May 27, 2020 — Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada-based AC Covert is rolling out new seafood boxes available for home delivery in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.
The seafood distribution company, which is owned by Cooke Inc., caters to retailers, restaurants, and the tourism and hospitality sectors, but has pivoted its sales focus due to the coronavirus pandemic.
April 4, 2018 — Lobster fishers on P.E.I. are taking new measures this season to help protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement.
In January, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced changes to the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to protect the right whales, including reducing the amount of rope floating on the surface and mandatory reporting of all lost gear.
Fishermen are also required to report any sightings of the endangered whales.
At least 18 North Atlantic right whales died in Canadian and U.S. waters last year.
Necropsies on seven of the carcasses determined four whales died of blunt force trauma from collisions with ships, while the other three likely died from entanglements in fishing gear.
There are only an estimated 450 to 500 of the whales left in the world.
This winter, the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association set up a special working group focused on helping to protect the right whale, with members representing all 13 species fished around Prince Edward Island.
“It’s a delicate balance between the fishery and the survival of these species,” said Melanie Giffin, a marine biologist and program planner with PEIFA.
“So our members will do everything they can in terms of reducing rope and to try to help reduce those entanglements for the whales.”
Giffin said most of the measures are being mandated by the federal department of fisheries.
“There’s a reduction in the amount of floating rope on the surface of the water and that’s being done in numerous species,” she said.
‘It’s not specific that it has to be lead rope but the rope needs to be sinking.”
In the snow crab fishery, there will also be colour coding of ropes, with different colours woven into the rope to identify where it’s from, including P.E.I.
“That’s to ensure that if there is a whale entangled, we have an idea of where that whale was entangled,” Giffin said.
“If they’re all entangled in the same area, then maybe management measures need to be looked more closely in that area, rather than the Gulf as a whole.”
There is no colour coding for lobster ropes yet, she added.
Read the full story at CBC News
June 2, 2016 — Warming waters from climate change off the Atlantic coast are driving lobsters further north than ever before, disrupting fisheries and – for some – perhaps changing a way of life forever.
While the southern New England lobster fishery has all but collapsed, fishers in Maine, Prince Edward Island and even further north are benefiting from the crustaceans’ movement.
“I’ve seen enough of the charts to say the water’s warming, and if that’s climate change, it’s happening. It is happening,” says Beth Casoni, executive director of the Lobstermen’s Association of Massachusetts.
Casoni estimates some 30 fishers still trap lobster in southern New England, down from hundreds previously. The impacted areas include Southern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York.
At the same time the lobster fishing in Maine and north has exploded. Maine is seeing historically high landings now, roughly five times higher than it was back in the 1980s and ‘90s.
It’s a similar story in P.E.I., where lobster landings have gone from a low of 17.6 million pounds in 1997 to a high of 29.7 million pounds in 2014.
April 19, 2016 — Jean Lavallée said he once watched a Canadian lobsterman overstuff a crate with lobsters, put the wooden lid on top and then smash it down with his foot.
The resulting crunch of limbs and shells “sounded like a bowl of Rice Krispies,” he told a group of Maine lobstermen in Bath on Monday. Not only did the carelessness cause needless death and injury, Lavallée said, it also undoubtedly cost the lobsterman some money.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he said.
Lavallée, a veterinarian from Prince Edward Island who has specialized in lobsters for more than 20 years, is traveling along the Maine coast this week to lead a series of workshops on proper care and handling of the lucrative crustaceans. The workshops are sponsored by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance with funding from the Island Institute.
Lavallée said as many as 10 percent of the lobsters harvested in the U.S. die on their way to market. Given Maine’s $616.5 million harvest in 2015, that’s up to $61.7 million in lost revenue for the state’s top fishery.
“We kill more lobsters (prematurely) than most other countries are fishing for their entire year,” he said of the U.S. lobster industry. “That’s a lot of lobsters.”
Lavallée argues that more careful handling of lobsters, based on a better understanding of their anatomy and biology, will reduce losses and save the industry millions of dollars.
March 24, 2016 — Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski says she opposes federal approval of genetically engineered salmon “for the health of both consumers and fisheries.” But there is no scientific evidence that suggests GE salmon will pose a significant risk to either.
Murkowski claims GE salmon may “interbreed with the wild stocks, and thus perhaps destroy them.” But GE salmon have been rendered sterile — meaning they can’t interbreed with wild salmon stocks. Geographic and physical confinement measures also limit the likelihood that the GE fish will escape and survive.
As for human consumption, scientists engineered GE salmon to grow faster than non-GE farm-raised salmon by inserting genes from two other fish into the genome of an Atlantic salmon. After these changes, the GE salmon remained nutritionally and physiologically comparable to non-GE salmon, according to Food and Drug Administration’s scientific assessments, so the agency deemed GE salmon “safe to eat.”
