Saving Seafood

NORTH CAROLINA: Opponents line up in showdown over limits to shrimp trawling

January 12, 2017 — Hyde County Commissioners, along with local stakeholders and seafood advocates, have issued strong opposition to proposed rules that would result in major changes to the state’s commercial trawling industry. They say the restrictions could ultimately end the state’s access shrimp.

A petition for the changes was submitted to the North Carolina Marine Fisheries Commission on Nov. 2 by The North Carolina Wildlife Federation. It asks the state to designate coastal fishing waters in the sounds and 3 miles into the ocean as primary nursery areas for various fisheries.

The petition was discussed at the commission’s November meeting. On Jan. 17, five joint advisory committees will meet and hear public comment on the issue in New Bern. Then, the commission will review comments and take action at its February meeting.

Other rule changes outlined in the 99-page NCWF petition are: Limiting shrimp trawling to three days a week; limiting trawling to daytime only; limiting the total head rope (the span of the nets) to 90 feet; establishing 45-minute tow times; define type of gear and how it can be used in special secondary nursery areas;and opening the season based on a 60 shrimp per pound.

Last week, Hyde County Board of Commissioners passed a resolution opposing the rules. Dare County and its towns are also taking up resolutions. Groups such as North Carolina Catch and the North Carolina Fisheries Association have taken stands against the petition and an individual effort has started a counter-petition.

The Hyde resolution says that hundreds of local businesses and families depend on catches from trawlers. Shrimp catches represent paychecks for the captain, crew and seafood industry, as well as products to market to visitors. The affects range across the 20 coastal North Carolina counties that boast a commercial fishing history.

“This petition would obviously cripple the state’s shrimp fishery, which is the second most valuable in our state and supports a number of other valuable industries such as gear design and manufacture, boat building and repair, refrigeration and repair, mechanical engineering, marine propulsion dealers, fuel distribution, seafood processing and a vibrant restaurant industry,” said Lauren Salter of Williston.

Salter serves on the board of directors for North Carolina Catch, a statewide group that works with several localized fishing partnerships to educate consumers about the importance of buying local seafood.

“This goes beyond shrimping,” said Salter, who is also the daughter of a down-east commercial fisherman. “If special interest groups continue to successfully limit access to our seafood by skillfully sidestepping the established fisheries management process, no seafood will be safe.”

Read the full story at The Outer Banks Voice

Sea turtles, shrimp fishermen tangled in government’s net proposal

December 29, 2016 — It’s hard to think of two species more beloved on the North Carolina coast than shrimp and sea turtles.

A generations-old low country diet had turned shrimp into a multi-million dollar industry for North Carolina fishermen. Sea turtles, on the other hand, have become the symbol of coastal conservation and a tourist draw at nest-hatchings and aquariums.But to a fishing net, all animals are the same. To protect endangered sea turtles, many shrimp boats in the Southeast are equipped with “turtle excluder devices” (TEDs), barred openings that let captured turtles shimmy out of nets.

TEDs are not required on some shrimp boats, but a rule proposed this month by the National Marine Fisheries Service would put them on more shrimp trawlers from North Carolina to Texas.

The proposal comes after a 2015 lawsuit from environmental group Oceana, which accused the federal government of violating the Endangered Species Act by not regulating shrimp fishing more stringently. Fishermen, for their part, say they are regulated enough and have gone out of their way to help turtle populations recover up and down the coast.

“North Carolina shrimp is our biggest-selling item in all markets, our most important product,” said Joe Romano, a commercial fisherman and co-owner of Wilmington-based Seaview Crab Company. “We have a system to do this and it’s already working.”

Read the full story at the Star News Online

Mid-Atlantic Council Initiates Action in Response to Overage of Black Sea Bass Catch Limit

December 21st, 2016 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council: 

On December 15, 2016, at their meeting in Baltimore, Maryland, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council initiated a framework action to review and modify accountability measures (AMs) for the commercial black sea bass fishery. The Council initiated this action in response to new information from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) indicating that commercial catch in 2015 exceeded the annual catch limit due to higher than anticipated discards. On December 21, NMFS announced a rule which reduced the 2017 commercial quota by 34% in response to this overage, as required by the Council’s AMs.

AMs are measures that are implemented if annual catch targets are exceeded and are intended to mitigate the negative biological impacts of such overages. Commercial AMs for black sea bass currently require pound for pound paybacks through quota deductions in following years, regardless of the circumstances of the overages. The Council initiated a framework action to consider adding flexibility in the commercial AMs based on stock status. The Council intends to develop and implement this framework by mid-2017.

