Saving Seafood

NOAA slashes recreational, commercial limits for flounder, black sea bass

December 27, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is slashing 2017 and 2018 recreational and commercial catch limits for summer flounder and the 2017 commercial quota for black sea bass.

The sweeping cuts will impact both the commercial and recreational harvesting of the summer flounder. The cuts, based on the recommendations of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, will be most severe in 2017, when the commercial and recreational quota for the species is cut by 30 percent from current levels.

Those reductions will set the set the commercial quota at 5.66 million pounds and the recreational at 3.77 million pounds in 2017.

The 2018 reduction summer flounder catch limits is projected to be 16 percent below current levels, setting the commercial quota at 6.63 million pounds and the recreational catch limits at 4.42 million pounds.

The federal fishing regulator is cutting the commercial black sea bass quota by 31 percent in 2017 to 1.86 million pounds as “an automatic accountability measure” because the fishery exceeded its annual catch limit in 2015.

“In 2015, the commercial annual catch limit was exceeded due to both a 4 percent overage of the commercial quota and higher-than-anticipated estimated discards of black sea bass,” NOAA Fisheries said in announcing the cuts.

The agency, however, said it is possible that a final report on the black sea bass stock assessment, due in early 2017, might provide the impetus for increasing recreational and commercial catch limits in the midst of the next fishing season.

“It is possible that the next black sea bass assessment will provide justification for increasing the 2017 black sea bass catch limits for both the commercial and recreational fisheries,” NOAA Fisheries said. “If that is the case, we will work with the (Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council) to quickly implement revised catch limits mid-year. A final report for the assessment is expected in early 2017.”

The 2017 recreational harvest limit for black sea bass will hold steady at about 2.82 million pounds, according to NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman Jennifer Goebel.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

NOAA seeks comment on groundfish permitting rule

December 27, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is seeking public comment on a proposed rule that would limit the number of permits and the amount of groundfish allocation one individual or entity could own in the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery.

According to NOAA Fisheries, the rule is designed “to promote diversity in the groundfish fishery and enhance sector management” by preventing excessive consolidation in the fishery by capping the number of limited access permits and the amount of a sector’s annual catch entitlement any one entity may own.

The final proposed rule, which the NEFMC submitted to NOAA in August, would limit any ownership entity from possessing more than 5 percent of all limited access groundfish permits in the fishery.

Currently, there are approximately 1,373 limited access permits operating in the fishery, so a 5 percent cap would limit any single ownership entity to owning approximately 69 permits.

“As of May 1, 2014, the most permits held by any entity is 55,” NOAA Fisheries said in the publication of the proposed rule. “Therefore, if approved, this alternative is unlikely to restrict any entity.”

The New England Fishery Management Council began work on the rule, also known as Amendment 18, in 2011.

“Subsequently, the stock status for many groundfish stocks declined and the associated annual catch limits were significantly reduced,” according to NOAA Fisheries’ summary of the proposed rule that was published Tuesday in the Federal Register. “As a result, some groundfish fishermen were concerned that implementing an accumulation limit could be problematic if it reduced flexibility and prevented them from obtaining additional quota necessary to maintain viable fishing operations.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

NOAA awards $8 million for coastal resiliency investments across the nation

December 22, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries is pleased to announce $8 million in recommended funding for 11 shovel-ready coastal resiliency projects in various sites across the country. These awards are part of NOAA’s continued commitment to build resilient coastal ecosystems, communities, and economies.

“Americans who live on the coast face enormous risks when Mother Nature strikes; however, it is natural infrastructure—wetlands, marshes, floodplains, and coral reefs—that often serve as our best defense. The selected projects will restore our natural barriers and help keep people, communities, and businesses safe,” said Eileen Sobeck, assistant NOAA administrator for Fisheries.

