Saving Seafood

Our 2023 College-Supported Students Share Insights

August 30, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Since 2006, NOAA has partnered with colleges to provide undergraduate students college-funded summer internship opportunities. Students enrolled in one of the partner colleges participate and apply through that college. NOAA also collaborates with other universities to offer internship opportunities to help them fulfill their degree requirements.

This year, our science center hosted four students from three states and four different colleges and universities. Projects focused on endangered species, coastal fish distribution, aquaculture gear as fish habitat, and oral histories.

In each profile, students outline their project, explain why it’s important, and—always the most compelling part—share insights they’ve gained into marine science as a career during their time with us.

 

NOAA Fisheries Announces Large-scale Study on its Recreational Fishing Effort Survey

August 30, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has conducted a pilot study on our recreational Fishing Effort Survey. The study is part of our commitment to continuous improvement and to producing quality recreational fishing data. These preliminary results suggest that the order of the questions in the survey may lead to overestimation of fishing effort, though a more robust study is necessary to confirm findings. It will be implemented in 2024.

The survey is a household mail survey administered from Maine to Mississippi and in Hawaii. It collects recreational fishing trip information for boat and shore fishing from private anglers. It’s part of a group of NOAA Fisheries’ surveys used to estimate total recreational catch. This information provides one piece of critical data that helps inform stock assessments and fisheries management decisions.

“We listened to the concerns of our recreational fishing community, and we took action to investigate their concerns further as part of our ongoing research process,” said Dr. Evan Howell, director of NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Science and Technology.

Evaluating and Improving the Current Survey

The Fishing Effort Survey was designed through an extensive research and peer-review process. The sequence of questions is based on a well-researched and standard survey practice to ask easier questions prior to more challenging questions. However, findings from our 6-month pilot study suggest this may not always be optimal. Changing the order of questions in the pilot study led to fewer observed reporting errors and illogical responses uncovered during our standard data review process. The resulting effort estimates were lower for shore and private boat fishing than estimates produced from the current design. However, results varied by type of fishing and state.

“The findings from this limited pilot study should not be taken as a final answer, and the results cannot be generally applied to all fisheries and fishing areas,” said Howell. “We have to do our due diligence in conducting a full-scale study prior to assessing the need for design changes or making large-scale changes to assessments or management measures.”

The planned follow-up study will be conducted over a longer duration with a larger sample size. This will help us gain a clearer understanding of the differences in effort estimates between the current design and a revised design that changes both the question order and increases the frequency of sampling. The revised design will be administered throughout all of 2024 alongside the current survey to compare the results.

“The switch to monthly sampling will have positive impacts to recreational fishing science and management, and is a very important piece to this study,” said Howell. “Monthly survey administration will produce more frequent effort and catch estimates, which is a priority of our regional partners. A shorter respondent recall period may also minimize reporting error in the survey.”

Supporting Informed Fisheries Management

Our staff and our partners at regional fishery management councils, marine fisheries commissions, and states use a combination of fisheries data to make informed fisheries management decisions.

“We won’t have all the answers regarding potential impacts to catch and effort estimates or stock assessments until we’ve completed the follow-up study,” said Howell. “We recognize that changes to a survey method can cause disruption to stock assessments and fisheries management decisions, and are committed to working openly and transparently with our partners throughout this process.”

If the agency shifts to a revised design—based on the findings of the follow-up study—the magnitude of historical estimates may change, but critical catch and effort trend information are expected to remain similar. It’s important to note that stock status determinations are relatively consistent when trend information hasn’t changed.

We will work closely with our partners to make informed decisions on how to proceed in light of the pilot study findings. Until we have the full-scale study results in hand, data from the Fishing Effort Survey remains the best—and sometimes the only—available science for tracking relative year-to-year and long-term effort trends.

Gulf of Mexico Fisheries Management Council members recently initiated a collaborative approach for determining which stock assessments and fisheries management actions may be impacted by these study findings and for identifying potential solutions in the short, medium, and long term.

“We are pleased with the fisheries management councils’ actions to determine which decisions may be impacted, and we fully commit to working with them, our marine fisheries commissions, and our other partners moving forward,” said Dr. John Walter, NOAA Fisheries’ Southeast Fisheries Science Center, deputy director for Science and Council Services. “We are also pleased to work with our state partners to find effective solutions.”

Adapting to Survey Improvements

It is a standard practice for government agencies that produce statistics to evaluate their current survey methods and develop new or improved methods. As with all of the surveys we administer, we have extensively tested the Fishing Effort Survey for various other common survey biases that can impact data accuracy. These include non-response and adequate coverage of the recreational fishing population.

