Saving Seafood

MARYLAND: Crab Population Is Not Being Overfished According To Blue Crab Report Released By Chesapeake Bay Program

July 1, 2021 — The Chesapeake Bay Program released the 2021 Blue Crab Advisory Report and it found that the blue crab population is not being overfished and is not depleted. The numbers may be down, but the population remains healthy.

“All of us who love blue crabs benefit from the science-based analysis and discussion in the Blue Crab Advisory Report. The report helps state resource managers set limits that leave enough crabs in the Bay to ensure healthy harvests for years to come,” said Sean Corson, Director, NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office and Chair, Sustainable Fisheries Goal Implementation Team.

The Winter Dredge Survey found that the blue cran population in the bay decreased from 405 million in 2020 to 282 million in 2021. Experts said this decline can be attributed to the juvenile crab population — crabs that will grow to harvestable size next year. That number is estimated to be 86 million, down from 185 million in 2020.

Read the full story at CBS Baltimore

Chesapeake Bay’s ‘dead zone’ to be smaller this summer, researchers say

June 30, 2021 — The Chesapeake Bay’s “dead zone,” the oxygen-starved blob of water that waxes and wanes each summer, is forecast to be smaller than average for a second consecutive year.

A consortium of research institutions announced June 23 that it expects the volume of this year’s dead zone to be 14% lower than average. In 2020, the zone was smaller than 80% of those monitored since surveying began in 1985.

The size of the summer dead zone is driven largely by how much excess nutrients flow off lawns and agricultural fields into the Bay during the preceding January to May, researchers say. Those nutrients — nitrogen and phosphorus — fuel explosive algae growth, triggering a chemical reaction that robs the water of oxygen as it dies back. The area is dubbed a “dead zone” because of the lack of life found within it.

This year, those first five months were slightly drier than usual, causing river flows entering the Bay to be 13% below average. As a result, the Chesapeake received 19% less nitrogen pollution compared with the long-term average at monitoring stations along nine major tributaries.

Efforts to curb nutrient pollution in the Bay’s 64,000-square-mile watershed also appear to have played a role in shrinking this year’s dead zone, scientists say. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has joined with Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia to implement a “pollution diet” for the Bay and its tributaries by 2025.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Commercial shrimp fishing could be coming to Virginia Beach

June 25, 2021 — Virginia could open a small commercial shrimp fishery off Virginia Beach, after a four-year experiment showed it is ecologically sustainable and commercially viable.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission plans to hold a public hearing July 27 to consider proposed regulations to allow trawling for shrimp. Unlike the shrimpers operating to the south, Virginia fishermen would be allowed to tow only small nets, to reduce the chance of trapping too many other species.

“This will be a small-boat, small-gear fishery,” Pat Geer, VMRC’s Fisheries Management Division chief told the commission in a recent briefing.

While shrimp have been seen in Virginia waters for years, fishermen began reporting large numbers of them in 2017.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA WIND TURBINE PILOT PROGRAM EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS

June 23, 2021 — The two-turbine pilot program of Dominion Energy’s Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind venture has yielded better results than expected.

The pilot is Dominion’s precursor for plans to install 180 wind turbines in a leased block on the Atlantic’s continental shelf roughly 27 miles off Virginia Beach, at a cost currently projected at $8 billion. In doing so, Dominion is following a General Assembly directive to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.

Running since October, the two 600-foot tall pilot turbines, each driven by three 253-foot-long blades, are giving Dominion’s engineers a real-world education in the potential for Virginia coastal wind power. The turbines’ efficiency over winter and spring is beating the forecasts, and their downtime for maintenance is less than expected (about two percent).  Automated controllers that turn their mounts to “aim” them and adjust the blade angles to “harvest” the wind have proven more effective than human operators.

Still to be determined, though, is how well they perform in the summer months when winds drop below the 5–8 knots needed to start the blades. Scientific field studies are showing fish using the area and minimal interactions with birds, according to cameras on the towers.

The news may be encouraging, but the project still faces many challenges. The immediate one is the environmental impact statement needed for the full 180-turbine wind farm. Dominion plans to have a draft out for public comment next year and a final version in the fall of 2023.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

University of Maryland environmental scientists give the Chesapeake Bay a C on health report

June 23, 2021 — After two straight year’s of declines due to record rainfall in 2018, the Chesapeake Bay’s health improved slightly in 2020, according to a report from the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science.

The center’s grade for the estuary ticked up from a C- back to a C. The entire watershed received a B- for the second straight year.

The grade is based on measurements of phosphorous, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, water clarity, aquatic grasses and bottom-dwellers.

Officials dubbed the data a mixed bag. For instance, the bay’s dissolved oxygen and nitrogen levels improved, but the scores for chlorophyll and phosphorous worsened. Water clarity, too, remains poor.

Read the full story at The Baltimore Sun

Coastal Virginia project set to be next Biden milestone for offshore wind

June 18, 2021 — Twenty-seven miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia, stand two offshore wind turbines, each taller than the Washington Monument, generating power for up to 3,000 homes.

In five years, Dominion Energy hopes to be finishing construction of its own ocean skyline — complete with 180 turbines standing roughly 200 feet taller than the pilot project, three underwater power substations, and a deep-sea transmission line to bring that electricity to shore.

The Virginia-based utility expects the commercial project, now the largest proposed offshore wind project in the country, to generate 2.6 gigawatts of electricity. That is enough zero-carbon electricity to power 660,000 homes.

Dominion Energy’s offshore wind efforts are a microcosm of what is happening all up and down the eastern seaboard. States and power companies invest billions in putting turbines in the water and turning East Coast ports into offshore wind industry hubs.

Read the full story at The Washington Examiner

Dominion Energy’s wind turbines have been more efficient than expected

June 18, 2021 — The automated controllers for the 253-foot blades on Dominion Energy Virginia’s two wind turbines, 27 miles off the Virginia Beach shore, had aimed them just a few degrees west of due north, so a 12-knot wind could turn them at a stately ten revolutions a minute.

And so, pumping some 12 megawatts of power back to the grid, it was another day of learning for the electric utility’s wind-power pilot project, as Dominion prepares to see how turbines perform in the calmer days of summer.

Dominion is planning to spend roughly $8 billion to install roughly 180 wind turbines, one third again as tall as the pilot project duo. The aim is to meet a General Assembly directive that it not emit any of the greenhouse gases by 2045.

Burning coal, oil and natural gas produces carbon gas emissions. Wind does not. When the wind farm is up and running it will generate enough electricity to power 660,000 homes.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Picture of Chesapeake microplastics grows clearer

June 14, 2021 — Scientists have long suspected that the tiny plastic particles floating in the Chesapeake Bay and its rivers — consumed by a growing number of aquatic species — are anything but harmless.

Now, studies by a regional workgroup are beginning to clarify the connections between the presence of microplastics and the harm they could be causing in the Bay region. This research, combined with international interest in microplastics, is setting the stage for more informed management decisions and a flurry of additional studies.

Globally, microplastics have been found in the air we breathe, the food we eat and in human organs — even in mothers’ placentas. It’s possible that humans are ingesting a credit card’s worth of microplastics every week. One of the ways people consume plastics is by eating seafood, though the tiny particles can also be swirling around in tap and bottled water. Assessing the risk of plastic consumption by humans is one important research goal.

In the Chesapeake Bay region, researchers also want to understand how microplastics could be impacting local ecosystems and aquatic species. A workgroup of the Chesapeake Bay Program, a state-federal partnership that leads the Bay restoration effort, identified microplastics in 2018 as a contaminant of mounting concern. A 2014 survey of four tidal tributaries to the Bay found microplastics in 59 out of 60 samples of various marine animals, with higher concentrations near urban areas. A Bay survey the next year found them in every sample collected.

Read the full story at The Bay Journal

New rockfish moratorium possible warns architect of ban that saved species 36 years ago

June 10, 2021 — The architect of a historic fishing moratorium that saved the rockfish in the Chesapeake Bay nearly 36 years ago is warning that it could happen again.

Former Maryland State Senator Gerald Winegrad told WUSA9 Wednesday that efforts to stop an alarming slide in the population of rockfish are not working and action has to be taken now.

It is a drastic prediction, because the iconic Chesapeake Bay species amount to a half-billion-dollar industry in the Eastern U.S., according to one study for a recreational fishing organization.

“It’s a potential if we wait two, three, or four years to really start cracking down on the harvest,” Winegrad said. “It is a potential that we would be forced into such a drastic measure.”

“Back in the 1980’s we were experiencing similar declines,” he added.

The famous five-year rockfish moratorium engineered by Winegrad and supporters in 1985 is credited with saving the species from complete collapse.

Read the full story at WUSA 9

StarKist to move headquarters from Pittsburgh to Virginia

May 26, 2021 — StarKist Co. has announced plans to move its corporate headquarters from Pittsburgh to Virginia next year.

StarKist, known for cartoon mascot Charlie the Tuna, said in a statement that the headquarters on Pittsburgh’s North Shore will close at the end of March 2022 “but the company will maintain a presence in the region.” The new headquarters will be in Virginia in the Washington D.C. area, StarKist said.

StarKist, originally the French Sardine Co., was founded in California in 1917 and became StarKist Foods in 1953. The seafood firm’s connection with landlocked Pittsburgh came when it was sold to H.J. Heinz Co. in 1963. StarKist was acquired in 2002 by Del Monte Foods and was purchased by Dongwon Industries of South Korea in 2008.

Read the full story at the Associated Press