Saving Seafood

“Good Catch!” Campaign Bolsters New England’s Sustainable Seafood Businesses

August 10, 2016 — The following was released by the Marine Stewardship Council:

BOSTON — According to new independent research, seafood consumers in New England are significantly more likely than national consumers to purchase fresh fish at a seafood counter, 58 percent and 40 percent, respectively. New England consumers’ affinity for fresh seafood is renowned, and the region benefits from a concentration of certified sustainable fisheries, which work to protect fish stocks, ecosystems and local fishing communities. However, consumer awareness of the abundant sustainable seafood offerings from area sellers remains low. To address this, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), an international non-profit dedicated to safeguarding the seafood supply, will launch a campaign to educate New England consumers about identifying sustainable seafood products.

MSC will take its “Good Catch!” campaign directly to consumers this month with events at Whole Foods and Big Y grocery stores, which feature MSC at their fresh fish counters, in greater Boston, Springfield and Great Barrington, as well as at Green Fest and the Quincy Farmers Market.

“As consumers are developing greater awareness of their impact on the world, they are demanding more ways to validate that the products they buy support their values,” said Brian Perkins, MSC Regional Director – Americas. “You should have confidence that what you are buying really is what it says it is and that it originates from a sustainable source. The blue MSC label ensures that the seafood was caught wild, using methods that don’t deplete the natural supply or come at the expense of other ocean life.”

IMPACT ON LOCAL FISHING INDUSTRY: The fishing industry – at the heart of many New England communities – has seen first-hand the consequences of unsustainable fishing. Sustainable fisheries in New England, and globally, are the most important players in addressing these problems. The MSC certification program helps these fishing communities prove to the marketplace that their seafood supplies are healthy. In New England, the US Atlantic sea scallop; Maine Lobster; US North Atlantic swordfish; US Atlantic spiny dogfish; US Acadian, redfish, pollock and haddock fisheries are MSC certified.

“The fishing industry is vital to New England’s economy, and operating them sustainably ensures that our industry will continue for generations to come,” said Doug Feeney a commercial fisherman and member of the Cape Cod Fisherman’s Association. “Consumers want to know that the seafood they buy is responsibly sourced – MSC certification allows us to let local shoppers know that what they’re buying really does come from our sustainable sources.”

Consumers wishing to learn more about sustainable seafood can look for the MSC booth throughout August outside Whole Foods stores in the Boston area, Big Y stores in Springfield and Great Barrington, Green Fest, and the Quincy Farmers Market. Visit msc.org/goodcatch for information.

“By purchasing seafood that they know comes from a sustainable source, consumers help protect our oceans and ensure that seafood can be enjoyed for many generations to come,” said Perkins. “They have the power to impact the health of the ocean and the continuation of the fishing industry simply by the products they choose.”

About the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC): The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is an international non-profit organization. Our vision is for the world’s oceans to be teeming with life, and seafood supplies safeguarded for this and future generations. Our ecolabel and certification program recognizes and rewards sustainable fishing practices and is helping create a more sustainable seafood market. The MSC ecolabel on a seafood product means that it comes from a wild-catch fishery which has been independently certified to the MSC’s science-based standard for environmentally sustainable fishing, and it’s fully traceable to a sustainable source. More than 280 fisheries in over 35 countries are certified to the MSC’s Standard. These fisheries have a combined annual seafood production of almost nine million metric tons, representing close to 10% of annual global yields. More than 20,000 seafood products worldwide carry the MSC ecolabel. For more information, visit www.msc.org.

Maine fishermen testing a ‘game-changer’ for protected cod

July 25, 2016 — GEORGETOWN, Maine — Like many Maine fishermen, Bryan Kelley faces a dilemma as he looks to diversify beyond the lobster that account for the bulk of his catch.

To target pollock, which are relatively common in the Gulf of Maine, he has to fish in the same areas frequented by cod, a type of groundfish protected through strict federal catch limits.

“We literally have to stay away from the codfish,” Kelley said while standing on his 40-foot boat moored in the Five Islands harbor of Georgetown. “I could fill this with codfish if I wanted to, but that wouldn’t help anybody in this sector and that is not why we are out here.”

To help him catch the groundfish he wants and avoid the species he doesn’t, Kelley has begun experimenting with a contraption akin to a conventional fishing reel on steroids and with an electronic brain. The “automatic jigging machines” loaned to Kelley and a handful of other fishermen by The Nature Conservancy allow them to more accurately target the water column where pollock hang out and stay off the bottom where cod lurk. The machines’ simple hooks and lures also ostensibly reduce inadvertent “by-catch” of cod while avoiding other downsides of trawlnets and gill nets more commonly used by fishermen.

