Saving Seafood

North Carolina Fisheries Association Weekly Update for Feb 1, 2016

February 2, 2016 — The following was released by the North Carolina Fisheries Association:

CARTERET COUNTY FISHERMEN’S ASSOCIATION TO MEET

The Carteret County Fishermen’s Association has scheduled a meeting for Saturday, February 6, 2016 at the Marshallberg Community Center at 6:30pm.

SOUTHERN SHRIMP ALLIANCE & SHRIMP IMPORTS:

The Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) is an organization of shrimp fishermen, shrimp processors, and other members of the domestic industry in the eight warmwater shrimp producing states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.

Founded in 2002, the SSA works to ensure the continued vitality and existence of the U.S. shrimp industry.  The livelihoods of U.S. shrimpers are threatened by cheap, unfairly traded imported shrimp.  The U.S market has become a dumping ground for shrimp that are turned away from other major seafood importing countries.  Proposed restrictions on shrimp fishing and rapidly increasing costs of doing business also loom over the industry.   The SSA is committed to preserving the long term viability of one of our nation’s most valuable fisheries, which for decades has been a foundation of the economy and social structure of countless coastal communities throughout the Gulf and Southeast regions. 

SSA is currently conducting a sunset review, which is required to determine if antidumping duties should remain for imported shrimp from certain countries. John distributed surveys for shrimpers and processors. It is very important for shrimpers and shrimp processors to participate in this survey! If not, the antidumping duties could be lifted.

We have copies at the office, so call if you want us to send you one or more. Or you can contact John Williams of the Southern Shrimp Alliance directly: john@shrimpalliance.com or call: 727-934-5090.

PROPOSED BOUNDARY EXPANSION TO MONITOR NATIONAL MARINE SANCTUARY

After several years of scientific and archaeological assessment and in coordination with the public, NOAA is proposing to expand Monitor National Marine Sanctuary off North Carolina’s Outer Banks to include additional maritime heritage resources. The proposed expansion would protect a nationally significant collection of shipwrecks that currently have little or no legal protection, including one of America’s only World War II battlefields.

 For more details and maps see http://monitor.noaa.gov/management/expansion.html.  

This expansion could have significant impacts on fishermen off the Outer Banks.  Please plan to attend one of the following public meetings:

 

Raleigh, NC

Tues., Feb. 9 from 6-9 p.m.

North Carolina Museum of History

5 East Edenton Street

919-807-7900

Beaufort, NC

Wednesday, Feb. 10 from 6-9 p.m.

North Carolina Maritime Museum

315 Front Street

252-728-7317

Hatteras, NC

Thurs., Feb. 11 from 6-9 p.m.

Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum

9200 Museum Dr.

252-986-2995

Washington, D.C.

Tues., Feb. 16 from 6-9 p.m.

US Navy Memorial – Main Auditorium

701 Pennsylvania Ave., NW

202-380-0710

Nags Head, NC

Wed., Feb. 17 from 6-9 p.m.

Jennette’s Pier – Oceanview Hall

7223 S. Virginia Dare Trail

252-255-1501

 

JERRY’S COMMENTS

Last fall WRAL aired a documentary that was not at all complimentary to our state’s commercial fishermen. I was interviewed for it and offered some suggestions for other interviews to the producer, Clay Johnson. After I watched it, I sent him a note and said it was the most subjective piece of fisheries journalism I’ve experienced. He didn’t agree with that statement, but I maintain that it’s a fact.

Since then, there are some fishermen who wonder why I would even consent to an interview. At the same time, we all seem to agree that we “need to get the word out”, and quit preaching to the choir. How do we do that by saying no to a request for an interview, when the question is, “would you be interested in being interviewed for a documentary about commercial fishing”? Before saying yes, I did some research on the producer. I watched several of his documentaries with one being about commercial fishing in 2008. The others were not about commercial fishing but all of them, in my opinion, were fair and objectively done.S

Below is the link to the video, “Net Loss”, produced by Clay Johnson in 2008. If you haven’t watched the other one that aired last year, let me know and I’ll forward to you.

http://www.wral.com/wral-tv/video/3599816/

CALENDAR

Feb 2-4     ASMFC Winter meeting; Alexandria VA

Feb 6        Carteret County Fishermen’s Association; 6:30pm;