Six projects aim to restore critical wetlands, marshes, and floodplains in Massachusetts, California, Washington, and Hawaii, which increase resiliency and offer flood protection for homes and businesses:

  • The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation will receive $250,000 to restore floodplain connectivity in the Teanaway Community Forest which will reduce peak flows and recharge groundwater for the nearby community and enhance streams for salmon by reducing water temperatures.
  • Ducks Unlimited will receive $1.5 million to transform 710 acres of former salt evaporation ponds in South San Francisco Bay into marsh and upland habitat which will increase resiliency to sea level rise and flooding.
  • The Nature Conservancy will receive $721,095 to support coastal habitat restoration on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu through invasive species removal, native species replanting, and traditional management practices to strengthen ecological and community resilience.
  • Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe will receive $1 million to restore the tidal connection between Kilisut Harbor and Oak Bay, Washington. This effort will provide passage for endangered juvenile salmon, and enhance cultural traditions of fishing and clam digging.
  • The Redwood Community Action Agency will receive $1,091,045 in funds to support a multi-phase project to enhance Martin Slough in Northern California which will reduce flooding on surrounding public and agricultural land and improve habitat for threatened salmonids.
  • The Town of Yarmouth, Massachusetts will receive $633,044 to replace a degraded and undersized bridge on a major transportation corridor in Cape Cod and allow for restoration of the estuary to reduce flooding for property owners caused by storm surge and also improve fish passage.

Two projects focus on coral reef restoration efforts in Florida and in Hawaii to help sustain many economically-important fisheries and natural barriers to storm surge:

  • The Coral Reef Alliance will receive $842,782 to reduce the flow of water and levels of nutrients and sediment that reach nearshore coral reefs off West Maui. In applying best management practices, the project will increase these reefs’ resilience to climate changes.
  • The University of Miami will receive $521,920 to restore coral reefs across Miami Beach and Key Biscayne which will improve the resiliency of threatened staghorn and elkhorn corals to sea temperature changes.

Read the full story at Phys.org

Union for Concerned Scientists Sets Up ‘Hotline’ for Federal Employees to Report ‘Political Meddling’ by the Trump Administration at NOAA

The Union for Concerned Scientists, led by Andrew Rosenberg, who served as northeast regional administrator, and later deputy director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, has established a hotline for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) employees to report allegations of “political meddling” by President-elect Trump and his incoming Administration.

“I am hearing a lot of worry,” Rosenberg told Bloomberg regarding a potential Trump selection to head the agency. “The worry is that they will be putting another ideologue in place,” Rosenberg said.

December 21, 2016 — The following is excerpted from a story by Michael Bastach. It was published yesterday in The Daily Caller.

Environmentalist worry over President-elect Donald Trump reached new heights when activists set up an anonymous hotline for government climate scientists to report “political meddling” by the incoming administration.

Bloomberg reports “outside scientists are setting up an anonymous hotline for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s employees to report political meddling” over fears Trump could delete public climate data and silence researchers.

“I am hearing a lot of worry,” Andrew Rosenberg, a top activist at the at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in Cambridge, Mass., told Bloomberg. “The worry is that they will be putting another ideologue in place.”

UCS set up the hotline for climate scientists in the wake of news Trump’s administration could tamper with taxpayer-funded climate data. Interestingly enough, it’s a rumor they started.

Trump’s transition team has never said anything to indicate they would alter any public databases — a fact Freedman admitted. But it was too late, scientists, activists and media outlets began to preach the story as gospel.

Climate scientist and Slate columnist Eric Holthaus led the charge and asked people to fill it with climate data “you don’t want to see disappear.” Scientists at the University of Toronto and the University of Pennsylvania created a “Guerrilla Archiving team” to download data before Trump could “delete” it.

Holthaus, to his credit, argued budget cuts are more likely to force agencies to jettison climate data rather than malicious acts by Trump appointees. But it’s hard to say since Trump has not nominated anyone to head NOAA or NASA.

Budget cuts could shrink some efforts to monitor the climate, but it’s unlikely to result in wholesale deleting of taxpayer-funded databases, along with the planes, buoys and weather stations that go along with it.

Read the full story at The Daily Caller

NOAA fisheries releases climate action plans

December 21st, 2016 — After years of preparation, NOAA Fisheries last Friday released five “regional action plans” to guide implementation of the agency’s national climate science strategy over the next five years.

The regions covered include the Northeast, Southeast, Pacific Islands, West Coast and Alaska.

The waters off the Northeastern states are among the fastest warming of the world’s oceans. Marine species from plankton to the largest whales are affected as a variety of ecosystem components — habitat, food webs, water temperatures, wind patterns — respond to climate change.

NOAA’s regional action plan for the Northeast addresses the Continental Shelf ecosystem, which extends from Maine to North Carolina and from the headwaters of local watersheds to the deep ocean. It was developed jointly by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole and the Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office in Gloucester, with input from a variety of sources.

Its goal is to provide “timely and relevant information on what’s changing, what’s at risk and how to respond,” according to NOAA. That information is “key” to minimizing the effects of climate change on the region.

“We are excited to release the Northeast Regional Action Plan, which was developed with input from many partners in the region,” Jon Hare, lead author of the plan and the director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement announcing the release of the plan.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American 

Grant Helps Researchers Studying Toxin Stalking Florida Reef Fish

December 20th, 2016 — An international team of researchers headed by a Florida Gulf Coast University professor is trying to understand the most common marine toxin in the world.

The five-year study funded by NOAA’s Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms Program is investigating the conditions that lead to outbreaks of ciguatoxin.

Dr. Mike Parsons with FGCU’s CiguaHAB research project said on WGCU’s Gulf Coast Live the toxin is produced by single celled algae. They tend to grow on seaweeds in tropical environments like coral reefs. It gets into the food chain when fish eat the algae, and bigger fish eat those fish, and so on.

Parsons said it doesn’t take much to make a person sick with ciguatera fish poisoning, with the toxin affecting humans in doses measured in parts per billion. Early symptoms are gastrointestinal and neurological. They can last hours to months. And they can flare up weeks or even years later. Parsons said ciguatera poisoning can even be fatal.

“Even though there’s no cure for it you can treat some of the symptoms,” Parsons said. “So for example one of the symptoms of a more severe case of ciguatera fish poisoning would be a drop in blood pressure, a drop in your heart rate. And so in some cases you’ll have to go into intensive care for that so you would need to go to the hospital in that case.”

No matter how or how long you cook the fish, you can’t kill the toxin.

Parsons said if people really want fresh fish from a tropical or reef environment avoid dangerous species such as predators like barracuda.

Read the full story at WGCU

US cracks down on a global crime: Illegal fishing

December 20th, 2016 — There’s a good chance that the tuna sushi you ordered last week wasn’t actually tuna – or that it was caught under illegal circumstances. To help bring down those chances, last week, the Obama administration passed a final rule to combat illegal fishing and seafood fraud.

 Under the rule issued on Dec. 8 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), importers will be required to track and report key data on a preliminary list of seafood imports at risk of illegal fishing and fraud. This means that at-risk imported seafood will be tracked from its point of origin to the U.S. border.

The rule is intended to help even the playing field for domestic seafood companies, since illegal fishing and seafood fraud have hurt U.S. fishermen who adhere to more stringent rules than in some other countries. However, illegal fishing and seafood fraud affect far more than just American fishermen’s bottom lines. In fact, they are symptoms of a rampant problem that spans the globe: illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing (IUU).

IUU undermines efforts to conserve and sustainably manage fish stocks and represents a threat to fisheries worldwide. It is estimated that global costs related to IUU reach up to $23 billion annually and up to 20 percent of seafood is illegally caught. In addition, IUU comprises a host of interconnected problems, including piracy, organized crime, drug trafficking, slave labor, exploitation of migrant workers, and mislabeling of catches.

 Read the full story at The Hill 

NMFS Chief Scientist Writes on Changing Climate, Oceans and America’s Fisheries

December 20th, 2016, Seafoodnews.com — Across America, changes in climate and oceans are having very real and profound effects on communities, businesses and the natural resources we depend on, according to Dr. Richard Merrick is the chief scientist for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

 Fishing communities face extra challenges, as droughts, floods, rising seas, ocean acidification, and warming oceans change the productivity of our waters and where wildlife live, spawn and feed. And there is much at risk – marine fisheries and seafood industries support over $200 billion in economic activity and 1.83 million jobs annually.

NOAA last year set out a national strategy to help scientists, fishermen, managers and coastal businesses better understand what’s changing, what’s at risk and what actions are needed to safeguard America’s valuable marine resources and the revenues, jobs and communities that depend on them. Today, NOAA released regional action plans with specific actions to better track changing conditions, provide better forecasts, and identify the best strategies to reduce impacts and sustain our marine resources for current and future generations. Implementing these actions will give decision-makers the information they need now to sustain our vital marine resources and the many people that depend on them every day. 

