Saving Seafood

Sportfishing Industry Applauds Bill to Help Enhance Fish Habitat Conservation

August 10, 2018 — The recreational fishing industry today expressed its appreciation to Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) for introducing H.R. 6660, the National Fish Habitat Conservation Through Partnerships Act. This legislation will authorize a national program to conserve, restore and enhance fish habitat across the country for the benefit of recreational fishing.

“America’s 49 million recreational anglers and the 800,000 jobs supported by recreational fishing depend on healthy fisheries resources,” said Mike Leonard, Conservation director for the American Sportfishing Association. “The sportfishing industry is grateful to Rep. Wittman for his continued commitment to fisheries conservation by introducing the National Fish Habitat Conservation Through Partnerships Act. This legislation will authorize and improve upon a successful partnership-based program that unites anglers, industry, state and federal agencies and other partners to help restore fish habitat in Virginia and throughout the nation.”

The foundation for the National Fish Habitat Conservation Through Partnerships Act is the National Fish Habitat Partnership, a voluntary, non-regulatory and locally-driven program housed within the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The National Fish Habitat Partnership program is currently comprised of 20 individual Fish Habitat Partnerships that focus on specific regions or habitat types. These partnerships include representatives of federal, state and local agencies, conservation and sportsmen’s organizations, private landowners and the business sector. To date, more than 600 successful conservation projects have been carried out through these partnerships, benefitting fish habitat and anglers throughout the country.

Read the full story at Sporting Classics Daily

VIRGINIA: A fishy tale

August 9, 2018 — Where else to look for a fish tale about politics than Shad Plank, eh?

Consider, then a casual comment from the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s menhaden board discussion this week.

You know, one of Rhode Island’s commissioners mused, as the board wrapped up discussion about whether or not to start down the road of shutting down Virginia’s menhaden fishery, Atlantic herring could come into play here.

Well, if that isn’t enough to make you sit up in your seat. It did for Shad Plank, anyway.

Here’s why. The commission groups 15 states from Maine to Florida to manage onshore fisheries (within three miles of the shore), making sure nobody’s taking too many fishies from sea.

Some species do better than others, and sometimes they do better in some parts of the coast than others. And while nobody on the commission wants to drive any species into oblivion, many find it hard not to think about their fishermen — commercial and recreational — and their desire to harvest the sea’s bounty.

Last year, the commission cut its cap on the catch of menhaden from Chesapeake Bay by more than 40 percent. Not complying with this cap — and the General Assembly declined to enact it into law — could lead the commission to say we’re out of compliance and then ask the federal government to do something about it.

Read the full story at the Daily Press

 

VIRGINIA: Menhaden landings pacing below disputed cap

August 8, 2018 — Chesapeake Bay landings of menhaden are coming in at a pace well below a controversial cap imposed by an interstate fisheries commission, Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner Steven Bowman said.

As of the end of June, landings for the so-called reduction fishery came in at 24,000 metric tons, Bowman told the management board of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) this week.

He said that meant landings this year would almost certainly come in below the 51,000-ton cap the interstate commission imposed last year — a cut of more than 40 percent that the General Assembly balked at adopting.

Bowman, joined by Maryland’s director of fisheries, asked the board to hold off declaring that Virginia was not in compliance with the cap because the General Assembly had not written the 51,000-ton limit into state law.

That finding, if adopted by the commission and accepted by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, could shut down the menhaden fishery, which employs about 300 people working on Omega Protein’s fishing boats and its processing plant in Reedville, on the Northern Neck. While the cap applies only to menhaden caught by the big “purse seine” vessels Omega operates to catch fish to be processed for oil and fish meal, board members said a finding of noncompliance could shut down the bait fishery, in which smaller operators use a different technique to catch fish used by crabbers and in commercial fin-fisheries

Instead, Bowman and Blazer proposed that the commission find Virginia out of compliance if landings this year actually exceeded 51,000 tons.

That effort failed, but the board decided to delay until February acting on an alternative declaring Virginia out of compliance.

Omega spokesman Ben Landry said he believed the menhaden board’s decision to delay acting reflected commissioners’ new-found concern, underlined by NOAA’s Lynch, about the scientific basis for the cap.

“We have no intention of blowing past the 51,000,” he said. “But it’s an artificial number … our concern is flexibility; if there are storms out in the ocean, we’d like to be able to come into the bay.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

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.