Saving Seafood

Last Call for Public Comments on Chub Mackerel Amendment

January 15, 2019 — The following was released by the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council (Council) is soliciting public input on an amendment to consider adding Atlantic chub mackerel to the Mackerel, Squid, and Butterfish Fishery Management Plan. The amendment considers potential catch limits, accountability measures, and other conservation and management measures required for stocks “in the fishery.” The deadline to submit written comments is January 18, 2019. Comments may be submitted online here or by email, mail, or fax (scroll down for addresses).

Learn More

Additional information about the amendment and the management alternatives being considered can be found at http://www.mafmc.org/actions/chub-mackerel-amendment.

Contact

Julia Beaty, Fishery Management Specialist, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, jbeaty@mafmc.org, 302.526.5250

Written Comments

Written comments may be sent by any of the following methods by 11:59 PM, Eastern Time, on Friday, January 18, 2019:

Email to Julia Beaty, Fishery Management Specialist, at jbeaty@mafmc.org

Online at: http://www.mafmc.org/comments/chub-mackerel-amendment

Mail to Dr. Chris Moore, Executive Director, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, 800 North State Street, Suite 201, Dover, DE, 19901

Fax to 302-674-5399

Please include “Chub Mackerel Comments” in the subject line if using email or fax, or on the outside of the envelope if submitting written comments by mail.

Regional Regulators Vote For 3-Year Closure Of Maine Shrimp Fishery

November 19, 2018 — A panel of regulators from Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts voted Friday to put a three-year moratorium on the commercial fishery for Northern Shrimp, also known as Maine shrimp. Maine’s representatives at the meeting in Portland wanted some type of season preserved, but they were outnumbered.

The decision came after Katie Drew, a scientist with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, told the panel there was virtually no chance the shrimp would bounce back from depleted levels before 2022 and, in fact, might never recover. Above all, she says, the Gulf of Maine, has warmed to the limits of the shrimp’s reproductive capacity.

“The warmer the waters the less baby shrimp you have the next year,” says Drew. “And so we’ve had a lot of warm waters, and we’re just not getting a enough baby shrimp into the population. And in addition a lot of things like to eat northern shrimp.”

Predators such as red hake, spiny dogfish and squid, which are growing more abundant in some parts of the Gulf. The pressure they are putting on shrimp is a growing problem, even though one top predator, humans, haven’t been in the picture since 2014.

Historically, the commercial shrimp fishery, which traditionally started in December, has been dominated by boats from Maine. But it’s been closed for four consecutive years.

Panel member Mike Armstrong, assistant director in the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, says the regulators should bow to reality and proposed the three-year closure.

Read the full story at Maine Public

 

Industry launch large-scale squid project at China Fisheries Expo

November 7, 2018 — The following was released by Ocean Outcomes:

Four leading seafood buyers, Chinese seafood industry groups, retailers, fishermen, and sustainable seafood enterprises came together today at the China Fisheries and Seafood Expo to celebrate the much anticipated launch of the East China Sea and Yellow Sea Squid FIP.

The fisheries improvement project—or FIP for short—is a precompetitive project aimed to improve the management and fishing practices of Chinese trawl, purse seine, and gillnet vessels targeting Japanese flying squid. JFS are one of the most commercially lucrative species of squid, and in the Chinese side of East China Sea and Yellow Sea alone, annual production can approach 30,000 metric tons.

“Squids are one of the most loved seafoods, but compared with many species, squid sustainability efforts are lagging,” said Songlin Wang who is leading the project. “Given squid account for about 5% of global fishery landings, it’s encouraging to see that change.”

In the East China and Yellow Seas, China has important domestic fisheries which target migratory JFS stocks. These supply both a booming domestic market and are exported to the Europe Union, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, and South Korea, among many others, by global seafood companies such as those involved in the project.

However, JFS fishing practices and management need improvement in a number of ways to ensure a continued supply of squid products. For example, China lacks a JFS-specific harvest strategy outside of a summer fishing moratorium banning the use of motorized fishing vessels, and it’s difficult to verify the exact catch locations for some squid products from the region.

“Around a third to half of all squid passes through a Chinese seafood supply chain, whether caught, processed, traded, or consumed,” said Dr. He Cui, who heads CAPPMA, a Chinese national seafood industry group with thousands of members. “Given CAPPMA’s commitment to both domestic and global seafood sustainability, it’s in our interest to ensure a future where all squid stocks are healthy. This project will help us explore a path forward.”

The FIP will work to address areas of concern through implementation of a five year improvement work plan designed, in part, to establish science-based stock assessments and bycatch monitoring protocols, harvest rules fit to JFS 1-year lifecycles, and traceability systems to verify and track locations of harvest.

Since its inception, the FIP has grown beyond founding members Ocean Outcomes, Sea Farms, and PanaPesca to include support from a number of industry stakeholders, including, Quirch Foods, Seachill, China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA), Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and local Chinese suppliers Genho, IG and the Zhejiang Industry Group.

The success and growth of the project were due, in part, to the collaborative forum of the Global Squid Supply Chain Roundtable, facilitated by Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, which heavily featured the East China Sea and Yellow Sea Squid FIP in recent meetings at the North America Seafood Expo in Boston, MA.

“We couldn’t have envisioned the enthusiasm and support for this work when this project began three years ago,” said Dick Jones, who has been working to improve seafood industry practices for decades. “Precompetitive industry collaboration is key to ensuring durable and positive change. This project demonstrates that message is catching on.”

US mid-Atlantic fishery votes to increase Illex squid catch

October 5, 2018 — The US’s Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council voted on Oct. 3 to increase the acceptable biological catch (ABC) for Illex squid to 26,000 metric tons in 2019 and 2020, an increase of 8% over the 24,000t per year limit previously set for 2018-2020.

The council said it made the decision to raise the ABC after reviewing recommendations from its Scientific and Statistical Committee, which reviewed recent catch and survey information. It noted the recent “rapid pace of landings”, which forced the fishery to be closed on August 15, 2018 — a month earlier than the year before — due to 95% of the annual catch limit being landed.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Australian fisheries declared free from overfishing

October 1, 2018 — Commonwealth fisheries in Australia, the Southern Ocean and the south Pacific managed by Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) have been assessed as not subject to overfishing.

It is the fifth year in a row the fisheries, which include fisheries for southern bluefin tuna, toothfish, skipjack tuna, billfish, scale fish, squid and shark, have been been declared free from overfishing.

The assessments reported by Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) in its status reports 2018, assessed 95 species that are either solely or jointly managed by AFMA.

AFMA’s CEO, James Findlay, said the result is a credit to the Australian seafood industry, scientists and fisheries managers.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Supporters Hope That Dogfish By Another Name Sells Better, And Benefits Consumers

September 26, 2018 — The Fishermen’s Alliance is working with fishermen, and the public, to change the name of dogfish.

Longtime fisherman John Our knows some people who love calamari, but won’t eat squid. Doesn’t matter that they are same thing; calamari just sounds better.

“Dogfish” seems to provoke a similar visceral reaction; people turn their noses up at the name.

“I’ve always thought that if you changed the name you would make it more attractive,” Our said. “It would only help.”

Our’s feeling is backed by research. Fishermen, processors and others have spent years trying to turn local palates on to dogfish. Not that it’s all about the name; there are a host of other problems with making the abundant fish a popular choice, including the lack of nearby processing facilities, but inroads have been made.

Read the full story at The Cape Cod Chronicle

 

New research partnership formed to investigate illegal fishing in North Pacific

September 17, 2018 — Japan’s Fisheries Research and Education Agency (FRA) will help Global Fishing Watch and the Australian National Center for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, in New South Wales, with their investigation of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.

Following a memorandum of understanding signed on Sept. 3, the groups have agreed to share “relevant open public data and analytical methodologies, including vessel movement data, catch data and satellite imagery; collaborate on relevant research activities, and publish research outcomes to advance international understanding on IUU fishing and its impacts,” according to a press release.

They intend to analyze night-time satellite imagery, the groups say, as squid jigging most often takes place at night, using bright overhead lights to attract the squid.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Five Wild Days Aboard a New England Squid Boat

September 12, 2018 — Corey Harris wasn’t concerned about the storm. The captain of Rhonda Denise, a 77-foot commercial trawler, he’d been stuck in port all week, as two nor’easters, in early March, slammed the New England coast back-to-back. Now a third brewed offshore. But Harris saw an opportunity. “We’ll thread the needle between the storms,” he told me over the phone. We’d catch as much squid as possible, then haul ass back to port before the next system hit. Bring seasickness. medicine, he added. “It’ll be rough—but worth it.”

On the Thursday of our departure, the Port of Galilee, in Point Judith, Rhode Island, was full of boats but empty of people. If you’ve eaten calamari at a seafood shack or a little red-sauce joint, odds are it crossed the dock here in Point Judith. In 2016, the village’s 119 vessels landed 22.6 million pounds of squid, valued at $28.6 million—its best haul to date. It’s the 15th-highest-earning seaport in the country and first in squid on the Atlantic seaboard. By all measures, it’s the calamari capital of the East Coast. And with ongoing downturns in cod, flounder, and haddock, scores of commercial fishermen, not only here but also up and down the New England shore, now depend on squid to stay afloat in a notoriously unpredictable industry.

Harris met me in the parking lot. Among the local fishermen, he’s one of “the few young guys worth a shit,” a longtime captain told me. He’s also something of an anomaly. The salutatorian of his high school, in Babylon, New York, he dropped out of his university’s pre-dental program, in 2007, to work on trawlers, drawn to fishing for reasons that he can’t quite explain. Soft-spoken and ambitious, with a tight red beard, he started as a deckhand on Rhonda Denise, made captain by age 22, and became a co-owner a few years later. Now, at 31, he’s still 20 years younger than the majority of guys on the dock. “The storms have kept most boats in,” he told me. “There’s no fish on the market. Prices will be high.” There was no need to worry about the weather, he added—as long as we made it back by Monday.

Read the full story at Men’s Journal

 

CALIFORNIA: Threat of El Niño has Pacific squid fleet on edge

August 7, 2018 –All eyes and ears were on water temperatures and foreign trade tariffs as seiners hit their strides in the West Coast squid season. Cooler ocean temperatures last fall fostered hopes that the environmental pendulum had begun swinging in favor of squid production. But as the summer of 2018 ensued, the threat that El Niño conditions may be returning set fishermen and processors on edge.

“We’re watching the inklings of an El Niño,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, in Buellton. “It’s an interesting season. It started well, and it’s still going… better than when we were in the throes of El Nino.”

In late June, Oregon had posted healthy landings, and Pleschner-Steele said harvest numbers had begun picking up in California. The commercial squid season runs from April 1 to March 31 of the following year, and seiners fish on a quota of 118,000 short tons. Pleschner-Steele says the fleet hasn’t caught the quota in recent years, given oceanic conditions and other factors, and that the set quota is an optimal harvest number.

As of June 28, the seiners had landed 9,931 tons of squid.

On July 3, Pleschner-Steele said it was unlikely the fleet would catch the quota this year. The pending shortage in the harvest might be a good thing, in terms of curbing volumes headed to troubled markets in China.

The recent trade fracas between China and the United States predicated a stiff tariff on U.S. squid products shipped to China, one of the West Coast industry’s primary markets.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Slump in global squid catch ignites fisheries management efforts

July 12, 2018 — A global slump in the catch of squid — that has caused alarm bells as prices for key commercial species rocket — is bringing some of the biggest industry players together in an effort to improve squid fisheries management. But significant obstacles stand in their way, with China’s role front and center.

In recent years squid has become an increasingly important commercial species. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), global squid catch has increased from 3.09 million metric tons in 2000, to 3.95m metric tons in 2015.

Squid previously discarded as worthless bycatch is now the target of international fleets.

But in 2016, global catch fell by over a million metric tons, to 2.79m metric tons (see graph below). Prices of Argentine shortfin squid, a key benchmark, have more than doubled. This season’s Argentine squid catch in international waters is said to be half last year’s levels, or worse.

Speaking to Undercurrent News, Sam Grimley, director of strategic initiatives at Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), an NGO, said concerns have mobilized industry stakeholders to come together to find solutions. Today, several fisheries improvement projects (FIP) are now underway or in the pipeline; five years ago, bar a couple in North America, there were none.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News