Black sea bass management measures for 2017 may also be modified as a result of a new benchmark stock assessment, which was peer-reviewed this month. According to this assessment, black sea bass are not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. The Council’s Scientific and Statistical Committee (SSC) will meet in January 2017 to review the assessment and determine if it can be used to inform the Council’s management decisions. If so, the SSC will recommend acceptable biological catch limits for black sea bass for 2017-2019. At their February 2017 meeting in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Council plans to recommend commercial and recreational black sea bass catch and landings limits for 2017-2019 based on this new information. These recommendations are expected to result in a revised 2017 commercial quota that could reduce the magnitude of the reduction needed to address the overage of the 2015 annual catch target.

NOAA fisheries releases climate action plans

December 21st, 2016 — After years of preparation, NOAA Fisheries last Friday released five “regional action plans” to guide implementation of the agency’s national climate science strategy over the next five years.

The regions covered include the Northeast, Southeast, Pacific Islands, West Coast and Alaska.

The waters off the Northeastern states are among the fastest warming of the world’s oceans. Marine species from plankton to the largest whales are affected as a variety of ecosystem components — habitat, food webs, water temperatures, wind patterns — respond to climate change.

NOAA’s regional action plan for the Northeast addresses the Continental Shelf ecosystem, which extends from Maine to North Carolina and from the headwaters of local watersheds to the deep ocean. It was developed jointly by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole and the Greater Atlantic Region Fisheries Office in Gloucester, with input from a variety of sources.

Its goal is to provide “timely and relevant information on what’s changing, what’s at risk and how to respond,” according to NOAA. That information is “key” to minimizing the effects of climate change on the region.

“We are excited to release the Northeast Regional Action Plan, which was developed with input from many partners in the region,” Jon Hare, lead author of the plan and the director of NOAA Fisheries’ Northeast Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement announcing the release of the plan.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American 

Coast Guard rescues 80-year-old man off Hatteras Island

December 19, 2016 — WILMINGTON, N.C. — An 80-year-old man was rescued by the Coast Guard Sunday morning after his skiff went adrift about eight miles northeast of Hatteras Island.

The Coast Guard was first notified about the man around 5 p.m. Saturday by Dare County 911 dispatchers who reported that the man had not returned to his family as expected after heading out on the water around 8 a.m.

Officials in Coast Guard Sector North Carolina Command Center in Wilmington immediately issued an urgent marine information broadcast and began coordinating search crews.

A Coast Guard MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Elizabeth City launched at 5:42 p.m., and a Coast Guard 24-foot Special Purpose Craft-Shallow Water crew from Station Hatteras Inlet launched at about 5:28 p.m., according to the Coast Guard.

Both crews were on scene searching in Pamlico Sound by about 6:23 p.m., joining Hatteras Island Rescue crews and Hatteras Island Fire crews.

Crews searched through the night and were joined by others Sunday at first light. Searching Sunday were SPC-SW crews from Coast Guard Stations Oregon Inlet and Hatteras Inlet, as well as an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter crew from Air Station Elizabeth City.

Eventually, the man was found adrift in his 18-foot skiff about eight miles northeast of Hatteras Island around 8:25 a.m., unconscious but breathing, by a Hatteras Island Rescue skiff crew. The crew brought him to Avon Harbor where Dare County EMS met them and took the man to Avon Medical Center.

The man was then taken by helicopter from Avon to Sentara Norfolk general Hospital, arriving just after 10 a.m.

Read the full story at ABC 13

NOAA approves Mid-Atlantic deep-sea coral canyons for protection

December 16, 2016 — Vulnerable deep-sea corals off Virginia and along the Mid-Atlantic just got final approval for federal environmental protection by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The move will protect a 38,000-square-mile swath of sea bottom from New York to the North Carolina border, or an area roughly the size of the state of Virginia. The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council initiated the action for the deep-sea coral zone in 2015.

 Many of these corals grow in underwater canyons, including Norfolk Canyon — a steep gouge in the side of the Continental Slope about 70 miles off Virginia Beach.

John Bullard, administrator for NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, said the action represents the efforts of a wide variety of stakeholders.

“This is a great story of regional collaboration among the fishing industry, the Mid-Atlantic Council, the research community and environmental organizations to protect what we all agree is a valuable ecological resource,” Bullard said in a statement.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council is one of eight regional bodies empowered by Congress in the 1970s to manage fisheries off the U.S. coast. It moved in June 2015 to adopt the Deep Sea Corals Amendment.

