Saving Seafood

Regulators push pause on allowing greater striped bass catch

May 12, 2017 — Fishing regulators are pulling away from a plan to liberalize the regulation of the commercial and recreational striped bass fishery.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission was considering sending new rules for the fishery out to public comment, but chose not to this week. The commission will instead wait until the results of a new assessment of the striped bass stock.

Striped bass have been fished commercially from Maine to North Carolina over the years. The fishery was worth more than $18 million in 2015. Striped bass are also a very popular recreational sport fish.

The commission had been considering allowing more catch of the fish. Members were concerned that changing the management of the fishery could result in over-harvest.

Read the full story at Central Maine 

Could North Carolina’s fisheries management see biggest change in decades?

May 2, 2017 — The N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission’s priorities would shift from sustainability to conservation under proposed legislation that commercial fishermen view as potentially dangerous to their trade.

House Bill 867, which is supported by N.C. Sound Economy and a multitude of environmental groups, explicitly states conservation would become the commission’s focus. Under the legislation, the nine-member commission that crafts rules for the state’s fisheries would also be granted the authority to tweak management plans at will outside of the typical five-year review schedule.

North Carolina had four depleted and 13 fisheries of concern, according to the N.C. Division of Marine Fisheries’ latest stock status report.

“We have found that it takes too long to make changes to the management of these species and that has caused many of our species to become depleted,” said David Knight, a N.C. Wildlife Federation policy analyst.

H.B. 867, supporters say, is grounded in science and would allow fisheries to make full recoveries by revamping the Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 — ultimately benefiting both commercial and recreational fishermen. Commercial fishermen view the legislation differently, claiming it gives a commission that has swung toward recreational fishermen too much sway.

Read the full story at The Daily News

SEAMAP Releases 5-Year Management Plan

April 19, 2017 — The following was released by the Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program:

The Southeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program (SEAMAP) has released its 2016-2020 Management Plan. Prepared by the South Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean components of SEAMAP, the Management Plan serves as a reference for official SEAMAP policies and procedures through 2020. The Plan also includes detailed information on SEAMAP activities and highlights how SEAMAP data meet critical needs for recent stock assessments and management decisions. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the Plan details how SEAMAP’s core surveys have been impacted by level/declining funding. It identifies how expansions in funding could be used to refine existing assessments and advance the movement towards ecosystem-based management; ultimately, leading to more comprehensive fisheries management in the Southeast region.

SEAMAP is a cooperative state/federal/university program for the collection, management, and dissemination of fishery-independent data and information in the Southeastern U.S. and Caribbean. Representatives from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) jointly plan and conduct surveys of economically and ecologically important fish and shellfish species and the critical habitats that support them. Since 1982, SEAMAP has sponsored long-term standardized surveys that have become the backbone of fisheries and habitat management in the Southeast and Caribbean. SEAMAP currently provides the only region-wide mechanism for monitoring long-term status and trends of populations and habitats within the region.

As a cooperative effort, SEAMAP monitors the distribution and abundance of fish and other marine resources from North Carolina through Texas and into the Caribbean. SEAMAP is intended to maximize the capability of fishery-independent and associated survey activities to satisfy data and information needs of living marine resource management and research organizations in the region. The primary means of performing that task is to optimize coordination and deployment of regional surveys and provide access to the collected data through documents and online databases. Additional roles of SEAMAP are to document long- and short-term needs for fishery-independent data to meet critical management and research needs, and to establish compatible and consistent databases for ecosystem and predictive modeling applications. SEAMAP promotes coordination among data collection, processing, management, and analysis activities emphasizing those specifically concerned with living marine resource management and habitat protection, and provides a forum for coordination of other fishery-related activities.

The 2016-2020 SEAMAP Management Plan is available online at: http://bit.ly/2pw1qXM. For more information about SEAMAP, particularly the South Atlantic component, please visit www.SEAMAP.org or contact Shanna Madsen, SEAMAP-SA Coordinator, at smadsen@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.      

Could controversial North Carolina shrimping rules be stalled?

