Saving Seafood

Research finds trawling not as devastating as often portrayed

November 23, 2015 — An ongoing two-year independent study on trawling and its effect on benthic sea life — species that live on sea floors where trawling occurs – has found that the practice may not be as devastating as it is portrayed by some NGOs.

The study called, ‘Trawling: Finding Common Ground on the Scientific Knowledge Regarding Best Practices’, is being funded by the Walton Foundation and the Packard Foundation in partnership with the National Fisheries Institute, and is being done by a group of international scientists who are collecting and assessing data of global sea floors where trawling occurs.

The major data collection and analysis for the project has been completed, including assessments of mobile bottom contact gear in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa and most of the US, making it six times more extensive than and previous compilations.

According to Ricardo Amoroso of the University of Washington, who presented the data at this year’s Pacific Marine Expo in Seattle, public perception of trawling is often negative. Common public beliefs include the equivalent of 10 football fields are trawled every four seconds and that trawling is turning the seafloor into a desert.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Say Goodbye to Bycatch: Fishing Smarter in the 21st Century

November 23, 2015 — Fishing nets are blind. They have been for thousands of years.

Just like our ancestors, today’s commercial fishermen drop their nets, or “trawls”, into dark, opaque waters. What they pull up is anyone’s guess.

In addition to the fish being targeted, their trawls also contain “by-catch”: unintended fish species and ocean wildlife that are tossed back because they cannot be sold. The thing is, by the time the nets are hauled up, most of the by-catch is already dead.

So what’s the problem with catching a few extra fish?

What if I told you that by-catch is a major contributor to overfishing and poses a significant threat to the world’s oceans? Currently, in the United States, approximately 1 in 5 fish caught by commercial fishermen are by-catch. That’s 2 billion pounds of fish and other marine species wasted each year. Imagine inadvertently capturing, killing, and disposing of 4,800 blue whales…what an enormous, destructive waste.

In attempting to solve the by-catch problem, Rob Terry, founder of SmartCatch, asked himself: what if commercial fisheries could see inside their trawls before they reel them in?

In 2014, the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic (LEX-NG) Fund issued a grant to Rob Terry to develop SmartCatch’s Digital Catch Monitoring System, or DigiCatch for short. With DigiCatch technology, fisherman can reduce by-catch by having eyes underwater to monitor their trawls.

Read the full story at the National Geographic

DON CUDDY: Collaborative research can save the New England groundfish industry

October 25, 2015 — These days it seems as though every story about the New England groundfishery contains a headline with “crisis” or “disaster” in it, often followed by claims and counterclaims from fishermen, environmental groups and fishery regulators. Yet amidst all the controversy there is general agreement on one point: the need for better fishery science, to enable more timely and more accurate stock assessments.

The data used for fish stock assessment in the Northeast is derived primarily from the annual spring and fall surveys conducted by the Henry B. Bigelow, the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s 208-foot research vessel. The results are largely distrusted by many fishermen who contend that NOAA is using the wrong bottom-trawl gear on a vessel that is in any case too large for the task. Furthermore, fishermen say, random sampling of the vast survey area is not sufficient to develop an accurate picture of stock abundance.

To get a better picture of what is happening in the ocean the fishing industry has been urging NOAA Fisheries to engage in more collaborative research, using commercial fishing vessels with crews working alongside fishery scientists. This is not a radical idea. It is already in effect in fisheries on the West Coast and it is also happening here in the shallower coastal waters of the northeastern seaboard. The Bigelow’s deep draft of 19.5 feet precludes it from working inshore.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

How Restaurants and Fisheries Are Saving Edible Seafood From the Trash

October 22, 2015 — As demand for seafood rises, chefs have their seafood supplier on speed dial. And while species like tuna, cod, and halibut are popular, these days, the daily catch on the blackboard might be something unfamiliar — squirrel fish or the banded rudderfish. Don’t be scared off. Most likely it’s bycatch or trash fish. While perfectly edible and quite tasty, these fish are so named because they might otherwise be thrown overboard or ground into fishmeal because they aren’t the intended catch on commercial fishing boats.

If they had a choice, fisherman would rather not have to deal with bycatch, but fishing nets aren’t particular about what they scoop up. Bottom trawlers have little discretion when they drag along the seafloor. Longlines with baited hooks extend for 50 miles or more, which attracts anything that swims by — including unwanted edible fish as well as sea turtles, sharks, and other sea mammals. Opportunistic seabirds flock to longlines in hopes of an easy meal, often getting snagged.

All in all, it’s an inefficient way catch fish, and even the fisherman dislike it. The most recent tally from Johns Hopkins University estimates that in United States-controlled waters, 573 million pounds of fish are lost due to fisherman bycatch every year. This pales in comparison to the even-more striking fact that 51-63 percent of seafood is wasted at the consumer level.

Read the full story at Eater

 

Keep America Fishing Expresses Concern on Vast “No Fishing” Proposals for New England Waters

September 11, 2015 — Do you believe that the only way to conserve our public lands and waters is to lock recreational fishermen out? Do you view recreational fishing as an extractive activity on par with oil drilling and commercial bottom trawling?

Of course you don’t.

But right now, that’s what some anti-fishing organizations are actively accusing us of. When demanding areas off the New England coast be designated as “fully protected” marine monuments, their real agenda is to set up no-fishing zones.

The federal government is currently exploring this issue. There is the potential for all recreational fishing to be banned, even though there’s no evidence to suggest we pose a threat to the habitat or fish populations in these areas.

Read the full story from The Fishing Wire

A RENEGADE TRAWLER, HUNTED FOR 10,000 MILES BY VIGILANTES

July 28, 2015 — Aboard the Bob Barker, in the South Atlantic — As the Thunder, a trawler considered the world’s most notorious fish poacher, began sliding under the sea a couple of hundred miles south of Nigeria, three men scrambled aboard to gather evidence of its crimes.

In bumpy footage from their helmet cameras, they can be seen grabbing everything they can over the next 37 minutes — the captain’s logbooks, a laptop computer, charts and a slippery 200-pound fish. The video shows the fishing hold about a quarter full with catch and the Thunder’s engine room almost submerged in murky water. “There is no way to stop it sinking,” the men radioed back to the Bob Barker, which was waiting nearby. Soon after they climbed off, the Thunder vanished below.

It was an unexpected end to an extraordinary chase. For 110 days and more than 10,000 nautical miles across two seas and three oceans, the Bob Barker and a companion ship, both operated by the environmental organization Sea Shepherd, had trailed the trawler, with the three captains close enough to watch one another’s cigarette breaks and on-deck workout routines. In an epic game of cat-and-mouse, the ships maneuvered through an obstacle course of giant ice floes, endured a cyclone-like storm, faced clashes between opposing crews and nearly collided in what became the longest pursuit of an illegal fishing vessel in history.

Industrial-scale violators of fishing bans and protected areas are a main reason more than half of the world’s major fishing grounds have been depleted and by some estimates over 90 percent of the ocean’s large fish like marlin, tuna and swordfish have vanished. Interpol had issued a Purple Notice on the Thunder (the equivalent of adding it to a Most Wanted List, a status reserved for only four other ships in the world), but no government had been willing to dedicate the personnel and millions of dollars needed to go after it.

So Sea Shepherd did instead, stalking the fugitive 202-foot steel-sided ship from a desolate patch of ocean at the bottom of the Earth, deep in Antarctic waters, to any ports it neared, where its crews could alert the authorities. “The poachers thrive by staying in the shadows,” Peter Hammarstedt, captain of the Barker, said while trying to level his ship through battering waves. “Our plan was to put a spotlight on them that they couldn’t escape.”

Read the full story at The New York Times 

Deadline to apply to NEFMC’s Trawl Survey Advisory Panel Friday, July 31

July 27, 2015 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

The deadline is this week, Friday, July 31, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. if you would like to apply for a New England Fishery Management Council seat on the new Trawl Survey AP.  

In addition to addressing the objectives identified for this group, panel members may discuss concerns about trawl survey performance and data collection, methods to address or mitigate these concerns, and assist in promoting a better understanding of the results. The panel will include members of both the Mid-Atlantic and New England Fishery Management Councils, the Atlantic States Fisheries Commission, and fishing industry experts, as well as non-federal and Northeast Fisheries Science Center scientists.

Please see www.nefmc.org/news/nefmc-seeks-applicants-for-trawl-survey-advisory-panel for more details, including the full announcement, an application, and instructions about returning a completed application. If you have any questions please contact Pat Fiorelli at pfiorelli@nefmc.org.