Saving Seafood

Ocean Planning Update: Draft Northeast Ocean Plan and Public Comment Meetings

May 26, 2016 — The following email was released yesterday by the Northeast Regional Planning Body:

Earlier today [May 25, 2016], the Northeast Regional Planning Body (RPB), a group composed of representatives from six New England states, six federally recognized tribes, nine federal agencies, and the New England Fishery Management Council, announced the rollout of its Draft Northeast Ocean Plan. The Draft Plan is available at the RPB website: neoceanplanning.org. The RPB is seeking input on the Draft Plan in multiple ways: people can provide comment online or in writing (see the website for details) or by attending one of the following public meetings (please note: there have been a couple of schedule changes to this list, so please check the website for further updates):

Monday, June 6 – Maine

Location: Rockland Public Library, 80 Union Street, Rockland, ME

Time: 5PM to 8PM

Wednesday, June 8 – Connecticut

Location: Conference Room, Marine District Headquarters, 333 Ferry Road, Old Lyme, CT

Time: 7PM to 9PM

Monday, June 13 – Massachusetts

Location: Maritime Gloucester, 23 Harbor Loop, Gloucester, MA

Time: 6PM to 8:30PM

Tuesday, June 14 – Massachusetts

Location: Executive Office of Environmental Affairs, 100 Cambridge Street, 2nd Floor, Hearing Rooms C & D, Boston, MA

Time: 2PM to 4:30PM

Wednesday, June 15 – Massachusetts

Location: New Bedford Public Library, 613 Pleasant St., New Bedford, MA

Time: 6PM to 8:30PM

Monday, June 20 – Maine

Location: Ellsworth Public Library, 20 State Street, Ellsworth, ME

Time: 5PM to 8PM

Monday, June 27 – New Hampshire

Location: Portsmouth, NH DES Office 222 International Drive, Suite 175

Time: 6PM to 8:30PM

Wednesday, June 29 – Rhode Island

Location: TBD

Time: 6PM to 8:30PM

Thursday, June 30 – Maine

Location: Portland, ME TBD

Time: 5PM to 8PM

Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you—

John Weber

 

On behalf of:

Betsy Nicholson, RPB Federal Co-lead

Grover Fugate, RPB State Co-lead

Richard Getchell, RPB Tribal Co-lead

Mark Patinkin: Freedom, danger is in R.I. fisherman’s wheelhouse

May 25, 2016 — I got to wondering what it’s like these days for commercial fishermen so I drove to the Point Judith docks, walked up to the trawler Elizabeth & Katherine and asked the captain, Steven Arnold, if I could come aboard.

It was at 11 a.m. and he’d already put in a long shift with plenty more to go — he’d steamed out for squid at 4:30 a.m. He was back because his net tore on rocks while dragging the bottom of Rhode Island Sound so the crew had come in to repair it.

I climbed over the rail and followed Arnold, 52, to the wheelhouse. He wore jeans, boots, a sweatshirt, hadn’t shaved for a few days and seemed to belong there in the captain’s seat.

Squid is his biggest species but that morning, they weren’t there. He mostly had scup when the net came up torn.

You have good days and bad, Arnold said, but he still loves fishing for the same reasons that first drew him to it after a childhood in South County and two years at New England Tech.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Fishermen, Scientists Collaborate to Collect Climate Data

May 23, 2016 — Fishermen plying the waters off the southern New England coast have noticed significant changes in recent years.  Though generations of commercial fishermen have made their livings on these highly productive waters, now, they say, they are experiencing the impacts of climate change.

“The water is warming up, and we see different species around than we used to,” says Kevin Jones, captain of the F/V Heather Lynn, which operates out of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

To help understand the ongoing changes in their slice of the ocean, Jones and other fishermen in the region are now part of a fleet gathering much-needed climate data for scientists through a partnership with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

“There has been a lack of consistent measurements in this region, particularly across the continental shelf south of Rhode Island,” says Glen Gawarkiewicz, a physical oceanographer at WHOI and principal investigator on the project. “In order to understand the changes in ocean conditions and how those changes impact ecosystems and the people who depend on them, we need to collect more data, more often.”

The Shelf Research Fleet Project began in 2014 with that goal in mind. The fleet is made up of commercial fishing vessels that are fishing in or transiting through the study area throughout the year.

Read and watch the full story at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute

Film captures day in the life of a scallop fisherman

May 20, 2016 — “I should have been born 150 years ago,” said Markham Starr, a man who actively documents the present so it can be preserved for the future.

In recent years, Starr has documented working cultures throughout New England, mostly through photography. Many of these images have been organized into books, such as “In History’s Wake: The Last Trap Fishermen of Rhode Island,” which “documents a tradition now hundreds of years old, capturing the spirit and work ethic that drives Rhode Island’s fishermen to continue providing food for their neighbors.”

More recently, Starr began capturing these stories through video. In 2011, he spent a day scallop fishing on a small boat called Mister G with its owner, Mike Marchetti, and that experience has been made into a 45-minute film, “Scallop Fishing on the Mister G,” which will have its first public showing at Peace Dale Library, 1057 Kingstown Road, Peace Dale, Saturday at 2 p.m.

Starr said he first met Marchetti a number of years ago, when he was photographing around Point Judith and got to know people working in the area. He said fishermen tend to be very welcoming when it comes to letting him on their boats, for a day or the week. After taking many still photographs of life and livelihoods on the water, he decided scallop fishing would lend itself to video production. So he asked Marchetti about filming on one of his two boats. He agreed, and the two set out from Point Judith on the Mister G, a typical 40-foot lobster boat converted to trail a dredge.

The subject of scallop fishing is significant because it is an industry in peril, at least for the independent fisherman trying to make a living at it. While scalloping is now the most successful and largest fishery in New England, large corporations dominate the industry. Big industry has “knocked out all the little guys who used to scallop,” Starr said, noting there are only six licenses left in Rhode Island, and only four people scalloping from small boats like the Mister G.

Read the full story at the Independent Rhode Island

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD: Warming Atlantic bodes poorly for lobster industry

May 13, 2016 — It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see one possible future for the Maine lobster industry. All it takes is a look south.

Warming water temperatures, the result of man-made climate change, have for decades been the primary factor in pushing the lobster population farther and farther north, first decimating the industry off the coasts of Rhode Island and Connecticut, then off Cape Cod.

And even though the industry has been booming in Maine, with record landings the last three years, the focal point of the catch has changed through the years, from Casco Bay to Penobscot Bay and, now, Down East, a signal of its vulnerability to change.

One of the state’s iconic industries, indispensable to and inseparable from so many communities, is being disrupted. The question is: How far will it go?

Fortunately, regulators are watching.

TAKING NOTICE

The Maine Department of Marine Resources will soon award contracts for studies exploring not only the full economic impact of the lobster industry, on which there is surprisingly little data, but also the impact of warming ocean temperatures on lobster biology and the ocean ecosystem in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full editorial at the Portland Press Herald

Survey delay might hurt fish population research

May 12, 2016 — The following is an excerpt from a story published today by the Boston Globe.

NEWPORT, R.I. – Even before mechanics found deeply pitted bearings near crankshafts in its generators, problems that could have led to catastrophic engine failure, the Henry B. Bigelow was running more than a month behind.

Now, the government research vessel is embarking on its annual spring voyage later than ever before, a delay that could have serious consequences for scientists’ ability to assess the health of some of the 52 fish stocks they survey, from the waters off North Carolina to the eastern reaches of the Gulf of Maine.

Fish migrate and change their feeding patterns as waters warm, which might make it difficult for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists to compare this spring’s survey of fish populations with previous counts.

The prospect of skewed data could complicate efforts for policy makers to set proper quotas, potentially leading either to overfishing or unnecessarily strict catch limits.

“I worry that this will create statistical noise and more uncertainty,” said Gary Shepherd, a fishery biologist at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, where he and other scientists recommend quotas based on what the Bigelow catches, along with other data.

As the waters warm, some of the fish, such as herring, migrate out of the survey area and into the region’s rivers. Other species, such as squid, which are short-lived, might not survive in representative numbers through June, when the Bigelow is now scheduled to finish its survey.

“If the survey had started at its normal time, it would have found squid on the continental shelf,” said Robert Vanasse, executive director of Saving Seafood, a Washington-based group that represents the fishing industry. “But now it won’t because the survey doesn’t sample Nantucket Sound.”

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

Fishery Board Considers Ideas To Protect Southern New England Lobsters

May 6, 2016 — The health of Southern New England’s American lobster population remains a concern for fishermen, scientists and regulators. Ideas for how to help replenish lobsters are still making their way through a long process.

This week the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s lobster management board offered ideas on how to improve the health of the declining lobster populations in areas critical to southern New England fishermen.

Mark Gibson, a board member representing Rhode Island and chief of the fisheries division at the state Department of Environmental Management, said they are just that: ideas.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Approves Draft Addendum I for Public Comment

May 5, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Comission:

Alexandria, VA – The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved Draft Addendum I to Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan (FMP) for Atlantic Menhaden for public comment. The Draft Addendum proposes modifying the FMP’s bycatch allowance provision. Specifically, it considers allowing two licensed individuals to harvest up to 12,000 pounds of menhaden bycatch when working from the same vessel fishing stationary, multi-species gear – limited to one vessel trip per day. Bycatch represents less than 2% of the total coastwide landings.

The practice of two permitted fishermen working together from the same vessel to harvest Atlantic menhaden primarily occurs in the Chesapeake Bay pound net fishery.  This practice enables the fishermen to pool resources for fuel and crew.  However, the practice is currently constrained by the FMP’s bycatch allowance provision, which includes a 6,000 pound/vessel/day limit. The Draft Addendum seeks comment on whether the provision should be revised to accommodate the interests of fixed-gear fishermen who work together, as authorized by the states and jurisdictions in which they fish.

The intent of Draft Addendum I is to add flexibility to one element of the bycatch allowance provision while the Board prepares to address menhaden management more comprehensively through the development of Draft Amendment 3 to the FMP over the next two years. A subsequent press release on the public hearing schedule and Draft Addendum I availability will be distributed once state hearings have been scheduled.

In a separate action, the Board extended the episodic event set aside program until the finalization of Amendment 3. It also conditionally approved a request from New York to be added as an eligible state.  The program reserves 1% of the coastwide total allowable catch to be used by New England states in areas and times when menhaden occur in higher abundance than normal.  Rhode Island opted into the program in 2014 and 2015, and harvested a portion of the set aside each year.  As a result of the Board’s decision to extend the program, the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut remain eligible to participate in the program in 2016.

New York is currently reporting unusually large amounts of menhaden in the Peconic Bay estuary, raising the potential for more large fish kills, similar to last year, as the waters warm.  New York sought Board approval to participate in the episodic event set aside program so fishermen can harvest a portion of the large build-up of menhaden in the Peconic Bay estuary to mitigate the impacts of additional fish kills. The Board approved the request subject to a one million pound harvest cap under the episodic event set aside.

Lobster fishing to be restricted in bid to save population

PORTLAND, Maine — May 3, 2016 — Southern New England’s fading lobster fishery will be the subject of a battery of new regulations to try to save the crustacean’s population locally.

The number of adult lobsters in New England south of Cape Cod was estimated in 2013 to be about 10 million, which is one-fifth the total from the late 1990s. Scientists issued a report last year that said the historic and economically important species is shifting northward in large part due to the warming of the ocean.

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s lobster management board voted on Monday to use new measures to address the lobster decline, which has dramatically reduced lobster catches off Rhode Island and Connecticut.

The new regulations could include a combination of things like closed seasons, closed fishing areas, trapping cutbacks and stricter standards about the minimum and maximum size of harvestable lobsters.

“We’ve clearly got an overfished stock. We’ve got multiple problems that we actually need to fix,” said David Borden, chair of the lobster board. “The climate’s changing. When you do this, there is a cost to the industry.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS Boston

New England’s Commercial Fishermen Worried About Sustainability of Fishing Communities

April 28, 2016 — PROVIDENCE, RI — Fishermen, scientists and interested citizens gathered in mid-April at Rhode Island College for a panel discussion about whether commercial fishing is, or can be, sustainable.

The panel consisted of six speakers who discussed the current state of fish populations within U.S. waters, climate change and its impact on fish stocks, and the current rules and regulations imposed on commercial fishermen. The discussion was often heated, and it was obvious that the fishermen, both on the panel and in the audience, weren’t happy with current catch quotas and monitoring regulations.

Panelist John Bullard, the northeast regional administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), said commercial fishing is “definitely sustainable.” But fishermen David Goethel and Mark Phillips, also on the panel, believe the more important question to explore is if fishing communities are sustainable. Both fishermen said that between catch quotas and the crippling expenses fishermen have to face both to run their boats and pay catch monitors, makes fishing as a way of life all but impossible.

“The smell of fish is gone, replaced by burnt coffee,” Phillips said about the traditional fishing docks of New England.

NOAA regulates the fishing industry, and both Phillips and Goethel are involved in a lawsuit against the federal agency regarding the costs incurred by New England fishermen who now have to pay monitors about $700 a day to be on their boats.

Read the full story at ecoRInews