Saving Seafood

Texas Public Policy Foundation brings fishermen’s lawsuit against Vineyard Wind

December 22, 2021 — The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has so prioritized offshore wind energy development that it is bypassing real environmental review and failing to consider alternative sites that won’t harm the commercial fishing industry, charges a lawsuit brought by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Filed Dec. 15 in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of six fishing businesses in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York, the action challenges BOEM and other federal agencies on their review of the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project off southern New England.

The lead plaintiff, Seafreeze Shoreside Inc. of North Kingston, R.I., is a homeport and major processor for the Northeast squid fleet. Captains there are adamant they will not be able to fish if Vineyard Wind and other planned turbine arrays are erected in those waters.

Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison at Seafreeze and a vocal advocate for its fishermen, said she had heard mention of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in conversation, “kind of along the lines of Pacific Legal Foundation which litigated for the fishing industry on the Northeast marine monument” fishing restrictions recently reinstated by the Biden administration.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Maine’s shrimp fishery will stay closed, but regulators warm to idea of limited harvest

December 20, 2021 — Maine’s northern shrimp fishery has been closed for seven years and regulators decided Friday to continue the harvest moratorium for another three years with no signs of rebound.

But in a change, officials with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission entertained the idea of opening a small personal-use fishery at the suggestion of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and planned to look into it in the future.

A moratorium was enacted after the northern shrimp stock collapsed in 2013 and has been in place ever since. It is unclear what caused the shrimp’s downturn but recent research suggests that a species of squid that rode into the Gulf of Maine on a historic 2012 heatwave may have played a significant role.

Maine is the southernmost range of the shrimp and the gulf’s warming waters are also suspected to be part of the reason the cold-loving shrimp have struggled to bounce back, even with no commercial fishing for nearly a decade.

Read the full story at The Bangor Daily News

OREGON: State regulators rushing to catch up on market squid fishery

October 26, 2021 — If Joe Mulkey could fish for market squid year-round, he would.

The emerging Oregon fishery ticks a lot of boxes for the commercial fisherman from Reedsport: the use of seine gear and electronics, and, of course, the recent profitability.

In the past five years, the market squid fishery has moved from almost nonexistent to booming. Now boats that would normally fish for squid in California’s Monterey Bay have headed north and Oregon fishermen are seeing new opportunities in local waters, hunting the small, short-lived animals.

Last year, the fishery saw the highest participation yet in Oregon and fishermen landed more than 10 million pounds. Before fishing took off in 2016, fishermen had only landed 4.5 million pounds in Oregon since 1980.

But as market squid surges forward, state fishery managers are rushing to catch up.

Read the full story at The Astorian

 

Squid a possible culprit in Gulf of Maine shrimp’s demise

October 14, 2021 — Maine’s shrimp fishery has been closed for nearly a decade since the stock’s collapse in 2013. Scientists are now saying a species of squid that came into the Gulf of Maine during a historic ocean heatwave the year before may have been a “major player” in the shrimp’s downturn.

In 2012, the Gulf of Maine experienced some of its warmest temperatures in decades. Within a couple of years, the cold-water-loving northern shrimp had rapidly declined and the fishery, a small but valued source of income for fishermen in the offseason, closed.

Anne Richards, a biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and Margaret Hunter, a biologist with the Maine Department of Marine Resources, studied the collapse and found that it coincided with an influx of longfin squid, a major shrimp predator.

The squid is a “voracious and opportunistic” predator that Richards and Hunter believe expanded in the gulf during the heatwave at the same time the shrimp population was struggling because of warmer water temperatures.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Scientists think they’ve found the reason for Maine’s prized shrimp fishery collapse. They point to longfin squid

October 1, 2021 — Scientists think they’ve found the chief culprit in the collapse of Maine’s prized shrimp fishery. They’re pointing the finger at a voracious species of squid that rode in on warming waters almost ten years ago.

Maine shrimp were long a regional delicacy fishermen and diners alike looked forward to each fall, with 10 million pounds and more harvested annually earlier in this century. While they’re small compared to other commercially-harvested shrimp, fans say they are sweeter too.

But in 2012, their population collapsed, federal regulators closed the fishery, and they haven’t recovered since.

Their latin name is Pandalus borealis, which gives a nod to their preference for cold arctic waters. Maine was always at the southern edge of their range, and the crash coincided with an extreme marine heat wave that warmed the Gulf of Maine’s waters to the highest temperatures since the 1950s.

But some thought there had to be more to the shrimp’s disappearance than just heat-sensitivity.

“After I saw this I remembered a fisherman saying to me ‘it’s the damn squid.’ He was saying there had been squid all over the place that spring,” Richards said.

Read the full story at Maine Public

The Town Dock Makes Domestic Squid Sourcing Public on Ocean Disclosure Project

September 28, 2021 — The following was released by the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership’s Ocean Disclosure Project:

Rhode Island-based seafood company The Town Dock is become the latest company to participate in the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP).

The Town Dock is a family-owned calamari supplier based in Point Judith, Rhode Island in the US. The company published an ODP profile containing a list of its domestically sourced wild-caught calamari, alongside information on the environmental sustainability of those sources. Listed are The Town Dock’s Longfin Inshore Squid (Doryteuthis peallei) and Northern Shortfin Squid (Illex illecebrosus), the only two squid species in the world to be MSC-certified sustainable.

“We are participating in the Ocean Disclosure Project because we continue to seek ways to demonstrate and underscore the importance of sustainably caught seafood. As a provider of the only two certified sustainable squid species, we saw this as an opportunity to become a resource for those interested in supporting sustainable fishing practices,” said Ryan Clark, president and CEO of The Town Dock.

“We’re pleased to have The Town Dock join ODP. We hope this partnership inspires others and showcases the importance of practicing sustainable fishing and transparency of sourcing,” said Tania Woodcock, project manager for the Ocean Disclosure Project.

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) started the ODP in 2015 to provide a valuable resource for responsible investors, seafood consumers, and others interested in sustainable seafood. To date, 38 other companies, including major retailers and suppliers from around the world, have participated.

The Town Dock’s full ODP profile can be viewed at: https://oceandisclosureproject.org/companies/the-town-dock 

Squid processors help new Northeast science center study

September 24, 2021 — Researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center have installed a new electronic data collection system at five shortfin squid processing facilities across the region, a project that NMFS officials say will help “support good management of a burgeoning fishery.”

With a lot of squid available to measure, researchers hope this pilot project will show that processors can help increase the amount of real-time data on this relatively short-lived species.

The Squid Electronic Size Monitoring Pilot Project is new, and was developed by a team of science center researchers including:

• The Cooperative Research Branch, which specializes research with industry partners.

• The Information Technology Division, which manages and develops data and information gathering systems.

• The Population Dynamics Branch, which studies the distribution, abundance, and population dynamics of commercial species like the shortfin squid.

This team worked alongside industry to design the system. The goal is to create a standardized data stream of northern shortfin squid size and weight provided by processors. The northern shortfin squid (Illex illecebrosus) is fast-growing and lives for less than a year. At any given time, there are multiple cohorts (groups of similarly aged squid) in the population with a wide range of body sizes and weights.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

 

Great Wall of Lights: China’s sea power on Darwin’s doorstep

September 24, 2021 — It’s 3 a.m., and after five days plying through the high seas, the Ocean Warrior is surrounded by an atoll of blazing lights that overtakes the nighttime sky.

“Welcome to the party!” says third officer Filippo Marini as the spectacle floods the ship’s bridge and interrupts his overnight watch.

It’s the conservationists’ first glimpse of the world’s largest fishing fleet: an armada of nearly 300 Chinese vessels that have sailed halfway across the globe to lure the elusive Humboldt squid from the Pacific Ocean’s inky depths.

As Italian hip hop blares across the bridge, Marini furiously scribbles the electronic IDs of 37 fishing vessels that pop up as green triangles on the Ocean Warrior’s radar onto a sheet of paper, before they disappear.

Immediately he detects a number of red flags: two of the boats have gone ‘dark,’ their mandatory tracking device that gives a ship’s position switched off. Still others are broadcasting two different radio numbers — a sign of possible tampering.

The Associated Press with Spanish-language broadcaster Univision accompanied the Ocean Warrior this summer on an 18-day voyage to observe up close for the first time the Chinese distant water fishing fleet on the high seas off South America.

The vigilante patrol was prompted by an international outcry last summer when hundreds of Chinese vessels were discovered fishing for squid near the long-isolated Galapagos Islands, a UNESCO world heritage site that inspired 19th-century naturalist Charles Darwin and is home to some of the world’s most endangered species, from giant tortoises to hammerhead sharks.

Read the full story from the AP

 

NOAA Fisheries Announces Illex Squid Directed Fishery Closure

August 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Effective August 30

NOAA Fisheries is closing the directed Illex fishery in federal waters through the end of the fishing year, December 31, 2021.

Effective at 0001 hour on August 30, 2021, vessels are prohibited from fishing for or landing more than 10,000 lb of Illex squid per trip in or from federal waters through December 31, 2021. Vessels may not land Illex squid more than once per calendar day.

Landings information analyzed by NOAA Fisheries projects the Illex squid fishery will meet 94 percent of the annual quota for the 2021 fishing year on August 30,2021.

If you have started a trip prior to August 30, 2021, you may offload and sell more than 10,000 lb of Illex squid from that trip, as long as the vessel entered port before 0001 hr on August 30, 2021.

For more information, please read the notice as filed in the Federal Register, and our permit holder bulletin.

Read the full release here

Pacific squid: Better ocean conditions, catches and prices bring optimism

August 10, 2021 — The California squid fleet fished in favorable ocean conditions as the season kicked off on April 1.

Last year’s ocean water temperatures left an air of optimism that the effects from El Niño conditions in 2018 and 2019 had swung through normal (ENSO) temperatures, and that this year’s harvest would increase.

“We’re having a better year,” says Diane Pleschner-Steele , executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, in Buellton. “We saw the shift last summer, and we’re back into La Niña.”

Landings for 2020 came in at 55.27 million short tons, according to converted data from PacFIN. As of July in 2021, the fleet had landed 48.77 million short tons.

Though the fishery has been conducted at night in years past, Pleschner-Steele noted that boats had been fishing during the days and that some good catches had been coming from the waters near Monterey.

Another optimistic uptick for this year has been that ex-vessel offers are hitting around $1,200 per ton. That’s up from last year’s $1,000 per ton average. In recent years the bulk of West Coast squid has been exported to China. Trade wars between the United States and China entered full swing in 2018, and since then tariffs from both sides have hobbled product movement to the west.

Read the full story at National Fisherman