Saving Seafood

Federal court rules against Atlantic Coast Pipeline

August 7, 2018 –The Atlantic Coast Pipeline faces problems similar to the now-halted Mountain Valley Pipeline.

On Monday, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals threw out the National Park Service’s permit for the ACP.

As a result of this decision, if ACP construction continues along its 600-mile-route from West Virginia through Virginia and into North Carolina, it will be operating without two crucial federal permits.

The ACP is proposed to go through Highland, Augusta and Nelson counties.

“This is an example of what happens when dangerous projects are pushed through based on politics rather than science,” said D.J. Gerken, attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. “This pipeline project was flawed from the start and Dominion and Duke’s pressure tactics to avoid laws that protect our public lands, water and wildlife are now coming to light.”

The SELC is calling on the Federal Regulatory Commission to stop all construction along the ACP route due to the decision from the 4th Circuit Court and the recent stop work order placed on the MVP.

“It’s time to pause and take a look at this project for what it is an unnecessary pipeline that’s being pushed through to benefit Dominion Energy, not the people of Virginia and North Carolina,” said Greg Buppert, senior attorney for the SELC.

According to a statement from the Sierra Club, Virginians will pay $2 billion more for the ACP than they would if the utility used existing pipelines.

Read the full story at WSLS

Governor Northam announces consultant to make Virginia a leader in offshore wind power

July 26, 2018 — Virginia’s foray into offshore wind power got a lift Wednesday when Gov. Ralph Northam announced international energy consultant BVG Associates was hired to leverage the state as a coastal leader for the industry.

And BVG’s Advisory Director Andy Geissbuehler wasted no time in getting to work.

At a public listening session held in the Gaines Theatre at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Geissbuehler said his goal is to see Virginia play “a substantial role in the offshore wind industry on the East Coast, and is going to go further.”

And, while the U.S. has lagged many European nations for years in commercial offshore wind energy, it likely won’t take long to catch up.

“Everyone knows the U.S. will be a massive offshore wind market, and the U.S. will be very fast in picking up and catching up with some of the current market leaders, and will probably develop to one of the No. 1 markets globally,” Giessbuehler said.

The listening session was part of a series to let the public weigh in on Northam’s 2018 Virginia Energy Plan. Wednesday’s was the only session to focus on offshore wind power and to be held in Hampton Roads.

Read the full story at the Orlando Sentinel

Feds allow pipeline construction in North Carolina to expand

July 26, 2018 — Federal regulators are allowing work on the 600-mile Atlantic Coast Pipeline to expand in North Carolina.

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission officials this week approved work to proceed without further steps to protect endangered species. The FERC order issued Tuesday said work could be stopped to protect the environment if ordered by a federal court.

Opponents are trying to force a stop to the $6 billion project after a federal appeals court in Virginia in May vacated a U.S. Fish and Wildlife service approval meant to protect threatened or endangered species.

The pipeline being developed by Dominion Energy, Duke Energy and Southern Company will carry fracked natural gas from West Virginia through Virginia to North Carolina.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at WVVA

VIMS kicks off its annual juvenile striped bass seine survey

July 9, 2018 — On the bank of the James River beside the Lions Bridge in Newport News, field assistant Matthew Oliver waded chest-deep into the warm, lapping water Friday morning, hauling a seine net.

The net wasn’t tall, but it was long — 100 feet — with floats along the top edge and sinkers along the bottom, the better to keep little baby fish from scurrying underneath and swimming away.

Oliver moved heavily in a wide arc through the water, the better to scoop up whatever was swimming in the shallows.

This was just one sweep of select sites along the shores of the James, York and Rappahannock rivers as the monthslong Juvenile Striped Bass Seine Survey kicks off.

The survey is conducted by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point and is the second-longest continuous striped bass index in the country. It began in 1967 and, except for a five-year hiatus starting in 1973 for lack of funding, has been conducted every summer since.

The goal is to keep a weather eye on how this iconic sport fish is doing by counting the young-of-year that spawn early in the year and will, in just a few more years, become an official part of the region’s lucrative recreational and commercial fisheries.

“Knowing how many young striped bass are produced this year helps them understand what’s coming in the future,” said VIMS marine biologist Mary Fabrizio. “It helps us better manage the fishery.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

19 Eel Smugglers Sentenced, But Lucrative Trade Persists

June 28, 2018 — Tommy Zhou said he’d buy black market eels as long as nobody developed a “big mouth”—and if anyone did double-cross him, he’d pay $200,000 to have him killed, according to undercover agents who arrested Zhou. Zhou, a 42-year-old Brooklyn seafood dealer, was buying and selling eels caught illegally in Virginia. He was among more than 20 other people—ranging from small fishermen to powerful businessmen—recently snagged in a multi-state wildlife trafficking investigation named “Operation Broken Glass.”

“The dealers were laundering eels—buying them illegally, then mixing them with legal ones and actively smuggling them using false labels,” said U.S. Fish and Wildlife special agent Eric Holmes, who posed as a poacher selling to Zhou. Poaching all along the East Coast was very sophisticated, he said. “They used night vision and rental vehicles, and they could drop a crew in the middle of the night without making any noise. As long as these poachers had the opportunity to sell to a dealer willing to buy illegal eels, they were unstoppable.”

The run on American eels, Anguilla rostrata, was sparked by a sushi crisis that began in 2010. Wild baby eels, also known as glass eels or elvers, acquired to seed giant aquaculture farms in China and elsewhere were becoming scarce—putting supplies of unagi, eel grilled with soy sauce and served at sushi joints around the world, in danger.

Asia’s eels had already been largely depleted when the European Union announced that it was putting a ban on exports of European eel species to stem a precipitous population decline.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Bill to make North Carolina ‘Napa Valley’ of US oyster industry also good for Cooke

June 25, 2018 — The following is excerpted from a story originally published in Undercurrent News: 

Many North Carolina fishermen are petitioning in support of the Support Shellfish Industry Act. One group, Citizens for a Level Playing Field, have created a petition in support of the Act.

A vote by the North Carolina General Assembly — potentially as early as Monday — could make it easier for Cooke Seafood USA and others to harvest more oysters in the US coastal state. But it’s coming down to the wire, as the state’s legislature is expected to end its session either this week or next.

The Support Shellfish Industry Act (HB 361) would raise the cap for oyster permits in the Pamlico Sound – the US’ second largest estuary, covering over 3,000 square miles of open water behind North Carolina’s touristy Outer Banks — from a combined 50 acres to 200 acres, allowing for larger scale operations. It’s a change being sought by the Wanchese Fish Company, a Suffolk, Virginia-based harvester and processor acquired by the Canadian Cooke family in 2015, among others.

The measure, which was originally introduced in late May as Senate Bill 738 by Republican state senators Bill Cook, Harry Brown and Norman Sanderson, passed the North Carolina upper chamber on June 15 by a 28-9 vote, but still requires approval by the state’s Republican-dominated House of Representatives.

“With our acres of pristine waters, and a large and growing interest in cultivated oysters, the potential for the industry in the state is huge,” the three lawmakers said in a press release when introducing the original bill. “Our goal is for North Carolina to become the ‘Napa Valley’ of oysters and to become a $100 million dollar industry in 10 years.”

The North Carolina lawmakers might have picked a different area to represent dominance in the US wine industry. Despite its reputation, Napa Valley produces just 4% of the grapes used in California.

Regardless, Jay Styron, president and owner of the Carolina Mariculture Company, an oyster grower in Cedar Island, North Carolina, would settle right now for his state just getting on a playing field that’s level with the oyster industries in Virginia and Maryland, two states on the Chesapeake Bay (the US’s largest estuary), with lease caps that allow operations of up to 2,000 total acres.

Other states, like Louisiana and Washington, allow similarly high oyster growing caps, he said in a letter to the editor published Friday by Undercurrent News.

Styron told Undercurrent he isn’t interested in expanding beyond the 6.5-acre floating-cage oyster and clam farm he owns in the adjacent Core Sound, but is arguing for the change on behalf of other oyster growers in his role as the president of the North Carolina Shellfish Growers Association.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

ASMFC Horseshoe Crab Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop II Scheduled for July 31 – August 2, 2018, in Arlington, VA

June 25, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The second of two Horseshoe Crab Stock Assessment Workshops will be conducted July 31 – August 2, at the Commission’s office at 1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200A-N, Arlington, Virginia. The assessment will evaluate the horseshoe crab population along the Atlantic coast and inform the management of this species.

All Commission assessment workshops are open for public attendance. Time may be allotted for public comment at the Stock Assessment Subcommittee (SAS) Chair’s discretion, but may also be limited to keep the workshop on schedule. Due to the use of confidential data in this assessment, some portions of the workshop may be “closed door,” for which only members of the SAS with clearance to view confidential data may be present (see NOTE below for more information on data confidentiality). Additionally, to ensure adherence to confidentiality laws, there will be no remote public access via webinar or conference call for this meeting.

The benchmark stock assessment will be independently peer-reviewed through a Commission External Peer Review Workshop, tentatively scheduled for late fall/early winter 2018. Details on the dates and location of the Peer Review Workshop will be announced later this year.

For more information about the assessment or attending the Assessment Workshop, please contact Dr. Mike Schmidtke, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mschmidtke@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

NOTE: Confidential data are data such as commercial landings that can be identified down to an individual or single entity. Federal and state laws prohibit the disclosure of confidential data, and ASMFC abides by those laws. Each state and federal agency is responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of its data and deciding who has access to its confidential data.  In the case of our stock assessments and peer reviews, all analysts and, if necessary, reviewers, have been granted permission by the appropriate agency to use and view confidential data. When the assessment team needs to show and discuss these data, observers to our stock assessment process are asked to leave the room to preserve confidentiality.

In determining what data are confidential, most agencies use the “rule of 3” for commercial catch and effort data. The “rule of 3” requires three separate contributors to fisheries data in order for the data to be considered non-confidential. This protects the identity of any single contributor. In some cases, annual summaries by state and species may still be confidential because only one or two dealers process the catch. Alternatively, if there is only one known harvester of a species in a state, the harvester’s identity is implicit and the data for that species from that state is confidential.

Jay Styron: North Carolina law needed to open up shellfish opportunity

June 22, 2018 — The following is a letter to the editor of Undercurrent News from Jay Styron, owner and president of the Carolina Mariculture Company, in Cedar Island, North Carolina:

If North Carolina wants to be a major player in the shellfish industry, it needs to make it easier for oyster farmers to lease space and raise their products. The Support Shellfish Industry Act, currently being debated in the state’s General Assembly, is a major step in the right direction.

The bill expands North Carolina’s shellfish leasing program, making it easier for local businesses to acquire leases and ensuring that our state’s working watermen are the ones operating the farms. Most importantly, it expands the area that can be leased for oysters in Pamlico Sound. Currently, businesses are capped to leasing only 50 acres in the sound. The bill raises that cap to 200 acres total, while keeping individual sites to 50 contiguous acres.

The bill ensures that this expansion is done in a responsible and cautious way. Before the additional acreage can be approved, the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries will be required to first study and identify suitable lease areas. The bill does not change this cap for other parts of the state, which will remain at 50 acres.

Allowing larger leases in Pamlico Sound, part of the nation’s largest single-state estuary, will help North Carolina keep up with other coastal shellfish-producing states. In the Chesapeake Bay, both Virginia and Maryland have lease caps of 2,000 total acres. Other states, like Louisiana and Washington, allow for similarly high caps. While this legislation won’t immediately raise North Carolina to the same level as these states, it represents a significant step towards closing the gap.

