Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: The Endurance of New England Fishermen

August 29, 2017 — March, 1981. A large blue dragger, The Little Infant, is moored nearby on my side of the Harbor, which is deepest just inside the curve of the spit. The entire crew of seven or eight are standing in a line on her port side, shucking sea scallops and throwing the gurry over the rail to the raucous delight of the gulls swarming below on the surface of the water.

A U.S. flag, which is usually not run at all, is at half-mast in the rigging, a tribute to the crew of the scalloper Cap’n Bill, which went down with all hands lost a few weeks earlier.

The men stand at the rail in large yellow rubber overalls and shirtsleeves, with the intermittent winter sun beaming down on them and small flocks of eiders scudding by as they deftly slip their knives into the yielding shells and flip out the large “eyes” or adductor muscles. There is a rhythmic competency and camaraderie to their work, almost as if they are a band performing out there for their own pleasure.

Read and listen to the full story at WCAI

‘Couldn’t Get Any Fresher’ — Maine’s Scallop Industry Looks to Grow Market

January 25, 2017 — It’s scallop season in Maine. Fishermen here have hauled in over 450,000 pounds of the tender delicacy in each of the last three years, but the state produces only a tiny fraction of the entire U.S. sea scallop harvest. So to grow a market for its own brand of inshore scallops, the Maine industry is trying to sell one particular quality that sets it apart.

Just offshore from the Cousins Island town dock in Casco Bay, Alex Todd and his crew, Levi Gloden and Edward Lefebvre, are shelling scallops on Todd’s boat, the Jacob and Joshua.

“We get rid of the stomach and the mantle and all that. And just put the abductor muscle in the bucket,” Todd says.

He is one of more than 600 licensed scallop fishermen in Maine, of which about 450 are active. He has been harvesting scallops for almost 30 years, and chairs the Scallop Advisory Council, a panel that makes recommendations about the fishery.

In Maine, a few dozen fishermen dive underwater in scuba gear to harvest scallops by hand, but the majority of scallops in the state are harvested by draggers, like Todd.

“We tow the dredge — we call it drag, the federal government calls it a scallop dredge — across the bottom. There’s chains on it that tickle the top and the bottom and flip the scallops into the link bag, which we tow a couple hundred yards behind the boat depending on the depth of the water. And after say, 15 minutes, we haul it back, see how many scallops are in it. Dump it out, start over,” he says.

On a good day, like today, Todd hits his quota of 135 pounds of meat, or 3 buckets.

“And yesterday we got ‘em a little quicker. But it’s still early. It’s still good — we’re happy,” he says.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Fishermen: not so fast with wind farm

December 30, 2016 — Could sea scallops and longfin squid be reason enough to stop an offshore wind farm on the coast of New York and New Jersey?

The Fisheries Survival Fund, which represents the majority of the U.S. Atlantic scallop industry, claims the site picked for the farm is on documented fishing grounds for both commercially important species. It claims the wind turbines would shut fishermen out.

The group is the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and Sally Jewell, the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior.  The BOEM has jurisdiction over the sea floor.

Other plaintiffs include the Garden State Seafood Association, the Fishermen’s Dock Co-Operative in Point Pleasant Beach and the Borough of Barnegat Light.

“We’re looking to stop the construction in it’s proposed location. If they want to build it somewhere else, that’s fine,” said Andrew E. Minkiewicz, attorney for the group.

Last year, the co-op handled close to $15 million worth of seafood, of which roughly two-thirds were scallops, according to the lawsuit.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

New England 2017 scallop plan likely to mean landings of 47.5m pounds

November 22, 2016 — The New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC) has approved an Atlantic sea scallop fishery management plan for 2017, which maintains landings at a comparable level to 2016, it said.

The framework establishes specifications for the 2017 fishing year, and sets default specifications for 2018.

All told, estimated landings for 2017 are put at 47.5 million pounds, NEFMC said. So far this fishing year — March to October — the fishery has caught around 33m pounds, Dvora Hart, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Undercurrent News.

She estimated that by the end of the fishing year, on Feb. 28, fishers will have caught a total of around 40m pounds for 2016. Hence, the NEFMC’s projection suggests an increase of 18.7%.

The NEFMC, meanwhile, told Undercurrent that “many factors go into these calculations, but once all of the adjustments and deductions are made, the council’s projections indicate that landings in the end will be very similar — not exactly the same, but in the same general ballpark”.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

New Bedford fishermen net sea scallops—and the richest catch in the country

October 28th, 2016 — Who knew a such a tiny mollusk could turn such a hefty sum?

According to a federal report Wednesday, the city of New Bedford retained its pole position as the nation’s most-valued port in 2015, pulling in a total catch worth $322 million.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual fisheries report, New Bedford’s total haul weighed 124 million pounds.

While that amount wasn’t even enough to land New Bedford in the top 10 ports for total quantity (Dutch Harbor, Alaska topped that list with 787 million pounds of mostly pollock and cod), it yet again made the Massachusetts port the richest—by more than $100 million. They were first by even a wider margin in 2014.

Why? Sea scallops.

According to the Associated Press, the pricey seafood delicacy (the larger counterpart to the bay scallop) accounted for more than three-quarters of New Bedford’s catch. More than 60 percent of the 35.7 million pounds of sea scallops were caught in Massachusetts, according to the NOAA.

The NOAA put the price of sea scallops at $12.26 per pound in 2015, slightly down from $12.55 per pound in 2014. But that’s still more than double the market price during the mid-2000s.

As The Boston Globe reported in 2013, the New Bedford scallop industry has buoyed the lives of fishermen in an otherwise struggling city.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

Maine fisheries experts head to Japan to learn scallop practices, buy machinery

October 4th, 2016 — Expanding on earlier visits to Japan, 10 aquaculture and fisheries experts from Maine are headed for Aomori Prefecture in the northern part of Japan’s main island of Honshu to learn successful techniques to grow scallops and to buy machinery to help harvest them.

“Sea scallops are among the most lucrative commercial marine species caught in the United States,” Hugh Cowperthwaite, fisheries project director at Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI), of Portland and the trip leader, told Mainebiz as he was preparing to leave for Aomori last Friday. “The nationwide landings value of sea scallops remained high in 2013 and was ranked fourth among all species with a total worth of $467.3 million. In 2015 the Maine wild caught scallop season witnessed prices at $12 per pound for 20-30 counts … [and up to] $16 per pound for 10 counts.”

Maine’s scallop industry was worth $5.7 million in 2015 for 3,770,760 million live pounds of scallops, down from 2014’s $7.6 million and 5,042,648 live pounds, according to the Maine Department of Marine Resources. The per pound price remained similar however, at $12.70 in 2015 and $12.67 in 2014.

Read the full story at Mainebiz 

NEFMC Newsletter – Council Report

July 6, 2016 — The following was released by the NEFMC:

The Council Report summarizes major actions approved at NEFMC meetings or highlights items of interest.

At its June 21-23 meeting in Portland, ME, the Council approved actions related to the development of its fishery management plans.

The issues involved:

  • Sea Scallop FW 28 and the RSA Program
  • Small Mesh Multisp. Amendment 22
  • Industry Funded Monitoring Amendment
  • Atlantic Herring Amendment 8
  • Groundfish FW 56 and the haddock catch cap for herring midwater trawl gear
  • Other Items of Interest

Read the full newsletter here

Maine scallop farmers borrow from Japan in test to expand fishery

June 13, 2016 — Maine sea farmers are taking a page from Japan (again), an industry titan, to test a new method of farming scallops they hope will grow larger mollusks, and grow them faster than current methods do.

The experiment, in which sea scallops are pinned in pairs to vertical ropes suspended in the ocean water, exposes the animal to more water flow. That, in turn, causes them to open and close their shells more often to feed and helps their adductor muscle, the part that Americans eat, grow larger through exercise during the scallops three-year seed-to-harvest cycle. Farmers hope the “ear-hanging” method will allow them to develop their test farms into commercial-scale operations, which are needed to keep up with rising consumer demand.

And they hope that three scallop pinning, drilling and cleaning machines that a Maine-based investor is bringing to the state from Japan will help them rein in the high labor costs of ear hanging, so they can turn a bigger profit.

The state has granted a handful of limited leases to test the potential market, tapping into the small, tight-knit network of farmers who already raise oysters, clams, and mussels in leased state waters up and down Maine’s 3,500-mile shoreline. These demonstration projects will help scientists determine which husbandry methods, nutrient mix, hanging heights and water temperature grow the biggest, fastest, and healthiest scallop meats, and if it’s profitable enough to become a commercial aquaculture fishery.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Sale of sea scallops to fund research on loggerhead turtles

April 12, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — Organizations in five states will receive more than $15 million for marine science research projects funded by the sale of sea scallops.

One of the projects seeks to understand the impacts of sea scallop fishing on loggerhead sea turtles through the use of satellite tagging. Coonamessett Farm Foundation Inc. of Falmouth, Massachusetts, is the lead investigating organization on that effort.

Recipients of the grants are located in Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia. They range from universities and educational organizations to commercial fishing businesses.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Virginian-Pilot