The evolution of surveys through pilot studies is not uncommon. We are prepared to review and analyze the results of the 2024 follow-up study in our continuous effort to improve recreational data collection.

“We have initiated important discussions with our partners on how to become more adaptive in our fisheries assessment and management processes in light of continuous survey improvements and data uncertainty,” said Howell. “We will continue working collaboratively with our partners on programmatic improvements to the state-regional-federal partnership for recreational data collection, including leveraging recent Inflation Reduction Act investments.”

NOAA Fisheries law enforcement plans on subscribing to commercial database

August 29, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries plans on subscribing to an existing commercial database to support its law enforcement division, giving the agency access to more public and propriety information as it conducts its investigations.

In July, SeafoodSource reported that NOAA Fisheries was considering creating or purchasing a new national database that would enable law enforcement officers to search vehicle registrations, phone records, social media accounts, and more. According to a June 2023 notice, NOAA wanted the centralized repository to be capable of creating custom reports showing “connections between people, businesses, assets, and locations.” The agency also wants access to license plate recognition technology and automatic alerts when data on subjects of interest is updated.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NORTH CAROLINA: 2023 commercial red snapper season closed

August 28, 2023 — The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries and NOAA Fisheries announced that the commercial harvest of red snapper in state and federal waters of the South Atlantic was closed on August 18, 2023. All sales and purchases of red snapper will be prohibited during the commercial closure.

The North Carolina Proclamation FF23-053 states that “it is unlawful to possess red snapper taken from waters under the jurisdiction of North Carolina or the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council. Unless specified otherwise, the fishery will re-open July 8, 2024.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA introduces quota system for Pacific cod trawlers

August 28, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries has finalized its plans for a new quota system for Pacific cod trawling, which will require U.S. fishermen to join a cooperative to harvest cod in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands region in most of 2024.

Under the Pacific Cod Trawl Cooperative Program, NOAA Fisheries will set an overall harvest quota and then assign quota permits to cooperatives. The cooperatives, which must be associated with a processor, will then determine how much cod each individual member can catch under those permits. Quota shares for cooperatives will be determined by historic landing data.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Restoring Atlantic Salmon and Reviving Tribal Connections in the Penobscot River Watershed

August 26, 2023 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For the last 20 years, NOAA Fisheries and its partners have strived to restore endangered Atlantic salmon to Maine’s Penobscot River, a NOAA Habitat Focus Area. The Penobscot River watershed, and several other waterways in Maine, support the last remaining wild Atlantic salmon in the United States. Through the removal of dams and other barriers, access to high-quality habitat in the Penobscot River is improving.

Now, our long-term partners—the Atlantic Salmon Federation and the Penobscot Nation—received more than $10.5 million dollars in funding from NOAA under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act. They are working to:

  • Connect Atlantic salmon and other sea-run fish with the cold, clean streams and lakes off of the mainstem Penobscot River, where juvenile fish can thrive
  • Revive the once vital human connections to the river

A Loss of Fisheries and Culture

The Penobscot River once brought millions of migratory fish from the Gulf of Maine to distant spawning grounds in the lakes and small streams of the Appalachian Mountains. “The watershed once saw up to 100,000 Atlantic salmon, tens of millions of river herring, and 3 to 5 million American shad,” says Matthew Bernier, a NOAA engineer who reviews project designs for Penobscot restoration efforts.

It was also the lifeline of the Penobscot people who have lived alongside the river for thousands of years. “The river was our highway and our food source,” says Chuck Loring, Jr., Director of Natural Resources for the Penobscot Nation. “Fish was a third of our diet and we also used alewife [a type of river herring] to fertilize our gardens.”

Two hundred years ago, a wave of industrialization permanently altered the Penobscot watershed. More than 100 dams were built and pollution entered the water, causing fish populations to crash. The Penobscot Nation last harvested Atlantic salmon in 1988 for ceremonial purposes.

“We have to be careful about eating other types of fish because of the level of contamination,” says Loring. “Now we eat more processed food and there is a high occurrence of diabetes in the community.” Loss of ancestral traditions has had major psychological effects on the Nation as well. “I think in losing pieces of our culture, we’ve also lost pieces of ourselves,” says Loring.

Read the full article at NOAA Fisheries

 

NOAA to test new fighting line device and other gear in the Pacific Islands

August 24, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries plans to test a new fishing device designed by the Hawaii Longline Association along with other gear in the Pacific Islands to see what is safest for marine mammals.

