Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Fisheries association not satisfied with state’s striped mullet plan

November 21, 2023 — The N.C. Fisheries Association (NCFA) is urging its members to come up with a unified position on an alternative to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ (DMF) initial recommendation on a plan to reduce the harvest of striped mullet.

The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission (MFC), policy-arm of the fisheries division, voted 9-0 Thursday during its quarterly business meeting in Emerald Isle to approve Amendment 2 to the striped mullet management plan for a public comment period and review by the commission’s advisory panel.

The division’s initial recommendation includes:

* 50-pound trip limit Jan. 1-31 and Nov. 16-Dec 31.

* Year-round Saturday through Sunday 50-pound trip limit.

* 500-pound trip limit Feb.1-Oct.15.

* 30,000-pound stop net catch cap.

* 50 fish recreational individual bag limit.

* For-hire vessel bag limit equal to the number of anglers they are licensed to carry (including possession in advance of a trip).

* Adaptive management, by proclamations from the division director.

Read the full article at the NEWS-TIMES

Bluefin Tuna Get It On off North Carolina

November 15, 2023 — In November 1981, a fleet of briefcase-toting lobbyists, scientists, and political negotiators gathered in sunny Tenerife, Spain, to decide the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna. Representing more than a dozen countries, including Canada, the United States, Spain, and Italy, the besuited men knew crisis loomed. Since the early 1970s, rising global demand for bluefin flesh had spurred fishing fleets—hailing from ports on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean—to kill untold thousands of the wide-ranging predator every year. Under this heavy fishing pressure, primarily driven by the Japanese appetite for sushi-grade tuna, the species careened toward collapse.

During the meeting in Tenerife, the American delegation to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas proposed a disarmingly simple solution: they would draw a line down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and split the bluefin into two separate stocks. The Europeans could only fish east of the line, while the Canadians, Americans, and Japanese would fish west of it, limiting their catches to let the population recover.

The proposal passed and, eventually, for a variety of reasons, Atlantic bluefin tuna did bounce back. For more than four decades, that proposal has shaped how the fish are managed and understood. The only problem is that, as one former delegate put it, the two-stock idea may have only ever been a “convenient fiction.”

Since the 1950s, scientists have broadly accepted that Atlantic bluefin tuna live in two general populations: an eastern stock, which spawns in the Mediterranean Sea, and a western stock, which spawns in the Gulf of Mexico. But a growing body of evidence, including one study published in February 2023, now threatens to upend that binary theory. This developing research points to the existence of a third spawning site in a patch of ocean off North Carolina called the Slope Sea.

Read the full article at Hakai Magazine

NORTH CAROLINA: New Fish Passage Facility Restores Access to 1,000 Miles of Habitat in North Carolina

October 5, 2023 — The following was released by the NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have been working with Duke Energy on major upgrades to fish passage facilities along hydropower dams in North Carolina. These upgrades are reopening access to hundreds of miles of upstream spawning and rearing habitat for American eel, American shad, and blueback herring. The work highlights NOAA’s efforts to support migratory fish.

New Plans for Old Dams

On the Pee Dee River in North Carolina, Duke Energy operates the Yadkin-Pee Dee Hydroelectric Project. This includes the energy generating Blewett Falls and Tillery Projects and their associated dams. Originally built in 1912, the Blewett Falls Project has a long history of generating hydropower for the region. The Blewett Falls Dam is located 29 miles downstream of Tillery Dam and almost 200 miles upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. It’s also the first obstacle to fish migrating inland from the ocean.

In 2015, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a new license to Duke Energy to operate the Yadkin-Pee Dee Project. Through the relicensing process as part of the Federal Power Act, NOAA Fisheries and partners requested fish passage at both the Blewett Falls and Tillery Projects. At Blewett Falls, the original dam builders had created a fish ladder, but it was non-functional due to an ineffective design. There were no fish passage structures at Tillery. Through coordination with NOAA Fisheries and partners, Duke Energy began work on fish passage and facility upgrades in 2020.

NORTH CAROLINA: North Carolina’s captain Jimmy Ruhle passes at age 75

October 3, 2023 — James A. Ruhle Sr., a well-known North Carolina captain and commercial fishing advocate, passed away Sept. 28 at age 75.

Ruhle was a 2004 recepient of National Fisherman’s Highliner award, recognizing his long dedication to responsible fisheries management and cooperative research. Ruhle served for nine years on the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and participated in numerous research projects with scientists.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NORTH CAROLINA: Dare commissioners oppose NOAA amendment, joined by Congressman Murphy

“We’ll continue fighting for you,” said Dare County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robert L. Woodard to Dewey Hemilright, a pelagic longline waterman from Kitty Hawk.

At the Sept. 6, 2023 meeting of Dare’s commissioners, Hemilright protested the proposal that pelagic watermen pay for all electronic monitoring equipment and operation.

In an email, Jeff Oden, another longline fisherman, accuses the National Marine Fisheries Service of creating a major contraction of the fishery.

Read the full article at The Coastland Times

 

NORTH CAROLINA: Valuable N.C. shrimp fishery suffering, group wants financial aid for shrimpers across Southeastern and Gulf coasts

September 13, 2023 — In what has turned out to be a bad year for many commercial shrimpers, a regional shrimpers’ association has sent governors of eight states, including North Carolina, a letter requesting emergency assistance for the watermen.