April 5, 2017 — A bill introduced by the state senators from two of North Carolina’s heaviest-shrimping districts would keep the state from adopting controversial shrimping rules until an ongoing study could be completed.

If approved, Senate Bill 432 would prevent the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission from proposing or adopting rules related to any petitions made during its Feb. 16 meeting until a shrimp gear study has been finished and results have been reported. The bill has been referred to the senate’s rules committee.

At question is a controversial N.C. Wildlife Federation petition that would see the fisheries commission limit shrimping to three days on the Intracoastal Waterway and sounds and four days on the ocean up to 3 miles out. The proposal would also limit the time a trawl could stay in the water to 45 minutes.

Shrimpers have been adamant the petition, which was approved by a 5-3 margin at February’s meeting, would devastate their industry if the rules went into effect. Environmentalists say the rules are intended to help protect juvenile fish from being caught in shrimp trawlers’ bycatch.

Read the full story at Star News

North Carolina’s sharks are attacking fish and leaving them half eaten

April 4, 2017 — The recent spate of shark attacks off the coast of the Carolinas isn’t just hurting the plans of beach enthusiasts as North Carolina fishermen in the Outer Banks have started to be affected as well.

The apparent increase of sharks in the area is hitting fisherman where it hurts most – their wallets.

Sharks in the area have been feasting on the local fish population and leaving a trail of half-eaten carcasses behind in their wake.

These partially-devoured fish have been a problem for weeks for off-shore fishermen, according to NewsChannel 3.

Fisherman Glen Hopkins said: “It’s really heart wrenching when you catch a $1,000 fish, and you can’t get it to the boat.  It’s nothing but a chunk of mangled up meat. Some sets we don’t get a fish back. We might catch 25 or 30 heads. Pieces where everything is gone. It’s literally costing thousands and thousands out of my pocket.”

Another fisherman, Britton Shackelford, said the predators ‘are just following the boat’ and he sometimes sees thousands of sharks when he is out on the water.

He added: ‘At least two-thirds of your catch is going to be eaten before it ever gets to the boat.’

Read the full story at the Daily Mail

Are catch shares an effective tool for fisheries management?

March 30, 2017 — A Brunswick County senator’s proposed resolution opposing catch-share fisheries management is drawing praise from the fishing community.

In fisheries managed by catch shares, certain fishermen or companies are assigned individual limits for a given species during a season, a strategy the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) says allows fishermen to make decisions based on market conditions and avoid hazardous weather conditions.

Many North Carolina fishermen have expressed great concern about catch shares reaching their waters and are supporting Senate Bill 370. Sen. Bill Rabon, R-Brunswick, introduced the bill, which would communicate to the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, NOAA Fisheries and the N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission that the Senate opposes catch share management off the N.C. coast.

Rabon did not respond to phone calls and a text message seeking comment on his resolution, which says catch shares give private ownership of federal fisheries to individuals, cause consolidation of fishing fleets and lead to lost jobs. A virtually identical resolution was adopted March 7 by the South Carolina House.

Read the full story at Star News 

Senators file bill to expand aquaculture

March 30, 2017 — Two lawmakers from coastal North Carolina filed a bill Monday to encourage the Wilmington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to allow shellfish cultivation and aquaculture activities in North Carolina waters containing submerged aquatic vegetation.

Sens. Norman Sanderson (R-Carteret) and Bill Cook (R-Beaufort) described Senate Bill 410 as an economic development driver that is also good for the environment.

“With our acres of pristine waters and a large and growing interest in cultivated oysters, the potential for the industry in the state is huge,” said Sanderson and Cook in a press release. “Our goal is for North Carolina to become the ‘Napa Valley’ of oysters. A single adult oyster can filter and clean up to 50 gallons of water a day — thus our waters will be cleaner and our economy will grow.

“North Carolina’s estuaries are well-known for being some of the most productive in the world. We have the second largest estuary system in the United States and the largest contained in one state. Amending this federal rule has tremendous potential to create new jobs with the shellfish and aquaculture industry.”

The federal rule in question aims to protect submerged aquatic vegetation, but the bill sponsors contend it is too restrictive.

“This policy is more stringent than policies used in other coastal states, including the Commonwealth of Virginia,” said the senators in a statement. “Shellfish lease applications in North Carolina have been routinely denied by the Division of Marine Fisheries due to the presence of any submerged aquatic vegetation. Virginia falls under the Norfolk District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and in that state, after the individual lease holder has a preconstruction notification, their lease can have a certain amount of submerged aquatic vegetation under certain conditions.”

Read the full story at North State Journal 

NORTH CAROLINA: Dare County GOP confronts N.C. GOP chair on shrimp vote

March 29, 2017 — In the wake of the N.C. Fisheries Commission’s approval of a petition putting greater limits on shrimp trawling, the Dare County GOP has written a letter requesting that N.C. GOP Chairman Robin Hayes appear before its executive committee and “provide relevant information regarding his personal involvement and influence in the 2016 appointment process of members of the North Carolina Fisheries Commission.”

In its letter to Hayes, dated March 16, the Dare GOP said the commission’s approval of the petition represented a decision to “ignore science and destroy our state’s shrimping industry,” and accused Hayes of intervening improperly in the process of selecting commission members.

The letter goes on to say that, if Hayes does not comply with that request to appear before the local party, he should resign his post as state party head.

The Dare County Board of Commissioners has also expressed anger at the Fisheries Commission’s Feb. 16 decision to adopt the petition from the N.C. Wildlife Federation calling for new regulations on shrimp trawling after five advisory committees had voted to deny the petition.

The petition calls for all inshore waters and the ocean out to three miles to be designated as special secondary nursery areas. It also proposes limiting tow times to 45 minutes and trawling to three days per week in the estuarine waters and four in the ocean during daylight hours.

Read the full story at the Outer Banks Sentinel

REP. JONES TESTIFIES ON BEHALF OF EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA SHRIMPERS

March 16, 2017 — The following was released by the office of Representative Walter B. Jones:

Today at the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), Congressman Walter B. Jones (NC-3) testified on behalf of Eastern North Carolina shrimpers in strong support of continuing anti-dumping duty orders against imported warmwater shrimp from Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ITC first enacted these orders more than 10 years ago to offset cheating by foreign producers, and to help level the playing field for American shrimpers. 

“Shrimping is an integral part of Eastern North Carolina’s heritage and economy,” said Congressman Jones. “Hard working Eastern North Carolina fishing families have been devastated by unfairly traded foreign shrimp.  If these orders aren’t continued, I have no doubt that producers from communist China, Vietnam and elsewhere will start illegally dumping shrimp into our market again.  That is unacceptable, and I hope the ITC will stand up for American workers.”

Background: In the early 2000s, the U.S. shrimp market nearly collapsed. Unfairly traded imports from Brazil, China, India, Thailand, and Vietnam flooded the U.S. market at prices below the cost of production overseas. As a result, the American shrimp industry was forced to slash production and lay off workers.   Many shrimpers abandoned the profession, sometimes after generations. The duty orders on dumped shrimp, first imposed in 2005, have helped bring stability to the market.  Under international trade law, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) is required to review existing anti-dumping orders every five years to determine if revocation would be likely to lead to continuation or recurrence of dumping, and as a result, material injury to American shrimpers.  If the ITC does not come to that conclusion, the orders would be revoked.  Today, the ITC held a public hearing on that review.  The commission is expected to vote on the matter on May 2, 2017.

Watch Representative Jones’ testimony here

NORTH CAROLINA: New Leader for Marine Fisheries Sought

March 10, 2017 — A search is underway by state environment officials for a new director for the North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries.

Braxton Davis has been serving in the role for the last 11 months, as well as serving as the director of the Division of Coastal Management. The divisions had separate directors before April, when Davis was appointed to head both.

The Department of Environmental Quality cites the Davis’ workload as the reason for finding a new lead for DMF.

“Braxton has been an outstanding leader for our agency and has served admirably as the chief for these two divisions for almost a year,” said Michael Regan, secretary for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality. “Braxton and I and our leadership team have discussed the workload of managing two divisions, and we all agree that oversight of both divisions is more than one person can handle in a long-term situation.”

Read the full story at Coastal Review Online