Saving Seafood

ASMFC 2016 Summer Meeting Supplemental Material Now Available

July 27, 2016 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

Supplemental materials for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s 2016 Summer Meeting have been posted here for the following Boards/Committees (click on “Supplemental” following each relevant committee header to access the information).

Executive Committee – Memo on Plan Development Team Member; ACCSP Governance (Transition Document, Draft MOU, Staff Flowchart)

South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board – Cobia Management White Paper; FMP Reviews for Atlantic Croaker and Red Drum

Tautog Management Board – 2016 Tautog Regional Stock Assessments for Long Island Sound and New Jersey/New York Bight; Regional Assessment Desk Review; Tagging Trial Preliminary Results

Horseshoe Crab Management Board – Revised Draft Agenda and Meeting Overview; Memo on Ecobait Trials; Draft Recommendations for ARM Framework Review; Draft Biomedical Exceedance Recommendations;

Coastal Sharks Management Board – FMP Review; Advisory Panel Nomination and Request for Review of New Membership

Atlantic Menhaden Management Board – Advisory Panel Report on Draft Addendum I; Draft Public Information Document for Amendment 3; Public Comment

ACCSP Executive Committee – ACCSP Governance (Transition Document, Draft MOU, Staff Flowchart)

Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board – FMP Review

ISFMP Policy Board – Cobia Management White Paper; Risk and Uncertainty Policy Workgroup Memo; Habitat Committee Memo on Seismic Testing; MAFMC Correspondence to BOEM; SCWF Correspondence to SAFMC

ACCSP Coordinating Council – ACCSP Governance (Transition Document, Draft MOU, Staff Flowchart)

American Eel Management Board – New York Yellow Eel Allocation Proposal

American Lobster Management Board – American Lobster Technical Committee Memo on the Effect of Gauge Changes on Exploitation, SSB, Reference Abundance, and Catch; GARFO letter to ASMFC on the Southern New England Stock of American Lobster; American Lobster Plan Review Team & Advisory Panel Comments on Maine Conservation Equivalency Proposal

For ease of access, supplemental meeting materials have been combined into one PDF here.

As a reminder, Board/Section meeting proceedings will be broadcast daily via webinar beginning at 10:15 a.m. on August 2nd and continuing daily until the conclusion of the meeting (expected to be 4:00 p.m.) on Thursday August  4th. The webinar will allow registrants to listen to board/section deliberations and view presentations and motions as they occur. No comments or questions will be accepted via the webinar. Should technical difficulties arise while streaming the broadcast, the boards/sections will continue their deliberations without interruption. We will attempt to resume the broadcast as soon as possible. Please go here to register.

Illegally caught striped bass seized

July 26, 2016 — Environmental Police confiscated 388 pounds of illegally caught striped bass with a market value of $2,400 Sunday from six commercial vessels in the southern Cape Cod Bay area, Major Patrick Moran of the Massachusetts Environmental Police said.

A patrol boat, two smaller boats and an undercover surveillance vessel saturated the commercial striped bass fleet after receiving numerous complaints, Moran said. Officers confiscated the striped bass along with fishing gear valued at $3,000 and issued about $1,000 in fines.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

MARYLAND: Striped bass poachers banned from fishery for life

June 29, 2016 — EASTON, Md. — Two Talbot County Watermen received lifetime bans from the striped bass fishery by the Maryland Department of Natural Resource (DNR) after being convicted of poaching and selling nearly $500,000 of striped bass over a period of four years.

Tilghman Island watermen Michael D. Hayden Jr. and William J. Lednum were convicted in 2015 and 2014, respectively, of running an illegal striped bass operation.

In addition to the $498,000 in court-ordered restitution to the state of Maryland, both Hayden and Lednum received lifetime revocations of their striped bass fishing licenses and were suspended from all commercial fishing activities for the next year, followed by a four-year probationary period in all other fisheries, according to DNR.

Their striped bass allocations are being returned to the commercial fishery.

“The department has acted to protect the species as well as the interests of those who rely on the striped bass fishery for their livelihood,” said DNR Secretary Mark Belton. “We hope this sends a strong signal to poachers that the state is serious about protecting the fishery.”

Read the full story at the Star Democrat

As Long Island Sound warms, its fish species are changing

June 13, 2016 — During a day of fishing on Long Island Sound earlier this month, Richie Nickerson of Niantic caught 10 legal-sized scup, a black sea bass and a northern kingfish — all species he wasn’t likely to land when he first started angling in these waters 30 years ago.