Thomas Newman, fisheries liaison for the Morehead City-based N.C. Fisheries Association, a private trade and lobbying group for commercial fishermen, said the letter came from the Southern Shrimp Alliance, based in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Newman said the request is warranted.

“The shrimpers in our state have been struggling to make ends meet this year,” he said in an email Monday.

“Foreign imports of shrimp have reached unheard of levels, all the while sending domestic shrimp prices to an all-time low.

“If the historic low prices were not bad enough, the sheer volume of the imported shrimp has also caused issues with buyers not having enough cold storage space for domestic caught shrimp. Adding to this inflation and high fuel prices is plenty enough hardship on our fishers to request a fishery resource disaster.”

Read the full article at NEWS-TIMES

NORTH CAROLINA: Valuable N.C. shrimp fishery suffering, group wants financial aid for shrimpers across Southeastern and Gulf coasts

September 12, 2023 — In what has turned out to be a bad year for many commercial shrimpers, a regional shrimpers’ association has sent governors of eight states, including North Carolina, a letter requesting emergency assistance for the watermen.

Thomas Newman, fisheries liaison for the Morehead City-based N.C. Fisheries Association, a private trade and lobbying group for commercial fishermen, said the letter came from the Southern Shrimp Alliance, based in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Newman said the request is warranted.

“The shrimpers in our state have been struggling to make ends meet this year,” he said in an email Monday.

“Foreign imports of shrimp have reached unheard of levels, all the while sending domestic shrimp prices to an all-time low.

“If the historic low prices were not bad enough, the sheer volume of the imported shrimp has also caused issues with buyers not having enough cold storage space for domestic caught shrimp. Adding to this inflation and high fuel prices is plenty enough hardship on our fishers to request a fishery resource disaster.”

Mike Norman, who owns a 35-foot boat and sells shrimp at Norman’s Shrimp in Salter Path, mostly in the summer, said he agrees time are tough in the shrimp fishery and would welcome help.

Prices are very low, he said, and it’s hard to make money off shrimp these days.

Read the full article at Carteret County News-Times

NORTH CAROLINA: Shrimp Disaster Assistance Request

September 11, 2023 — The following was released by NORTH CAROLINA FISHERIES ASSOCIATION:

As many of you know, the shrimpers in our state have been struggling to make ends meet this year. Foreign imports of shrimp have reached unheard of levels, all the while sending domestic shrimp prices to an all-time low. If the historic low prices were not bad enough, the sheer volume of the imported shrimp has also caused issues with buyers not having enough cold storage space for domestic caught shrimp. Adding to this inflation and high fuel prices is plenty enough hardship on our fishers to request a fishery resource disaster.

 The Southern Shrimp Alliance did just this on August 25th and sent a letter to all 8 coastal governors from Texas to North Carolina. Our shrimpers have struggled all season with low price returns, lay days due to market conditions, high fuel prices, and inflation. Some vessels have not even harvested shrimp this year, knowing they would lose money every week just trying to work. It’s time to help our hard-working American families.

 As of writing this update, we have yet to hear from the NC Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), NC Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF), or Governor Roy Cooper’s Office on whether they intend to request disaster relief or not. We will keep you updated.

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

NORTH CAROLINA: The Last Fish

August 28, 2023 — Glenn Skinner isn’t happy.

Skinner is a licensed commercial fisherman who relies on his catch to make a profit. He’s been on the water 47 years; he started accompanying his longshoreman father on boats at age 3. Like most of his commercial brethren, Skinner doesn’t limit himself to one type of catch—he snags finfish using a gill net in the spring, trawls for shrimp in the summer, and spots roe mullet from his boat’s tower in the fall.

I met Skinner on a hot day in early June at a Beaufort processing center, or fish house, where he typically brings his catch. Skinner is soft-spoken and wore an Ocean and Coast shirt and a Myrtle Beach hat. He’s been out on the water less and less over the past five years, he said as we talked in the dust by his truck, which sported an “Eat Local Seafood” sticker. He’s become increasingly frustrated with what he sees as overregulation at the state level due to lobbyists who want to curtail commercial fishing.

“I couldn’t make up my mind if I wanted to get into the fight or get out of the fishery,” said Skinner. He chose the former, and now serves as the executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, a nonprofit that advocates for commercial fishing interests at the state and federal levels.

The following day, I met Rip Woodin, a 76-year-old in boat shoes and a fly-fishing T-shirt, in the noisy lobby of a fly-fishing conference in Morehead City. Woodin, like Skinner, is a North Carolinian deeply invested in fishing. And like Skinner, he’s not happy.

Woodin started fly-fishing while working as a journalist in Wyoming, and bought an 18-foot boat when he moved to Atlantic Beach in 2005. His favorite to catch are redfish, which slither through spartina grass hunting for crabs during the full moon. He’s on the water about 25 days a year, but keeps very little of what he brings in—he says he releases most of his catches because he’s worried about the stock, as commercial fishers scoop up 200,000 pounds of redfish annually.

Skinner and Woodin represent opposite sides of a bitter dispute in North Carolina. Commercial fishermen like Skinner accuse recreational fishermen of promoting overregulation by pushing the state to impose gear limitations, reclassify species as recreational only, and restrict shrimp trawls in certain areas. Skinner believes these measures are imperiling the livelihood of people who rely on the sea to make a living—and he believes they are partially responsible for driving the number of commercial fishers down from more than 5,300 in 1994 to under 2,300 in 2021.

Read the full article at The Assembly