or as little, as most actors know about commercial fishing, even award-winning ones. This thought arose following the recent appearance in these pages of an opinion piece on fishery management by a member of the acting profession in an attempt to wield political influence.

The thespian in question is also an Oceana board member, a well-funded environmental group antithetical to America’s oldest industry. This group has been known to advance claims which fail to resonate with real scientists. One particularly misleading report ‘Wasted Catch,’ launched by Oceana on a credulous public in 2014, drew a letter of censure from all eight of our nation’s regional Fishery Management Councils. Among other things the letter stated:

“While we acknowledge that there are no laws requiring Oceana reports to accurately represent the best available scientific information or to undergo peer review, to do so would be in the best interest of all involved parties. This is why we suggest that you retract the report until it is reviewed and corrected.” http://www.mafmc.org/newsfeed/wasted-catch

The Magnuson Stevens Act which governs fisheries in federal waters requires reauthorization and it is currently under review. Changes proposed in a bill now before Congress were denounced by this Oceana advocate as “counter factual, anti-science, anti-conservation.”

The frothy plea to our congressman is for maintenance of the status quo in fishery management. And the argument carries weight because it comes from a well-known actor? Well sir, Nature isn’t listening. And the modest proposals in H.R 200, intended to remove some of the onerous provisions burdening our fishermen, have generated a predictable response from environmentalists who dismiss realities which do not fit their agenda. Change is needed.

The act as written, for example, calls for rebuilding all stocks to maximum sustainable yield simultaneously and imposes timeline to achieve that. I called my friend Dave Goethel for his take on that. “That ignores Nature. It’s a biological impossibility,” he said. “Something will always be overfished. The reason haddock are up and cod are down now is because they occupy the same ecological niche.”

Dave is a working commercial fisherman with a degree in marine biology who served two terms on the New England Fishery Management Council. He doesn’t act but he has been fishing for 50 years. Fishermen, he said, are simply hoping to introduce a little flexibility on these rigid rebuilding timelines which were imposed more or less arbitrarily when the act was written.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Sector IX vessels make a move to lease quota

March 30, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Fifty-five vessels have left Sector IX, but they still can’t fish. However, they can lease their groundfish quota.

The 55, including four Carlos Rafael vessels subject to forfeiture, were submitted to be included in Sector VII for the 2018-19 fishing season, according to NOAA and Sector VII.

The move comes after six months of negotiations with NOAA in trying to get an operational plan approved, which would have lifted the groundfishing ban.

Had a move not been made, the vessels would have remained in Sector IX without the ability to lease quota. Three Sector IX vessels will remain in the sector.

The deadline for vessels to change sectors was Monday.

“What are we supposed to do,” Sector VII President Richie Canastra said. “The enrollment was Monday where you have to choose your sector for the 2018 and 2019 fishing season. No answer (from NOAA) was there yet. So those vessels and the permits owned by Carlos went to Sector VII.”

Canastra said the vessels affected by NOAA’s ban can only return to fishing with authorization from the agency or if they are sold to an independent party.

“It’s really straight forward. None of this was done to try to pull the wool over someone’s eyes or being sneaky,” Canastra said. “I just think it’s the right thing to do. I really believe the people in the industry will understand it’s the best move for everyone.”

The shift in sectors also included the additions of Richie Canastra as President, Tor Bendiksen as Treasurer and Cassie Canstra as Clerk to Sector VII.

In a letter from NOAA’s Regional Administrator Michael Pentony to the Chair of the New England Fishery Management Council John Quinn, he confirmed that the vessels would be allowed to transfer quota. He also confirmed that all vessels owned by Rafael would be inactive, unless they are sold to in independent party.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times