Bob Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a D.C.-based group that represents the commercial fishing industry, also praised the final designation Thursday as an example “of the right way to protect these resources.”

“This is a situation where the industry came together with the council, with NOAA and with environmentalists and came up with a plan that created a compromise that everyone could live with,” Vanasse said in a phone interview. “It’s a bright, shining example of how to do it right.”

Read the full story at The Daily Press

Some of Earth’s oldest creatures are now protected off the Jersey Shore

December 15, 2016 — To preserve some of the oldest living creatures on Earth, the federal government announced Wednesday that it had created an enormous protected area off the coast of New Jersey to protect deep-sea corals and other hidden ecological treasures.

At more than 40,000 square miles (the size of Virginia), the Frank R. Lautenberg Deep Sea Coral Protection Area includes about a dozen deep-water chasms, including the fabled Hudson Canyon. The area begins more than 70 miles offshore and parallels the coast from Long Island to North Carolina. Lautenberg, the U.S. senator from New Jersey who died in 2013, championed several deepwater species.

The agreement was hashed out by several stakeholders including NOAA Mid-Atlantic Fisheries, fishermen  and marine scientists.

Cold-water corals live hundreds of meters under the water. Until the fishing industry started harvesting using bottom trawling, the creatures were undisturbed for millennia. Commercial fishermen using “canyon busters,” however, have raked the world’s sea floors to harvest mackerel, monkfish and squid. The equipment boosts fisheries production but also topples and destroys the fragile coral. What survives can take centuries, even thousands of years, to bounce back. As a result, species that depend on the coral for their habitats — spider crabs, the bizarre rhinochimera, and scores of other rarely seen animals — are also left unprotected and imperiled.

Read the full story at The Philadelphia Inquirer

South Atlantic Fishery Managment Council Approves Electronic Reporting for Federally Permitted Charter Vessels

December 12, 2016 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

Federally permitted charter vessels in the snapper grouper, dolphin wahoo, and coastal migratory pelagic (mackerel and cobia) fisheries along the Atlantic Coast will have the opportunity to electronically report their fishing activities, including landings and discards, beginning in mid-2017. Mandatory reporting for the federally permitted charter vessels will begin in 2018. That’s the intent of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council after it approved measures to implement the reporting program during its meeting this week in Atlantic Beach, North Carolina. If approved by the Secretary of Commerce, the reporting requirements proposed in the For-Hire Electronic Reporting Amendment are expected to improve the accuracy and timeliness of data available for management and stock assessments, allow better monitoring of landings and discards, and allow managers to more accurately assess the impacts of regulations on the for-hire industry in federal waters.

Currently for-hire charter vessels, commonly referred to as “6-pack” vessels for the number of customers they are allowed to carry, are considered part of the recreational fishery for data collection purposes and there are no logbook reporting requirements. Getting a handle on the amount of fish harvested and sometimes even more importantly, the number of fish released by offshore recreational fishermen is a daunting task. Estimates are made using data collected through a combination of dockside intercepts, telephone surveys and most recently, mail surveys – all conducted through NOAA Fisheries’ Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP). Data from federally permitted charter vessels are currently included as part of the MRIP along with data estimates for private recreational anglers.

The new reporting requirements are expected to affect approximately 2,000 charter vessels with Federal For-Hire Permits. Federally permitted headboats or “party boats” that carry more than six customers are currently required to submit weekly electronic reports through the Southeast Region Headboat Survey. The For-Hire Reporting Amendment would also change reporting deadlines for headboats to improve timeliness of reporting.

“We realize that implementing a reporting program affecting nearly 2,000 charter vessels will take time,” said Mel Bell, Chair of the Council’s Data Collection Committee and representative for the SC Department of Natural Resources’ Marine Resources Division. “Having a voluntary program in place for next year will provide an opportunity for NOAA Fisheries to address any reporting system issues and allow charter captains the chance to become familiar with the reporting system,” explained Bell. “We intend to keep reporting as simple as possible by providing a platform that will allow captains to complete electronic reports while offshore or at home on their computers and avoiding duplicative reporting requirements.”

The Council received an update on a pilot electronic reporting project currently being conducted in partnership with the Atlantic Coast Cooperative Statistics Program and the States of SC, GA, and FL. A total of 24 charter vessels from North Carolina to the Florida Keys are participating, using onboard tablets to test software and ease of reporting. The project also involves testing a dockside validation mobile app, an electronic measuring board, and a mobile app for law enforcement. The Council is pursuing additional program funding for outreach and training relative to implementation of the for-hire reporting requirement.