The bill makes other improvements to the state’s aquaculture industry beyond expanding leasing areas. It opens new areas for shellfish nurseries and hatcheries to operate, which will help clean the surrounding waters, and creates a new, in-state source of seed to make it easier to populate new shellfish beds. It also creates new administrative procedures for the DMF to quickly mitigate conflicts arising from leasing decisions. These provisions will all allow shellfish cultivation in North Carolina to grow and diversify.

Improving our shellfish leasing program will help North Carolina regain its competitive edge regionally, particularly with respect to Virginia. In recent years, Virginia has moved aggressively to expand its fresh wild-caught and farm-raised oyster harvest, now producing about $35.8 million in oyster production annually. By contrast, North Carolina lags well behind at $3.9 million annually. This disparity is even more alarming considering just 13 years ago North Carolina’s shellfish industry was worth four times as much as Virginia’s.

The Support Shellfish Industry Act will lead to greater economic development, providing much needed jobs for North Carolina oyster farmers. Importantly, the legislation keeps requirements that leaseholders have a business registered in North Carolina and a commercial fishing license – which only state residents can get – safeguarding North Carolina jobs. Leased areas will still be public waters owned by the state, and leases can be canceled at any time should issues arise. Strict regulations on lease sales will also remain in place, including hearings where members of the public can make their voices heard.

The benefits of the bill extend to the environment. Oysters are among the most sustainable forms of food production available, filtering the water around them and improving fish habitat. According to a recent study, led by University of Washington professor Ray Hilborn, farmed shellfish are among the least carbon-intensive sources of food, and have among the smallest environmental impact.

North Carolina’s shellfish industry has the potential to provide great economic benefits to our state’s coastal communities, but only if we tap into its full potential in places like Pamlico Sound. That requires passing the Support Shellfish Industry Act, which will help us regain an equal footing with our neighbors, instead of keeping us in their shadow.

Read the letter here.

 

Atlantic Striped Bass Benchmark Stock Assessment Workshop Scheduled for September 11-14, in Arlington, VA

June 22, 2018 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Striped Bass Stock Assessment Workshop will be conducted September 11-14, 2018 at the Commission’s office,  1050 N. Highland Street, Suite 200A-N, Arlington, VA. The assessment will evaluate the condition of Atlantic striped bass stocks from Maine to North Carolina and inform management of those stocks. The workshop is open to the public, with the exception of discussion of confidential data when the public will be asked to leave the room. 

The deadlines for the submission of data and alternate models have passed. The final step in the assessment process is a formal peer review. This will be conducted at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s 66th Stock Assessment Workshop (SAW/SARC), November 27-30, 2018. The Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board will be presented the findings of the assessment and peer review at the Commission’s Winter Meeting in February 2019.

For more information about the assessment or attending the upcoming workshop, please contact Max Appelman, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mappelman@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

A PDF of the press release get be found here.

Healthy fisheries and aquatic grasses fuel Chesapeake Bay recovery

June 19, 2018 — Booming aquatic grasses and bellwether fisheries are driving sustained progress in Chesapeake Bay health, which experts say is finally showing “significant” overall improvement.

The 2017 Chesapeake Bay Report Card issued by Virginia and Maryland rates the estuary a C for the third straight year as recovery holds steady or improves in five of seven indicators, the James River nails a B- for the first time and the fisheries index scores its first-ever A+.

Experts call their assessment “important evidence that the positive trend in ecosystem health is real” and that cleanup efforts across the watershed are working.

“It is the first time that the … scores are significantly trending in the right direction,” said Bill Dennison at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in a statement Friday. “We have seen individual regions improving before, but not the entire Chesapeake Bay.”

The UMCES compiled the report card along with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and other governmental agencies and academic groups both in this state and Maryland. This is the 12th year of its release.

The fisheries index is comprised of the average score for blue crab, striped bass and bay anchovy indicators. These species are considered ecologically, economically and socially important to the bay.

Last year’s fisheries index was 90 percent. This year, it rose to 95 percent, the highest ever recorded for the annual reports — the average of 100 percent for striped bass and blue crab, and 84 percent for bay anchovy.

Read the full story at the Daily Press