February 6, 2023 — The Gulf of Maine lobster fishery has temporarily withdrawn its effort to pursue recertification under the Marine Stewardship Council sustainability standard.
The Maine Certified Sustainable Lobster Association (MCSLA), an industry group that has served as the fishery’s client group for the MSC certification process since it was first certified in 2016, decided not to continue to seek recertification, after it lost its certificate in November 2022.
February 6, 2023 — Active lobstermen are being advised to open mail from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission in the coming months, because the envelopes that arrive just might contain a check for up to $3,500.
Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher told members of the Lobster Advisory Council at their January 18 meeting that the checks—meant to partially offset the expense of gear modifications required by 2021 North Atlantic right whale protections—will be issued by ASMFC and should arrive this spring.
“These are checks that will be distributed to a lot of harvesters,” Keliher said. “The Commission will be writing the checks, so make sure you don’t see the envelope and throw it away.”
In an email clarifying the timing, DMR spokesman Jeff Nicholas wrote, “We cannot predict the timing for that, but we will keep license holders informed as the approval process is initiated.”
The money comes from a $14 million appropriation approved by Congress last year—prior to the December passage of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, usually referred to as the Omnibus spending bill. The December bill delayed new protection rules for the endangered whales for six years and includes $55 million for research and development of new technologies for lobstering and for monitoring the whales.
February 3, 2023 — An unusual winter concentration of endangered North Atlantic right whales in Cape Cod Bay prompted Massachusetts state officials and the National Marine Fisheries Service to order a three-month removal of trap and pot fishing gear in the region through April 30.
The emergency rule announced NMFS this week covers the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge where the gear closure is intended to reduce the risk of gear entanglement “when large numbers of whales are exiting Cape Cod Bay at the same time and place where fishermen are either fishing or may be staging their trap/pot fishing gear in preparation for the May 1 opening of federal waters in the Massachusetts Restricted Area,” according to the agency.
NMFS last imposed an similar emergency rule for the Massachusetts wedge area in April 2022. The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries requested the NMFS action, as the state imposed its own state-waters seasonal restrictions effective Feb. 1.
February 2, 2023 — The New England Fishery Management Council is asking the National Marine Fisheries Service to establish a control date that potentially could be used to determine eligibility criteria for switching between the types of scallop Limited Access General Category (LAGC) permits that can be used to access the Northern Gulf of Maine (NGOM) Management Area.
Control dates become effective the day NMFS publishes a notice in the Federal Register, which may not be until March for this particular request. The Council took this step as a precautionary move while it assesses a recent increase in fishing activity and permit switching in the Northern Gulf of Maine, especially between C and B permits.
Category C permits give vessels the opportunity to land 40 pounds of scallops as incidental catch on non-scallop trips, while B permits allow directed fishing on 200 pounds of scallops per day in the Northern Gulf of Maine area.
January 23, 2023 — Authorities in the U.S. state of New York have discovered hundreds of undersized lobsters for sale in several New York City supermarkets.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) Division of Law Enforcement conducted an inspection of an unidentified supermarket in the borough of Queens on 24 December, 2022, and found 128 undersized live lobsters for sale. On 26 December, 245 undersized lobsters were found for sale at a market in the borough of Brooklyn. Both supermarkets were issued violation notices, according to a DEC press release, with each violation coming with a fine of between USD 400 and USD 600 (EUR 368 and EUR 552). The lobsters were confiscated and donated to a food pantry in New York City.
January 23, 2023 — Changes to U.S. rules about the monitoring of Northeast commercial fishing activities are going into effect this month with a goal of providing more accurate information about some of the nation’s oldest fisheries.
The U.S. mandates observers to work onboard fishing boats to collect data and make sure fishermen adhere to rules and quotas. The relationship between fishermen and observers is sometimes difficult, and fishermen have long complained the monitoring program heaps costs on them.
The National Marine Fisheries Service has adopted new monitoring rules for Northeast fishermen of groundfish, like haddock and flounder, to try to improve the accuracy of the data. The fishermen harvest some of the most popular seafood species in the country, and the data are used to craft fishing regulations.
November 4, 2021 — In recent years, the federal government in the form of the National Marine Fisheries Service has been expanding restrictions on fin fishermen throughout the U.S. In the Northeast every aspect of a fishing vessel is controlled by regulation, from the size of the mesh in a net, to where and when and what you can fish for, to who is on your vessel and when you can leave the dock.
This has caused the fishing industry to shrink and the fin fishermen in New Hampshire have dwindled down to a handful. During my lifetime, the fishermen in New Hampshire have had one commercial fishing organization. We all meet together and work out our differences. Compliance in all the New Hampshire fisheries is high and conflicts are few. After all, we are a community out on the ocean and need to work together.
Read the full opinion piece at the Portsmouth Herald
January 22, 2019 — Slow-moving, hulking ships crisscross miles of ocean in a lawn mower pattern, wielding an array of 12 to 48 air guns blasting pressurized air repeatedly into the depths of the ocean.
The sound waves hit the sea floor, penetrating miles into it, and bounce back to the surface, where they are picked up by hydrophones. The acoustic patterns form a three-dimensional map of where oil and gas most likely lie.
The seismic air guns probably produce the loudest noise that humans use regularly underwater, and it is about to become far louder in the Atlantic. As part of the Trump administration’s plans to allow offshore drilling for gas and oil exploration, five companies have been given permits to carry out seismic mapping with the air guns all along the Eastern Seaboard, from Central Florida to the Northeast, for the first time in three decades. The surveys haven’t started yet in the Atlantic, but now that the ban on offshore drilling has been lifted, companies can be granted access to explore regions along the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific.
And air guns are now the most common method companies use to map the ocean floor.
December 7, 2018 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report on Thursday, 6 December that indicates 2017 was a worse than average year for the entanglement of large whales, but an improvement over numbers in recent years.
That news was of a worse-than-average year was also tempered by the fact that of the large whales entangled, right whales had fewer entanglements in the U.S. Northeast than in previous periods. The most frequently entangled large whale species in 2017 was the humpback, which accounted for 49 of the 76 entanglements, according to NOAA.
Right whales accounted for only two of the 76 entanglements, according to NOAA.
December 7, 2018 — The number of large whales entangled in U.S. waters was a little worse than usual in 2017, but entanglements of right whales and in the Northeast were down.
In a report released Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration confirmed 76 large whales were found entangled in fishing gear or marine debris in U.S. waters in 2017. Six of the 76 entangled whales were found dead, 45 were presumed to be alive but still entangled, four had freed themselves and 21 were freed by good samaritans or members of the national Large Whale Entanglement Response Network.
“Entanglement in fishing gear or marine debris is a very serious conservation and welfare issue,” said Sarah Wilkin, a national stranding and emergency response coordinator and one of the authors of the NOAA Fisheries report. “It can kill or seriously injure large whales. Entanglements that involve threatened or endangered species can have significant population level effects as well.”