After reviewing public comment and much discussion, the Council requested that staff develop a white paper to begin outlining information on limited entry options for federal for-hire permits in the snapper grouper fishery. The Council’s Snapper Grouper Committee will continue discussions during its 2017 meetings. The Council decided not to pursue limited entry for Dolphin Wahoo and Coastal Migratory Pelagic for-hire permits at this time.

Mutton Snapper, Red Snapper, and Other Actions

The Council approved Snapper Grouper Amendment 41 for review by the Secretary of Commerce. The amendment addresses management measures for mutton snapper and includes regulations to designate April through June as spawning months, retain mutton snapper in the 10-snapper aggregate bag limit and set the mutton snapper bag limit at 5 per person per day year round, specify a commercial trip limit during the spawning months of 5 per person per day with a trip limit of 500 pounds during the “regular season” (non-spawning season months), and increase the minimum size limit for mutton snapper from 16 inches to 18 inches total length.

Discussions continued on options for the red snapper fishery. The fishery remains closed in federal waters. Additional management measures or modifications to current management measures are needed to reduce the large number of dead discards contributing to the stock’s overfishing status as the stock continues to rebuild. The Council will solicit public input during a series of in-person scoping meetings scheduled for January and February 2017.

Public hearings will be held in conjunction with the January/February scoping meetings on allocation measures for yellowtail snapper. The Council had initially included both yellowtail snapper and dolphin in a joint amendment to address allocations after the commercial fishery was closed for both species in 2015. The Council will continue to address allocation measures for dolphin during its March 2017 meeting. In addition, the Council approved Visioning Amendments for public scoping with measures for both commercial and recreational snapper grouper fisheries as a part of the Council Vision Blueprint for the Snapper Grouper Fishery. Scoping for the Visioning Amendments will be held via webinar. Schedules for the public hearings and scoping meetings will be publicized as they are finalized.

The Council decided not to move forward with a proposed change to the fishing year for Atlantic cobia, noting the efforts of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) to develop a complementary management plan to allow additional flexibility for state management considerations. The fishing year change may be addressed at a later date if necessary. The ASMFC is currently soliciting public input on proposed measures.

NORTH CAROLINA: Shark’s 8,500-mile odyssey ends on a fisherman’s hook

December 8, 2016 — A mako shark caught by commercial fishermen off North Carolina traveled more than 8,500 miles after a tracking device was attached 18 months earlier, an ocean research group says.

Researchers studying shark migrations for the Guy Harvey Research Institute at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., attached the device to the female shark’s dorsal fin in mid-2015 near Ocean City, Md.

A donation to the institute by Heather Finke sponsored the tag in honor of Charlotte Latin School.

A commercial long-line fishing boat caught the shark near Manns Harbor last month. The last of the tag’s 265 data transmissions from the sea to an orbiting satellite was recorded on Nov. 24.

Data show the shark swimming up and down the East Coast (click mako sharks > W. North Atlantic > Charlotte) between North Carolina and Rhode Island, making one big loop into the Atlantic north of Bermuda last spring. It traveled an average of 15 miles a day over 557 days.

“We’re happy to have recovered the satellite tag, but disappointed about the loss of the mako,” said executive director Greg Jacoski of the Guy Harvey Ocean Foundation, which supplies the tags. “It’s important for us to recover tags because of the value they have for our research efforts.”

NORTH CAROLINA: Fishermen can earn $400 a day removing old gear from the waters

December 5th, 2016 — Fishermen can earn $400 a day removing old fishing and crabbing gear from the waters of northeastern North Carolina.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation is accepting applications through Jan. 13. Watermen must have a valid commercial fishing license and guarantee availability for work from Jan. 18 through Feb. 7, according to a news release from the federation.

Those accepted will have to attend a training session to learn general project protocol and how to use equipment such as data collection tablets and side-scan sonars.

Each boat can earn $400 per day and is required to have two people on board for safety. The project is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Marine Debris Program and is intended to improve habitat and water quality, according to the release.

In January 2016, 11 crews, in partnership with state Marine Patrol officers, removed 753 crab pots, the release said. Combined with a shoreline cleanup, this project removed over 7.5 tons of fishing gear and marine debris.

Applications are available at www.nccoast.org/crab and can be mailed to P.O. Box 276, Wanchese, N.C. 27981.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot