Saving Seafood

Peltola, 1st Alaska Native in Congress, Wins Full Term

November 25, 2022 — U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola has been elected to a full term in the House, months after the Alaska Democrat won a special election to the seat following the death earlier this year of longtime Republican Rep. Don Young.

Peltola defeated Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, as well as Libertarian Chris Bye in the Nov. 8 election. Results of the ranked choice election were announced Wednesday. Palin and Begich also were candidates in the special election.

“It’s a two-year contract,” Peltola told the Anchorage Daily News after her victory — a 55%-45% margin over Palin in the final tabulation round — was announced. “I will be happy to work for Alaskans again, as long as they’ll have me.”

Read the full article at US News

Climate Change Scenario Planning: Scenario Creation Phase; Apply by April 18 to Participate in Two-and-a-Half-Day Workshop

April 4, 2022 — The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:

East Coast fishery management bodies are currently engaging in a Climate Change Scenario Planning initiative to explore governance and management issues related to climate change and fishery stock distributions.

The next phase of this work centers around a two-and-a-half-day Scenario Creation workshop to be held June 21-23, 2022 in the Washington D.C. metro area. Anyone interested in participating should fill out the application form by April 18, 2022. Here are the workshop details.

Workshop Overview

Through a series of conversations and exercises, participants will create a set of scenarios that describe how climate change might affect East Coast fisheries in the next 20 years. Each scenario will describe a different way in which changing oceanographic, biological, and social/economic conditions could combine to create future challenges and opportunities for East Coast fisheries.

Read the full release from the New England Fishery Management Council

Is Climate Change Causing Sharks To Bite Humans? The D.C. Metro Thinks So

March 11, 2020 — Can taking Metro prevent shark bites? That’s the contention of an ad in stations and trains throughout the region. It’s part of a Metro public relations campaign to highlight the effects of climate change and how taking public transit can help. If you’ve seen the shark bite ads and wondered about them — you’re in good company.

“As someone who studies sharks and shark conservation, and in fact who has been involved in studies of climate change and sharks, this caught my attention,” says David Shiffman, a marine conservation biologist. The ad caught his attention, he says, “because it’s nonsense.”

The ad shows a black shark fin on an orange zig-zag background. It reads: “More CO2 could lead to increased shark bites. Keep the sharks at bay. Take Metro.”

Metro’s other climate change ads are on pretty solid scientific ground. There’s one about arctic ice melting and one about extreme weather — both well known consequences of climate change. Other ads focus on more obscure impacts — how climate change is affecting wine and beer producers. Still, says Shiffman, “The agricultural consequences are fairly well documented and not controversial.”

Read the full story at WAMU

A daunting task begins: Reducing lobster gear to save whales

May 6, 2019 — Fishing managers on the East Coast began the daunting process this week of implementing new restrictions on lobster fishing that are designed to protect a vanishing species of whale.

A team organized by the federal government recommended last week that the number of vertical trap lines in the water be reduced by about half. The lines have entrapped and drowned the North Atlantic right whale, which numbers a little more than 400 and has declined by dozens this decade.

The interstate Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission met Monday outside Washington to discuss the implementation of the new rules, which are designed to reduce serious injuries and deaths among whales by 60 percent.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times 

New Bedford Fishing Captains Discuss Impacts of Shutdown

January 28, 2019 —  Jack Morris and Justin Dube, scallop boat captains fishing out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, shared with Saving Seafood how the recent federal government shutdown negatively affected their businesses.

Capts. Morris and Dube discussed how the closure of NOAA offices prevented them from getting necessary permits from the agency for their scallop fishing vessels. Without these permits, they were unable to fish during the shutdown, negatively impacting their livelihoods and those of their crews.

The captains were in Washington for a Chamber of Commerce event where people from around the country shared how they were negatively affected by the 35-day shutdown.

View the full interview here

National Fisherman: Tax to Grind

November 2, 2018 — Everyone is talking tariffs. First it was anticipation, and now we’re in reality check, keeping an eye on the long-term consequences.

My first instinct with the tariffs was to gather information and watch what happens. There’s no denying our federal government is in fickle hands. The tariffs could have been canceled as easily and swiftly as they were declared. So wait and see seemed the best course of action.

Of course, I’m not a fisherman, processor or retailer. Wait and see is a luxury for me. And now it’s also a luxury for the purveyors of many itemized seafood products that have been granted dispensation from the tariffs.

As the deadline inched closer this summer, fisheries with decent lobbying power began to appeal to U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to get a pass for their product — meaning the United States would not add a tariff to those products being sold into Chinese markets (most of which are already taxed as exports). In the case of U.S. seafood products being processed in China and reimported to the U.S. market, the government also granted a waiver on Chinese import taxes for some products.

The result was good for many stakeholders — they got the pass they need to stay competitive. But fisheries that don’t have access to Capitol Hill are left out there alone to bear the brunt of the tariffs on their own. They are now the guinea pigs for the whole industry.

Read the full editorial at National Fisherman

 

US distributor plans to hike invasive catfish sales

October 4, 2018 — Congressional Seafood Company, which already sells invasive blue catfish to Whole Foods Market and other major buyers, is aiming to significantly grow sales of the fish in the state of Maryland.

Around four years ago, Jessup, Maryland-based Congressional began selling blue catfish, an invasive species in the Chesapeake Bay, the Potomac River, and other waterways. Blue catfish feeds on many native species, including blue crabs, rockfish, and mussels.

“I started reading about this environmental crisis because of the explosion of the fish in the tributaries, and knew we had to try to sell it,” Congressional founder and executive vice president Tim Sughrue, told SeafoodSource. “However, one of the hardest thing I’ve had to do … is create a market for a fish that has never been sold before.”

Blue catfish has a great flavor and it tastes similar to snapper to rockfish, Sughrue said. However, its meat yield is 25 percent on average, versus around 65 percent for mahi and 70 percent for tuna.

After contacting several restaurant and retailer chains, Congressional got its “first big break” in 2014, when Clyde’s Restaurant Group, based in Washington D.C., agreed to menu blue catfish regularly, according to Sughrue.

In 2015, Congressional got another break when Whole Foods Market’s mid-Atlantic region came on board.

“I had been meeting with Whole Foods for a while, but it wasn’t until blue catfish was rated ‘green’ by Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch program, that they said they could sell it,” Sughrue said. “That allowed us to gain a market for it.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The Chesapeake Bay hasn’t been this healthy in 33 years, scientists say

June 18, 2018 — For the first time in the 33 years that scientists have assessed the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary showed improvement in every region, a likely sign that a massive federal cleanup plan is working.

The bay’s most important species — blue crabs and striped bass, which support commercial and recreational fisheries, and anchovies, the foundation of its food chain — earned top scores in a report card released Friday. Bright green underwater grasses — which help protect young fish before they venture into the Atlantic Ocean — are now thriving, even in some places where such vegetation had disappeared.

In sharp contrast to the days when the bay was so beleaguered that every meaningful species experienced sharp population declines, officials and scientists from the District, Maryland and Virginia announced Friday that it is in the midst of a full and remarkable recovery. As if to underscore the progress, their backdrop along the District’s southwest waterfront was a brilliantly sunny morning and a picturesque view of the Anacostia River, which feeds into the Chesapeake.

The news comes at a time when hundreds of bottle-nosed dolphins have been seen frolicking in the bay, including a large pod off Maryland’s Ragged Point last month. On Tuesday, two great white sharks were hooked by scientists in Virginia. The number of fish-hunting osprey is also on the rise.

The bay’s overall grade is a C, because some areas, such as the Patuxent, Patapsco and York rivers, are bouncing back from near-failure. The category of water clarity faltered, falling to an F from last year’s D. But the James River area and the lower stem of the bay closer to the Atlantic both earned grades of at least B-, their highest ever, and shored up the overall score.

Read the full story at the Washington Post

Chesapeake crab caper results in felony charges

January 23, 2018 — More than three years after federal fish fraud investigators were tipped off that a Virginian seafood company was selling foreign crabmeat labeled as more expensive domestic crabmeat, federal prosecutors filed felony charges against Casey’s Seafood owner, James R. Casey, 74, of Poquoson, Va.

At the time of the tip in 2014, The Baltimore Sun had begun following special agents tracking crab fraud among other kinds of seafood fraud.

The Sun found that, despite increased concerns about such fraud, the number of enforcement cases brought by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency had plummeted after the agency began cutting the “special agents” who investigate fish fraud in 2010.

As the world’s seafood resources decline, substituting other species of seafood for rarer and more expensive ones has become a lucrative business as well as a growing concern for governments and health officials.

Jack Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Seafood in Cambridge, described how easy it is to commit fraud with crabmeat in a 2014 letter he wrote to the federal task force establishing the new rules to mitigate seafood fraud. It happens, he wrote, when “unscrupulous domestic companies, seeing a quick and profitable opportunity” simply put imported crabmeat into a domestic container.

Brooks, who processes crab, added that there is “no or very limited enforcement” of such fraud, which can net businesses an extra $4 to $9 per pound. That leaves domestic competitors with higher costs and puts seafood-related jobs in jeopardy.

During their investigation, NOAA agents sent eight containers of Casey’s Seafood crabmeat bought at stores in Delaware and Virginia to a laboratory in College Park for DNA testing. The results confirmed the tip: seven of the eight Casey’s containers labeled as “Product of the USA” contained swimming crab found only outside U.S. waters, according to court documents.

Read the full story at the Baltimore Sun

 

Sean Horgan: House bill gives fishermen glimmer of hope

December 18, 2017 — From a literary standpoint, there really isn’t much to say about the Magnuson Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The plot is murky, the characters non-existent and the writing so dense and boring that you’d swear it was written by some Beltway wonks.

Oh wait, it was. Perhaps the movie will be better. Or even the re-authorized version.

Following five years of stultifying futility, Congress finally seems on the threshold of formally re-authorizing the law that governs the management of our nation’s federal fisheries.

Last Wednesday, the House Natural Resources Committee voted H.R. 200 (or if you’re not into the whole brevity thing, the Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act) out of committee, setting the stage for a vote by the full House and, somewhere down the road, a clash with the Senate over whatever bill comes from the upper chamber.

But for now, the House bill has given commercial fishermen at least a glimmer of hope that their cries have carried from the wilderness and now are resonating in the halls of Congress.

The key word in all of this is flexibility.

Read the full column at the Gloucester Times