Saving Seafood

As water temperatures rise, Rutgers scientists breed tougher shellfish

February 23, 2021 — Over the last half-century, global sea surface temperatures have been on the rise, but in the last decade they have increased at an accelerated rate.

New Jersey’s coastal waters, both along the Atlantic Coast and Delaware Bay, have been no exception. More alarming, recent research indicates that sea surface temperatures in the Northeast are warming two to three times faster than the global average. For instance, in 2012, water temperatures in the Mid-Atlantic reached the highest levels ever seen in over 150 years of recorded observations.

This rapid increase in water temperature is already influencing New Jersey’s marine species. Breeding habits, ranges and growth rates are adjusting as the environment in which they have evolved to thrive has changed at an unnatural pace. For the commercial fishermen and women whose livelihoods depend on the state’s fishery, particularly those who are only just beginning to experiment with shellfish aquaculture, warmer waters mean higher operational risk.

A new study from the Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, which has been monitoring New Jersey’s shellfish stocks for more than a century, is working to combat the impacts of climate change by selectively breeding bay scallops and surf clams that can grow faster and tolerate higher water temperatures.

Read the full story at NJ Spotlight News

Brexit: UK fishermen fear losing their homes as export ban bites

February 22, 2021 — Since 1 January, the European Union has stopped British fishermen from selling oysters, scallops, clams, cockles and mussels, known as live bivalve molluscs (LBM), that are caught in so-called “Class B” waters.

The government says it is seeking an “urgent resolution”, while the European Commission told Sky News the ban, on health grounds, applies to all third countries and “is not a surprise” to the UK.

The Sailors Creek Shellfish company in Falmouth, Cornwall, has seen 99% of its business disappear.

Read the full story at SkyNews

MASSACHUSETTS: Task force: State needs shelllfish lab

February 19, 2021 — The Massachusetts Shellfish Initiative has developed a five-year strategic plan that could overhaul the management of the state’s shellfish resources, including a recommendation for a dedicated state shellfish laboratory.

The 2021-2025 strategic plan, developed by the 21-member MSI Task Force that includes Gloucester Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken, recommends increased public funding for additional staff and resources at the Division of Marine Fisheries. It also seeks more public funds to promote “the economic, environmental and social benefits” of the state’s shellfish resources.

“In many cases existing state and local government resources provide insufficient support to adequately manage the state’s shellfish resources and shellfish fisheries,” the draft of the plan stated.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Court revokes general permit for Washington shellfish growers

February 16, 2021 — A court in the state of Washington ruled in favor of a lawsuit to revoke the Clean Water Act general permit for the state’s shellfish farmers last week, shooting down an appeal by Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association (PCSGA).

The Center for Food Safety (CFS) and the Coalition to Protect Puget Sound filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers last year, and in October of 2019 a federal court upheld the lawsuit, ruling the Corps’ Issuance of Nationwide Permit (NMP) 48 for shellfish farming unlawful.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

UK shellfish sector hit with EU ban

February 5, 2021 — The European Union has put a stop to the import of live bivalve mollusks from the United Kingdom that are not ready for human consumption, plunging the country’s shellfish sector into further uncertainty.

The measure follows on the heels of the challenges caused by new post-Brexit border rules. Historically, U.K. shellfish producers have exported millions of pounds of mussels, scallops, oysters, and other products into E.U. member-states. However, as the U.K. is now a separate country and subject to strict hygiene rules, it is no longer allowed to transport these animals to the E.U. unless they have already been treated in purification plants.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

More management measures lead to healthier fish populations

January 12, 2021 — The study, led by Michael Melnychuk of the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, draws upon the expertise of more than two dozen researchers from 17 regions around the world. The research team analyzed the management practices of nearly 300 fish populations to tease out patterns that lead to healthier fisheries across different locations. Their findings confirmed, through extensive data analysis, what many researchers have argued for several years.

“In general, we found that more management attention devoted to fisheries is leading to better outcomes for fish and shellfish populations,” Melnychuk said. “While this won’t be surprising to some, the novelty of this work was in assembling the data required and then using statistical tools to reveal this pattern across hundreds of marine populations.”

The research team used an international database that is the go-to scientific resource on the status of more than 600 individual fish populations They chose to analyze 288 populations that generally are of value economically and represent a diversity of species and regions. They then looked over time at each fish population’s management practices and were able to draw these conclusions:

  • In regions of the world where fish and shellfish populations are well studied, overall fisheries management intensity has steadily increased over the past half century
  • As fisheries management measures are implemented, fishing pressure is usually reduced toward sustainable levels, and population abundance usually increases toward healthy targets
  • If fish populations become depleted as a result of overfishing, a rebuilding plan may be implemented. These plans tend to immediately decrease fishing pressure and allow populations to recover
  • If strong fisheries management systems are put in place early enough, then overfishing can be avoided and large, sustainable catches can be harvested annually, rendering emergency measures like rebuilding plans unnecessary

Read the full story at Science Daily

In Scotland, the battle for scallops and the future of sustainable fisheries

January 4, 2021 — People enjoy scallops in Oban. “We can’t get enough of them to satisfy demand,” smiles Carol Watt, whose family business has been selling fish for more than a century in the port city of Argyll.

Watt explains how she likes to cook the mollusks: pan-fried and eaten with pancetta, Italian bacon, as a line of masked shoppers forms outside her tiny mustard-yellow shack.

Watt beams with excitement as she shows off a tray of shucked scallops, palm-sized, pale, fleshy slices with the fiery red roe still holding on, which some customers find too spicy, wearing an apron emblazoned with a species-rich school of fish.

In the past, scallops, often referred to simply as “clams” in Scotland, were never so common. In 1960, the Scottish ports landed just sixty tons of the species. There were 15,000 tons in 2019, down 2% from 2018 but still worth almost £ 36 million.

The boom, however, has sparked an often bitter conflict about how scallops, which grow on the seabed, are harvested between environmentalists and the fishing industry.

Some “scallops” are lifted from the sea sustainably by divers, who charge a premium for doing so.

Read the full story at Brinkwire

If you recently bought Maine seafood online, 2020 might be the reason why

December 16, 2020 — Though 2020 will be remembered for many things, it also may be remembered as the year when online, direct-to-consumer sales of Maine seafood took off.

In a year that saw continued wrangling over foreign trade agreements — which hampered overseas sales of Maine lobster, the state’s dominant seafood product — and a severe drop in restaurant sales due to precautions aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19, many seafood harvesters and producers have sought to connect directly with consumers to stay afloat.

A new marketing initiative launched this month by the state — created with $1 million in COVID-19 federal relief funds — is the latest effort geared toward making it easier for consumers to buy Maine seafood directly from distributors and retailers. A website borne of that initiative, SeafoodfromMaine.com, follows suit with other sites such as Localcatch.org and Lukeslobster.com that aim to connect consumers and sellers directly online, or to guide consumers to retailers that sell locally sourced seafood.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: Weekend farmers market aims to help local shellfishermen

December 10, 2020 — A first-of-its-kind shellfish farmers market promises to get oysters from Wellfleet Bay to the dinner plate in record time.

Shellfishermen will be able to sell their oysters to customers on Saturdays from noon to 2 p.m. beginning this weekend at the Wellfleet Marina. The market will run through May 1.

The initiative came after a monthlong effort led by the town’s shellfish constable, Nancy Civetta, with assistance from the Wellfleet Shellfishermen’s Association and Holbrook Oyster. Civetta was able to get approvals from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Division of Marine Fisheries to hold the event.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

New Study Finds Ways to Potentially Reduce Uncertainty in Shellfish Assessments

December 4, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

Researchers working to determine the abundance of shellfish, including surfclams and ocean quahogs, have faced limits in getting a precise count due to the uncertainty inherent in stock assessment surveys. A new study, by Leanne Poussard, Dr. Eric Powell, and Dr. Daniel Hennen and published this month in Fisheries Research, examines one of these sources of uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a major factor affecting all stock assessments, which rely on estimating the size of an entire population based on the data provided by a small sample. Identifying these sources of uncertainty is key to producing precise estimates. In the case of surfclams and other shellfish species, a main driver of uncertainty is how efficient the dredges used during the stock surveys are in catching shellfish.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducts what are known as depletion experiments to measure how efficiently a dredge harvests clams; a dredge will be run multiple times in a single area, and how quickly the catch declines with each subsequent tow will be used to estimate its efficiency. NMFS has also developed a statistical model to estimate the level of uncertainty present in these experiments.

Using this model, as well as running simulations of dredge tows, the new study finds that uncertainty in depletion experiments can be significantly reduced by taking measures such as running additional tows, and having more overlapping tows during the course of an experiment to measure gear efficiency. Having these measures in place could significantly reduce the role of survey gear as a source of uncertainty.

“By making modest changes to the way we conduct surfclam depletion experiments, we can potentially reduce uncertainty and be more confident in the ultimate results of clam stock assessments,” said Leanne Poussard, the lead author of the study. “This study provides clear guidance on the best ways to conduct future shellfish depletion experiments.”

“As a participant in NMFS surfclam and ocean quahog stock assessments over the past 30 years, I can attest that uncertainty regarding dredge efficiency has been a continuing source of scientific caution in projecting stock biomass, and appropriate levels of commercial harvest,” said Tom Alspach, of Sea Watch International. “This new work should significantly ameliorate that uncertainty, allowing fishery managers to appraise stock sustainability with more confidence, leading in turn to stability in annual quotas for the direct benefit of the harvesting sector. This is why the surfclam/ocean quahog industry has enthusiastically provided financial support for the research initiatives of SCEMFIS.”

The study is the latest to be funded by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS), and is part of the Center’s work of improving shellfish science and management. SCEMFIS is part of the National Science Foundation’s Industry-University Cooperative Research Center program. Working together with its partners in the fishing industry, SCEMFIS identifies the most pressing needs in finfish and shellfish science. In the last year, SCEMFIS funded over $191,000 in scientific research.