Saving Seafood

Gulf shrimp season closing Wednesday

May 8, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico commercial shrimp season for both Texas and federal waters will close 30 minutes after sunset on Wednesday, May 15, 2019, until a still-to-be-determined date in July.

The closing date is based on samples collected by the Coastal Fisheries Division of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) using trawl, bag seine, and other information gathered from the shrimping industry.

Data collected regarding TPWD bag seine catch rates of brown shrimp, mean lengths of shrimp in April 2019, percent of samples containing shrimp, and periods of maximum nocturnal ebb tidal flow indicate a May 15 closing date is appropriate. Typically, once the shrimp reach about 3½ inches long, they begin their migration to the gulf.

Read the full story at the Victoria Advocate

Omega Protein: New York menhaden law a ‘feel good’ for environmentalists

April 26, 2019 — Omega Protein says it won’t be hurt by a new law that blocks it from fishing for menhaden in New York state waters in order to preserve the forage fish for whales and other wildlife because it never goes there.

Rather, it’s “feel-good legislation for the environmental community, but it will have zero impact on the company’s operations”, commented Ben Landry, director of public affairs for the Houston, Texas-based division of Canada’s Cooke, when called by Undercurrent News Tuesday for a response.

The legislation passed unanimously, 61-0, by New York’s Senate in February (companion bills S. 2317 and A. 2571) went into effect immediately upon being signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on Thursday. The new law, which was sponsored by Democratic senator Todd Kaminsky and assembly member Steve Englebright, prohibits the taking of menhaden with the use of purse seine nets within three miles of the state’s coast.

Because menhaden are sensitive to oxygen levels in the water and can die off by the thousands when large schools become too confined in one area during hot weather, the law allows the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to issue a temporary order to allow purse seiners to reduce the population.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Game wardens, Coast Guard chase off illegal fishing boats

April 23, 2019 —  Texas game wardens and U.S. Coast Guard patrols chased eight “lanchas” fishing illegally in U.S. waters back into Mexico on Saturday, confiscating and removing 10 miles of illegal long-lines.

The Mexican fishermen were illegally setting long-lines in the Gulf of Mexico off Cameron County shores, and game wardens confiscated those and freed game fish including 40 sharks and king mackerel along with a single sea turtle.

Long-lining, which is banned in Texas waters, uses hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks attached to a single line. Texas waters stretch nine nautical miles from shore and, following a tip, the wardens and Coast Guard found the lanchas setting their lines a mile to a mile-and-a-half from shore in U.S. waters.

Game wardens found so many illegal long-lines had been set that they had to continue their mop-up operations Sunday.

Lanchas are speedy open boats favored by inshore fishermen and are usually 20 to 30 feet long and powered by outboard motors. The boats cross into U.S. waters and captains set long-lines and then head back to Mexican waters before returning five or six hours later to haul in their catch.

Read the full story at The Valley Morning Star

SeaWorld Publishes Decades of Orca Data to Help Wild Whales

April 23, 2019 — The endangered killer whales of the Pacific Northwest live very different lives from orcas in captivity.

They swim up to 100 miles (161 kilometers) a day in pursuit of salmon, instead of being fed a steady diet of baitfish and multivitamins. Their playful splashing awes and entertains kayakers and passengers on Washington state ferries instead of paying theme park customers.

But the captive whales are nevertheless providing a boon to researchers urgently trying to save wild whales in the Northwest.

SeaWorld, which displays orcas at its parks in California, Texas and Florida, has recently published data from thousands of routine blood tests of its killer whales over two decades, revealing the most comprehensive picture yet of what a healthy whale looks like. The information could guide how and whether scientists intervene to help sick or stranded whales in the wild.

Read the full story at NBC Washington

Famed music festival South by Southwest features panel on aquaculture for first time

March 12, 2019 — For the first time, famed music and culture festival South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, featured a panel on aquaculture dubbed “The Future of Food: Aquaculture” on 11 March.

The panel was led by Andrew Zimmern, host of The Travel Channel’s “Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,” who is also a restaurant operator. In addition to Zimmern, the panel included Rod Fujita, co-founder of the Environmental Defense Fund’s Oceans Program; Fiona Lewis, owner and operator of retail market The District Fishwife; and James Wright, editor of the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s “Global Aquaculture Advocate” magazine.

The need for more farmed fish is incredibly apparent, Zimmern noted during the panel. The health of the oceans is suffering, due to climate change, marine pollution, and other factors. While demand for seafood continues to grow with the global population, 60 percent of major fish species are fished at sustainable levels, 33 percent of fish species are fished at unsustainable levels, and just 7 percent of fish are under-fished, Zimmern said.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Suppliers Challenge Texas Law Targeting Shark Sales

February 20, 2019 — Sharks caught in U.S. waters are dressed in short order, fins are removed and carcasses are packed in trucks bound for Mexico. But an unconstitutional Texas law mandating sharks remain intact has cut off the Mexican market, shark-meat purveyors claim in a federal lawsuit.

Texas-based Ochoa Seafood Enterprises Inc. says in the complaint filed Tuesday in Houston federal court that its business depends on shark meat.

It gets 60 percent of its income from buying the meat from dealers in Louisiana, Florida and North Carolina and shipping all of it in refrigerated trucks through Texas to clients in Mexico City, where it’s filleted and put on grocery store shelves and restaurant menus.

But the company hit a snag last July when a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department agent contacted its owner and said an inspection of its refrigerated truck at the Mexico border had revealed it was shipping shark carcasses with the fins and tails removed in violation of Texas law.

Joined by its shark-meat supplier, Louisiana-based Venice Seafood LLC, and the trade group Sustainable Shark Alliance, Ochoa Seafood sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Executive Director Carter Smith.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Interior announces region-wide oil and gas lease sale for Gulf

February 15, 2019 — The Interior Department and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that BOEM will offer 78 million acres for a region-wide lease sale scheduled for March 2019. The sale would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lease Sale 252, scheduled to be livestreamed from New Orleans, will be the fourth offshore sale under the 2017-2022 National Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program (National OCS Program). Under this program, 10 region-wide lease sales are scheduled for the Gulf, where resource potential and industry interest are high, and oil and gas infrastructure is well established. Two Gulf lease sales will be held each year and include all available blocks in the combined Western, Central, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico Planning Areas.

Lease Sale 252 will include approximately 14,696 unleased blocks, located from three to 231 miles offshore, in the Gulf’s Western, Central and Eastern planning areas in water depths ranging from 9′ to more than 11,115′ (three to 3,400 meters). The following areas are excluded from the lease sale: blocks subject to the congressional moratorium established by the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act of 2006; blocks adjacent to or beyond the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone in the area known as the northern portion of the Eastern Gap; and whole blocks and partial blocks within the current boundaries of the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary.

The Gulf of Mexico OCS, covering about 160 million acres, is estimated to contain about 48 billion barrels of undiscovered technically recoverable oil and 141 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered technically recoverable gas.

Revenues received from OCS leases (including high bids, rental payments and royalty payments) are directed to the U.S. Treasury, certain Gulf Coast states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama), the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the Historic Preservation Fund.

Read the full story at Workboat

Shutdown might delay state management vote

January 28, 2019 — The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council opens its first 2019 meeting Monday in Orange Beach, Alabama, but its 17 members might not be able to take final votes on two key items.

Reef Fish Amendment 50, the hot-button item to hand recreational red snapper management to the five Gulf States, was scheduled for a final vote during the meeting’s run through Thursday.

A Gulf Council release explained, “Due to the partial government shutdown, the required Federal Register Notice was not published in advance of this meeting. As a result, the Council will not be able to take final action.”

The government re-opened Friday.

The other item is a move to move charterboat skippers into a new Federal Charter/Headboat Permits system.

The four-day agenda begins with committee meetings from 8:30 a.m.-5:15 p.m. Monday, and the Reef Fish Committee dominates Tuesday’s schedule and into Wednesday morning. The full council will meet from 11 a.m.-4:45 p.m. Wednesday with public comments taken from 1:30-4:30 p.m. before a 4:45-5:30 p.m. closed session and a full council meeting scheduled for 8:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Thursday.

