Saving Seafood

Mark Your Calendar – SAFMC Meeting March 4-8, 2019 in Jekyll Island, GA

February 11, 2019 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

Members of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council will hold their next meeting March 4-8, 2019 at the Westin Jekyll Island, 110 Ocean Way, Jekyll Island, Georgia. The meeting week begins with a series of committee meetings and concludes with a meeting of the Full Council. A public comment session will be held on Wednesday, March 6, 2019 at 4:00 PM. An online comment form will also be available for written comments, and the meeting will be available via webinar as it occurs.

Agenda Highlights:

  • Red Snapper – The Snapper Grouper Committee is expected to receive an update from NOAA Fisheries on the status of the 2019 red snapper season.
  • Species Movement Northward – An Atlantic coast-wide discussion will take place during the Habitat Committee meeting. Members of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, New England Fishery Management Council, and the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will participate.
  • Sea Turtle Release Gear – The Council is scheduled to approve Snapper Grouper Amendment 42, allowing commercial and for-hire fishermen additional choices for turtle release gear.
  • Best Fishing Practices and Use of Powerhead Gear – The Snapper Grouper Committee will continue to discuss proposed requirements for the use of descending devices, venting tools, and circle hooks, as well as changes to restrictions on powerhead gear.
  • Dolphin Wahoo – The committee will continue to discuss management options for both dolphin and wahoo to include in draft Amendment 10 to the Dolphin Wahoo Fishery Management Plan.
  • Allocations – The Council will meet as a Committee of the Whole to begin discussions of allocations between recreational and commercial sectors. In addition, the Committee of the Whole will also discuss the ABC Control Rule Amendment and an amendment to address Recreational Accountability Measures.

Additional Information:

A meeting Schedule-at-a-Glance, links to webinar registration, and additional meeting information is currently available from the March 2019 Council Meeting page. Briefing book materials, including the meeting agenda, committee agendas/overviews, and the public comment form will be available on February 15, 2019.

Seafood mislabeling common across North American supply chains, study finds

February 7, 2019 — New research completed at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, has found mislabeing is prevalent throughout the supply chain.

Researchers found that 32 percent of fish overall were mislabeled. The highest rate of mislabeling was at retailers (38.1 percent), followed by processing plants (27.3 percent) and importers (17.6 percent).

Conducted in collaboration with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the study was published in the journal Food Research International.

“We’ve been doing seafood fraud studies for a decade,” Robert Hanner, the lead author of the study and associate professor at the University of Guelph, said in a press release. “We know there are problems. But this is the first study to move beyond that and look at where the problems are happening throughout the food supply chain.”

“If you can see the name is changing across the supply system, that’s a red flag,” Hanner told SeafoodSource.

Hanner said he could not definitively prove whether some of the mislabeling is intentional, but found a “pretty significant price differential” in certain substitutions, such as farmed salmon labeled as wild salmon, tilapia labeled as red snapper, and basa labeled as haddock and cod.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Shutdown might delay state management vote

January 28, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council opens its first 2019 meeting Monday in Orange Beach, Alabama, but its 17 members might not be able to take final votes on two key items.

Reef Fish Amendment 50, the hot-button item to hand recreational red snapper management to the five Gulf States, was scheduled for a final vote during the meeting’s run through Thursday.

A Gulf Council release explained, “Due to the partial government shutdown, the required Federal Register Notice was not published in advance of this meeting. As a result, the Council will not be able to take final action.”

The government re-opened Friday.

The other item is a move to move charterboat skippers into a new Federal Charter/Headboat Permits system.

The four-day agenda begins with committee meetings from 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Monday, and the Reef Fish Committee dominates Tuesday’s schedule and into Wednesday morning. The full council will meet from 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Wednesday with public comments taken from 1:30-4:30 p.m. before a 4:45-5:30 p.m. closed session and a full council meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday.

Read the full story at The Advocate

Red snapper study to include $250 tags on fish

January 21, 2019 — When the red snapper season begins this summer in the Gulf of Mexico, some fish will carry $250 and even $500 worth of tags, as part of a study to estimate just how many of the popular sport and table fish live in the Gulf. The fish can be released as long as the tags are snipped off.

Scientists plan to tag 3,000 to 5,000 red snapper during April and May, said Greg Stunz of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who is leading a team of 21 scientists from the five Gulf states and Virginia. He said some will use university research boats, but others will go out with anglers, charter captains and commercial boats – and researchers hope to get tags back from all three fishing groups.

Each tag will be worth $250. Some fish will carry two tags, to help scientists learn how many of the tags fall out. Those are the potential $500 fish. The tubular tags are about 4 to 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) long but only a couple of millimeters wide, Stuntz said, making them easy to snip off at the bottom.

Each has a yellow plastic insert bearing a five-digit tag number starting with the letters RS, and the words “Reward $250. Keep tag” and a phone number to call.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Commercial fishermen stand to lose billions from government shutdown

January 16, 2019 — The government shutdown is jeopardizing jobs and tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the heavily regulated commercial fishing industry, a coalition of groups representing fishermen from Cape Cod to Alaska said Tuesday. 

The Commerce Department’s fisheries service has furloughed key employees that help to oversee commercial fishing operation and the quotas handed out to fishermen that need to be in place and enforced before they can enter the water. 

Without the oversight, fishing data isn’t collected, and the risk of overfishing becomes a problem. That situation prevents fishermen from working and results in lost catches.

Specifically, a plan worked out between the federal government and anglers to fish for highly prized red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico could be in jeopardy due to the shutdown.

Read the full story at the Washington Examiner

 

2019 Red Grouper Quota to Drop 60% in Gulf of Mexico

December 20, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — NOAA Fisheries announced this week that they will withhold nearly 60% of the annual red grouper IFQ commercial allocation on January 1, 2019. That is the amount of an intended cut in the commercial annual catch limit requested by the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council at their meeting last October.

During public testimony at the meeting, managers heard from their science advisors, the fishing fleet, and the public that the Gulf’s red grouper stock “is struggling” and “may not be large enough to sustain current harvest levels.”

In 2017, Gulf red grouper landings were the lowest they had been in recent years. Fewer legal-sized red grouper were seen this year, and scientists worry that an extensive red tide off the Florida west coast may hurt the red grouper stock recruitment.

An interim analysis of the stock, a report that updates harvest recommendations while the Council waits for the next stock assessment to be done, had little good news.

The Council asked National Marine Fisheries Service to issue an emergency order cutting the quota from 7.78 mlbs of gutted weight to 3 mlbs, the same level of the 2017 commercial landings.

Withholding distribution of 59.4 percent or 4.78 mlbs of red grouper IFQ commercial allocation will be effective  January 1, 2019.

Meanwhile, the Council will initiate a framework amendment to reduce the catch limits of both commercial and recreational fishermen beyond the expiration of the 180-day period covered by the interim or emergency rule.

If the proposed quota reduction does not occur prior to June 1, 2019, then NOAA Fisheries will distribute the withheld quota back to IFQ shareholders in accordance with the regulations.

Members of the public will be asked to comment on the proposed rule after it is published in the Federal Register, which should happen in the coming weeks.

For more information, contact the SERO Sustainable Fisheries Office at (727) 824-5305, weekdays between 8:00 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Florida recreational fishing survey improves data collection for Gulf red snapper

December 19, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

NOAA Fisheries announced today the certification of a new survey design used to estimate Gulf red snapper caught by anglers fishing from private boats in Florida, building on an agency priority of collecting accurate and timely recreational fishing data.

Florida’s survey is one of several survey designs developed by the Gulf States in collaboration with NOAA Fisheries to supplement the agency’s Marine Recreational Information Program (MRIP) angler surveys as well as improve monitoring of the Gulf red snapper fishery.

“Red snapper are an important resource relied on by countless communities and businesses in the Gulf of Mexico,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “This updated survey design, and others like it, will help the Department of Commerce and NOAA ensure that we will continue to enjoy this resource far into the future.”

“The certification of Florida’s new supplemental survey design, and similar efforts in other Gulf states, demonstrates NOAA’s commitment to collaborating with state and regional partners to advance recreational fishing data collection,” said retired Navy Rear Adm. Timothy Gallaudet, Ph.D., NOAA’s acting under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere. “Working together to meet the states’ unique data needs helps improve data quality and provide fishing opportunities for generations to come.”

Once Florida and NOAA Fisheries collaboratively develop and implement a transition plan to integrate the Gulf Reef Fish Survey with the MRIP survey, the resulting estimates can be used in Federal stock assessments and fishery management actions. Moreover, the survey is now eligible for Federal funding, pending availability, to support implementation efforts and ongoing improvements.

To learn more about Florida’s Gulf Reef Fish Survey, similar efforts in other Gulf States and the Marine Recreational Information Program go to countmyfish.noaa.gov.

Senate unanimously passes “compromise” recreational fishing bill

December 18, 2018 — The U.S. Senate on Monday, 17 December, unanimously passed a bill that would urge regional management councils to revise policies and take into account the needs of anglers in mixed-use fisheries.

The Modernizing Recreational Fisheries Management Act, proposed by U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), would require the Government Accountability Office to review how the Gulf of Mexico and South Atlantic management councils allocate catch limits in fisheries shared by commercial and recreational fishermen. It also would encourage the two councils to find alternative methods for managing recreational fisheries.

“I appreciate the hard work of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get this bill passed, but there is still more work to be done,” Wicker said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing our efforts to modernize federal fishing policies on the Gulf Coast and to support our fishermen.”

Monday’s vote comes after Wicker and members of the sportfishing industry stepped up their efforts to get the bill passed before the 115th Congress’ term ends. Wicker filed the bill in July 2017, and the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee advanced the bill in June.

However, the bill coming out of the committee met with serious resistance from commercial interest groups, who feared the bill would be detrimental to their industry. The Gulf of Mexico Reef Fish Shareholders’ Alliance as recently as last month said it opposed the bill as written.

Greg DiDomenico, executive director of the Garden State Seafood Association, lamented that the time and energy directed toward Wicker’s bill in the Senate could have been better used for discussing a Magnuson-Stevens Act reauthorization. If Wicker’s bill becomes law, the best outcome might be that the pubic gets a truer sense of the impact the recreational industry has on Southeastern fisheries.

“This does not get us the real reform that both industries need,” DiDomenico told SeafoodSource.

The push to revise recreational management policies comes on the heels of the federal government relaxing some regulations in the Gulf. Earlier this year, Gulf states started a two-year pilot to manage the red snapper recreational fishery in federal waters.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Bradley Byrne applauds NOAA’s increased Red Snapper catch limit under new rule

December 12, 2018 — Congressman Bradley Byrne, R-Montrose, applauded a new NOAA Fisheries rule to increase the annual catch limits and annual catch targets for the Red Snapper fishery in the Gulf of Mexico.

“This increase from NOAA shows exactly what those of us on the Gulf Coast have known for years: the health of the Red Snapper fishery is incredibly strong,” Representative Byrne said. “These latest numbers will further drive us to continue fighting for greater state control over the Red Snapper fishery and a full and adequate Red Snapper fishing season.”

The commercial annual catch limit would increase from 7.007 million pounds to 7.701 million pounds. The annual recreational charter boat catch limit would increase from 2.848 million pounds to 3.13 million pounds. The annual recreational private boat limit would increase from 3.885 million pounds to 4.269 million pounds.

The catch limits for Red Snapper are being increased because assessment of Gulf red snapper was completed in 2018 and indicated that red snapper was not overfished or experiencing overfishing, but the stock is still in a rebuilding plan. Based on the assessment, catch limits can be increased. The commercial, recreational, and component ACLs could also be increased.

The proposed rule would also decrease the annual catch limit of West Florida Hogfish from 219,000 pounds to just 129,500 pounds in 2019. It would increase to 141,300 pounds in 2020, and 150,400 pounds in 2021 and beyond.

Read the full story at the Alabama Political Reporter

December South Atlantic Council Meeting Summary

December 10, 2018 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council held their December meeting in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Below are highlights from the Council’s week-long meeting. Additional information from the meeting is available from the Council’s website at: http://safmc.net/safmc-meetings/council-meetings/ including a Meeting Report, Story Map, final committee reports, public comments, and briefing book materials.

Approved for Secretarial Review

Vision Blueprint Regulatory Amendment 26

After considering public comment and much discussion, the Council approved Regulatory Amendment 26 for review by the Secretary of Commerce. However, the Council chose not to take action on measures within the amendment that would have established a deepwater species aggregate (snowy grouper, misty grouper, yellowedge grouper, blueline tilefish, golden tilefish, and wreckfish) and specified seasons and bag limits for the species within the aggregate. Council members noted that establishing two seasons, one proposed for January and February and the other May through August and modifying bag limits could unfairly impact fishermen in the region. The Council discussed seasonal differences in the fishery for deepwater species in Florida and North Carolina, especially for recreational fishermen targeting blueline tilefish and golden tilefish, and chose not to take action. As a result of the discussion, the Council decided to explore options for allocations of the species in the proposed deepwater species aggregate during its June 2019 meeting.

The following actions were approved as part of Regulatory Amendment 26:

  • Change the recreational minimum size limit of gray triggerfish from 14 inches to 12 inches (fork length) in federal waters off the east coast of Florida to maintain consistency with state regulations currently in place;
    Modify the current 20-fish aggregate bag limit in place (for species without individual bag limits) to specify that no more than 10 fish can be of any one species within the 20-fish aggregate; and
  • Remove recreational minimum size limits for queen snapper, silk snapper, and blackfin snapper, currently set at 12 inches total length.
  • The regulatory amendment was developed as part of the Council’s 2017-2020 Vision Blueprint for the Snapper Grouper Fishery. NOAA Fisheries will solicit additional public input on the amendment during the Secretarial review process. Regulatory actions in the amendment will be implemented following the review process in 2019, if approved by the Secretary of Commerce.

Other Items:

Yellowtail Snapper – Regulatory Amendment 32

Council members voted to postpone consideration of Regulatory Amendment 32 that would revise accountability measures for yellowtail snapper with the intent to alleviate socio-economic impacts of in-season closures in the fishery. After considering recommendations from the Snapper Grouper Advisory Panel and public comment, the Council will delay further development of measures until a benchmark stock assessment for yellowtail snapper is completed in 2020.

Red Grouper – Regulatory Amendment 30
The Council delayed final action on Regulatory Amendment 30 addressing red grouper stock rebuilding, modifications to spawning season closures off the Carolinas, and establishment of a commercial trip limit for red grouper. Council members cited concerns about the need to consider new recreational fishing effort estimates from the Marine Recreational Information Program and the need to have input from its Scientific and Statistical Committee. The amendment will be considered again during the Council’s March 2019 meeting.

Citizen Science Program
The Council reviewed and adopted the Program’s Standard Operating Policies and Procedures that will guide the operation of the Program moving forward. The Program has two citizen science projects in development that fishermen will be able to get involved with in 2019. The first project will focus on collecting data on the lengths of scamp discards using a mobile application called, Release. The app will be available on both Android and iOs platforms and will be available in the Google Play Store and App Store in January 2019. The second project called FISHstory will use crowdsourcing to analyze historic photos from a Florida headboat fleet in the 1940s-70s to document species and length composition. For more information on the projects and getting involved, contact Program Manager Amber Von Harten.

Dolphin Wahoo
The Dolphin Wahoo Committee discussed a request from the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council to consider managing frigate mackerel and bullet mackerel as ecosystem components in the Dolphin Wahoo Fishery Management Plan (FMP), acknowledging their role as prey species for both dolphin and wahoo. Discussions will continue during the March 2019 meeting. The Committee also identified potential additional items to include in Amendment 10 to the Dolphin Wahoo FMP, including: allowing bag-limit sales of dolphin by dually permitted for-hire and commercial permit holders; revising annual catch limits and sector allocations for dolphin and wahoo to accommodate new MRIP data; consider modifying recreational vessel limits for dolphin; and modifying gear, bait, and training requirements in the commercial longline fishery to align with HMS requirements. Development of the amendment will continue throughout 2019 with opportunities for public comment.

Habitat and Ecosystem-Based Management
The Committee received an update on collaborative efforts with the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council and New England Fishery Management Council to address the movement of species northward with changing oceanographic and environmental conditions. The Committee will continue to review landings data and discuss priorities and timing for addressing species movements at its March 2019 meeting with representatives of the Mid-Atlantic and New England Councils. The Committee also received presentations on renewable energy activities including the proposed Kitty Hawk Wind Development Project, a system of offshore wind generators proposed approximately 27 miles off the coast of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Presentations are available as part of the briefing book materials at: http://safmc.net/briefing-books/briefing-book-2018-december-council-meeting/.

The next Council meeting is scheduled for March 4-8, 2019 in Jekyll Island, Georgia. Briefing book materials will be available from the Council’s website two weeks prior to the meeting at: http://safmc.net/safmc-meetings/council-meetings/.