Saving Seafood

Microplastics in vast majority of Oregon shellfish, study finds

November 13, 2019 — A Portland State University study found tiny pieces of plastic in the vast majority of razor clams and oysters sampled along the Oregon coast and noted that the primary source of contamination was from fibers used in synthetic textiles.

Those microscopic fibers can be shed by yoga pants, fleeces and other active wear made of synthetic textiles during a wash — up to 700,000 per load of laundry, according to the study, which was reported on Tuesday in The Oregonian/OregonLive. These fibers are in the wastewater from laundry machines that eventually winds up in the ocean, although some of the tiny plastic fibers could also come from derelict fishing gear, the newspaper said.

The shellfish in question were plucked from 15 sites, from Clatsop in the north to Gold Beach near the California border, in both the spring and summer of 2017. Of the roughly 300 shellfish analyzed, all but two contained at least some microplastics, Elise Granek, a PSU professor of environmental science and management, said.

The study was published in the journal Limnology and Oceanography Letters.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KOMO

Fishing boat burns in Portland, Maine

November 6, 2019 — Just after 9 a.m. EST on the morning of Tuesday, 5 November, the 55-foot steel boat Resolve caught fire at Vessel Services at the Fish Pier in Portland, Maine.

The Portland and South Portland fire departments responded quickly to the 9:30 a.m. EST call and had the fire under control within half an hour.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

MAINE: Lobster ‘shack’ keeping Portland waterfront working

June 12, 2019 — In Portland in the summer, you can pretty much find lobster on every block along the water. One week ago, the latest fishing shack opened at the end of Portland Pier. But Luke’s Lobster is anything but a shack; and it’s not just another restaurant taking up waterfront space.

The owner, Luke Holden; his chef, Zac Leeman; and quite a few members of his staff come from fishing families, so preserving a working waterfront has been the focus of their brand new space – starting with fixing up the docks and making the space useful again.

Order a lobster, and it comes directly from one of the holding tanks adjacent to the restaurant; a lobster that came directly from one of the boats tied to the docks surrounding the deck of Luke’s Lobster. Visitors can sit, sip a cocktail and watch their catch come in.

These guys take their waterfront relationship seriously, with a slogan “No middlemen, just lobstermen.” Even their coasters reflect that.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

Seaweed matters: Eat your vegetables

April 26, 2019 — When I sat down at a Portland kombucha bar to attend a local Seaweed 101 session, I fully expected a love story about wild, vegan kelp and how we can change the world by eating more sea vegetables. What I didn’t expect was an in-depth exchange about federal fishery management and how it has decimated the industry’s communities in New England.

VitaminSea owner, and host of the session, Tom Roth was a commercial tilefish captain out of New Jersey a lifetime ago. He transitioned into New York Harbor tugboats as the industry declined, and started diving for kelp in his spare time from his home base in southern Maine about 15 years ago.

These days he goes out in a 40-foot boat that carries three other divers, two wooden skiffs and two Zodiacs. Each diver takes a small craft out on his own; they spread out, harvest, then meet back at the boat to help each other unload.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Canadian-U.S. Lobstermen’s Town Meeting: U.S. and Canadian lobstermen have a whale of a problem

April 17, 2019 — Department of Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher sure knows how to quiet a room.

On April 5, about 100 members of the U.S. and Maine lobster industry — fishermen, dealers, scientists, and regulators — gathered for the 15th Canadian-U.S. Lobstermen’s Town Meeting at the Westin Portland Harborview Hotel in Portland. There they heard Keliher announce that he’d just received an email from NOAA Fisheries announcing that, in order to protect endangered right whales, “the U.S. fishery will likely have to be reduced 60 to 80 percent.”

It’s a testament to the cardiac health of Maine and Canadian lobstermen that the statement didn’t produce a mass heart attack, especially since it came during a discussion of what fishing restrictions might be imposed by NOAA Fisheries this spring to meet the demands of the federal Endangered Species and Marine Mammal Protection acts.

What almost everyone in the room heard, though, wasn’t all that Keliher said. Thanks to a snafu with the microphone, the audience missed the beginning of the NOAA statement that said “whale mortalities” from U.S. fisheries would have to be reduced by “60 to 80 percent,” not the fisheries themselves.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

There’s new hope for Mainers fighting to save working waterfronts

December 31, 2018 — In Maine’s decades-long fight over working waterfront, developers have consistently held a distinct cash advantage over fishermen.

That hasn’t changed, so advocates for ensuring that enough Maine piers and wharves remain available to preserve the state’s embattled maritime workforce have adopted new tactics. And there’s hope the state could free up more cash soon for working waterfront preservation.

When Portland’s city council earlier this month enacted a six-month moratorium on non-marine-related development along the city’s working waterfront, even The New York Times paid attention.

The moratorium resulted from a signature-collecting effort for a referendum that would seek to reinstate a requirement that all new projects in the waterfront zone be water-dependent, a rule that would effectively block new construction of hotels, restaurants and offices, which have proliferated in the area in recent decades.

Among other developments, the petition was triggered by a $40 million development project — four-story hotel, retail shops, office space and a parking garage — proposed for Fisherman’s Wharf.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

U.S. Senate passes bill making it easier to kill sea lions on Columbia River

December 10, 2018 — A bill that would make it easier to kill sea lions that feast on imperiled salmon in the Columbia River has cleared the U.S. Senate.

State wildlife managers say rebounding numbers of sea lions are eating more salmon than ever and their appetites are undermining billions of dollars of investments to restore endangered fish runs.

Senate Bill 3119, which passed Thursday by unanimous consent, would streamline the process for Washington, Idaho, Oregon and several Pacific Northwest Native American tribes to capture and euthanize potentially hundreds of sea lions found in the river east of Portland, Oregon.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at KATU

Vote this week on keeping New England shrimp fishery shut

November 12, 2018 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) – Fishing managers will decide this week if New England’s fishery for shrimp must remain closed because of concerns about the environment and the animal’s population.

The shrimp fishery, based mostly in Maine, has been closed since 2013. The small, pink shrimp, once a popular winter seafood item, have been mostly unavailable to consumers in America since.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Washington Times

Dogfish Population Declines off East Coast, as Will Harvest

October 26, 2018 — Portland, Maine — A small species of shark that is fished for food off the East Coast has declined slightly in population, and fishermen will be allowed to catch slightly less of it in the coming year.

Spiny dogfish are harvested off several Atlantic states, and they are especially popular in Europe. The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says a recent assessment of the shark’s population shows a decline in the number of spiny dogfish.

The commission says the decline requires a 46 percent reduction in the dogfish quota for the 2019-20 fishing year. The commission says the reduction is designed to avoid overfishing.

Fishermen will be allowed to catch about 20.5 million pounds of the dogfish in the new fishing year. They caught nearly 27 million pounds in 2016.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S News and World Report

West Coast sardine fishing closed for 4th year; ‘alarming’ 97% population decline

March 8, 2018 — Sardine fishing nets will remain empty for a fourth straight year along the West Coast, where biologists are comparing the dramatic decline of the schooling fish to the infamous collapse that led to the downfall of Monterey’s once-thriving Cannery Row.

The northern Pacific sardine population, stretching from Mexico to British Columbia, has plummeted 97 percent since 2006, according to an assessment released this week by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

The perilously low numbers give regulators no choice but to close fishing, which had been scheduled to start July 1, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The 14 voting members of the fishery council, which makes policy along the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington, will meet April 8 in Portland, Ore., to discuss the results, but everyone agrees a fishing ban is inevitable. The council is required by federal law to close ocean fishing when the numbers fall this far below conservation objectives.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle