Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Island fishermen implore state to protect squid

February 23, 2017 — For the past couple of years, Nantucket fishermen have had a hard time finding striped bass in the rips and alongshore where they were accustomed to catching them.

They think they know why: no squid.

“This was where all the bass were caught. Now, no bait, no fish, no stripers to speak of,” said Pete Kaizer, a charter boat captain and commercial tuna fisherman.

Kaizer and other Nantucket fishermen petitioned the state Division of Marine Fisheries to prohibit fish draggers and scallopers that tow nets or large metal dredges along the ocean bottom from state waters, up to 3 miles out from shore all around the island. The ban would run from May 1 to Oct. 31 with the idea of protecting spawning longfin squid.

Kaizer said squid boats target the squid when they spawn because they come together in large schools and are easier to catch. Following mating, female squid drop to the bottom and put down a sticky substance that adheres to the sandy bottom, rocks or vegetation. They then deposit tubelike sacks containing over 100 embryos apiece, that stick to that patch and can resemble an underwater chrysanthemum, but are prosaically known as “squid mops.”

Nets or dredges towed across the bottom can dislodge these mops or even bring them up to the surface along with fish or squid. There is some debate about whether any young can survive this, but some lab studies have shown that older embryos hatch prematurely when the mop is dislodged from its adhesive anchor and tend to die, said Lisa Hendrickson, a fishery biologist specializing in squid with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Regulators: Loophole in striped bass fishery needs closing

February 9, 2017 — Massachusetts fisheries officials want to to close a loophole in state regulations that resulted in what they believe were illegal landings of striped bass last year.

At a public hearing at Massachusetts Maritime Academy Wednesday night, Division of Marine Fisheries Deputy Director Dan McKiernan said the state is looking to reduce the number of striped bass that commercial fishermen could land from 15 down to two, if they’re fishing from shore.

“What happened last year was disgusting,” said Patrick Paquette of the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association, which is composed of both commercial and recreational fishermen. “There was a rampant black market at the (Cape Cod) canal. Plenty of guys were taking fish from friends, putting them in coolers, and selling them under their boat permit.”

Under state striped bass fishing regulations, a commercial fisherman can buy a boat permit that allows him or her to catch and sell up to 15 fish a day. There is also a less expensive individual permit under which he or she can land two fish a day from shore. The state limited commercial fishing to two days a week. In bad weather, some fishermen with boat permits fished from shore, and could technically land their 15 fish.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

More liberal rules might come to US striped bass fishery

February 7, 2017 — Interstate fishing managers are considering liberalizing rules for commercial and recreational fishing of striped bass along the East Coast.

The regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission says the possibility of new rules arises from concerns raised over economic hardships in the fishery in the Chesapeake Bay.

The commission says rules enacted in 2015 required reductions in catch of striped bass. But an updated assessment of the stock last year showed that striped bass aren’t being overfished.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Virginian-Pilot

ASMFC Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board Initiates Development of Draft Addendum V to Consider Liberalizing Management Measures

February 3, 2017 — The following has been released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board initiated the development of Draft Addendum V to Amendment 6 to the Atlantic Striped Bass Fishery Management Plan (FMP) to consider liberalizing coastwide commercial and recreational regulations. The Board’s action responds to concerns raised by Chesapeake Bay jurisdictions regarding continued economic hardship endured by its stakeholders since the implementation of Addendum IV and information from the 2016 assessment update indicating fishing mortality is below the target. 

Addendum IV, implemented for the 2015 fishing season, required coastwide harvest reductions to reduce fishing mortality (F) to a level at or below the target. Specifically, coastal fisheries implemented measures to reduce harvest by 25% compared to 2013 levels, and Chesapeake Bay fisheries implemented measures to reduce harvest by 20.5% compared to 2012 levels. Additionally, an objective of Addendum IV is to protect the 2011 year class.

According to the results of the 2016 stock assessment update, the Atlantic striped bass stock is not overfished and overfishing is not occurring. Furthermore, Addendum IV successfully reduced fishing mortality to a level below the target (F in 2015 is estimated at 0.16), and length-frequency data from the catch in 2015 indicates a strong presence of the 2011 year class which is anticipated to join the coastal spawning population this year.

A draft of the addendum will be presented for Board review in May. For more information, please contact Max Appelman, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mappelman@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

CHRISTI LINARDICH: Fishing isn’t the problem

January 12, 2017 — “Let scientists manage menhaden approach” (editorial, Dec. 28) perpetuates the belief that so many people seem to have lately — that the largest impact on striped bass populations is lack of menhaden to eat.

According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, menhaden biomass was lowest during the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, but during that time (1993-2004, to be exact) striper recruitment was strong.

This is not easily explained, but neither is the simplified belief that taking a sustainable amount of menhaden out is magically taking striper off the end of people’s fishing lines.

Critics conveniently ignore the fact that the Chesapeake Bay and associated rivers, which striper depend on to complete their reproductive cycle and menhaden rely on for nursery grounds, has been severely altered by humans through dams and pollution.

Read the full letter to the editor at the Virginian-Pilot

Fisheries officials seek count of booming seal population

December 19, 2016 — NANTUCKET, Mass. — Fisheries officials in Massachusetts are seeking a head count of the booming seal population that’s drawn great white sharks to Cape Cod waters in greater numbers.

The Cape Cod Times reported earlier this month that state Division of Marine Fisheries Director David Pierce said determining the size of the gray seal population size is “extremely important” for ecosystem management in New England at the recent Nantucket Seal Symposium.

But National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials warned the count could cost as much as $500,000.

New England fishermen have been calling for a seal population count for years to gauge its impact on cod, haddock, flounder, striped bass and other important species.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Times

Menhaden catch cap eased

November 3, 2016 — Meeting in Bar Harbor, Maine, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to allow a 6.5% increase in the harvest of menhaden. The fish are used to make animal meal and health supplements and as bait to catch crabs, striped bass and other fish. But they’re also considered a vital link in the marine food chain and a staple in the diet of striped bass and other predators. For all of those reasons their management stirs intense passion.

The commission, which regulates near-shore fishing from Maine to Florida, had deadlocked in August over whether to raise the allowable menhaden catch next year. It began its final meeting of the year discussing the need to set some limit or there would be no cap at all in 2017.

Fishing interests have been pushing for a substantial catch increase, arguing that recent studies showed there were plenty of fish in coastal waters and no risk of taking too many. Yet, conservationists urged the commission to stay the course saying the fisheries panel should first figure out how many menhaden are needed as food for other fish and then look at reallocating the commercial harvest to spread the catch around more.

This is the latest round in a debate that goes back to December 2012, when the commission cut the catch 20% coastwide after a stock assessment indicated the fish population was overfished. It was the first time the commission set a coastwide harvest limit for menhaden.

A subsequent study finished last year, which used new models and new information, contradicted the earlier one finding that menhaden weren’t overfished. Further analysis by the commission’s technical advisory committee suggested the fish were abundant enough that catch limits could be raised by as much as 40% without any risk of taking too many.

Commercial fishing interests pressed for an increase of at least 20% from the current coastwide cap of 188,000 metric tons, arguing that it would ease the economic pinch that fishermen have had to endure the last four years because of a cut they said the science showed was unwarranted. But conservationists resisted, pointing out that the commission already raised the catch limit 10% last year in response to the more optimistic stock assessment and that it had not yet figured out how many menhaden should be left uncaught to feed other species.

Bill Goldsborough, senior fisheries scientist with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and a member of Maryland’s delegation to the commission, appealed for the panel to hold the line on the harvest cap. There are signs menhaden are increasing in number and showing up in waters off New England where they haven’t been seen in years. But while surveys show increases in juvenile fish along much of the coast, sampling has not found a similar upswing in the bay, one of the primary nursery areas.

Read the full story at the Rappahannock Record

MAINE: Taking Down Dams and Letting the Fish Flow

October 24, 2016 — BANGOR, Maine — Joseph Zydlewski, a research biologist with the Maine Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of the United States Geological Survey, drifted in a boat on the Penobscot River, listening to a crackling radio receiver. The staccato clicks told him that one of the shad that his team had outfitted with a transmitter was swimming somewhere below.

Shad, alewives, blueback herring and other migratory fish once were plentiful on the Penobscot. “Seven thousand shad and one hundred barrels of alewives were taken at one haul of the seine,” in May 1827, according to one historian.

Three enormous dams erected in the Penobscot, starting in the 1830s, changed all that, preventing migratory fish from reaching their breeding grounds. The populations all but collapsed.

But two of the dams were razed in 2012 and 2013, and since then, fish have been rushing back into the Penobscot, Maine’s largest river.

“Now all of a sudden you are pulling the cork plug and giving shad access to a truckload of good habitat,” Dr. Zydlewski said. Nearly 8,000 shad have swum upstream this year — and it’s not just shad.

More than 500 Atlantic salmon have made the trip, along with nearly two million alewives, countless baby eels, thousands of mature sea lamprey and dozens of white perch and brook trout. Striped bass are feeding a dozen miles above Bangor in waters closed to them for more than a century.

Nationwide, dam removals are gaining traction. Four dams are slated for removal from the Klamath River alone in California and Oregon by 2020.

Just a few of these removals have occurred on such large rivers, which play an outsize role in coastal ecosystems. But the lessons are the same everywhere: Unplug the rivers, and the fish will return.

Read the full story at the New York Times

Science on Menhaden Continues to Support Increased Quota

August 3, 2016 — The following was released by the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition:

Peter Baker, the Director of U.S. Oceans, Northeast for the Pew Charitable Trusts, argues in a recent article that fisheries managers should not raise the coastwide Atlantic menhaden harvest level (“10 Reasons to Maintain the Atlantic Menhaden Catch Limit in 2017”). But this recommendation goes against the last two years of menhaden science, which found in 2015 that the stock is healthy and sustainably managed, and this year finds that the quota can be significantly and sustainably raised.

Mr. Baker writes that “the [Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission] created the first coastwide catch limit in 2013 and set the allowable catch lower than the amount taken in preceding years in order to help menhaden rebuild.” In fact, the cuts were made to address overfishing that turned out never to have existed. The quota cut was instituted following a flawed stock assessment in 2010 that underestimated the health of the menhaden population, leading to an unnecessarily strict quota. Contrary to that assessment, menhaden was, and remains, a healthy and vibrant stock.

The numbers are not better now because cuts allowed the stock to rebuild, but rather because the earlier numbers were inaccurately low and have been corrected in the most recent assessment. The more recent, accurate ASMFC assessment, released in 2015, conclusively found that menhaden was “neither overfished nor experiencing overfishing” – in other words, the stock is sustainable and successfully managed.

Scientists with the ASMFC Menhaden Technical Committee recently gave regulators further evidence in favor of a quota increase. In a series of simulations – 9,000 to be precise – the Technical Committee analyzed what would happen if the menhaden quota was raised by various increments, up to a 40 percent increase. Their conclusion: there is a zero percent chance of overfishing occurring should the quota be increased.

Mr. Baker also questions the ecological effect a quota increase would have. Menhaden play a role in the food chain, with juvenile menhaden—menhaden from ages 0-1—serving as food for larger predators. Commercial fishermen do not fish for juvenile menhaden, a fact supported by the available data.

Additionally, Mr. Baker alleges that striped bass and weakfish populations are diminished because they have a lack of menhaden to consume. But striped bass and weakfish are susceptible to a wide variety of environmental factors, which regularly cause fluctuations in the population.

Lastly, Mr. Baker argues that the public supports the existing quota limitations based upon the results of online petitions with leading questions, funded and promoted by his organization.  The accuracy of Pew’s campaigns notwithstanding, commercial fisheries are not managed by popularity contests.

Over the past three years, commercial fisheries and related industries have suffered lost revenue and workers have lost jobs.  We now know that the unnecessarily low quotas were based on flawed data.

It is time to set quotas based on solid data and scientific review, not by demands made in well-funded media campaigns from the Pew Charitable Trusts and other special interest groups.

About the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition
The Menhaden Fisheries Coalition is a collective of menhaden fishermen, related businesses, and supporting industries. Comprised of over 30 businesses along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, the Menhaden Fisheries Coalition conducts media and public outreach on behalf of the menhaden industry to ensure that members of the public, media, and government are informed of important issues, events, and facts about the fishery.

New Supplemental Materials for ASMFC Horseshoe Crab and Striped Bass Boards

August 1, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

There are two new supplemental materials for the Horseshoe Crab and Atlantic Striped Bass Boards, which will be meeting during the Commission’s 2016 Summer Meeting this week.  The meeting materials are as follows and can be found on the meeting page here as Supplemental 2 at each board header (links are also provided below). Copies of these materials will be provided at the meeting for Board members.

Horseshoe Crab Management Board – a Conference Call Summary of the Horseshoe Crab Technical Committee and the Delaware Bay Ecosystem Technical Committee; and Conference Call Summary of the Horseshoe Crab Advisory Panel

Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – Advisory Panel Nomination