PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — July 22, 2015 — Officials with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center will hold meetings throughout New England about upcoming assessments of 20 stocks of important commercial fish species.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is using the assessments for information needed to set annual catch limits.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at CapeCod.com
July 20, 2015 — Now, as part of its scallop population survey to plan the rotating closure of dredging grounds, NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service has found an underwater realm nearly the size of South Jersey with at least 10 billion sea scallops – and it’s just 50 miles off the Jersey Shore.
Scallop fishermen are hoping for a sustainable harvest of 50 million pounds a year for a decade. That would ensure one of the region’s most important non-tourism industries remains robust.
The management of the scallop fishery is a great example of what’s possible when public and private interests collaborate and natural resources cooperate. It should give fisheries managers the encouragement to persevere in restoring more challenged species such as summer flounder.
Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City
July 16, 2015 — Federal plans to expand observer coverage on lobster boats from Maine to Maryland may have a hit a lull, but they are not going away, especially for lobstermen who hold both state lobster and federal access permits, according to the NOAA Fisheries official that oversees the program.
Amy Martins, manager of the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program, said Wednesday the number of calls to lobstermen to schedule observer trips have declined substantially in the past month primarily because of concerns lobstermen expressed at a contentious June 4 meeting at NOAA Fisheries’ regional headquarters in Gloucester.
“We heard concerns from the lobstermen that our observer program was calling too frequently and that we were perhaps overly aggressive,” Martins said. “We’ve also done quite a bit of work since that meeting that has allowed us to zone in a little more clearly on the specific parts of the fishery we want to monitor, the fleet-within-the-fleet, so to speak.”
July 17, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:
Atlantic Dolphin, Atlantic Wahoo, and Snapper-Grouper Species (Except for Wreckfish)
After the catch limit is met and the commercial sector is closed for Atlantic dolphin, Atlantic wahoo, or snapper-grouper species (except for wreckfish):
Atlantic King and Spanish Mackerel
After the catch limit is met and the commercial sector is closed for Atlantic king or Spanish mackerel:
July 17, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:
The New England Fishery Management Council has been developing Amendment 18 to the Northeast Multispecies Fishery Management Plan for several years.
The notice of availability of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for Amendment 18 published today in the Federal Register. The DEIS is open for comments through August 31. More information, including dates and times of public meetings, is available on our website and on the Council’s website.
Amendment 18 provides a range of alternatives that could address the following issues:
The Council is expected to take final action on Amendment 18 at its September 2015 meeting.
Send your comments to:
Email: nmfs.gar.amendment18@noaa.gov
Mail: John K. Bullard
Regional Administrator
Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office
55 Great Republic Drive
Gloucester, MA 01930
Fax: 978-281-9315
Please include “Amendment 18” in the subject line or on the outside of the envelope.
Questions? Contact Jennifer Goebel, Regional Office, at 978-281-6175 or Jennifer.Goebel@noaa.gov.
July 17, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA:
On July 17, 2015, NOAA Fisheries published a final rule (80 FR 42423) to implement Amendment 8 to the Fishery Management Plan for Coral, Coral Reefs, and Live/Hardbottom Habitats of the South Atlantic Region (Coral Amendment 8). Regulations will be effective on August 17, 2015.
The amendment extends protections for deepwater coral ecosystems by expanding the boundaries of the Oculina Bank Habitat Area of Particular Concern, and the Stetson-Miami Terrace and Cape Lookout Coral Habitat Areas of Particular Concern.
Within Habitat Areas of Particular Concern, the use of bottom longline, bottom trawl, dredge, pot or trap is prohibited. If aboard a fishing vessel, anchor, use of anchor and chain, and grapple and chain is prohibited. Mid-water trawls are also prohibited in Stetson-Miami Terrace and Cape Lookout Coral Habitat Areas of Particular Concern.
Coral Amendment 8 also implements a transit provision through Oculina Bank Habitat Area of Particular Concern for fishing vessels with rock shrimp onboard. When traveling through the area, vessels are required to have gear appropriately stowed and maintain a minimum speed of five knots. Vessel speed is determined by a vessel monitoring system registering a ping (signal) at a rate of 1 ping per 5 minutes.
More Information
For more information on Coral Amendment 8, please click on this link to the Frequently Asked Questions found at:
http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/sustainable_fisheries/s_atl/coral/2014/am8/index.html.
Maps of the revised Coral Habitat Areas of Particular Concern can be found on our website at:
http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov/maps_gis_data/fisheries/s_atlantic/index.html.
This bulletin serves as a Small Entity Compliance Guide, complying with section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996.
This bulletin provides only a summary of the information regarding the existing regulations. Any discrepancies between this bulletin and the regulations as published in the Federal Register will be resolved in favor of the Federal Register.
Consider signing up for fishery bulletins via email.
To receive fishery bulletins electronically, via email, you must sign up through Constant Contact. Constant Contact is an internet-based distribution service. This service allows you to subscribe or unsubscribe at any time. The electronic copy of the bulletin will be delivered to you faster than the paper copy, is in color, features informational links, and reduces paper use.
To receive fishery bulletins via email using Constant Contact, please sign up at http://bit.ly/HQDUEU. You may also sign up for Constant Contact by visiting our Web site http://sero.nmfs.noaa.gov (sign-up option is located on the left side of the page).