Feb 9         Monitor National Marine Sanctuary hearing; 6-9pm; Raleigh

Feb 10     Monitor National Marine Sanctuary hearing; 6-9pm; Beaufort

Feb 11       Monitor National Marine Sanctuary hearing; 6-9pm; Hatteras

Feb 9-11   MAFMC meeting in New Bern NC

Feb 17     Monitor National Marine Sanctuary hearing; 6-9pm; Nags Head

Feb 17-19 NC MFC meeting in Wrightsville Beach, NC

Mar 7-11   SAFMC meeting in Jekyll Island, GA

View a PDF of the Weekly Update

An hour with: The Woods Hole Science Aquarium

February 1, 2016 — WOODS HOLE, Mass. — The cart of food wouldn’t look totally out of place at an upscale sushi restaurant: capelin and herring, both whole and neatly chopped, mysis shrimp and cubes of gelatin packed with ground fish, broccoli, carrots and spinach.

But these restaurant-grade meals aren’t for fine dining; they’re for the fish and other marine animals that call the Woods Hole Science Aquarium home.

The free aquarium is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service and is open five days a week. But fish need to eat even on weekends or federal holidays. So every morning, usually before the doors open at 11 a.m., one of the three staff members or five regular volunteers comes to dole out a specific mix of edibles to the critters in each tank, clean the tanks or perform other behind-the-scenes maintenance at the nation’s oldest public aquarium at 166 Water St.

Alison Brodet, a marine biologist who volunteers at the aquarium once a week, briefly conferred with senior biologist Kristy Owen about the morning’s feeding. Some usually ravenous fish were being slower to the food today, but Owen wasn’t worried. The bigger fish will eat more than once a day, but the smaller fish may eat only once a day or less, depending on their temperament.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

 

Maine Shrimp Hitting Market Thanks to Spawning Study

PORTLAND, Maine — January 29, 2016 — Despite a moratorium on the northern Maine shrimp fishing season for the third consecutive year, a few wholesale buyers, restaurants, and markets could have some Maine shrimp on their hands — and plates — this winter, due to a scientific study currently underway throughout the state.

Fisheries regulators have closed the northern Gulf of Maine shrimp fishery every year since 2014, saying the shrimp population has dipped to an unsustainable low level.

Northern Maine shrimp is now considered by the regulatory committee to be “collapsed,” and a 2015 report indicated that from 2012 through 2015, the Maine shrimp population was the lowest on record during the 32 years that scientists have collected data.

However, this week, some Maine fishermen have been harvesting Maine shrimp from traps and trawlers as part of a sampling project being conducted by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Northern Shrimp Technical Committee— a regulatory panel that manages the fishery — as well as other agencies including the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the School of Marine Science at the University of Maine in Orono.

Read the full story from Maine Pubilc Broadcasting

Maine firm finds new use for lobster shells: bandages

January 20, 2016 (AP) — A start-up company in Maine is developing a children’s bandage coated with a substance extracted from crushed lobster shells that would promote blood-clotting and is resistant to bacterial infection.

The company, Lobster Tough, shipped Maine lobster shells to a processor in Iceland for testing, and so far, the results are promising, said Thor Sigfusson, an Icelandic investor in the company.

Lobster shells usually end up in landfills after the meat is removed, he said. Using lobster shells to create a medical product would create more value for lobsters and boost the industry in Maine, he said.

“My dream will be to use the massive amounts of lobster shells that are being thrown into dumpsters,” he said.

Chitosan, the blood-clotting compound, is currently produced industrially by crushing shrimp shells and washing the solids with acids to remove inorganic materials and proteins. The U.S. Army has used field bandages treated with chitosan processed from shrimp shells.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Concord Monitor

North Carolina Fisheries Association Annual Meeting, Monday, January 25th

January 19, 2016 — The following was released by the North Carolina Fisheries Association:

Attached above is a pdf flyer for several meetings this coming Monday, January 25th, all to be held at the Riverfront Convention Center in New Bern.

Please print out the flyer and post it on your bulletin board if you have one, or distribute to encourage fishermen to attend the Annual Meeting!