“That’s part of the draw of it: It’s the quickest and easiest I have ever rigged anything up in my life,” Kelley said.

Geoff Smith, marine program director at the Maine chapter of the The Nature Conservancy, said preliminary reviews of the machines have been largely positive.

“This project is really about helping fishermen target those healthy stocks (of fish) while avoiding the codfish to allow them to rebuild,” said Smith, whose organization owns several groundfish permits in the Gulf of Maine. “We really feel that these jigging machines, if fished properly, can be selective and have minimal impact on the seafloor. … And if they work for fishermen, we think they could be a real game-changer.”

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

AL BURCH: Governor should recognize value of Alaska groundfish industry

July 25, 2016 — My brother and I were some of the pioneers of the trawl fishery here in Kodiak. We started from scratch when the United States claimed a 200-mile zone. I remember the foreign fleets off our shores, and once they were replaced by U.S. vessels like ours, I remember how the trawl fishery for pollock and cod helped put the town back on its feet after the collapse of the crab and shrimp fisheries in the late 1970s. I am proud of the fact that the fishery I helped pioneer now supports a year-round fishing economy here in Kodiak.

Although I am retired now, I continue to follow how the fishery is run. And I am concerned.

In the past, when we were struggling to build the fishery, the state of Alaska was on our side. We worked hard together to build a fishery that was managed by scientific principles and research, with no overfishing. We pioneered putting observers on U.S. vessels, and unlike a lot of other fisheries here in Alaska we have had observers for roughly 30 years. We worked alongside the state and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council to meet conservation and management challenges together, to ensure practical solutions that ensured an economically sustainable fishery for Kodiak and other Alaska coastal towns.

But now it seems that the state of Alaska is not concerned about the impacts of its decisions on the hard-working participants in this fishery and communities like mine that are dependent on groundfish.

Read the full opinion piece at Alaska Dispatch News

UN report: People around the world are eating more fish

July 8, 2016 — UNITED NATIONS — People around the world are eating more fish and global per capita fish consumption topped 20 kilograms (44 pounds) a year for the first time in 2014, according to preliminary estimates in a U.N. report released Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization report said the record consumption, which appears to have continued in 2015, is the result of increased supplies from fish farming, growing demand linked to population growth, reduced wastage, rising incomes and urbanization, and a slight improvement in some fish stocks.

According to The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016, world per capita fish consumption increased from an average of 9.9 kilograms (21.8 pounds) in the 1960s to 14.4 kilograms (31.7 pounds) in the 1990s, 19.7 kilograms (43.3 pounds) in 2013 and 20.1 kilograms (44.2 pounds) in 2014.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva said fish farming or aquaculture — using coastal net pens or ponds to raise freshwater and saltwater species — now provides half of all fish for human consumption.

China has played a major role in the growth of fish farming, accounting for 60 percent of world aquaculture production, the report said.

On a negative note, the report said “the state of the world’s marine fish stocks has not improved” despite notable progress in some areas.

It said almost a third of commercial fish stocks are now fished at biologically unsustainable levels, triple the level of 1974.

Global total production from fishing in 2014 was 93.4 million tons — 81.5 million tons from marine waters and 11.9 million tons from inland waters, the report said. China was the largest marine producer followed by Indonesia, the United States and Russia.

For the first time since 1998, anchovy was not the top-ranked catch in 2014, falling below Alaska pollock, the report said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

ALASKA: Council convenes in Kodiak with Gulf catch shares in focus

June 2, 2016 — The North Pacific Fishery Management Council will meet in Kodiak from June 6-14 to hear a discussion paper that has enraged the trawl industry since late 2015.

Two proposals are engineered to prevent harmful impacts such as the job losses and high cost of entry that have occurred under previous such programs in halibut and crab.

This is an official state position, and the North Pacific council holds a six-member majority of the 11-member body that governs federal Alaska waters.

Gov. Bill Walker’s administration prioritizes coastal communities’ economic prospects during the state’s oil-driven financial calamity. Part of that stance concerns keeping the fishing industry, the state’s largest private employer, in Alaskan fishermen’s hands.

“The greatest challenge facing fishery managers and communities to date has been how to adequately protect communities and working fishermen from the effects of fisheries privatization, notably excessive consolidation and concentration of fishing privileges, crew job loss, rising entry costs, absentee ownership of quota and high leasing fees, and the flight of fishing rights and wealth from fishery dependent communities,” the council’s discussion paper reads. “Collectively, these impacts are altering and in some cases severing the connection between Alaska coastal communities and fisheries.”

