Saving Seafood

Study measures drag from fishing gear entanglements on North Atlantic right whales

December 9, 2015 — Entanglement in fishing gear is the leading cause of death for North Atlantic right whales—one of the most endangered of all the large whale species. Their migratory routes take them through some of the busiest commercial fishing areas along the East Coast of the United States and into Canada.

Entangled whales can tow fishing gear for tens to hundreds of miles over months or even years, before either being freed, shedding the gear on their own, or succumbing to their injuries.

In a paper published online Dec. 9, 2015, in Marine Mammal Science, a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has for the first time quantified the amount of drag on entangled whales that is created by towing fishing gear, such as rope, buoys, and lobster and crab traps. The study provides important data for teams evaluating the risks and benefits of whale disentanglements.

“We know that entanglement can change a whale’s diving and swimming behavior and depletes their energy,” said Julie van der Hoop, lead author of the paper and a PhD Candidate in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, “but the big thing we have never really known is what it must be like for animals to tow the gear. Is it like wearing an empty backpack or is that backpack overloaded with heavy books? Does removing part of the gear improve chances of survival? These are some of the questions that we were looking to answer with this research.”

Read the full story from Phys.org

Putting seafood’s best foot forward

August 19, 2015 — Deck to Dinner, a new initiative launched in the United Kingdom last week, aims to repair damage done by years of ignorant information printed in the media, which have given the seafood industry a poor reputation according to Barry Deas, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organizations (NFFO).

Inspiration for the initiative comes in the form of data from a survey by Research Now, which reveals that despite two thirds of us now eating fish once a week and supermarkets reporting increases in wet fish sales, 90 percent of people are only comfortable cooking familiar fish that is pre-prepared.

Deck to Dinner also builds on the latest research from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), which shows there has been a “dramatic reduction in fishing pressure” across North Atlantic commercial fish stocks as a result of strict management plans. The data show that between 2006 and 2015, the number of stocks fished at Maximum Sustainable Yield, which is seen as the gold standard of sustainability, increased from two to 36.

“We have been working with chefs for a while now, asking them to create recipes using underutilized species of sustainably sourced seafood, to prove they are just as versatile as the seafood staples. The aim is to get the media and the public to understand that there are sustainable and tasty alternatives to eating salmon, cod, haddock, tuna and prawns, which account for over 70 percent of all U.K. seafood sales,” explained Deas.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Tuna Fishermen and Boaters Advised to Watch Out for Whales

August 19, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries reminds all fishermen and boaters to keep a safe distance from whales. Whales can get hooked in tuna rigs or tangled in monofilament line. We recommend boaters keep a distance of at least 100 feet from all whales (and at least 500 yards from endangered North Atlantic right whales, as required by federal law).

 In recent years, we have received increasing numbers of reports of tuna fishermen trolling their gear too close to humpback whales. This can result in injuries to both the whales and the people.

 Humpbacks create bubble clouds to corral their prey, and then lunge through the center to swallow the small fish. Fishermen or boaters in these bubble patches run the risk of colliding with a massive 79,000-pound humpback whale as it rapidly approaches the surface. When a whale collides with a vessel, it can be gravely injured and die from its injuries. Collisions with whales have also thrown boaters from vessels, causing injuries and even death.

 In addition to the potential risk of a collision, the close proximity of a boat may cause a whale to stop feeding. All whales in U.S. waters are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it illegal for people to harm, injure, kill, chase, or harass whales or any other marine mammal. Harassment includes any activity that results in changes to the whales’ natural behaviors, such as feeding. Penalties for Marine Mammal Protection Act violations are fines of up to $20,000 and up to one year in prison. In addition, some whales are protected under the Endangered Species Act, such as North Atlantic right whales, humpback whales, and fin whales.

 Get more information on safe boating near whales.

Mainer sees success in commercial clam farm, but not everyone loves the project

August 2, 2015 — GEORGETOWN, ME — Marching across the clam flats near the head of Heal Eddy, you notice two things.

First, both the seafloor and the sea grass meadows on the shoreline are cratered with holes – the work of green crabs, the voracious crustaceans blamed for the widespread destruction of the state’s soft-shell clams.

 Then you see Chris Warner’s response: five long rows of what appear to be net-covered garden beds, some 70 patches in all, spread across the exposed ocean bottom at the mouth of a 300-foot-wide cove. Beneath the netting, protected from the hungry crabs, the tiny seed clams Warner planted here in May 2014 have been growing toward harvestable size, grazing on the plankton-rich seawater that floods the area with each tide.

Behold Maine’s first commercial-scale soft-shell clam farm, an experimental project that aims to test whether a single owner-operated farm can earn a worthwhile return for clam diggers who heretofore relied exclusively on the whims of nature to earn a living from the seafloor. If it works, it could revolutionize Maine’s second most valuable fishery, enhance the livelihoods of diggers and stop the assault of the green crabs in their tracks.

But the project has been contentious here in Georgetown, a coastal community 6 miles south of Bath, where some clam diggers fear that self-employed clam diggers like Warner and themselves will eventually be pushed out by corporate growers if the succulent mollusks are farmed rather than gathered in the wild.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Murder for Lobster

July 30, 2015 — On the morning of June 1, 2013, Venard Samson motored across the mouth of Petit-de-Grat Harbour in a small fishing boat. The narrow harbor, off the southeastern coast of Nova Scotia, is wedged between Petit-de-Grat Island, where he lives, and the wooded tail end of a larger island known as Isle Madame. By 6:30 a.m., he’d pulled one line of lobster traps and glided past a green navigational buoy. The North Atlantic, known for its rough winds and heavy swell, stretched out before him, so flat he could have passed a straight razor over its surface. “The water was right dead and calm,” he later recalled. “It was a nice damn day, clear, you could see anything.”

Then, he spotted the dark shape. It was floating along an uninhabited stretch of shoreline the fishermen all knew as Mackerel Cove. At first, Venard thought little of it; he had seen dead deer there before. But as Venard pulled closer, he discovered a banged-up fiberglass skiff, a small oceangoing vessel. It was waterlogged, its sideboards cracked and its bow barely a foot above the water line. No one was on board.

Venard circled the damaged boat three times, and discovered a floating gas tank and some green rope tangled around an anchor. The skiff’s outboard motor was missing, and its bowline, the rope that ties to the front of a boat, was apparently cut. Venard, a short man with a laborer’s physique who often speaks in an excitable squawk, picked up his radio and called the Canadian Coast Guard in Halifax, some 120 miles to the southeast. No, his GPS plotter wasn’t working. He’d have to drop a lobster trap to mark the spot. Around 6:55 a.m., the marine VHF radio cackled with a universal distress call: Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. All mariners were requested to be on the lookout and report any sightings of a man overboard.

Venard towed the skiff back toward the wharf and handed it off to another lobsterman. In some 50 years of fishing, neither man had encountered a situation like this. But both immediately wondered what had happened to Philip “Bowser,” who often roared around in the beat-up skiff, which he christened the Midnight Slider. The missing man’s full name was Philip Joseph Boudreau, but no one called him that because another local fisherman had the same name. A bull-necked man, 43 and going soft around the waist, Philip didn’t have a license to go lobster fishing. Islanders caught glimpses of him and Brodie, his blonde Labrador, cruising around under the light of the moon.

Later that morning, a ball cap washed ashore and a pair of boots were found floating in the harbor. It seemed Philip Boudreau was gone.

 

Read the full story at BuzzFeed