Saving Seafood

Options to rebuild oyster population in Maryland draw criticism

August 30, 2019 — Maryland watermen face potential cutbacks in their wild Chesapeake Bay oyster harvest starting this fall, as the state eyes new regulations aimed at eventually making the troubled fishery sustainable. But critics question whether the state is serious about ending overharvesting, and lawmakers could order a do-over.

Officials with the Department of Natural Resources told their Oyster Advisory Commission in August that they were considering reductions of up to 20% in the daily harvest limits and setting a shorter season, which has traditionally run from Oct. 1 through March 31.

They also suggested they might close some areas of the Bay to wild harvest for the coming season if available data indicates oysters are unusually scarce there or the areas were being heavily overharvested.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Maryland oysters are having a bad year, and here’s why

August 19, 2019 — People, aside from oyster researchers and farmers, likely won’t feel the impact for at least another 18 months.

But, eventually, everyone will know just how bad a year it has been for Maryland oysters.

Thanks to record levels of persistent rainfall throughout the bay watershed, salinity levels in the Chesapeake Bay have remained perilously low since May 2018. The absence of salt in the bay and its tributaries has been annihilating oyster spat production and oyster growth at hatcheries and farms around the region.

At the University of Maryland’s Horn Point Hatchery, the largest oyster hatchery in the state, the carefully controlled operation is on course to produce hundreds of times fewer larvae this year than it would during a regular season, its manager said. This is bad news both economically and as an indicator of bay health, which data shows has suffered greatly under the deluge.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Baltimore Sun

Efforts with scallops and oysters paying off in NJ

August 19, 2019 — Fisheries management has provided a model for how people can adjust their impact on the natural world to benefit themselves and the environment. Scallops have made New Jersey a leader in East Coast seafood landings, with Cape May the region’s No. 2 port behind New Bedford, Connecticut. And oysters, while slowly growing into a robust and lucrative industry, now also promise to clean coastal waters and help reduce flooding.

Years of federal fisheries managers allowing Atlantic sea scallops to thrive by limiting their harvest have yielded an abundance of this shellfish delicacy.

New data shows their harvest last year reached more than 58 million pounds, the highest since 2011 and the fifth highest since record keeping began in 1945.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

Maryland plan to boost oysters criticized as administration makes push for approval

July 25, 2019 — Maryland natural resources officials say they have an “ambitious,” science-based plan for putting the state’s troubled oyster fishery on a path to sustainability in the next eight to 10 years. They want to get on with it.

But others say the plan falls short because it fails to set a goal for rebuilding the state’s decimated oyster population and doesn’t make a firm enough commitment to stop overfishing. They’re hoping the General Assembly will order a do-over.

At a legislative briefing on the Department of Natural Resources’ proposed oyster management plan on July 23, a key lawmaker predicted the legislature would do just that.

Montgomery County Del. Kumar Barve, chairman of the House Environment and Transportation Committee, said he was “a little disappointed” that Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed legislation that he and Anne Arundel County Sen. Sarah Elfreth sponsored.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

What can researchers learn by eavesdropping on fish?

July 17, 2019 — Oyster reef restoration provides important benefits, such as stabilizing shorelines, filtering water, and providing habitat for estuarine fish. However, quantifying fish use of restored oyster reefs can be difficult. Traditional sampling methods do not record all fish species and are often conducted only intermittently. As a result, fish diversity and resulting conservation and restoration decisions often rely on incomplete “snapshots” in time.

Luckily, many  and invertebrates make sounds to communicate, navigate, and feed, providing the opportunity to “listen in” to learn about what species are present, when they are present, and what behaviors they exhibit on restored reefs.

Passive acoustic recording offers a non-destructive method to gather data on species of ecological and economic importance that traditional sampling misses. This information is vital for understanding fish behavior, including when and where certain species are spawning—a key to conservation and for establishing targets for habitat restoration.

Researchers at NC State University monitored oyster cultch reefs for two years following restoration, using a combination of traditional net and trap fish sampling and underwater acoustic surveys. In North Carolina, oyster cultch reefs are constructed primarily to provide oysters for harvest, and the NC State team wanted to determine their value as fish habitat, which is currently unknown.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

MAINE: State rejects group’s petition to change aquaculture lease process

July 17, 2019 — The Department of Marine Resources rejected a petition to change the criteria for aquaculture lease applications on the basis that the request was “not realistic,” “arbitrary” and could have a “perverse outcome” for some applicants.

Meanwhile, the company pitching a 40-acre oyster aquaculture lease on Maquoit Bay continues to await the department’s decision on its application, which is now two months overdue.

A group known as Save Maquoit Bay, composed of coastal property owners, lobstermen and fishermen, submitted a 189-signature petition asking officials to include a stipulation requiring the department to consider whether any other locations near a proposed lease site could “accommodate the proposed activities while interfering less with existing and surrounding uses of an area.”