Tony Murphy of Berlin, who fished from the Black Hawk charter boat with Nickerson, also reeled in a haul of scup, also called porgies, as did most of the other 38 fishermen on board that day.

“It used to be we’d strictly catch bluefish and striped bass,” Murphy said. “But now, there are just so many porgies.”

Scup, black sea bass and northern kingfish are just three of the species once more prevalent in warmer mid-Atlantic waters that are now becoming abundant in Long Island Sound.

As the warmer-water species move in, they compete for food and habitat with cold-water species, such as winter flounder and cod, that are now becoming scarce.

“Everything’s changing,” said Greg Dubrule, owner and captain of the Black Hawk, which takes daily boatloads of anglers into the Sound from its docks on the Niantic River.

“There’s no question that, because of the warmer water, we’re seeing more scup and black sea bass, which had always been a New Jersey and southern Long Island fish,” he said.

“Our mainstay used to be winter flounder and cod, but now it’s sea bass, scup and fluke,” he added, “and we’re catching a lot of trigger fish, which we never used to see.”

Read the full story at The Day

Rep. Zeldin’s Bill for Long Island Fishermen Passes House of Representatives

June 13, 2016 — On Tuesday, June 7, 2016, Congressman Lee Zeldin’s (R, NY-1) EEZ Transit Zone Clarification Act (HR 3070) unanimously passed the House of Representatives with bipartisan support. You can watch passage of the bill here. The Congressman’s bill, which passed the House Natural Resources Committee with unanimous support on Wednesday, March 15, 2016, would clarify federal laws governing the management of the striped bass fishery in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) between Montauk, New York, and Block Island, Rhode Island, permitting striped bass fishing in these waters.

Between New York State waters, which end three miles off of Montauk Point, New York, and the Rhode Island boundary, which begins three miles off of Block Island, there is a small area of federally controlled water that is considered part of the EEZ. The EEZ, which extends up to 200 miles from the coast, are waters patrolled by the Coast Guard, where the United States has exclusive jurisdiction over fisheries and other natural resources. Striped bass fishing has been banned in the EEZ since 1990. Congressman Zeldin’s EEZ Transit Zone Clarification Act would authorize the Secretary of Commerce to open this area to striped bass fishing.

Read the full story at Long Island Exchange

Striped bass regulations vary across North Carolina

April 14, 2016 — Striped bass regulations vary according to the body of water across North Carolina, including five distinct areas along the coast.

Stripers moving up the Roanoke River to spawn must come in from the Atlantic Ocean Management Area and pass through the Albemarle Sound Management Area before reaching the Roanoke River Management Area. These fish are subject to different regulations as they journey from the ocean to the spawning grounds near Weldon.

The Albemarle Sound Management Area begins at Oregon Inlet and extends inland to the mouths of the Roanoke, Cashie, Middle and Eastmost Rivers near Plymouth. This includes the northern end of the Pamlico Sound, Roanoke Sound, Croatan Sound, Currituck Sound and Albemarle Sound. It also includes all rivers and creeks feeding into these sounds inland to Edenton. Effective Jan. 1, striper season in the ASMA is open all year unless the annual quota of 68,750 pounds is caught. Eighteen inches is the minimum size, and fishermen may keep two per day.

See the full story at the North Carolina Sportsman

MASSACHUSETTS: Will Sea Bass Quota Go Up or Down?

April 7, 2016 — Last year, sea bass literally put some commercial fishermen in the black.

The black fish with the delicious pure white meat abundantly filled local waters and made up some financial losses for fishermen curtailed by otherwise stringent regulations on striped bass, cod, flounder and other lucrative species.

But that might change soon.

In a memo dated March 18 from the Division of Marine Fisheries in Boston, while regulations for striped bass, bluefish, fluke and scup will likely remain unchanged this year in Massachusetts, “Regulations for black sea bass have been amended to achieve a mandatory 23 percent harvest reduction.”

The Massachusetts regulatory agency says these revisions are being implemented along the entire Atlantic seaboard via “emergency rulemaking” to take effect prior to the onset of the 2016 season. Public hearings will be held to discuss proposals before changes are finalized.

Read the full story at Newport This Week

MARYLAND: Oyster study bill advances despite watermen objections

April 5, 2016 — State fisheries managers use science-backed information to determine how many striped bass, blue crabs and menhaden can be caught each season without damaging the overall health of each species.

But not the Chesapeake Bay’s oysters.

A bill passed by the Maryland Senate and pending before the House would require University of Maryland scientists to establish harvest limits that ensure a sustainable catch for years to come. Representatives of the seafood industry are branding the measure as costly and unnecessary.

The bill’s supporters, however, say Maryland’s oyster population is being overfished, pointing to estimates that it is 1 percent of its historic size.

“We’ve learned the hard way that nature, especially with these oysters, is not inexhaustible,” said Bill Goldsborough, a fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “So this attitude, this disregard for science, led to the depletion of this valuable resource and the unstable boom-and-bust pattern of fishery that we see today.”

Maryland’s oyster haul plummeted from an all-time high of 15 million bushels in the 1880s to 26,000 bushels in 2004. After surpassing 100,000 for several years, the total harvest rocketed above 300,000 in 2013 and 2014. Researchers attribute the jump to hearty reproduction in 2010 and 2012.

The size of oyster catch this season, which officially ended Thursday, is expected to be lower again, reflecting poorer reproduction in subsequent years.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

On Long Island Sound, Discord Over Push for Fishing Rights

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — February 26, 2016 — The proposal: to open part of Long Island Sound, the sliver of ocean separating New York’s Long Island from Connecticut and Rhode Island, to striped bass fishing by shifting it from federal to state control.

The problem: The New York congressman who’s pushing the idea didn’t check first with Rhode Island or Connecticut, where lawmakers say the proposal is pointless at best and environmentally dangerous at worst.

Striped bass fishing is allowed in state waters but banned in the federal area, and Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York says he wants to restore local control and common sense to fishery management. He introduced a bill to change the boundary for 150 square miles.

Though Rhode Island would get control over a slice, U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat, said the notion of removing federal jurisdiction just doesn’t make sense here.

“I’m not sure the rationale for it,” Cicilline said.

U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, another Rhode Island Democrat, called the bill “an odd little thing.” He said his office contacted Rhode Island fishermen and regulators and “nobody’s very interested in it.”

Recreational anglers who catch striped bass legally in state waters sometimes stray into, or travel through, the federal exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, between areas south of Montauk, New York, and south of Point Judith, Rhode Island.

According to Zeldin’s office, some have been fined for having striped bass on board because they couldn’t prove the bass were caught legally in state waters. Zeldin, whose district encompasses eastern Long Island, is responding to concerns from local fishermen, his office said.

Zeldin is a vulnerable freshman lawmaker who has been targeted by Democrats in a swing district that President Barack Obama narrowly won twice. Passage of the legislation could help him in his re-election bid.

Joe McBride, of the Montauk Boatmen & Captains Association, publicly thanked Zeldin for his leadership on the issue. Sport fishing is important to the Long Island economy, especially in Montauk, McBride said.

Connecticut’s entire congressional delegation signed a letter opposing the “misguided bill,” citing the potential for “major economic losses” to the Connecticut fishing industry and a “major blow” to efforts to rebuild the striped bass stock.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Climate cycle could determine the reproductive success of menhaden

February 19, 2016 — Scientists have long puzzled over what drives the reproductive success of Atlantic menhaden, a tiny but critical East Coast fish.

A new study, published in the ICES Journal of Marine Science and supported by the Lenfest Ocean Program, provides a partial answer: An oceanic climate cycle known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or AMO.

The finding is likely to be useful in improving the way scientists assess the species and the way managers set catch limits.

Menhaden is a small, oily fish that provides food for striped bass, bluefish, and several other species, as well as bait for fishermen.

It also is the target of the largest fishery on the East Coast, which is centred in Virginia and catches menhaden for use in nutritional supplements, animal feed, and fertilizer.

Setting catch limits has proved challenging, in part because no one has been able to say what drives recruitment—a technical term for how many young fish are produced. Recruitment largely determines how much fishing a population can sustain.

Tom Miller of the University of Maryland, and one of the authors of the study, explained that it is very difficult to understand and manage this stock.

To address this, the researchers used a statistical model designed for disorderly data like those on the abundance of young menhaden. They considered 16 factors that might be driving that abundance, including climatic cycles, intensity of fishing, temperature, salinity, and predator abundance.

Read the full story at FIS