Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: That Seafood May Not Be What You Think

September 21, 2020 — Jeffrey Styron sold a lie.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of lies neatly packaged for buyers — primarily small seafood retailers and restaurants — who trusted they were buying crabmeat harvested in the United States.

After all, that’s what the labels on crabmeat from Garland Fulcher Seafood Co. Inc. said.

Earlier this month, Styron, treasurer of the corporate board of officers for Garland Fulcher in Oriental, pleaded guilty to falsely labeling crabmeat as “Product of USA.”

Glenn Skinner, executive director of the North Carolina Fisheries Association, warns consumers to stay away from imported seafood “since you don’t know what you’re getting.”

“To me whether it’s local or not shouldn’t determine whether they should buy seafood,” he said. “I would try to get domestic, whether caught or farm raised, either way.”

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

Outer Banks seafood sent to Louisiana as part of Hurricane Laura relief

September 16, 2020 — More than 11,000 pounds of Outer Banks shrimp and fish is going to help with storm relief in Louisiana, another area known for seafood and devastating hurricanes.

The North Carolina Fisheries Association coordinated the effort with companies in Wanchese, Grantsboro, Washington, N.C., and Hampton, Va., to gather and ship 11,225 pounds of seafood, including more than 2,000 pounds of shrimp and nearly 9,000 pounds of filleted flounder and other fish, said Jerry Schill, government affairs director for the fisheries organization, in an email.

The seafood shipment was part of a relief effort to help those affected by Hurricane Laura.

“Hurricanes hit the Atlantic and Gulf coasts on a regular basis so we need to have the infrastructure in place and do what we can, just as they would do the same for us,” Schill said.

Read the full story at  The Virginian-Pilot

Cooper urges Trump administration to include North Carolina in offshore oil drilling moratorium

September 16, 2020 — Governor Roy Cooper said he’s reached out to President Donald Trump and his administration to include North Carolina in the recently announced moratorium on offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic Ocean.

Last week, Trump extended a ten-year moratorium on offshore oil drilling for South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, but did not include North Carolina in the executive order.

“I am deeply concerned and disappointed that you did not include North Carolina in the moratorium,” Cooper wrote in a letter to President Trump on Tuesday. “Offshore drilling threatens North Carolina’s coastal economy and environment and offers our state minimal economic benefit. Accepted science tells us that there is little, if any, oil worth drilling for off North Carolina’s coast, and the risks of offshore drilling far outweigh the benefits.”

Read the full story at WECT

NORTH CAROLINA: DMF’s CARES Act Spending Plan Approved

September 15, 2020 — National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has approved the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries’ spending plan for federal coronavirus fisheries assistance.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES, Act is a more than $2 trillion economic relief package. The  next step is for the state to be notified by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission that the $5.4 million has been awarded.

The Marine Fisheries spending plan details how the funding will be disbursed through direct payments to eligible commercial fishermen, charter businesses, seafood dealers and processors and qualified marine aquaculture operations.

The division was notified May 7 that NOAA Fisheries had allocated $5.4 million in CARES Act fisheries assistance to North Carolina. Receipt of the funding, which passes through the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, was contingent on federal approval of the spending plan, which was received Sept. 9.

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online

Seafood Processor Pleads Guilty to Selling Foreign Crabmeat Falsely Labeled as Blue Crab From USA

September 11, 2020 — The following was released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:

A North Carolina man pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III in the Eastern District of North Carolina on charges that his company, Garland F. Fulcher Seafood Company Inc. (Garland Fulcher), at his direction, falsely labeled hundreds of thousands dollars’ worth of foreign crabmeat as “Product of USA.”

According to information in the public record, Jeffrey A. Styron was the treasurer of the corporate board of officers for Garland Fulcher, a North Carolina company engaged in the business of purchasing, processing, packaging, transporting and selling seafood and seafood products, including crabmeat from domestically harvested blue crab.

As treasurer, Styron was responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the company’s crab-related business, which involved managing and directing employees of the company with respect to the processing, packaging, and labeling of crab meat. Styron pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with substituting foreign crabmeat for domestic blue crab and, as part of the plea, Styron admitted to falsely labeling crabmeat with a retail market value of at least $250,000 dollars, which was sold primarily to small seafood retailers and restaurants.

“Blue crabs are a classic American seafood product and a vital resource for coastal communities in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and other parts of the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “This investigation is part of the department’s mission to work with our law enforcement partners in the protection of Atlantic blue crab populations and other marine resources.”

“Seafood mislabeling is consumer fraud that undermines efforts of hardworking, honest fisherman and the free market by devaluing the price of domestic seafood,” said U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. for the Eastern District of North Carolina. “In this case, the fraudulent scheme artificially deflated the cost of domestic blue crab and gave Styron and Garland Fulcher Seafood an unacceptable and unfair economic advantage over law-abiding competitors.”

Read the full release here

NC environmentalists alarmed after Trump order bans offshore drilling in nearby states

September 10, 2020 — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday in Florida imposing a 10-year moratorium on offshore drilling in waters from Florida to South Carolina, leaving North Carolina open to potential activity.

Under the order, leases of areas along the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina for the purposes of offshore exploration or development are prohibited between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2032. What is not clear is why the order omits North Carolina and Virginia, where residents have been vocally opposed to offshore drilling, often citing the potential impact to fisheries and coastal tourism.

Sierra Weaver, a senior attorney in the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Chapel Hill office, said, “There has been no explanation for why to stop at the South Carolina line, and based on what we know, there is no basis for that decision at all. We all know there is every bit as much worth protecting here in North Carolina as below.”

