Saving Seafood

Mid-Atlantic council calls for extending observer waiver through 2020

August 17, 2020 — On the eve of NMFS resuming at-sea observer coverage, the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council asked the agency to again extend its covid-19 waiver on deploying observers in the Greater Atlantic region.

“Given the continued transmission of the covid-19 virus, we do not believe the observer program can be safely operated at this time,” wrote council chairman Michael Luisi in an Aug. 13 letter to NMFS regional director Michael Pentony and Jon Hare, science and research director at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

“According to the Centers for Disease Control, when we last communicated on this issue (June 23, 2020), the 7-day new case average was under 30,000 new cases per day. On August 11, 2020, the national 7-day average of new cases was over 52,000 new cases per day,” the letter states.

“Given the ongoing community transmission of the virus and the particularly high risk of transmission in the close quarters onboard a vessel, we believe that deploying observers on fishing vessels at this time poses an unwarranted risk to fishermen, observers, and associated communities.”

Council members talked about that concern during their online August meeting this week and approved a recommendation to extend the observer and monitor waiver on permitted commercial fishing vessels through Dec. 31.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Pandemic scraps local shrimp study

August 13, 2020 — When NOAA Fisheries recently cancelled four fishery and ecosystem surveys because of pandemic-related health and safety concerns, it was no real surprise that the Northern shrimp survey was one of the casualties.

It’s was just another indication of the star-crossed nature of the once-thriving regional shrimp fishery in the Gulf of Maine.

The imperiled fishery, which has suffered debilitating declines in its ability to sustain biomass and recruitment, has been closed since the end of the 2013 fishing season. Six times, the Atlantic States Marine Fishery Commission looked at the numbers generated by stock surveys and six times it saw no recourse but to shutter the fishery.

Matters devolved to the point that in late 2019, the ASMFC abandoned the previous policy of single-season closures and closed the Northern shrimp fishery for three years, ending in 2021.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Northeast Offshore Mussel Farming Would Contribute to American Seafood Competitiveness

July 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The first environmental suitability study for blue mussel culture in federal waters off New England’s shore was conducted by scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Milford Laboratory. The study revealed great potential for farming. The scientific team has continued this work, furthering the case for offshore mussel farms in a recent perspectives column in Fisheries Magazine. They have also published findings in Ocean & Coastal Management, examining the risks harmful algal blooms pose to offshore aquaculture.

The Case for Mussels

Milford’s Darien Mizuta and Gary Wikfors suggest that a New England offshore mussel farming industry would be environmentally sustainable and beneficial for food security and the economy. The United States is the world’s top importer of seafood, despite having the second largest Exclusive Economic Zone. In May, the president of the United States signed an executive order promoting American seafood competitiveness and economic growth. The order calls for increasing domestic seafood production, including making aquaculture permitting more efficient and predictable and bolstering aquaculture research.

Mussels are the top imported bivalve shellfish in the United States, currently contributing more than $102 million to the $14 billion U.S. seafood deficit. Close to Canada’s mussel-producing Prince Edward Island, New England is the import epicenter for mussel products, including fresh live mussels, frozen mussels, and prepared mussel dinners.

With advances in mussel farming in the 1990s, the United States began importing more mussels, mostly from Canada. “The success of Prince Edward Island mussel farming has created a new market for mussels in the northeast United States that is growing beyond the production capacity of PEI,” explains Wikfors, who is also the director of the Milford Laboratory, where Darien Mizuta was a postdoctoral researcher.

Read the full release here

NEFMC Approves List of 2020-2024 Research Priorities and Data Need

July 28, 2020 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

During its late-June webinar meeting, the New England Fishery Management Council reviewed and approved a list of research priorities and data needs for 2020-2024. The Council developed this list for two primary reasons.

  1. It clearly identifies and rates the information the Council needs to best manage the fisheries within its jurisdiction; and
  2. It complies with a provision in the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act asking regional fishery management councils to provide the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS/NOAA Fisheries) with Council priorities to inform the agency of each Council’s needs. The agency then uses this information as it develops budgets and sets its own research priorities.

The Council submitted the 2020-2024 list, which contains 108 items, to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office (GARFO) of NOAA Fisheries.

Read the full release here

Baleen Whales Have Changed Their Distribution in the Western North Atlantic

July 17, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Researchers have been using passive acoustic recordings of whale calls to track their movements. They have found that four of the six baleen whale species found in the western North Atlantic Ocean — humpback, sei, fin and blue whales — have changed their distribution patterns in the past decade. The recordings were made over 10 years by devices moored to the seafloor at nearly 300 locations from the Caribbean Sea to western Greenland.

“All four whale species were present in waters from the southeast U.S. to Greenland, with humpbacks also present in the Caribbean Sea,” said Genevieve Davis, a senior acoustician at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and lead author of the study. “These four species were detected throughout all the regions in the winter, suggesting that baleen whales are widely distributed during these months. Humpback, sei, fin, and blue whales also showed significant changes in where they were detected between the two time periods considered in this study: before and after 2010.”