For years, the council has mulled over a regulations to install catch shares in the Gulf of Alaska groundfish fisheries. Mainly trawlers go after this fishery, which includes pollock, a midwater fish, and species such as Pacific cod and arrowtooth flounder, which are bottom, or pelagic, fish.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

Alaska holds its perennial spot atop NOAA fisheries rankings

May 27, 2016 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its annual report detailing national and regional economic impacts of U.S. fisheries and, as usual, Alaska produced both the greatest value and volume of any area.

The report includes economic impacts in the harvesting, processing, wholesale, retail and import sectors, as well as those from recreational saltwater fishing.

In 2014, the nation’s commercial seafood industry produced 1.4 million full- and part-time jobs, $153 billion in sales (including imports), $42 billion in income and $64 billion in value-added impacts. Domestic harvests produced $54 billion in sales.

Alaska’s seafood industry employs more people than any other private industry in the state. California supported most of the nation’s 1.4 million seafood jobs in 2014 with 143,440. Alaska’s industry supported 60,749 jobs.

North Pacific fisheries, dominated by walleye pollock and Pacific salmon, accounted for the greatest volume and value of the eight regions.

Read the full story at the Juneau Empire

The boats that land the fish

May 11, 2016 — To ask the question “what boat landed this fish?” may be one of the most important environmental, social and political acts of 2016.

These are some names of Gloucester day boats, boats that make short trips to Jeffreys Ledge, Ipswich Bay and Middle Bank: the Maria GS, the Santo Pio, the Angela & Rose, the Janaya & Joseph, and Cat Eyes. And there are more. These boats land a mix of species that call the Gulf of Maine home, but they are primarily landing codfish, dab flounder, blackback flounder, yellowtail flounder, gray sole and some whiting.

These are some of the offshore Gloucester boats currently fishing the northern edge of George’s Bank: The Miss Trish, The Midnight Sun, the Teresa Marie III, the Harmony, the Teresa Marie IV and the Lady Jane. Again, there are more boats than this. Right now, they are landing haddock, redfish, pollock, codfish, dab flounder, gray sole and some hake.

In port, these boats, and others, can be seen tied up at Felicia Oil, Rose Marine, Gloucester Marine Railways and the State Fish Pier, wharfs along the Inner Harbor, many in clear sight of some Gloucester restaurants.

In an effort to celebrate and promote the quality seafood that these boats land, Gloucester Seafood Processing in Blackburn Circle stamps every issue of fish with the name of the fishing vessel that landed it. They are hoping other processors will, too. Restaurants — particularly in Gloucester — should proudly be announcing to their guests, “This pollock was landed yesterday on the Angela & Rose!” — or the Janaya & Joseph, or the Santo Pio.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Misunderstood pollock a key to New England seafood’s future

May 9, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — It might not be time yet to rechristen Cape Cod as Cape Pollock, but the humble fish is staking its claim.

The Atlantic pollock has long played a role in New England’s fishing industry as a cheaper alternative to cod and haddock, but the fish’s place in America’s oldest fishing industry is expanding as stocks like cod fade.

But the fish has an image problem.

While considered a whitefish, its uncooked gray-pinkish color looks drab compared to the snow-white cod fillets consumers are used to seeing on seafood counters. And many confuse it with the very different Alaska pollock, which is the subject of a much larger industrial fishery that provides fish for processed food products such as the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish.

A loose consortium of fishermen, processors, restaurateurs and sustainable seafood advocates wants to change all that. They’re trying to rebrand Atlantic pollock as New England’s fish, and the push is catching on in places like food-crazy Portland, where food trucks offer pollock tacos to eager crowds.

Read the full story from the Associated Press

NEFSC Science and Research Director Dr. William Karp to Retire in September

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) — May 3, 2016 — Dr. William Karp, the Science and Research Director of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, announced today in an email that he will be stepping down from the position at the end of September. Dr. Karp, who was appointed to the Director position in 2012, has over 30 years of fisheries research experience, working at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center before coming to the NEFSC.

The text of Dr. Karp’s email is reproduced below.

Dear Colleagues and Friends:

After a 30-year career with NOAA Fisheries, I have decided to retire from Federal service on September 30th, 2016.