July 16, 2015 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Sharks are vital to the health of the ecosystems they inhabit, and some represent an important resource for commercial and recreational fishing communities. While federal fisheries laws are designed to ensure sustainable shark populations, cooperative research by commercial fishermen is a key component for supporting sustainable fishery management of sharks in the Northwest Atlantic.
Each fall, commercial fishermen are given the opportunity to apply for, and if qualified, to be randomly selected to participate in the research fishery. Fishermen who are interested, can sign up for Atlantic Highly Migratory Species (HMS) News to receive notice about how to apply along with other information about shark and HMS fisheries.
Learn more from our shark researchers about the science behind shark fishery management in the Northwest Atlantic. Watch our latest Youtube video!
And for more shark science videos, visit NOAA Fisheries YouTube channel.
SEAFOODNEWS.COM By Peggy Parker — July 15, 2015 — In yesterday’s Federal Register, the National Marine Fisheries Service, in consultation with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council, announced their intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on a new bycatch management program for trawl groundfish fisheries in the Gulf of Alaska.
The proposed action would create a new management program that would allocate allowable harvest to individuals, cooperatives, and other entities that participate in GOA trawl groundfish fisheries.
The program is intended to improve stock conservation by imposing accountability measures for taking target, incidental, and prohibited species catch, creating incentives to eliminate wasteful fishing practices, providing mechanisms for participants to control and reduce bycatch in the trawl groundfish fisheries, and to improve safety of life at sea and operational efficiencies.
The EIS will analyze the impacts to the human environment resulting from the proposed trawl bycatch management program.
NOAA Fisheries and the Council say an EIS may be required for this bycatch management program because some important aspects of the proposed action on species and their users may be uncertain or unknown. Thus, the agency and the Council are initiating scoping for an EIS in the event one is needed.
NOAA Fisheries and the Council want public comments to identify the issues of concern and help determine the appropriate range of management alternatives for the EIS. Comments should also focus on the environmental, social, and economic issues to be considered in the analysis.
NMFS will accept written comments through August 28, 2015.
You may submit comments electronically at www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;D=NOAA-NMFS-2014-0150 [2].
Or send written comments to Glenn Merrill, Assistant Regional Administrator, Sustainable Fisheries Division, Alaska Region NMFS, Attn: Ellen Sebastian. Mail comments to P.O. Box 21668, Juneau, AK 99802–1668.
This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.
July 15, 2015 — The number of scheduled observer trips aboard Cape Ann lobster boats and others throughout Massachusetts have fallen off dramatically since the contentious Gloucester meeting last month where NOAA outlined plans to increase observer coverage for the Northeast lobster fishery.
Beth Casoni, executive director of the Scituate-based Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said her discussions with the association’s membership revealed a significant drop in the number of lobstermen being contacted to schedule observer coverage on a future trip.
“I’ve been asking every fisherman from everywhere whether they’re getting called like before and they’re all telling me the same thing, that it’s pretty quiet,” Casoni said. “We’re pretty pleased with that.”
The same is true around Cape Ann, according to Arthur “Sooky” Sawyer, longtime Gloucester fisherman and lobsterman who now serves as the president of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association.
“There hasn’t been anyone contacted around here since the meeting,” Sawyer said.
The June 4 meeting at NOAA’s regional headquarters in the Blackburn Industrial Park provided the first glimpse of the rabid opposition among lobstermen to expanding the Northeast Fisheries Observer Program throughout the New England lobstering industry and as far down the East Coast as Maryland.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times
LOWER TOWNSHIP, N.J. (Press of Atlantic City) — July 10, 2015 — It may be fortunate that nobody has asked Dvora Hart to count the Atlantic sea scallops recently captured by camera images off the New Jersey coast.
Hart, a mathematical biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, knows numbers. She could count that high. The problem: It would take awhile.
“Ten billion is my best guess. It’s probably conservative and it’s very preliminary,” said Hart.
It’s being called one of the biggest scallop sets ever recorded, eclipsing one in 2003 fishermen harvested for years. The estimate of 10 billion is only for the most concentrated area, scallop grounds called the Elephant Trunk just southeast of Cape May covering more than 1,500 square nautical miles. The set actually extends as far north as Long Island and Block Island and as far south as the Delmarva Peninsula. Hart is still working on the overall numbers.
“The big concentration is southern New Jersey, a little north of Cape May, down to Delaware. You start to see them at 35 meters and the highest density is 50 to 60 meters. They drop off at 70 to 80 meters,” said Hart.
NOAA’s underwater camera recorded about 4 million images off the Mid-Atlantic coast earlier this year. Each picture is one square meter of ocean floor and Hart was seeing up to 350 scallops per image. Hart, the chief scallop assessment scientist with NOAA, puts that into perspective.
“Normally we’d see one scallop per square meter, which is actually good recruitment. We had a wide range of more than 100 per square meter and several places where they were on the order of 350 per square meter. This is an extreme event. It’s pretty amazing,” said Hart.
The find is great news for the Port of Cape May, where scallops are still the No. 1 catch but recent East Coast harvest cutbacks, about 20 percent averaged over the last two years, hurt the industry.
Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City