Saving Seafood

SCEMFIS Research Provides New Insights on Gray Seals; Suggests Alternatives to Current Management

September 28, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

Decades of strict conservation and management have led to a rebound of gray seals in the North Atlantic. Now, research from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) is providing new insights into this population, how local fisheries interact with them, and better options to manage them.

The study, led by Drs. Doug DeMaster, Paula Moreno, Andre Punt, and John Brandon of the Independent Advisory Team for Marine Mammal Assessments, is evaluating how interactions with regional fisheries, specifically the New England sink gillnet and bottom trawl fisheries, affect the gray seal population. Revising estimates for key parameters such as abundance, levels of bycatch, and the proportion of seals crossing between the U.S. and Canada, the study is providing alternative approaches for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to estimate Potential Biological Removal (PBR) levels. PBR determines the number of gray seals that can be removed annually by human activities without threatening the conservation status of the stock.

Preliminary results from the study find that calculations made by NMFS to determine the PBR threshold are likely too conservative. Specifically, it finds that NOAA’s estimate of gray seal productivity, a key metric in determining PBR, is too low by approximately 17 percent. It also finds that NOAA is likely being overly conservative in how it classifies at least one fishery, based on productivity, bycatch levels and assumptions regarding transboundary movements of gray seals between the U.S. and Canada.

Under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), bycatch is strictly managed based on PBR levels, and fisheries are often required to adopt burdensome mitigation strategies as a result. Having an accurate estimate of the seal population that is interacting with commercial fisheries, and setting an appropriately precautionary estimate of PBR, is critical not just for seals, but for the fisheries that interact with them.

“With the gray seal population continuing to grow, the fishing industry is increasingly concerned about bycatch and other issues that come from seal interactions,” said Greg DiDomenico, a member of SCEMFIS’ Industry Advisory Board. “The results of this study will provide options for managing gray seals that are both consistent with federal conservation goals and may be helpful in avoiding unnecessarily burdensome regulations on fishermen.”

Read the full release here

Finders keepers: New trawl technology helps fleets fish smarter and managers track biomass, despite covid disruptions

September 15, 2020 — In trawl fisheries, vessels usually spend costly amounts of time and fuel searching for fish. Even with advanced technology, the cost of finding fish comes with the price of investment. To increase efficiency, Kongsberg Maritime of Norway has developed an unmanned surface vehicle that can hunt for fish at a fraction of the cost of a fully manned fishing vessel.

“The vessel is equipped with high-definition SX95 omnidirectional sonar,” says Richard Mills, head of marine robotics sales at Kongsberg. “Then there is a moon pool in which we can put other equipment. We just put an EK80 echosounder in one for a company we can’t name, and we are hoping to demonstrate it next year for NOAA.” According to Mills, the USV can search large expanses of ocean and transmit data to land-based receivers and fishing vessels. “We sit down with our customers and look at cost benefits,” says Mills, noting that the USV could operate for as little as 15 percent of a manned vessel’s crew costs and fuel costs.

The 26.5-foot USV has a 7.3-foot beam and draws 2.3 feet. For receiving commands and transmitting data, the vessel has a mast that reaches 14.4 feet above the sea surface. The vessel can run autonomously or be operated from a laptop PC or radio control with data telemetry via a Kongsberg’s K-MATE control system, with communication through Maritime Broadband Radio and Iridium satellite (VSAT optional).

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Norway Rediscovers Taste For Whale Meat As Local Demand Rises

September 4, 2020 — Following several years of decline, the demand for whale meat in Norway is rising. A distribution deal with a national supermarket chain and an increase in domestic tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic are believed to be responsible for the uptick.

Supply has also increased. To address a shrinking fleet, the Norwegian government eased the requirements on whaling vessels this year, a move that has angered conservationists.

Vacationing Norwegians trying out whale

Parts of northern Norway including the Lofoten islands benefited from this year’s travel restrictions that saw Norwegians more accustomed to Mediterranean resorts forced to vacation in their own country. “More and more Norwegians are opening their eyes to whale meat,” reported trade publication Fiskeribladet.

Hopen Fisk in Kabelvåg sold out of their whale meat supply earlier this year. General manager Ernst Iseli said sales “exceeded all expectations”, adding that the demand could be linked to a rising national interest in local cuisine.

While not commonplace elsewhere in the country, whale meat is a speciality in many northern restaurants. The meat is also available in selected Rema 1000 supermarkets across the country.

Read the full story at Forbes

New Online Tool Launched to Track Ship Speeds in Areas Frequented by Right Whales

July 22, 2020 — Oceana has released a new online tool that allows anyone to track ship speeds in speed zones designed to protect North Atlantic Right Whales along the east coast of the U.S. and Canada.

Using Global Fishing Watch data, which is a component of the new tool called Ship Speed Watch, Oceana Canada tracked ship speeds in the Cabot Strait from April 28 to June 15, 2020.

During the 49-day period, Transport Canada asked vessels longer than 13 meters to slow down to 10 knots.

Only a few complied, with 67 percent of the ships (464 out of 697) traveling faster than the 10-knot limit, and some traveling 20 knots or faster.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Pollock Survey Begins in Eastern Bering Sea

July 16, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For the past four decades, a team of scientists have conducted an acoustic trawl survey from a NOAA research vessel in the eastern Bering Sea. They collect acoustic measurements of fish abundance and distribution. They also sample fish by capturing them with trawl nets to groundtruth the acoustic signals to confirm the species. They also are able to learn more about the fish themselves—for example, their age, length, weight, and reproductive state.