The petition requested the actions to be imposed statewide, Mere Point Oyster Co.’s proposed 10-year, 40-acre lease has been mired in controversy. A marathon three-day hearing that spanned several months wrapped up in mid-January after waterfront property owners and lobster fishermen spoke out against what they saw as conflicting uses of the bay and the potential infringement on valuable lobstering grounds. Some of the lobstermen who spoke out against the lease also are members of Save Maquoit Bay.

The department had 120 days to make a ruling, which would have been May 15, but according to Jeff Nichols, communications director of the department of marine resources, “depending on the complexity of the application and the evidence, it may take longer.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

With more storm flooding expected, Louisiana and Mississippi fishermen seek aid

July 10, 2019 — The news just got worse for the commercial fishing industry in Louisiana and Mississippi. Already impacted by oyster mortalities and movement of shrimp to other areas after the Bonnet Carre Spillway opening, the Gulf Coast is expecting flooding due to a tropical storm and likely hurricane this weekend.

A weather system in the Gulf could form as a tropical depression or tropical storm this week, and then hit the Gulf Coast as a Category 1 hurricane on Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

Already, the tropical system caused flash flooding in New Orleans, and the Mississippi River in New Orleans is forecast to crest near 20 feet this Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

The Mississippi and Louisiana fishing industries are already plagued by Mississippi River flooding. The flooding caused the opening of the Bonnet Carre Spillway more than 100 days ago, causing freshwater to mix with saltwater, producing toxic algae bloom off the coast of Mississippi and in Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans.

Already, a majority of oysters along the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi are dead, and other seafood species have been impacted.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Louisiana governor: Upriver floods a disaster for fisheries

June 18, 2019 — Louisiana’s governor says floodwaters from the Midwest are severely hurting people who make their living from coastal seafood, so he’s asking the federal government to declare a fisheries disaster for the state.

Floodwaters rushing from the Bonnet Carré Spillway north of New Orleans have killed oysters, hurt fish catches and damaged livelihoods, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross.

The fresh water has driven crabs, shrimp and fish out of bays and marshes and into saltier water where they can survive. But oysters are stuck — glued to the bottom.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, we are 9-and-a-half destroyed,” said Brad Robin, whose family controls about 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of oyster leases in Louisiana waters.

The full impact won’t be known for some time because the spillway, which protects New Orleans’ levees by directing huge amounts of Mississippi River water into usually brackish Lake Pontchartrain, remains open, Edwards said in a letter sent Thursday and released Monday.

If a long-range forecast of little rain holds up, spillway closing might begin in about four weeks, Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Matt Roe said Monday.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

MAINE: Smaller oyster farmers cry foul as red tide shuts them down. Meanwhile, larger harvesters can test and reopen.

June 12, 2019 — Ask Dave Hunter of Snow Island Oysters, grown in Quahog Bay, and he’ll tell you: the perfect oyster is 2 ½ to 3 inches long. That’s the length oyster dealers and customers are looking for, he said Monday.

“It’s, ‘Chew, chew, swallow,’” Hunter said.

“I usually tell the guys 2 ½ to 3 ½,” Ray Trombley, who buys American oysters at Casco Bay Shellfish in Brunswick, said Tuesday. “They’re not worth as much if they get any bigger. As a buyer, I like that size, and so does the market I sell to, and they sell to restaurants in Portland.”

But as of June 5, more than 200 of Maine’s smaller oyster farmers were temporarily out of business after PSP (paralytic shellfish poisoning) — a biotoxin known as red tide — was detected off Basin Point in Harpswell, the islands in Middle Bay, and Christmas Cove Landing in South Bristol, according to records from the Maine Department of Marine Resources.

State officials closed areas to oyster harvesting near the Bristol peninsula and, approximately, from Phippsburg to Cape Elizabeth.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Growth of Maine oyster farming prompts debate, disputes about aquaculture

May 23, 2019 — A short line of black floating tubes comes into view rounding Hopkins Island in Cundy’s Harbor. While they’re large enough for passing boaters and fishermen to spot, they don’t rise out of the water much higher than a lobster buoy. This is one of Peter Rand’s aquaculture leases.

He’s among the hundreds in Maine getting involved in the burgeoning aquaculture industry that has pumped millions into the state’s economy, but is under fire from lobstermen who compete for the same fishing grounds and homeowners who don’t want to see aquaculture sites from their waterfront properties.

With the situation coming to a head,  the Department of Marine Resources began the process at a meeting Wednesday of examining whether it should amend its rules to limit the size and location of aquaculture lease sites.

In March, the Department of Marine Resources received a petition with 189 signatures seeking an immediate moratorium on aquaculture leases larger than 10 acres. The petition also sought to create a new rule requiring that regulators consider alternate locations before approving aquaculture leases.

The petition triggered a rule-making process that began with Wednesday’s hearing.

In 2017, Maine aquaculture brought in 2.8 million pounds of oysters – a nearly fivefold increase since 2011 – and had an estimated $13.6 million economic impact.

That number is dwarfed by the landings value of Maine’s most famous shellfish – lobsters. Maine lobster landings were valued at a $484 million in 2018.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald