Saving Seafood

Portland-based fishing boat sinks off Massachusetts coast with 4 aboard

November 24, 2020 — The Coast Guard was searching overnight for four crew members who were aboard a Portland-based fishing boat that sank off the coast of Massachusetts early Monday.

The Coast Guard cutter Vigorous, which is home-ported in Virginia Beach, Virginia, would search through the night for the crew members of the 82-foot Emmy Rose, and an HC-144 Ocean Sentry fixed-wing aircraft based at Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod was scheduled to fly over the search area at first light Tuesday, Coast Guard spokeswoman Amanda Wyrick said on Monday night.

The Coast Guard had not released the names of the boat’s captain, its crew, and the boat’s owner by Monday night, but the daughter of one of the crewmen told News Center Maine (WCSH/WLBZ) that she was not giving up hope.

“I just know if he’s out there. He won’t give up,” Reyann Matthews said of her father, Jeff Matthews.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

For the first time, Virginia is setting aside capital funds to restore its oyster population

November 23, 2020 — Virginia is setting $10 million in new funding for oyster restoration in the Chesapeake Bay, focusing on the Piankatank, Great Wicomico and York Rivers.

It marks the first time the state is using capital funds, usually reserved for building state facilities and roads, to restore natural resources.

Bringing oyster populations back has been a top priority because the shellfish play a key role in cleaning the bay. Oyster reefs also protect shorelines from erosion and are habitats for crabs and fish, and oysters are an important commercial fishery.

The state’s stepped up efforts with the signing of the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement in 2014 have restored 240.5 acres of oyster habitat, on top of the earlier restoration of 473 acres. The agreements set a goal of restoring oyster populations in 10 Bay tributaries by 2025.

Read the full story at The Baltimore Sun

MARYLAND: Ocean City hopes multi-state wind deal brings more collaboration to local level

November 5, 2020 — Last week Gov. Larry Hogan announced that Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina would work together to develop the offshore wind industry off the three states. Now Ocean City is hoping that same collaboration trickles down to their level.

The agreement between the three Mid-Atlantic states will form a joint partnership called the Mid-Atlantic Regional Transformative Partnership for Offshore Wind Energy Resources (SMART-POWER), according to a copy of the agreement.

The new partnership goal is to help more rapidly develop the offshore wind industry and “promote the Mid-Atlantic and southeast United States as an offshore wind energy industry hub.”

Maryland is currently in the process of building two offshore wind projects off the state’s coast.

Read the full story at Delmarva Now

North Carolina will work with Maryland, Virginia to grow offshore wind industry

November 2, 2020 — An agreement announced Thursday could help North Carolina turn winds over the Atlantic Ocean into electricity sooner, according to an industry official.

North Carolina will join Maryland and Virginia in the “Southeast and Mid-Atlantic Regional Transformative Partnership for Offshore Wind Energy Resources,” which they are calling SMART-POWER for short. Unlike those states, North Carolina doesn’t have legislative mandates or executive orders with targets for offshore wind production, much less actual turbines in the water like Virginia.

The new partnership means North Carolina can apply the lessons already learned in nearby states, said Katharine Kollins, president of the Southeastern Wind Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for the growth of wind energy.

“North Carolina has been trying to get traction within the wind industry for a while, and some of these states farther north are further along in the process,” Kollins told The News & Observer.

Read the full story at The News & Observer

Lawsuit: Pipeline could push 2 fish species to extinction

October 29, 2020 — Environmental groups have filed a legal challenge against the Mountain Valley Pipeline that says the project could push two endangered species of fish to extinction.

The Roanoke Times reports that the legal challenge was filed Tuesday in the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. It involves the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter species of fish.

The route of the 300-mile long pipeline would go from northern West Virginia to southwestern Virginia and connect with an existing pipeline in North Carolina.

The coalition of environmental groups also asked the federal appeals court to review a recent biological opinion from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The agency had found that construction of the pipeline is not likely to jeopardize protected fish, bats and mussels.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at CBS 19

Surveys find mixed spawning success for striped bass this year in Chesapeake

October 26, 2020 — Striped bass can’t get a break, it seems. With their East Coast population in decline from overfishing, the migratory species had mixed success reproducing in the Chesapeake Bay this year, surveys show.

The state Department of Natural Resources reported last week that its annual trawl survey of newly spawned striped bass in Maryland waters yielded just 2.5 little fish per net haul — far below the long-term average of 11.5 per sample.

“We just didn’t have good recruitment [of young fish] this year,” said Mike Luisi, the DNR’s director of fisheries monitoring and assessment. “It kind of just goes along with everything else in 2020 that’s just been tough.”

This is the second straight year and the 10th in the last 15 years that the DNR survey found evidence of below-average striped bass reproduction.

A separate study done by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science found an above-average number of juvenile striped bass in that state’s tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay. It was the eighth straight year in which the survey tallied an average or above-average abundance for the species.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

VIRGINIA: Glimmer of hope for striped bass: Numbers of young fish show stability

October 23, 2020 — The Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s annual count of young striped bass once again yielded a number higher than the historic average.

But the significant increase — 13.89 fish per sample, compared to last year’s 9.54 and the historical average of 7.77 from 1980 to 2009 — may be a fluke of bad weather and the pandemic, VIMS cautioned.

The survey has yielded results above that historic average for eight years running. It counts juveniles — typically 1-1/2 to 4 inches long — that will grow to the size fishermen want to catch in three to four years.

The survey is based on what nets haul from 18 sites in the James, York and Rappahannock river watersheds. Its biologists usually draw samples from July to early September, but this year, Tropical Storm Isaias and COVID-19 precautions mean 19% of samples weren’t completed. Other indices suggest juvenile striped bass populations are fairly stable, VIMS said. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources, for instance, reported a below-average count in its 2020 survey, but the pattern of below average Maryland and above average Virginia counts has been seen in 2013, 2016 and 2019.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Cooke-owned Omega Protein calls 10% cut in menhaden fishing quota ‘not unreasonable’

October 22, 2020 — Cooke-owned Omega Protein in Virginia said the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s (ASMFC) decision on Tuesday to cut the US Atlantic coast menhaden quota by 10 percent “is not an unreasonable step.”

ASMFC voted 13 to 5 to cut the quota to 194,400 metric tons for the 2021 and 2022 seasons.

In response to the reduced catch limit, Omega released a statement saying the company “recognizes the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s decision to reduce the coastwide [harvest] by 10 percent, while not preferred, is not an unreasonable step toward moving to ecological management of this species,” reported the Chesapeake Bay Magazine.

Read the full story at IntraFish

ASMFC Horseshoe Crab Board Sets 2021 Specifications for Horseshoe Crabs of Delaware Bay Origin

October 21, 2020 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Horseshoe Crab Management Board approved the harvest specifications for horseshoe crabs of Delaware Bay origin. Under the Adaptive Resource Management (ARM) Framework, the Board set a harvest limit of 500,000 Delaware Bay male horseshoe crabs and zero female horseshoe crabs for the 2020 season. Based on the allocation mechanism established in Addendum VII, the following quotas were set for the States of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia, which harvest horseshoe crabs of Delaware Bay origin:

The Board chose a harvest package based on the Delaware Bay Ecosystem Technical Committee’s and ARM Subcommittee’s recommendation. The ARM Framework, established through Addendum VII, incorporates both shorebird and horseshoe crab abundance levels to set optimized harvest levels for horseshoe crabs of Delaware Bay origin. The horseshoe crab abundance estimate was based on data from the Benthic Trawl Survey conducted by Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech). This survey, which is the primary data source for assessing Delaware Bay horseshoe crab abundance, does not have a consistent funding source. Members of the Delaware and New Jersey U.S. Congressional Delegations, with the support of NOAA Fisheries, have provided annual funding for the survey since 2016.

For more information, please contact Caitlin Starks, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at 703.842.0740 orcstarks@asmfc.org.

Menhaden board lowers allowable catch by 10% for Atlantic coast states, Chesapeake Bay’s cap stays the same

October 20, 2020 — The Atlantic Menhaden Management Board voted to lower the total allowable catch for Atlantic menhaden coast-wide by 10% in response to a change in management that considers the role the tiny oily fish plays as food for others.

After a few hours of discussion Tuesday morning, the board voted at its online meeting to lower the allowable catch to 194,400 metric tons for 2021 and 2022. No change was made to the allocation of menhaden that can be caught in the Chesapeake Bay, which is capped at 51,000 metrics tons. Maryland was among the states voting in favor of the change.

The total allowable catch was last changed in 2017, when the board increased it from 200,000 metric tons to 216,000 metric tons.

Earlier this year, the Atlantic Menhaden Management Board, a subset of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, approved the use of a new ecological reference point model to inform management that considers menhaden’s role as food for other species such as rockfish and bluefish. Instead of focusing on menhaden abundance as a single species, the model examines the interactions between the tiny silver fish and other key species in the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean, where it plays a vital role in the food chain, eating up plankton and being eaten in turn by larger fish and whales.

Using those new reference points, which assume striped bass are also fished sustainably, managers calculated different catch scenarios for the next two years.

Read the full story at the Capital Gazette