FDA Approves GE Salmon
The FDA approved GE salmon – marketed by AquaBounty Technologies Inc. as “AquAdvantage Salmon” – on Nov. 19, 2015. AquaBounty first submitted its application to the FDA in 1995.
By inserting DNA from other fish, the company’s scientists engineered Atlantic salmon to reach market size faster than non-GE farm-raised Atlantic salmon. As per AquaBounty’s FDA application, the GE salmon will only be raised and farmed in inland facilities on Prince Edward Island in Canada and in Panama.
AquAdvantage Salmon was the first GE animal (as opposed to a plant) approved for human consumption in the United States.
However, it’s unclear when the GE fish will reach supermarkets. Back in November, when the FDA approved the product, Ronald Stotish, the chief executive of AquaBounty, told the New York Times that “the salmon would not be in stores immediately because it would take about two years for even these fast-growing salmon to reach market size.”
In January, the FDA also issued a ban on the import and sale of GE salmon until the agency “publishes final labeling guidelines for informing consumers of such content,” the FDA said. The ban was the result of language Murkowski introduced into the 2016 fiscal budget, or omnibus, bill.
False claims about GE salmon have come from politicians on both sides of the party divide. While Murkowski is a Republican, Rep. Jared Huffman, a Democrat from California, has said, for example, that “by approving GE salmon, the FDA is allowing the release of a new hybrid animal that could pose a danger to our wild salmon populations, damage the ecosystems they live in, and undermine our domestic commercial fisheries.”
But Murkowski has arguably been one of the most vocal and active opponents. On her website, she notes the importance Alaska’s fisheries to the economy of her state. According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the “seafood industry contributes 78,500 jobs to the Alaskan economy and an estimated $5.8 billion annually with Bristol Bay sockeye salmon … representing some of the largest salmon … fisheries in the world.” For this reason, Murkowski has “supported Alaska’s fisheries … through legislation and her position on the Senate Appropriations Committee,” as her website says.
The day the FDA approved GE salmon, Murkowski voiced her opposition on the Senate floor, claiming the FDA’s decision was “quite disturbing news to any of us who care about our wild species of salmon.” Specifically, she questioned the FDA’s ability to certify that GE salmon don’t “interbreed with the wild stocks, and thus perhaps destroy them.” In that speech, and later press releases, Murkowski called particular attention to GE salmon’s threat to Alaskan salmon stocks.
Murkowski also said that as someone “who believes that the real thing is the best thing for our families,” she found the FDA’s approval of GE salmon “very troubling.” In fact, she said, “I don’t even know that I want to call it a fish,” and instead referred to the GE salmon as a “frankenfish” and an “organism” generally. Likewise, in a Nov. 23 press release, Murkowski said: “Genetically modifying salmon is messing with nature’s perfect brain food. The real thing is not only the safe choice, but it’s the best thing.”
Most recently, Murkowski said in a March 3 press release: “I still adamantly oppose the FDA’s approval of GE salmon, for the health of both consumers and fisheries.” In this release, Murkowski announced the introduction of her Genetically Engineered Salmon Labeling Act, cosponsored with Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan and Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell.
This legislation calls for the market name of GE salmon to “include the words ‘Genetically Engineered’ or ‘GE.’ ” It would also authorize “an independent scientific review” of the effects of GE salmon on wild salmon stocks and for human consumption.
July 29, 2015 — PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND — “Which one should we try first?,” my husband asked, staring at the three equally enticing kinds of clams before us. The picturesque Gulf of St. Lawrence glistened on a sunny August evening on Prince Edward Island, Canada, and our 6-year-old daughter was running around on the grounds of the resort we were visiting for the afternoon called the Sundance Cottages.
But our attention was on the clams.
There was a raw quahog variety spiked with Tabasco and two soft-shell versions, one sautéed in oil and salted butter and the other puffing with an aromatic chorizo and white wine steam.
We had spent the better part of the afternoon on a beach nearby digging dozens of these shellfish from the sand and raking them from the water with the help of Stephen Flaherty, a handyman at Sundance who takes people clamming, including nonguests like us.
Finding them was only the start. Linda Lowther, a former owner of Sundance who offers cooking classes, had invited my husband and me into her home for a lesson on how islanders like to eat the mollusks, and now we were sitting at her kitchen table looking at the fruits of our half-day’s work.
It was one of several foraging trips we took during our summer break to the 175-mile-long, crescent-shaped province that’s famous for its picturesque setting of more than 90 beaches, rolling hills and sandstone cliffs and the abundant seafood in surrounding waters, including oysters, clams, cod, lobster and mussels. Agriculture, too, is big, with close to 1,500 mostly family-run farms growing a variety of produce and crops.
Restaurants were the obvious way to enjoy this bounty, but I had heard that the island was rife with opportunities to enjoy it through foraging, a tradition that locals practice. Given my primarily pescetarian diet, it was a particularly appealing proposition, and on our visit, we canvassed the area to find nearly everything we ate.
Read the full story at the New York Times