Read the full story at The Advocate

Changes in Aquaculture have Consumers Buying ‘Higher Value’ Fish

January 25, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Consumer trends continue to drive an industry change from traditional aquaculture species like catfish to higher value species including redfish and hybrid striped bass, according to a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service expert. Redfish are trending upward in price and consumer demand along with other alternative species like hybrid striped bass compared to traditional aquaculture species like catfish. Dr. Todd Sink, AgriLife Extension aquaculture and fisheries specialist, College Station, said catfish, a longtime staple for Texas fish production, has experienced a recent decline in pricing and popularity, causing producers to look at other options. Catfish prices were around 93 cents per pound compared to the high of $1.35 per pound two years ago. As a result, discerning U.S.

Consumers are buying less catfish as household wealth and expendable income increase and because other options in the market are perceived as higher quality. Those include salmon, redfish and hybrid striped bass, which are a cross between white and striped bass, he said. Sink said poor prices and consumer trends have some catfish producers switching at least a portion of production to other species like redfish and hybrid striped bass, which bring higher prices – $3-$3.30 per pound and $3.30-$3.60 per pound respectively – and are experiencing increased demand.

“It’s fairly clear that consumer tastes are changing from what is perceived as lower-quality fish to higher-end, higher-value fish,” he said. “The cyclical movement on catfish has been downward for a while, so you have a lot of producers looking to diversify with other options that are trending upward in both price and consumer demand.”

Redfish and hybrid striped bass can handle a range of salinity levels. Bass prefer fresh water to 10 parts per thousand salinity, while redfish are typically produced at five parts per thousand to full-strength seawater.Redfish growth rate stalls when waters are 50 degrees or below, and freezing waters can cause die-offs without proper management, which limits production to warmer climates, Sink said. Hybrid striped bass are more tolerant of cool waters and are grown throughout the U.S., although their growth rate can also decrease drastically below 50 degrees.

Catfish production densities in Texas are around 12,000 pounds of fish per acre compared to 6,500 pounds of hybrid striped bass per acre and up to 8,000 pounds of redfish per acre, Sink said. Texas is the No. 1 producer of redfish and hybrid striped bass, including around 98 percent of the nation’s redfish production and more than half of hybrid striped bass, Sink said. Established producers continue to expand their capacity to meet demand. It’s difficult to ascertain redfish and hybrid striped bass production levels because U.S. Department of Agriculture census reports are infrequent, but Sink estimates Texas produces up to 2.7 million pounds of bass and 2.3 million pounds of redfish annually based on their 2013 report and farm expansions since that time.Hybrid striped bass being harvested at a commercial aquaculture operation in Texas.

By comparison, Texas ranks No. 4 in U.S. catfish production with 18.9 million pounds per year.Several farms are expanding redfish production across Texas with one currently adding 200 acres of production capacity to its operation, which represents a 30 percent increase in overall production, Sink said. Hybrid striped bass production has been expanding at a 3-5 percent rate annually in Texas and southeastern states.

“We don’t expect to see any slowdown in the expansion of both the market and production to meet that market demand over the next five to 10 years,” Sink said. “They’re expanding as they can to supply consumers in a market that is just starting to take off.” Sink said 90 percent of Texas’ hybrid striped bass production serves demand from high-end restaurants on East and West coasts, while nearly all of the state’s redfish production serves restaurants in large cities such as New Orleans and Houston.”

Producers are getting a premium price for their product, many farms are looking to expand, and some restaurants are operating their own farms just to ensure they can supply their consumer demand,” he said. “Right now they are serving niche markets, so there is room and reason to expand.

This story was originally published by SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Haddock broadline sales up, prices likely to rise

January 23, 2019 — Haddock, a species that for decades has largely been popular in New England and the Middle Atlantic, is starting to proliferate down the U.S. East Coast, according to the latest data.

Broadline sales of haddock increased in nearly every U.S. market between 2016 and 2018. At the low end, sales in the “East North Central” area stayed relatively flat, while sales in the West South Central region of the U.S. (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) increased by 92 percent.

Broadline sales everywhere else increased too: Middle Atlantic by seven percent, South Atlantic by 21 percent, Mountain-Pacific by 44 percent, West North Central by 49 percent, and East South Central by 48 percent.

Read the full story at Seafood Source