Scientists believe using acoustic technology on saildrones to survey in the eastern Bering Sea will provide a reliable estimate of pollock abundance, based on past experience comparing the technology to ship-based surveys. It also helps that pollock are the dominant fish species in this area, minimizing the need to further sample with a trawl net to confirm species.

Since the standard surveys were cancelled this year due to COVID-19, data collected by the saildrones will fill a gap in the survey time series. Scientists use these survey data along with other data to assess pollock population abundance and trends (whether the stock is increasing or decreasing in size). The saildrone survey is expected to take two months to complete.

In late June, after some 40 days at sea, the three saildrones arrived at Unimak Pass, a 20-nautical-mile gap between Unimak Island and Ugamak Island that separates the North Pacific Ocean from the Bering Sea. At this point the saildrones separated. Each saildrone will cover a third of the 600-nautical-mile-wide survey area, which is bordered by Alaska’s Aleutian Islands to the south and the edge of the eastern Bering Sea shelf to the west.

The saildrones will complete a series of north-south transects moving from east to west; the mission is designed to mimic a typical ship survey as closely as possible in the amount of time available. Each vehicle is equipped with a Simrad EK80 high-precision split-beam echo sounder to map fish abundance.

Read the full release here

Blockchain Will Let You Track Salmon From Sea to Dinner Plate

June 26, 2020 — Consumers around the world will soon be able to know intricate life details of the salmon they eat with a new blockchain initiative from top exporter Norway.

The Norwegian Seafood Association has partnered with International Business Machines Corp. and technology provider Atea ASA to gather data on how salmon is bred, stored and shipped, information that consumers will eventually access by scanning a QR code. That will help Norway’s suppliers differentiate their premium products from other exporters, curb origin fraud and cut waste.

“Blockchain lets us share the fish’s journey from the ocean to the dinner table,” said Alf-Goran Knutsen, chief executive officer of Kvaroy Arctic, a supplier that’s part of the initiative. “This is now more timely than ever.”

Read the full story at Bloomberg

ALASKA: GAPP exploring how to best position pollock during COVID-19 recovery

June 10, 2020 — The nonprofit trade group Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) is trying to determine the best way to market its fish during the coronavirus crisis, which has caused a massive shift in seafood buying preferences globally.

The issue was explored in the most recent webinar in the GAPP’s summer series, “Post-COVID Communications and the Wild Alaska Pollock Toolkit,” which took place on 5 June. According to Caryn Leahy, the vice president of global public relations firm Ketchum, who presented during the webinar, Alaska pollock is uniquely positioned to take advantage of the current situation.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

A new robot may help keep ships’ bottoms clean

June 1, 2020 — All ships suffer from fouling: the build-up below the waterline of shellfish, seaweeds and other organisms. This causes drag, which slows the affected craft and increases its fuel consumption. Regular hull cleaning thus makes a considerable difference to the profitability of shipping. It also results in a useful reduction in the amount of planet-warming carbon dioxide emitted by the world’s merchant shipping—an industry that many environmentalists think is notoriously dirty and which could therefore do with burnishing its green credentials.

Roar Ådland, a shipping economist at the Norwegian School of Economics, in Bergen, says that a midsized oil tanker’s fuel consumption (and also, consequently, its emission of carbon dioxide) drops by around 9% after its hull is cleaned at sea—something that happens, on average, once every six or seven months. If the cleaning is done in a dry dock, which allows the process to be more thorough, that figure can be as much as 17%.

At the moment, cleaning at sea is done by teams of divers. In recent years, robots have sometimes been added to underwater cleaning crews, and have proved effective. Jotun, a Norwegian coatings company, and Semcon, a Swedish engineering firm, propose, however, to go one step further. They want to replace the divers completely with a machine. That machine, moreover, would not merely defoul a ship’s hull, but stop it fouling up in the first place.

HullSkater, as the consortium dub their invention, is a 200kg hull-crawling robot. It will reside permanently on-board ship, ready to be launched whenever the vessel is stationary—for example, when it is waiting in the roads outside a port for a berth to unload and load. To deploy the robot, it is first lowered overboard by a crane. Its four magnetic wheels, each of which is fitted with a motor, then clamp it to the hull and it can start trundling around. After this, the ship’s crew need do nothing. Wherever the vessel happens to be on the planet, the robot is piloted remotely by an operator on land, who may be half a world away, via a 4g phone connection.

Read the full story at The Economist

Lobstermen don’t need all the traps they use, research claims

May 29, 2020 — New research suggests that the U.S. lobster industry could place fewer traps in the water and still gain just as much profit. And that finding could play a role in the debate over what should be required of Maine lobstermen to reduce entanglements with endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The study was published this week in the peer-reviewed Marine Policy Journal. Lead researcher Hannah Myers, a graduate student at the University of Alaska’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, examined landings and other data from lobster-fishing territory that crosses the international Hague Line between Nova Scotia and Maine.

Myers’ research might help to end an impasse between animal-rights activists who are looking to reduce entanglements injurious, if not fatal, to the whales and have said that Maine fishing lines are at least a statistically-significant threat to the creatures. Maine lobstermen criticize activists and researchers as advancing poorly-researched and economically damaging arguments to their way of life. A plan recently advanced by Maine fishermen was criticized by researchers as not going far enough, while Maine’s federal and state government leaders have called on the federal government to back down on encroaching upon Maine lobstermen.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News