When I started work at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center in 1986, I was excited by the opportunity to work as a scientist in support of our mission while, at the same time, serving the public.  My understanding of the breadth and depth of our mission has increased greatly during my 30 years of service, and my commitment to science-based management of living marine resources has remained strong.  The work I have done during these 30 years has always been challenging and rewarding, and I have been honored to work with many skilled scientists and administrators.  At the start of my career with NOAA, I joined the midwater assessment team at the Alaska Center, working on acoustic technologies and survey assessment of pollock in the Gulf of Alaska and the Bering Sea.  During my years at AFSC, I changed jobs, and direction, several times, working with different staff at the Center and, increasingly, with partners in academia, the fishing industry, and the international community.  My time as Deputy Science and Research Director at AFSC was especially rewarding as I came to understand the incredible depth and breadth of the Center’s work, and the remarkable impact this has had on the science, management, and conservation of living marine resources throughout Alaska.  Four years ago, I moved to Cape Cod to take on a new assignment as Director of the Northeast Fisheries Science Center.  I was honored to be selected for the position and, as at the Alaska Center, have greatly enjoyed the opportunity to work with a highly dedicated and accomplished staff.  The science and management challenges in New England and the Mid Atlantic differ markedly from those in Alaska, and, while this job has been very demanding, I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with staff, stakeholders, and academic and management partners to improve our science and better inform the management process.

My career with NOAA has been exciting, challenging, rewarding, and fulfilling.  It has been my privilege and my pleasure to work with all of you.

Bill

Warmer Bering Sea will Reduce Future Pollock Harvests but Raise Prices

April 19, 2016 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Economic losses from a diminished catch will be partially offset by rising prices for the fish species that supports the nation’s single biggest seafood harvest, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

The report, by economist Chang Seung and biologist Jim Ianelli and published in the journal Natural Resource Modeling, estimates that the total Alaska pollock harvest in 2050 will be 22.2 percent smaller than it was in 2004. But the dollar value of the harvest – total revenue from sales of raw pollock – will decline by only 9 percent, according to the report’s projections.

Pollock harvests in waters off Alaska generally range between 1 million and 1.4 million metric tons a year, with nearly all of that pulled out of the eastern Bering Sea. The 2012 catch of pollock from waters off Alaska totaled 1.31 million metric tons and brought in nearly $500 million to the harvesting fishermen, according to the report. The total value of the fishery is much greater than that when multiplier effects are considered; it mounts to billions of dollars as the economic activity expands along each step from the fishing vessel to consumers’ meals.

Future consumers will be willing to pay more for pollock  for a variety of reasons, Seung said.

“There is a decrease in supply of pollock. That will increase the price a little bit,” he said.

In addition, the analysis assumes growth in the global population and economy, meaning expanded markets of fish-eaters and a positive shift in the demand curve, he said.

The analysis considers a range of scenarios that are averaged over the long term.

In the short term, Alaska pollock stocks and harvests fluctuate year to year. The gradual warming that is happening and is expected to continue will have effects in coming decades.

Effects of warmer waters on pollock are complicated, according to analysis by the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. Higher summer temperatures tend to spur growth of more young fish, but those conditions leave much less high-oil prey for them to eat. Though they are more abundant than their cold-summer counterparts, the warm-summer young pollock are low on the fat reserves they need to survive the winter. Since juvenile pollock are a major source of food for a variety of fish and marine mammals, winter survival is critical to stock sizes. Pollock populations can be plentiful if warm and cold years alternate, according to NOAA analysis, but there is concern about several sequential warm years causing big stock declines.

Do the future supply and demand changes mean the lowly pollock might become a more premium whitefish? Could pollock be the new cod?

Don’t count on it, advises Gunnar Knapp, a University of Alaska Anchorage economist with fisheries expertise.

“I don’t see it happening any time soon,” said Knapp, director of UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research.

Though groundfish is not his specialty, he said, his “gut instinct” is that pollock faces too many obstacles to become a prized fish like halibut, now considered a delicacy, or even cod, which has niche appeal as food with centuries-old traditions.

Those include competition from other whitefish, like farmed catfish and tilapia, along with the emerging farmed species from Vietnam, Pangasius hypophthalmus, which goes by the newly coined name “swai,” Knapp said. Swai was not even eaten in the United States until about 10 years ago but it is now a strong contender in the whitefish market, he said.

Future marketing of pollock could make a pitch for the product as wild and sustainably managed, Knapp added. Pollock also feeds spinoff markets for roe – generally a Japanese market subject to the changing value of the yen – and the paste known as surimi, making pollock economics a bit more complex than those applicable to other fish, he said.

This story originally appeared on Seafoodnews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.