A large group of federal, state and academic researchers from the United States and Canada conducted the study, published in Global Change Biology. It is the first to show the occurrence of these four species across the western North Atlantic Ocean over long time spans and at a large spatial scale. The study also demonstrates how whale distributions have changed over time, and in particular since 2010.

Read the full release here

John K. Bullard Diversity Award to be Presented Virtually July 23

July 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

The Woods Hole Diversity Initiative has named Larry Alade as the 2020 recipient of the John K. Bullard Diversity Award. Alade is a research scientist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory. He is being honored for his contributions to making Woods Hole a more welcoming, inclusive, and diverse community.

The presentation will follow the annual Ambrose Jearld Jr. Lecture on Diversity and Inclusion. This year’s lecture will be given by Nigel Golden,  a doctoral candidate in environmental conservation and graduate fellow in the Northeast Climate Science Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Golden will discuss “Reducing Harm: A Politic to Address Institutional and Cultural Practices that Reduce Participation and Retention in STEM.”

The lecture and award presentation will be offered on July 23 at 2:00 p.m. EDT via Zoom.  Registration is required.

Alade was chosen to receive the award for his:

  • Commitment to diversity in Woods Hole through his work on the Partnership Education Program
  • Leadership on the Black History Month Planning Committee
  • Participation in the Woods Hole Diversity Advisory Committee.

He is also a member of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s diversity and inclusion team. He participates on various other committees and programs that promote diversity and inclusion.

Read the full release here

MASSACHUSETTS: Joe Kennedy: NOAA Fisheries Should Move to New Bedford From Woods Hole

July 13, 2020 — Massachusetts congressman and U.S. Senate candidate Joseph P. Kennedy III said Friday that government scientists working for NOAA Fisheries should be headquartered in New Bedford instead of in Woods Hole, the scenic community on Cape Cod that hosts a half-dozen leading scientific institutions.

“We have the most important fishing port in the country here. And we have the scientists that have enormous influence about that port decide to be over there instead. Why would you do that?” Kennedy said during a campaign visit to New Bedford’s working waterfront.

The Democrat, who is challenging incumbent U.S. Senator Ed Markey in the Sept. 1 primary, said the concept would move 200 jobs to the city, provide an important investment in an anchor institution, and say to commercial fishermen “that we want your opinion, we need your opinion, and we want to get this right.”

The now-obsolete Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole was completed in 1961, and plans have been afoot to replace it. “It’s going to get rebuilt. The question is where,” said New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell.

Read the full story at WBSM

MASSACHUSETTS: Kennedy throws support behind moving NOAA from Woods Hole to New Bedford

July 13, 2020 — A proposal to move the region’s NOAA Fisheries headquarters to New Bedford now has the backing of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Kennedy III.

Kennedy, currently a Democratic congressman, made the announcement in the city Friday while visiting Pier 3 alongside Mayor Jon Mitchell. He spoke with local fishermen about his new COVID-19 economic recovery plan, which calls for large-scale public works and federal hiring programs.

“Listening to local communities, recognizing those bottlenecks and then saying, ‘Hey, with you at a seat at the table, let’s actually design a policy to do that,’” Kennedy said. “The risk that we have in the midst of a shock like this is that small guys essentially get eaten up and closed.”

Fisherman Steven Palmer said he appreciated his conversation with Kennedy, during which he expressed frustration about scallop prices during the pandemic.

“Earlier this year it dropped down to $4 a pound in some spots, so it’s been tough,” Palmer said.

Read the full story at WPRI

Lobsters, sea scallops are moving out of southern New England

July 13, 2020 — Researchers have projected significant changes in the habitat of commercially important American lobster and sea scallops along the Northeast continental shelf. They used a suite of models to estimate how species will react as waters warm. The researchers suggest that American lobster will move further offshore and sea scallops will shift to the north in the coming decades.

The study’s findings were published recently in Diversity and Distributions. They pose fishery management challenges as the changes can move stocks into and out of fixed management areas. Habitats within current management areas will also experience changes — some will show species increases, others decreases, and others will experience no change.

“Changes in stock distribution affect where fish and shellfish can be caught and who has access to them over time,” said Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist in the Ecosystems Dynamics and Assessment Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study. “American lobster and sea scallop are two of the most economically valuable single-species fisheries in the entire United States. They are also important to the economic and cultural well-being of coastal communities in the Northeast. Any changes to their distribution and abundance will have major impacts.”

Saba and colleagues used a group of species distribution models and a high-resolution global climate model. They projected the possible impact of climate change on suitable habitat for the two species in the large Northeast continental shelf marine ecosystem. This ecosystem includes waters of the Gulf of Maine, Georges Bank, the Mid-Atlantic Bight, and southern New England.

Read the full story at EcoRI