Saving Seafood

RHODE ISLAND: Fisheries Face Climate Peril, Aging Fleet

November 23, 2016 — As the guest speaker at Seamen’s Church Institute’s annual meeting on Monday, Nov. 14, Newport’s David Spencer, a lobsterman and president of the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation, reviewed the state of the commercial fishing industry in Rhode Island.

Spencer has run his 85-foot lobster boat Nathaniel Lee out of Newport’s State Pier since 1973, and graciously supplies free lobsters for Seamen’s annual Rock the Docks fundraiser.

“Back then, this was a vibrant fishing port, from south to north. It had many boats that docked here,” he said. “It was a good place to fish out of.”

Spencer said that all three Newport fish houses at that time had traps off Ocean Drive, near mooring docks that would be “awash in fish” with an almost daily, intricate choreography of dockworkers sorting and loading them all into trucks. “It was something to behold,” he recalled.

According to Spencer, present-day fleets gather quahogs, lobster, crabs, conch and a little known kind of shrimp in these waters. “It’s been a good opportunity for fishermen with smaller 20-foot boats,” with trawlers catching squid, butterfish, flounder, herring, black sea bass, and more. Improved netting allows turtles, cod, and other illegal species to escape.

Working “out front” in Rhode Island Sound waters and beyond, the lobster and crab fishery becomes one, “with an explosion of Jonah crabs, which has been a godsend for much of the fleet,” said Spencer. “There is a tremendous demand for these crabs,” which augment a depleted annual lobster catch.

Read the full story at Newport This Week

Advisory panel releases 3 proposals for whiting

November 18, 2016 — The New England Fishery Management Council, meeting in Newport, Rhode Island, this week, got an advance peek at three proposals that ultimately could limit access to the small-mesh multispecies fishery that includes whiting.

The three proposals, generated by the council’s whiting advisory panel and the whiting committee, will serve to provide the council with a fuller slate of alternatives, said Andrew Applegate, the council’s senior fishery analyst for small mesh multispecies.

Applegate stressed the analysis of the three proposals by the whiting plan development team is in the very early stages.

“We still have a lot of work to do, but we hope to present the council with something sometime next January,” Applegate said.

The initial discussion on the three proposals, Applegate said, “is just to update the council on our progress.”

The whiting fishery currently is an open-access fishery. The proposals to potentially limit access to the fishery are contained in Amendment 22 currently being developed by the council for the 2017 fishing season.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Double feature at New Bedford Heritage Fishing Center

November 17, 2016 — Dock-U-Mentaries continues its free monthly film series on Nov. 18, 7 p.m., at the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center, 38 Bethel St., with “In History’s Wake: The Last Trap Fishermen of Rhode Island.” A new film by Markham Starr.

For as long as people have lived along RI’s meandering coast, the ocean at their doorstep has provided them with a ready supply of food. Faced with assaults from the broad Atlantic Ocean, fishermen from Rhode Island experimented with new designs, capable of withstanding the punishment delivered by wind and waves, eventually creating the unique floating trap system still in use today. While dozens of companies deploying hundreds of traps once fished the state’s waters, only four continue using this ancient but effective technique.

Following the film, the Center hosts the opening reception of its first gallery show: “New England Fishermen: The Photography of Markham Starr”.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Regulators to Discuss Localized Depletion of Herring

November 16, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. – The New England Fishery Management Council will meet in Newport, Rhode Island tomorrow and an organization that supports local fishermen will push for a buffer zone to move midwater trawlers further off shore.

The Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance is looking to move the large herring trawlers at least 50 miles from the Cape and Islands to protect the ecosystem and small-boat coastal fisheries.

The management council will discuss ways to address “localized depletion” in the herring fishery, which is a key source of food for whales and larger fish.

“Our concern is that they are depleting the forage species that we need for tuna, stripers, cod, haddock, dogfish, the whales – all of that stuff is the food chain and they are sucking up the lower end of it,” said Bruce Peters, an Orleans fisherman from the vessel Marilyn S.

Current regulations allow for the midwater trawlers to fish beyond three miles from shore from Provincetown past the Islands.

A vessel tracking program showed about a half dozen trawlers about three or four miles off the Coast of Orleans and Eastham along the back side of the Cape earlier this week.

“They have huge boats. They can go to Georges Bank. They can go offshore. They can fish herring pretty much anywhere,” Peters said. “Our small-boat fleets are 30 to 40-foot boats. We don’t have the luxury of being to go way, way offshore like that.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishing Heritage Center Launches Exhibit Series

November 14, 2016 — The following was released by the Fishing Heritage Center:

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The Fishing Heritage Center is pleased to announce the opening of New England Fishermen: The Photography of Markham Starr, the first in a series of changing exhibits.  An opening reception will take place on Friday, November 18th at 8 p.m. The Center is wheelchair accessible and located at 38 Bethel Street in New Bedford. Parking is available in the lot adjacent to the Center.  This first exhibit will be on display through January 17th.

The commercial fishing industry in New England has long been an economic mainstay of the region, but has struggled for its very survival over the past two decades. Fearing the loss of yet another traditional working culture, Markham Starr began going to sea to photograph commercial fishermen from ports such as Point Judith, Rhode Island, New Bedford, Massachusetts, and Corea, Maine. His black and white images attempt to place today’s fishermen within the context of the long history of commercial fishing in New England, and preserve something of this important working culture for future generations.

Starr’s work has been translated into a dozen books and has been featured in magazines such as LensWork, The Sun, Vermont Magazine, and Rhode Island Monthly, and won a 2013 national magazine award for the best photographic essay for Yankee Magazine. The photographs from his major projects have been selected for inclusion in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress.

For more information, please contact the Fishing Heritage Center at: info@fishingheritagecenter.org or call (508) 993-8894.

Rebound seen for popular lobster bait fishery

November 9th, 2016 — Commercial fishermen can breathe a sigh a relief, as interstate fishing regulators say that the population of menhaden, a fish only topped by herring as the most popular type of bait for Maine’s lobster industry, continues to be healthy.

According to the Associated Press, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is reporting that menhaden fishery isn’t experiencing overfishing and continues to reproduce at a healthy rate. Atlantic Menhaden Board Chairman Robert Ballou added that the healthy population levels will give regulators a chance to reevaluate how to manage the fishery, which is typically worth more than $100 million annually, the AP reported.

The good news about the menhaden population comes on the heels of Maine’s menhaden fishery being closed by regulators for a week and a half in August, following reports that the annual landings quota for Maine, Rhode Island and New York, had been exceeded.

Read the full story at Mainebiz

ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Sets 2017 TAC at 200,000 MT & Approves Draft Amendment 3

October 31st, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission: 

The Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved a total allowable catch (TAC) forthe 2017 fishing season of 200,000 mt, a 6.45% increase from the 2016 TAC. According to Technical Committee analysis this increase has a zero percent probability of resulting in overfishing. The TAC will be made available to the states/jurisdictions based on the state‐by‐state allocation established by Amendment 2 (see accompanying table).

“Given the healthy condition of the resource, this modest increase provides additional fishing opportunities while the Board proceeds with the development of Draft Amendment 3 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan.” stated Board Chair Robert Ballou from Rhode Island.

Additionally, the Board approved the Public Information Document (PID) for Draft Amendment 3 for public comment. As the first step in the amendment process, the PID provides stakeholders with an opportunity to inform the Commission about changes observed in the fishery and provide feedback on potential management measures as well as any additional issues that should be included in the Draft Amendment. Specifically, the PID presents a suite of tools to manage the menhaden resource using ecological reference points as well as options to allocate the resource among the states, regions, and user groups.

The PID will be available on the Commission website, www.asmfc.org, early next week. It is anticipated that the majority of states will be conducting public hearings over the next couple months. A subsequent press release to provide the details of those hearings.  For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

View the full release at: http://www.asmfc.org/uploads/file/58113785pr32AtlMenhaden2017TAC.pdf 

Massachusetts: DMF Expands Shellfish Harvest Closures to All Waters South of Cape Cod

October 12th, 2016 — Effective immediately, the Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF) has expanded its recently announced shellfish harvest closures to include all waters south of Cape Cod due to a substantial bloom of a potentially toxic kind of phytoplankton termed Pseudo-Nitzschia.

As a result of the expanded closure, digging, harvesting, collecting and/or attempting to dig, harvest or collect shellfish, and the possession of shellfish, is prohibited in all waters from the Rhode Island border east to Nantucket Sound, including all of Vineyard and Nantucket Sounds and waters surrounding the islands.

This closure complements the state of Rhode Island’s shellfish harvest closures.

Pseudo-Nitzschia can produce domoic acid, a biotoxin that concentrates in filter feeding shellfish. Shellfish containing high concentrations of domoic acid can cause Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning (ASP) with symptoms that include vomiting, cramps, diarrhea and incapacitating headaches followed by confusion, disorientation, permanent loss of short-term memory, and in severe cases, seizures and coma.

Read the full story at Capecod.com 

Lobster fishermen face a monumental problem

October 3, 2016 — NEWPORT, R.I. — The Newport-based fishing vessel Freedom has been Marc Ducharme’s home away from home since it was built in 1984.

And for the better part of those 32 years, Ducharme, the boat’s captain, and his crews of four to five men have spent their time pulling lobster traps from the waters around three underwater canyons near the edge of the continental shelf, about 125 miles southeast of Nantucket. The crew makes 25-30 runs a year — each lasting about a week — to the lucrative lobster grounds formally referred to as the Northeast Canyons on George’s Bank.

Each trip nets them about 6,000 pounds of lobster, Ducharme said Wednesday, standing in the cockpit of the 72-foot-long vessel docked at the Newport state fishing pier.

“I’ve probably spent more time out there in those canyons than I have on land,” Ducharme said, pointing to the fishing area on a nautical chart.

The time he spends in the 25-mile area where his 1,800 lobster pots are located is growing short, and not just because, at 58 years old, Ducharme is nearing retirement from his sea-faring livelihood.

Using executive authority established by the Antiquities Act of 1906, President Barrack Obama on Sept. 15 designated a 4,900-square- mile area the Northeast Canyons and Seamount Marine National Monument. That area includes the sea canyons, where Ducharme plies his trade. The designation will eventually prohibit all commercial fishing there.

In a last-minute compromise, the Obama administration reduced the proposed size of the monument site and granted a seven-year exemption for lobster and red crab fishermen in the monument area.

Even though he is likely to retire before then, Ducharme is not happy about the eventual ban.

“This is exclusively where I fish, because it’s good,” said Ducharme, who added he catches more than 150,000 lobsters a year. “This (area) has been my life. It’s how I earned my living, how I supported my family. I’m more against the way they went about this.”

Read the full story at the Newport Daily News

Changes could come to East Coast monkfish business

September 30, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Interstate fishing regulators are working on a new plan to manage the monkfish fishery on the East Coast.

Monkfish are bottom-dwelling fish that are fished commercially and are a popular menu item in seafood restaurants. The New England Fishery Management Council has initiated a plan to create new fishing specifications for the fish for the next three years.

A spokeswoman says the council’s monkfish committee will work this fall on specifications for the fishery. Rules will be approved in November. The rules could also remain status quo.

Fishermen catch monkfish from Maine to North Carolina, though most are brought ashore in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Journal