Hawaii fishermen developed the fighting line device in response to concerns over harm to porpoises and sharks caught in fighting gear in the Pacific longline fisheries. The Western Pacific Fishery Management Council (WPFMC) has been working to reduce false killer whale bycatch in tuna fisheries, but weaker hooks developed to straighten out have proven ineffectual. In roughly a decade of usage, the hooks only straightened ten percent of the time.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Climate Change Likely to Reshape West Coast Fisheries by Sending Fish Farther Offshore

August 21, 2023 — Shifting ocean conditions associated with climate change will likely send high-value sablefish into deeper waters off the West Coast, new research shows. That could make the fish tougher to catch and force fishing crews to follow them or shift to other, more accessible species.

The research led by scientists at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center provides a glimpse of West Coast fisheries with climate change. Fishing crews must always balance the value of different commercial species against the distances involved in catching them, but climate change could alter that equation in new ways.

Scientists studied how four species of West Coast groundfish commonly caught together may respond to climate change. The four species accounted for 53 percent of bottom-trawl groundfish revenue off the Pacific Coast over the last decade. They include sablefish, the most valuable groundfish species, as well as Dover sole; shortspine thornyhead; and longspine thornyhead.

“Together, these are a large proportion of the groundfish caught off the West Coast, so they provide some indication of how things may change and the choices those changes present for the fishing community,” said Owen Liu, a research scientist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Seattle. “This may not be good news for the fisheries, but it hopefully provides some foresight into how distributions may shift and gives fisheries and managers time to consider how to adapt to these changes.”

The research published in Science Advances can help the commercial fishing fleet and fisheries managers prepare for changes climate change may bring to the ecosystem, researchers said. Climate models predict warming temperatures and declining oxygen levels in waters off the West Coast, which is dominated by the California Current. Temperatures and oxygen levels are known to affect the distribution of fish species.

Offshore Shift Goes Deep

The forecasts anticipate declines in the abundance of sablefish and shortspine thornyhead and increases in longspine thornyhead, with mixed forecasts of the abundance of Dover sole. All the species except longspine thornyhead are expected to move farther offshore into deeper waters. The steep offshore drop beyond the continental shelf, which on the West Coast is 20 or more miles offshore, can lead to substantial increases in depth for groundfish species that inhabit the sea floor.

As the species shift farther offshore, the increased depths and distances mean that fishing vessels must travel farther to reach their target species. They may also find that standard bottom trawl gear becomes less efficient at catching fish at such depths. Greater proportions of sablefish and shortspine thornyhead may also descend below 700 fathoms, depths where the groundfish management plan that governs fishing off the West Coast currently prohibits fishing.

The findings also highlight the challenge fisheries managers may face in keeping fishing sustainable even as conditions change and species move.  That may mean rethinking regulations so fishing can continue while protecting enough fish and habitat so species can maintain themselves long-term.

“If a significant proportion of target species moves deeper, as our results suggest for some species, there may be an incentive for industry and management to overcome technical and policy challenges to enable fishing at greater depths to follow target species to their new habitats,” the researchers concluded.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries

Warmer Seas Grow Hardships For US Commercial Fishing Industry

August 21, 2023 — Climate change is forcing shifts in the American fishing industry as animals, fishermen and policymakers adjust to rising sea temperatures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association said in a release earlier this week that July was the fourth-consecutive month of record-setting ocean surface temperatures. The month was also the first time the average July temperature was greater than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term average.

“Globally, July 2023 set a record for the highest monthly sea surface temperature anomaly … of any month in NOAA’s climate record,” the agency’s release said.

Shifting ocean temperatures force changes big and small for U.S. fishery. Some species benefit from warmer ocean temperatures while others suffer. While the catch isn’t significantly changing, the livelihoods of the men and women employed by the fishing industry and those in their communities are changing rapidly.

Read the full story at the International Business Times

ALASKA: New quota system to start for trawl harvests of cod in Bering Sea and Aleutians

August 21, 2023 — Commercial fishermen netting Pacific cod from the Bering Sea and Aleutians region will be working under new individual limits starting next year designed to ease pressure on harvests that regulators concluded were too rushed, too dangerous and too prone to accidentally catch untargeted fish species.

The new system will require fishers who harvest cod by trawl – the net gear that scoops up fish swimming near the bottom of the ocean – to be part of designated cooperatives that will then have assigned quota shares. The fisheries service at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it has notified eligible participants and is asking for applications.

The cod-trawling program, to start next January, is the first new fishery quota system started since 2012 in federal waters off Alaska, according to NOAA Fisheries.

The Pacific cod harvest is the second-biggest commercial groundfish catch in the waters off Alaska, after pollock, according to NOAA Fisheries. The 2021 commercial harvest totaled 330.4 million pounds and was worth $86.5 million, according to NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full story at KTOO