Read the full story at The Charlotte Observer

Artificial Reefs Take on a Towering Presence as Havens for Marine Predators

September 10, 2020 — The following was released by Duke University:

Acting like high-rise timeshares in the sea, shipwrecks and other artificial reefs can support dense populations of sharks, mackerels, barracudas, jacks and other large migratory marine predators essential to ocean health, according to a new study at 30 sites along the North Carolina coast.

Predator densities were up to five times larger at the 14 artificial reefs surveyed in the study than at the 16 nearby natural reefs that also were surveyed

Shipwrecks, especially those that rose between 4 and 10 meters up into the water column, were by far the fishes’ favorite. At some sites, they supported predator densities up to 11 times larger than natural reefs or low-profile artificial reefs made of concrete.

“These finding tell us two important things. One is that artificial reefs can support large predators, potentially supplementing natural reefs if the design and placement of the artificial reefs are strategic,” said Avery Paxton, research associate with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) in Beaufort, N.C., who led the study.

“The second thing it tells us is that when it comes to designing artificial reefs, there may be such a thing as a height advantage. We observed more fast-moving predators that live and hunt in the water column at the taller reefs in our study,” she said.

Climate change, pollution, development and other stresses have accelerated the decline of natural reef ecosystems across much of the world’s oceans in recent years, forcing large predators who formerly fed in the water column around the reefs to venture outside their normal migratory routes and native ranges in search of suitable alternatives.

Because these predators help maintain healthy and sustainable populations of species lower in the food web, providing suitable habitat for them as expediently as possible is critical, said Brian Silliman, Rachel Carson Distinguished Professor of Marine Conservation Biology at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment, who collaborated on the study.

Read the full release here

Loggerhead Turtles Record a Passing Hurricane

September 1, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

In early June 2011, NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues placed satellite tags on 26 loggerhead sea turtles in the Mid-Atlantic Bight. The tagging was part of ongoing studies of loggerhead movements and behavior. The Mid-Atlantic Bight, off the U.S. East Coast, is the coastal region from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to southern Massachusetts. A little more than 2 months later, on August 28, Hurricane Irene passed through the area, putting 18 of the tagged turtles in its direct path. The researchers were able to track changes in the turtles’ behavior coinciding with the hurricane, and found that they reacted in various ways.

“Hurricanes are some of the most intense weather events loggerheads in the mid-Atlantic experience, and we thought it was worth investigating how turtles in our dataset may be influenced by these dramatic environmental changes,” said Leah Crowe, a contract field biologist at the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and lead author of the study published recently in Movement Ecology.  “It was a perfect storm situation in terms of location, timing, and oceanographic conditions. We found that the turtles responded to the changes in their habitat in different ways.”

Satellite tags attached to a turtle’s carapace, or shell, transmitted the turtles’ location and dive behavior. They also  recorded sea-surface temperatures and temperature-depth profiles for approximately 13 months. This enabled the researchers to investigate the movements of 18 juvenile and adult-sized loggerhead turtles and associated oceanographic conditions as the hurricane moved through the region.

Most of the turtles moved northward during the hurricane, aligning themselves with the surface currents — perhaps to conserve energy. Researchers observed longer dive durations after the hurricane for turtles that stayed in their pre-storm foraging areas. Some dives lasted an hour or more, compared with less than 30 minutes for a typical dive before the storm.

The turtles that left their foraging areas after the hurricane passed moved south earlier than would be expected, based on their normal seasonal movements. This change was also more than a month earlier than the typical seasonal cooling in the water column, which is also when the foraging season for loggerhead turtles ends in the Mid-Atlantic Bight.

“Loggerheads experience environmental changes in the entire water column from the surface to the bottom, including during extreme weather events,” said Crowe. “This study was an opportunistic look at turtle behavior during a hurricane. Their behavior makes loggerheads good observers of oceanographic conditions where they forage.”

Read the full release here

North Carolina attorney general files federal lawsuit to block offshore drilling

August 26, 2020 — Attorney General Josh Stein on Wednesday announced he has filed a lawsuit that seeks to block the Trump Administration from allowing seismic exploration for oil and gas off the North Carolina coast.

“Protecting our state’s beautiful natural resources – and the critical economic benefits they bring to our state – is one of the most important mandates of my job,” said Attorney General Josh Stein. “North Carolinians have made their views crystal clear: We do not want drilling off our coast. I am going to court to fight on their behalf.”

Seismic testing uses powerful airguns that blast sounds at the ocean floor repeatedly for long periods of time. Marine experts say these sounds can harm sea life and coastal resources – and could have significant impacts on North Carolina’s fishing and tourism industries.

Read the full story at WECT

Flounder: Summer landings on track; reductions coming for southern allocations

August 18, 2020 — Summer flounder is a popular commercial fishery in the Mid-Atlantic region, with North Carolina allocated the largest share at 27.44 percent. Despite the widespread disruption in markets from covid-19, the state’s fleet by early summer was on track for landings just slightly lower than 2019.

Preliminary statistics show 69 North Carolina vessels representing 131 trips had landed 744,479 pounds of summer flounder by late June, with a value of $2.67 million distributed to 16 dealers.

“Landings of summer flounder appear to be somewhat down from last year, but the trend seems similar,” said Lee Paramore, biologist supervisor with the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries. “Since we can modify trip limits to stay within quota, it may be possible to allow for increased harvest if landings remain down relative to last year.

“There a lot of factors that can impact landings, and we haven’t yet determined if covid will play a part, but currently the fish houses here that typically land summer flounder have been operating at same level.”

The state’s commercial landings for summer flounder have been consistent since 2008 ,with the exception of 2012-13, where excessive shoaling in Oregon Inlet limited the number of trawl boats able to land in North Carolina. Annual commercial landings averaged 2.25 million pounds of summer flounder since 2008.

Read the full story at National Fisherman