Saving Seafood

Regulation Change May Keep Cape Scallop Fishermen in Local Waters

May 9, 2016 — CHATHAM, Mass. — Local small boat scallop fishermen will be able to fish an area of local waters that has been closed since 2014.

The New England Fishery Management Council has changed regulations to allow for scallop fishing in the Nantucket Lightship Access Area which is about 65 miles southeast of Cape Cod.

Council scientists have assured there will not be any conservation concerns from allowing limited amounts of fishing.

“They decided it doesn’t warrant an entire opening for the whole fleet,” said Bob Keese, a scallop fisherman out of Chatham on the F/V Beggar’s Banquet. “But there are plenty of scallops out there right now to warrant an opening for a small-boat fleet.”

The reopening of the Lightship area will also allow for the depleted near shore waters a chance to replenish, Keese said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Scallopers to White House: Marine monument a bad idea

May 6, 2016 — A fishing trade group that represents scallopers from Maine to Virginia has joined Northeast groundfishermen in opposing the designation of any marine national monuments in New England waters.

The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF) penned a May 4 letter to Obama administration officials stating its opposition to the establishment of the monuments while also criticizing the unilateral process — presidential decree through the Antiquities Act — being considered for designating them.

“A monument designation, with its unilateral implementation and opaque process, is the exact opposite of the fisheries management process in which we participate,” FSF legal counsels David Frulla and Andrew Minkiewicz wrote to Christy Goldfuss and Whitley Saumwebber, executives in the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Public areas and public resources should be managed in an open and transparent manner, not an imperial stroke of the pen.”

The FSF letter comes almost two months after Goldfuss, the managing director of the White House environmental council, told fishing stakeholders at a March 24 meeting in Boston the White House has shelved the proposal pushed by environmental and conservation groups to establish a marine national monument about 80 miles east of Cape Ann in the area around Cashes Ledge.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Atlantic Sea Scallop group opposes an Atlantic Marine Monument; says it contradicts the President’s own order

WASHINGTON – May 4, 2016 – The organization representing the Atlantic sea scallop industry, one of the most economically valuable fisheries in the nation, has written to the White House opposing the creation of an Atlantic Marine Monument, noting that such an action subverts public processes, and contradicts the President’s own executive order on public participation in the regulatory process.

The Fisheries Survival Fund (FSF), an organization that comprises the majority of the Limited Access Atlantic sea scallop fleet, is one of the many stakeholders that frequently participates in the public fisheries management process. FSF opposes any attempts to circumvent this process, as noted in the letter.

“We strongly urge the President to not designate any marine monuments in New England, but rather to allow the public process to continue moving forward,” states the letter, which was sent to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Let the President’s legacy be that he allowed the public to have a voice in how we manage our shared resources.”

The White House has been considering designating an offshore monument in the Northeast Atlantic at the behest of several environmental groups, an authority granted by the Antiquities Act. President Bush previously used this authority to create two expansive monuments in the Pacific Ocean around Hawaii and the Northern Mariana Islands.

As argued in the letter, “Public areas and public resources should be managed in an open and transparent manner, not an imperial stroke of the pen.” In fact, several regulations have already been developed through the Council process that ensure fisheries are properly conserving and managing marine resources.

FSF’s position mirrors that of Executive Order 13563, authored by President Obama himself, which states in part that regulations must be based on the best available science, involve public participation, and include greater coordination across agencies. The current management system is more consistent with these standards than a monument designation, which could be abused by a few select insiders. Through regional councils, the government is already protecting Cashes Ledge and deep-water corals.

If the Administration insists on the designation of a monument, the President should accept recommendations made by members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Rhode Island Delegation, in consultation with other regional fisheries organizations, and approved unanimously by the ASMFC. Their proposal would ensure the protection of deep-water corals and ocean canyon substrates while allowing for fishing that would not affect the protected areas.

Read the full FSF letter to the White House here

Helping Fishermen Catch What They Want, and Nothing Else

May 3, 2016 — Heather Goldstone, of NPR affiliates WGBH and WCAI, discusses bycatch reduction in fisheries on a recent episode of “Living Lab.” Her guests were veteran gear designer Ron Smolowitz of the Coonamessett Farm Foundation, who has worked with the southern New England scallop industry; Steve Eayrs, a research scientist at Gulf of Maine Research Institute, who has worked with groundfishermen in Maine; and Tim Werner, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium, who put acoustic pingers on gill nets to warn away dolphins. An excerpt from the segment is reproduced below:

It’s the holy grail of commercial fishing: catch just the right amount of just the right size of just the right species, without damage to the physical environment. It’s a tall order, and few fisheries are there yet.

Leaving aside the issue of straight up over-fishing, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that, each year, fishermen around the world accidentally catch more than seven million tons of marine life – everything from whales and turtles, to sea cucumbers – that they weren’t even after. Such by-catch, as it’s known, is essentially collateral damage.

And fishing has other environmental impacts. In some parts of the ocean, the scars left by trawls dragged across the sea floor can be seen for years.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Over the past decade or so, a lot of effort has gone into designing fishing gear and related equipment that allows fishermen to catch more of what they do want, and less of what they don’t, while also minimizing damage to the environment. For example:

  • Veteran gear designer Ron Smolowitz and the Coonamessett Farm Foundation have worked with the southern New England scallop industry over the past several years to develop a trawl that excludes loggerhead sea turtles. It turns out, it’s also better at capturing scallops, with the end result that scallopers can use smaller areas and less fuel – 75% less – to make their catch.

Read the full story and listen to the segment at WCAI

MASSACHUSETTS: House budget includes money for SMAST

April 29, 2016 — Next year’s state budget, passed by the House on Wednesday, includes increased funding for city public schools; money to expand fisheries research; and money for community programs.

“This is a big victory, I was able to secure most of what we asked for,” Rep. Antonio F.D. Cabral, D-New Bedford, said Thursday. The budget awaits approval by the state Senate.

Notable funds set to come the city’s way include $450,000 for fisheries research conducted by UMass Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology (SMAST).

“This is critically important,” said SMAST Dean Steven Lohrenz. “Funds have been tight lately so this will allow us to continue to do the kind of pioneering work we’ve been doing with our collaborative fisheries research.”

The research conducted by SMAST looks at ways to improve accuracy in fisheries data collection. Lohrenz said that the new funds will allow researchers to conduct new projects including video survey techniques of cod and other groundfish.

“Their progress with data collection is very important for our fisheries industry especially with federal regulations that could cut quotas for the next fishing cycle,” Cabral said. “We’re hoping down the road that they can do for ground fish what they did for the scallop industry.”

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Regulators to put focus on New England scallop fishing

April 22, 2016 — Federal fishing regulators say potential changes to the rules that govern scallop fishing off of New England could be a priority in the coming years.

The rules are a source of tension as fishing boats move into the waters off the northern Massachusetts coast to seek scallops. Scallop grounds off of northern Massachusetts, including Cape Ann, have been especially fertile, prompting increased fishing in that area.

The New England Fishery Management Council passed a motion Wednesday that says changes to management of the northern Gulf of Maine fishing area will be a potential priority in 2017.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times 

New York Times spotlights perils faced by Atlantic scallop fleet

April 18, 2016 – In an April 15 story, the New York Times described in detail the challenges faced at sea by members of the limited access scallop fleet. The story covered the rescue of the Carolina Queen III, which ran aground off the Rockaways Feb. 25, during a storm with waves cresting as high as 14 feet. The following is an excerpt from the story:

Scallop fishing may not conjure up the derring-do of those catching crabs in the icy waters of the Bering Strait or the exploits of long-line tuna fisherman chronicled on shows like “The Deadliest Catch.” But the most dangerous fishing grounds in America remain those off the Northeast Coast — more dangerous than the Bering Sea, according to data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

From 2000 to 2009, the years covered by the agency’s data, 504 people died while fishing at sea and 124 of them were in the Northeast.

The scallop industry had the second-highest rate of fatalities: 425 deaths per 100,000 workers. Among all workers in the United States over the same period, according to the C.D.C., there were four deaths per 100,000 workers. The size of the crew and the time at sea contribute to the dangers.

Drew Minkiewicz, a lawyer who represents the Fisheries Survival Fund, said that since 2010, the number of vessels permitted to fish for scallops has been limited, and with fewer unregistered ships at sea, there have been fewer accidents.

The Atlantic sea scallop — Placopecten magellanicus — has been popular since the 1950s, when Norwegian immigrants first scoured the seas south of New Bedford, Mass. The supply could swing between scarcity and plenty, but in the 1980s huge algae blooms known as brown tides appeared several years in a row and threatened to destroy the scallops’ ecosystem on the East Coast. Even after those tides passed, the industry almost did itself in by overfishing. Only after regulations were passed in the 1990s and the industry banded together with the scientific community to improve fishing techniques did the fisheries rebound.

Now, scalloping along the Atlantic Coast from Maine to North Carolina is among the most lucrative fishing in the world. In 2014, the catch was estimated to be worth more than $424 million.

The industry operates under strict guidelines, many aimed at ensuring sustainability of the fisheries. To fish some areas with known scallop beds, a permit is needed, and the haul is capped. Open-sea fishing, on the other hand, is restricted only by the annual 32-days-at-sea limit.

The clock is always ticking.

“We get so few days to go out, we have to find every efficiency to maximize our days at sea,” said Joe Gilbert, who owns Empire Fisheries and, as captain of a boat called the Rigulus, is part of the tight-knit scalloping community.

In preparation for the Carolina Queen’s voyage, the crew would have spent days getting ready, buying $3,000 in groceries, loading more than 20,000 pounds of ice and prepping the equipment on the twin-dredge vessel.

The vessel steamed north from the Chesapeake Bay, traveling 15 hours to reach the coast off New Jersey, where the crew would probably have started fishing. Then the work would begin.

It is pretty standard for a crew to work eight hours on and take four hours off, but in reality it often is more like nine hours on and three off. If you are a good sleeper, you are lucky to get two hours’ shut-eye before heading back on deck.

The huge tows scouring the ocean bed for scallops dredge for about 50 minutes and are then hauled up, their catch dumped on deck before the tows are reset and plunged back into the water, a process that can be done in as little as 10 minutes.

While the dredge did its work, the crew on duty on the Carolina Queen sorted through the muddy mix of rocks and sand and other flotsam on the ship’s deck, looking for the wavy round shells of the scallops.

“The biggest danger is handling the gear on deck,” Mr. Gilbert said. “It is very heavy gear on a pitching deck, and you get a lot of injured feet, injured hands.”

Once the scallops are sorted, according to industry regulations, they must be shucked by hand.

The crew spends hours opening the shells and slicing out the abductor muscle of the mollusks — the fat, tasty morsel that winds up on plates at a restaurants like Oceana in Midtown Manhattan, where a plate of sea scallops à la plancha costs as much as $33.

A single boat can haul 4,000 pounds in a day.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Maine scallop season winds toward closing

March 30, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Friday is April Fools’ Day and the joke may be on Maine’s scallop fishermen, though they may be laughing all the way to the bank.

In December, the last month for which the Department of Marine Resources has released figures, dealers reported Maine scallop landings of 159,845 pounds with a boat price of about $13 to $14 per pound — just over $2 million in all for the month. Although the price was high, the reported December landings were the lowest since 2012.

Maine waters are divided into three scallop fishing zones and in two of them — along all of the coast except in Cobscook Bay way Downeast — the fishing season lasts until April 15. The question is whether there will be anyplace left to fish.

The 50-day season in Cobscook Bay, where harvesters have a daily limit of 10 gallons of shucked scallop meats, ended last Friday although, after the DMR implemented emergency closures on Whiting and Dennys bays in early February, only the sliver of water in the St. Croix River remained available to harvesters. Even in that area, fishing was limited to one day per week.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Rebuilding Maine’s Scallop Fishery: Part 2

February 11, 2016 — The scalloping season is scheduled from December through March or April, depending on which fishing zone you’re in.

State waters are broken up into three zones, each with its own set of rules.

Wednesday, Caitlin Burchill took us scallop fishing in Cobscook Bay, an area which has since been closed to scallop fishing for the season.

The Department of Marine Resources says they’ve made the scallop fishery their top priority.

While Maine may be known for lobster, they want fisherman to have another seafood to fall back on.

In recent years, the DMR has implemented special closures, shorter seasons, and fishing limits, among other things, to help rebuild the fishery after it was overfished and hit rock bottom in 2005.

State regulators say it’s working, but what do fishermen think about all the rules?

Caitlin Burchill looks into it.

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Tim Sheehan sees scallop harvesters at the end of a hard day’s work.

Many stop by his store in Perry to sell him fresh caught Cobscook Bay scallops.

“Everyone needs to eat and the prices are going up and up and up. Years ago, guys would fish all day to get $5 a pound. Well now, I’m paying them $12.50 and you know for a half a days work, not that they don’t have huge overhead, it’s pretty good days pay,” said Sheehan.

A better price perhaps thanks to the creation of fishery management plans.

Trisha Cheney overseas the scallop fishery for the Department of Marine Resources.

“We base all of our management on the best available science, so we also have a science team that’s in the field collecting information,” said Cheney.

The state also gets input from fishermen.

Read the full story and watch the video from WABI