10:00 – 2:00  Bycatch Reduction Workshop

2:00 – 3:00    Southern Shrimp Alliance Survey

3:00 – ?          NCFA’s Annual Meeting

Attendance at NCFA’s Annual Meeting is very important as critical issues will be discussed, including southern flounder and the election of the Board of Directors will be held. If you cannot attend, please send a proxy to davidbush@ncfish.org or call (252) 633-6232 ext 102. 

View a PDF of the agenda

Vietnam Shrimp Farmers Suffer from Uncontrolled Expansion, Gov’t Vows Enforcement on Antibiotics

SEAFOODNEWS.COM [ Vietnam News Brief Service] January 5, 2016 — Authorities in the Mekong Delta, the biggest aquatic pond in Vietnam, are striving to tighten control over local shrimp farming toward sustainable way amid rising concerns on antibiotics contamination, disease outbreak and polluted environment.

Tran Quoc Tuan, director of the Industry and Trade Department of Tra Vinh province, said he supported efforts to tighten the management of antibiotic use in shrimp farming and boost dissemination of information to farmers and processing companies.

He said state management agencies still have to make farmers aware of the risks, and companies must change their way of doing business by co-operating with farmers to build clean material areas. In doing so, the seed, farming methods, feeding and medicines will be strictly controlled in order to produce quality products, he said.

Profitable shrimp farming produced a rapid transformation in the quality of life for Vietnamese people in the Mekong Delta region, but the unplanned expansion in production has also had negative effects on the environment and domestic shrimp trade.

Due to its favorable natural conditions, farmers in coastal communes of many Vietnamese southern provinces started to switch from rice cultivation to shrimp farming 15 years ago. The rapid success and high income that the industry ushered in pushed many local people to invest in this sector.

Due to attractive profits, farmers in other areas of unfavorable natural conditions also did whatever it took to raise shrimp. Farmers spontaneously drilled wells to bring in salt water and made ponds to raise shrimp.

The rapid growth of shrimp farming and poor infrastructure has led to disease outbreaks, massive shrimp death and huge losses for farmers in many places.

Many farmers in Ben Tre, Bac Lieu, Kien Giang and Tra Vinh have been forced to give up shrimp farming as shrimp disease broke out.

Meanwhile, a large volume of Vietnamese seafood, including shrimp, has been rejected by importing countries. According to statistics of relevant agencies, in the last two years, 32,000 tons of Vietnamese seafood, mainly shrimp were not allowed to enter foreign markets because of antibiotic contamination.

In the first nine months of 2015, 38 foreign countries returned 582 batches of seafood products to Vietnamese providers for the same reason, stating that they would tighten the inspection of shrimp shipments from Vietnam.

There are various types of antibiotics displayed for sale, but farmers are mostly unaware of their toxicological effects. On the other hand, processing factories keep buying shrimp without proper inspection, so farmers become negligent in utilizing antibiotics.

This opinion piece originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

DR. RAY HILBORN: Plenty of Sustainable Seafood Options Available

December 28, 2015 — The rising trend of “trash fish,” or unusual and underutilized seafood species, on fine dining menus in New York City was discussed last week in The New York Times by Jeff Gordinier. The idea is to, “substitute salmon, tuna, shrimp and cod, much of it endangered and the product of dubious (if not destructive) fishing practices,” with less familiar species that are presumably more abundant, like “dogfish, tilefish, Acadian redfish, porgy, hake, cusk, striped black mullet.”

Changing diners’ perceptions isn’t always easy, especially about seafood, but there is certainly momentum building for more diverse seafood species. Seafood suppliers are reporting record sales of fish like porgy and hake. Chefs feel good about serving these new species because, “industrially harvested tuna, salmon and cod is destroying the environment.” A new organization, Dock-to-Dish, connects restaurants with fishermen that are catching underutilized species and these efforts are highlighted as a catalyst for this growing trash fish trend. From a culinary perspective, this trend allows chefs to sell the story of an unusual and sustainable species, which more compelling than more mainstream species like tuna, salmon or cod. From a sustainability perspective, Gordinier implies that serving a diversity of seafood species is more responsible than the mainstream few that are “industrially caught” and dominate the National Fisheries Institute list of most consumed species in America.

Comment by Ray Hilborn, University of Washington

While I applaud the desire to eat underutilized species, it seems as if the chefs interviewed don’t know much about sustainable seafood. Below are a few quotes from the article that give the impression that eating traditional species such as tuna, cod, salmon and shrimp is an environmental crime.

“Salmon, tuna, shrimp and cod, much of it endangered and the product of dubious (if not destructive) fishing practices”

“The chef Molly Mitchell, can’t imagine serving industrially harvested tuna or salmon or cod. “You can’t really eat that stuff anymore,” she said. “It’s destroying the environment.”

“Flying them halfway around the world may not count as an ecofriendly gesture, but these oceanic oddities are a far cry from being decimated the way cod has. “Hopefully they’ll try something new and not just those fishes that are overfarmed and overcaught,” said Jenni Hwang, director of marketing for the Chaya Restaurant Group.”

“A growing cadre of chefs, restaurateurs and fishmongers in New York and around the country is taking on the mission of selling wild and local fish whose populations are not threatened with extinction.”

Read the full commentary at CFOOD

 

Labor Abuse in Shrimp Peeling Sheds in Thailand Showed US Importers Asleep at the Switch

SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — December 22, 2015 — The recent announcement by the Thai Shrimp Association that all shrimp peeling will be brought in house by major processors, and that use of third party peeling sheds will be discontinued, is not a ‘win’ for the shrimp industry.

Instead it shows that many have been asleep at the switch, and the safeguards put in place such as audits and certifications, have been inadequate.  However, several US importers say that they had already taken steps to safeguard their supply chain against labor abuse.

Jeff Sedacca, President of the shrimp division of National Fish & Seafood said, “We saw many years ago that Thai safeguards were not adequate, so we took proactive steps to create, implement, and enforce safeguards of our own, including discontinuation of peeling sheds in 2010 and advocating for expansion of fair labor practices required for BAP certification.”

Sedacca says his company has fully committed to the BAP program, and is one of the largest four star shrimp suppliers in the US.

In Thailand, National intends to gain four star certification in the First Quarter of this year, when the new feedmill and hatchery to supply many of their farms gets its certification.  The feed mill and hatchery has been operating this year, but has to build up a production record prior to being inspected by BAP auditors.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

Does fishing have a future in New England?

December 22, 2015 — Cod have been disappearing from the waters between Massachusetts and Maine, and shrimp populations are so depleted that the commercial shrimp season in the Gulf of Maine has been cancelled for the last three years.

At the same time, lobster are flourishing — alongside a host of species that have never before thrived in New England waters.

Why the wild ups and downs? One reason is that nearby waters are warming much faster than the rest of the ocean, making the environment newly unbearable for some longtime residents — and newly appealing for others. But overfishing has played a role as well, disrupting the balance of the watery ecosystem in unexpected ways.

It’s hard to predict where all this is headed, whether for individual species or local fishing communities. But it needn’t be a story of doom and gloom. These undersea changes may well dampen the prospects of the cod industry, but they will also bring new opportunities.

What’s happening in nearby waters?

Rapid and unusual warming.

Temperatures in the Gulf of Maine have been increasing faster than just about every other blue spot on the planet. According to a recent report in Science, Maine’s waters are in the top 0.1 percent when it comes to rapid warming.

While that team focused on the waters to the east and north of Massachusetts, that superwarm area they reported on actually extends significantly south, surrounding the Bay State.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Shrimpers wanted for research program

December 19, 2015 —  The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is closer to embarking on its planned sampling program for the endangered Gulf of Maine northern shrimp stock and is looking for trawl and trap vessels to help collect shrimp and data.

The commission, which hopes to begin the test-tow portion of the the program in mid-January and the trap portion about a month after that, is looking for a total of four trawl vessels and two trap vessels from New Hampshire, Maine or Massachusetts, according to Tina Berger, spokeswoman for the ASMFC.

Anyone interested in participating in the project should contact Maggie Hunter at the Maine Department of Marine Resources by Jan. 4.

The $10,000 program is designed to catch the northern shrimp, Pandalus borealis, while they are in inshore waters to collect data on the timing of the egg hatch, as well as the size, gender and development stages of the shrimp.

The vessels will be expected to fish approximately once every two weeks until the shrimp no longer carry eggs, which Berger estimated will be some time near the end of March.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times