Saving Seafood

Latest shrimp assessment points to closure of fishery

October 5, 2018 — The shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted Thursday to accept the 2018 benchmark assessment for northern shrimp that continues to reflect a stock in free fall and facing a highly uncertain future.

The assessment seems to point to another closure for the fishery that has been shuttered since after the 2013 fishing season because of the dire and deteriorating state of the northern shrimp stock.

The final decision on whether to close the fishery for the sixth consecutive year will come in November, when the shrimp section and its advisory panel are scheduled to meet to set specifications for the 2019 fishing season.

It does not look good.

The assessment, according to the section, indicates the northern shrimp population remains severely depleted, spawning stock biomass remains at the same low levels that have existed since 2013 and recruitment of new shrimp into the fishery continues at historically low numbers.

It also underlines the negative impact of the Gulf of Maine’s warming waters on the northern shrimp stock.

“Warmer water temperatures are generally associated with lower recruitment indices and poorer survival during the first year of life,” the section said in a statement. “Ocean temperatures in the western Gulf of Maine shrimp habitat have increased over the past decade, and temperature is predicted to continue rising as a result of climate change. This suggests an increasingly inhospitable environment for northern shrimp in the Gulf of Maine.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Maine fishermen demand better science before canceling another shrimp season

October 4, 2018 — Members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will meet Thursday in Portland to review the most recent stock assessment and make recommendations on whether Maine will see a shrimp season next year for the first time since 2013.

Initial indications from both federal and state surveys are that the shrimp population is in no better shape than any of the past five years.

“Spawning stock biomass and total abundance remain low, with little sign of recovery,” Toni Kerns, an ASMFC fishery management plans coordinator, wrote in an email about the shrimp population in the Gulf of Maine.

Fifty years ago, fishermen caught 11,000 metric tons of Maine shrimp. But the numbers steadily decreased and, by 2012, the catch was down to 2,185 metric tons. Then, even that bottom dropped out, and in 2013 fishermen brought in only 255 metric tons, prompting complete closure of the fishery other than a small “research set-aside” that in 2018 totaled 13.3 tons, the Press Herald reported.

Trends include the lowest abundance and biomass numbers in more than three decades, ASMFC told the Gloucester Times last month.

And Maggie Hunter, lead shrimp scientist for the Maine Department of Marine Resources, said the inshore trawl survey conducted every spring and fall by the Maine DMR and New Hampshire Fish and Game found “very low” numbers as well.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Lack of stock growth points to Gulf of Maine shrimp closure

October 3, 2018 — Nothing significant has changed for the Gulf of Maine’s imperiled northern shrimp stock in the past five years, as the fishery continues to be haunted by historically low abundance and biomass numbers that just refuse to improve.

The fishery’s recent past may indeed be prologue, as fishery managers from the shrimp section of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission get ready to meet Thursday to review and make recommendations on the most recent benchmark assessment of the stock, as well as a peer-review report on the assessment.

The meeting, set for Portland, Maine, is one of the final steps before the ASMFC decides in November whether to reopen the fishery for the 2019 season.

The early returns point to another closure.

Megan Ware, an ASMFC fishery management plans coordinator, said the 2018 stock assessment offers the same dismal assessment of the northern shrimp stock as every assessment since the 2013 assessment that instigated the past five closures.

“The trends are similar,” Ware told the Gloucester Daily Times last month. “We’re still seeing the low trends that we’ve seen in the past five years.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

ASMFC Northern Shrimp Section to Meet October 4th to Review Benchmark Assessment Results and Consider Draft Addendum I for Public Comment

September 27, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section (Section) will meet on October 4, 2018 at the Maine Historical Society, 2nd Floor Reading Room, 489 Congress Street, Portland, Maine. The Section will review the findings of the 2018 Benchmark Stock Assessment and Peer Review Report, and consider its approval for management use. The Section will also review Draft Addendum I and consider approving the document for public comment. This Draft Addendum considers providing states the authority to allocate their state-specific quota between gear types in the event the fishery reopens.
 
In November 2018, the Northern Shrimp Advisory Panel (AP) will meet to review the Benchmark Stock Assessment and provide recommendations on the 2019 fishery specifications. In addition, the AP will review public comment on Draft Addendum I and provide recommendations on its preferred management alternative. Following the AP meeting, the Section will meet to review the AP’s recommendations, take final action on Addendum I, and set 2019 specifications. Information regarding the date and location of the November meeting will be provided, when available, in a subsequent press release.
 
The October 4th meeting is open to the public; the draft agenda can be found at http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/NShrimpSectionAgenda_Oct2018.pdf. For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740

Regulators weigh health of shrimp fishery

September 7, 2018 — Fishery managers will move closer to deciding the fate of the Gulf of Maine’s northern shrimp fishery when they meet in October to review the latest assessment of the imperiled stock.

The review is one of the final steps leading to a decision whether to reopen the fishery to commercial fishing for the 2019 season for the first time in six seasons.

It does not look good.

The popular winter fishery has been shuttered since the beginning of the 2014 season to all but research-related shrimping because of historically low abundance and biomass numbers that reflect a stock in free fall.

The 2017 benchmark assessment — which led regulators to close the fishery for the 2018 season — showed no signs of improvement from previous years and regulators seem to expect the same outcome from the 2018 stock assessment.

“The trends are similar,” Megan Ware, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which regulates the fishery, said Thursday. “We’re still seeing the low trends that we’ve seen in the past five years.”