We are seeing dramatic changes, particularly in cooler-ocean regions like New England and Alaska where warming waters over the last twenty years are pushing fish northward or deeper to stay in cooler waters. In New England, known for its cod and lobster fishing, ocean temperatures have risen faster than many other parts of the world. Changes in the distribution and abundance of these and other species have affected where, when and what fishermen catch, with economic impacts rippling into the coastal communities and seafood businesses that depend on them. With better information on current and future shifts in fish stocks, fisheries managers and fishing industries can better plan for and respond to changing ocean conditions.

But not all change is bad: As southern fish species like black sea bass spread northward along the East Coast, they may provide opportunities for additional commercial or recreational fisheries. Changing conditions may also stimulate more opportunities for other marine related businesses, such as fish and shellfish farming. Better information on when, where and how marine resources are changing is critical to taking advantage of future opportunities and increasing the resilience of our fisheries and fishing-communities.

 Communities and economies in southern states are also being impacted by changing climate and ocean conditions. Louisiana loses a football field size area of coastal wetlands to the sea every hour due to rising seas and sinking lands. The loss of these essential nursery areas for shrimp, oysters, crabs and many other commercial or recreationally important seafood species has significant impacts on fisheries, seafood industries and coastal communities. Better information and on-the-ground action can reduce these impacts and help sustain these vital habitats and the many benefits they provide. 

In the Pacific and Caribbean, we’re seeing bleaching and destruction of vitally-important coral reef environments associated with warming seas. Covering only one percent of the planet, coral reefs are the home to 25 percent of all marine species, and upwards of 40 billion people rely on coral reefs for the fish and shellfish they eat. The loss of coral reefs also makes coastal communities more vulnerable to storm events. Coral reefs in Puerto Rico, for instance, help prevent an estimated $94 million in flood damages every year.  NOAA’s Coral Bleaching Early Warning System has already helped decision-makers take action to try and increase resilience of valuable reef ecosystems to warming seas and other threats.

While these challenges may seem daunting, with better information on what’s changing, what’s at risk and how to respond decision-makers can find ways to reduce impacts, increase resilience and sustain America’s vital marine resources and the millions of people who depend on them.

We are committed to sustaining the nation’s valuable marine resources and the many people, businesses and communities that depend on them for generations to come.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Party boat captains irate over summer flounder cuts

December 20th, 2016 — Few things are causing more ire among recreational fishermen than the summer flounder cuts.

Some party boat captains have called it “nail in the coffin” measures that are being taken by fishery management that starts from the top down with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It seems that every time we make a sacrifice there ends up being less boats on the water. It seems like they want us off the water,” said Gambler party boat owner and captain Bob Bogan.

Bogan’s summer flounder business depends on tourists. He said they will be less likely to pay a fare if they can keep very little or none of the fish they catch.

Also of concern to him are the party boat customers who come out to fish for table food. They are being shut out, he said.

“People will spend $50 if they can catch $25 or $50 worth of fish. They’re not going to pay to come home with nothing,” he said.

What New Jersey’s recreational season length, bag and size limit will be is still to be decided. But it’s looking like it will be amount to less fish in the cooler for anglers, and fewer trips on the water.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is recommending a 3.77 million pound recreational harvest limit for 2017. That’s down from 5.42 million in 2016.

The council said states or multi-state regions will have to develop customized measures that will achieve the coastwide recreational harvest limit. New Jersey has in the past got the largest share of that harvest limit.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press 

LOUISIANA: State’s gray triggerfish season will remain closed for 2017

December 19, 2016 — Louisiana’s season for recreational harvest of gray triggerfish will remain closed in state waters for all of the 2017 season.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries says the season was originally scheduled to re-open Jan. 1, however the federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries announced that accountability measures are being enacted which led to a closure of the entire 2017 season in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. They asked that Louisiana state waters also remain closed for that period.

NOAA Fisheries has estimated that the adjusted annual catch limit of 201,223 pounds for the Gulf in 2016 has been exceeded by 221,213 pounds.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Daily Comet