The 2017 stock status report made for sobering reading.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Meeting Set to Consider Future of Maine Shrimp Fishery

September 6, 2018 — A regulatory panel will meet next month to consider what the future holds for New England’s shuttered shrimp fishery.

The fishery has been shut down since 2013 because of low population, poor survival of young and concerns about warming oceans. An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission will meet in Portland on Oct. 4 to review the most recent assessment of the shrimp stock.

The board will consider sending potential changes to the fishery out for public comment. Possibilities include crafting new rules for the fishery if it reopens. However, officials with the Atlantic States commission say that’s unlikely at this point because little about the shrimp’s status seems to have changed.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

ASMFC Northern Shrimp Section to Meet October 4th to Review Benchmark Assessment Results and Consider Draft Addendum I for Public Comment

September 6, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Section (Section) will meet on October 4, 2018 at the Maine Historical Society, 2nd Floor Reading Room, 489 Congress Street, Portland, Maine. The Section will review the findings of the 2018 Benchmark Stock Assessment and Peer Review Report, and consider its approval for management use. The Section will also review Draft Addendum I and consider approving the document for public comment. This Draft Addendum considers providing states the authority to allocate their state-specific quota between gear types in the event the fishery reopens.

In November 2018, the Northern Shrimp Advisory Panel (AP) will meet to review the Benchmark Stock Assessment and provide recommendations on the 2019 fishery specifications. In addition, the AP will review public comment on Draft Addendum I and provide recommendations on its preferred management alternative. Following the AP meeting, the Section will meet to review the AP’s recommendations, take final action on Addendum I, and set 2019 specifications. Information regarding the date and location of the November meeting will be provided, when available, in a subsequent press release.

The October 4th meeting is open to the public; the draft agenda can be found at http://www.asmfc.org/files/Meetings/NShrimpSectionAgenda_Oct2018.pdf. For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

Will Louisiana’s shrimpers strike? ‘It’s a last resort’

August 28, 2018 — Acy Cooper bought his first shrimping vessel, an old wooden flatboat, when he was 15.

Cooper followed his father and grandfather before him into the rich gumbo Gulf of Mexico waters from the fishing community of Venice on the coast of southern Louisiana.

Today Cooper and his two sons and son-in-law operate two Laffite skiffs — one 35-footer and one 30-footer — docked in the same community for another generation.

But although many American business owners are bracing for potential negative impacts of a trade war triggered by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, Cooper and his fellow shrimpers are pleading for such protections as foreign producers dump shrimp in the U.S. and cratering prices in the process.

In fact, earlier this month, about 200 members of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, of which Cooper is president, threatened to go on strike without some action either from the Gulf Coast processors who buy their shrimp or from the president in the forms of tariffs or quotas.

“We were getting $1 a pound in the 1980s; now we’re getting 55 cents,” Cooper said as he prepared to spend another night on his boat casting his skimmer nets during the white shrimp season that began in August. “(Striking) is a last resort, but we have to show the processors we’re not going to work for nothing. Our communities are dying.”

During the shrimpers’ meeting in Houma one yelled, according to a nola.com report, “How many heard (Trump) say ‘make America great again’? Make shrimping great again!”

Read the full story at the Monroe News Star

MAINE: Odds may be bad for winter shrimp fishery

August 22, 2018 — Scientists gathered at a downtown hotel last week for a three-day “peer review” of the latest Northern Shrimp Benchmark Stock Assessment from by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

The assessment evaluates the condition of the Gulf of Maine northern shrimp resource and provides regulators with the information they need to manage the fishery.

The sessions were mostly open to the public but, as of Tuesday morning, the ASMFC had yet to publish a summary of the proceedings.

Whatever happened, the odds are against the fisheries managers allowing any shrimp fishing this coming winter.

Last year’s stock report showed that stock abundance and biomass between 2012 and 2017 were the lowest on record during the 34 years records have been kept. The 2017 numbers were the lowest ever observed.

Recruitment — the number of animals entering the fishery — has been poor since 2011 and includes the four smallest year classes on record.

There is little to suggest those numbers are likely to improve.

Recruitment of northern shrimp is related to both spawning biomass and ocean temperatures, with higher spawning biomass and colder temperatures producing stronger recruitment.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

New England shrimp population still looks bad amid shutdown

August 20, 2018 — A new analysis of New England’s shrimp population doesn’t bode well for the future of the long-shuttered fishery for the crustaceans.

The Maine-based shrimp fishery has been shut down since 2013 because of concerns such as warming ocean temperatures and poor survival of young. Scientists working with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission are assessing the shrimp stock, and so far it looks like little has changed.

Results of the stock assessment “look fairly similar to what we’ve seen in previous years,” said Megan Ware, a fishery management plan coordinator with the Atlantic States. That means reopening the fishery any time soon could be a tough sell when regulators meet to discuss and vote on the subject this fall.

“We’re still seeing low trends for northern shrimp,” said Ware. “Low abundance, low biomass.”

The small, pinkish shrimp were previously a popular winter seafood item in New England and around the country before regulators shuttered the fishery. Fishermen sought them with trawler boats and traps in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, sometimes catching more than 10 million pounds in a single year.

Scientists have said the shrimp face a long-term threat from the warming of the Gulf of Maine, which is one of the fastest-warming bodies of water in the world. Warm water is inhospitable for the animal’s recovery, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has said.

The closure of the fishery has left New England fishermen, who also contend with other declining species such as cod, with one less option. Terry Alexander, a longtime fisherman from Harpswell, Maine, said he’d like to see the fishery reopen, but he’s not optimistic.

Read the full story at the Associated Press