Conservation & Environment

June 11, 2012 – Workers began removing the Great Works dam late Monday morning, part of a historic effort to open nearly 1,000 miles of habitat to 11 species of fish that haven’t had open access to the Penobscot River for two centuries.

U.S. Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar joined about 300 conservationists, government officials, tribal leaders and residents to witness the first tangible step in what has been a 13-year push to revive the river.

“Today marks an important milestone for river conservation in America,” Salazar said moments before heavy equipment operators fired up their engines. “Through a historic partnership that exemplifies President Obama’s America’s Great Outdoors Initiative, we are reconnecting 1,000 miles of river, restoring vital habitat for fish and wildlife, expanding opportunities for outdoor recreation, and supporting energy production, jobs and economic growth in communities throughout Maine.”

The Great Works dam stretches across the Penobscot River from Bradley to Old Town. The Veazie dam also is slated for removal beginning in 2013, the Milford dam will get a new fish lift, and a fish bypass will be built at the Howland dam. The project, led by the Penobscot River Restoration Trust, has been called the biggest river restoration project in the eastern U.S. and is expected to cost about $62 million.

Crews from Ellsworth-based R.F. Jordan & Sons Construction Inc. used two excavators with hoe ram attachments — essentially large jackhammers — to break apart the fishway portion of the 1,000-foot-long dam piece by piece. A third excavator scooped up debris and loaded it into a dump truck that hauled the rubble off site.

Demolition is scheduled to be completed in November.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News.

 

 

June 11, 2012 — When an excavator slashes into the berm of the Great Works Dam on Monday morning, it will mark the start of a multimillion-dollar project to allow endangered and dwindling species to return to their historic spawning grounds along Maine’s Penobscot river. When the project is done – and after an additional dam is razed and another bypassed – it will open access to 1,000 miles of habitat for the native fish, including endangered Atlantic salmon.

When the project is done – scheduled for 2015, after an additional dam is razed and another bypassed – it will open access to 1,000 miles of habitat for the native fish, including endangered Atlantic salmon and short-nosed sturgeon that journey from the Gulf of Maine to breed in the cold, fresh waters of the Penobscot. That is more than any dam removal and river restoration effort in the country, state and federal officials say.

“People who had been fighting each other for many decades set that aside to focus on the common good,’’ said Laura Rose Day, executive director of the Penobscot River Restoration Trust, which bought the dams for $24 million two years ago and is overseeing their demolition. “It’s among the nation’s most comprehensive projects, with tribal, national, state, local, and nonprofit groups coming together to totally reconfigure the power production on a river so we can have fish restoration and hydropower.’’

The project, estimated to cost $62 million, will allow six other dams that will remain on the Penobscot and its tributaries to produce more electricity. Together, they will generate an estimated 50 megawatts of power, enough for about 25,000 homes.

“We absolutely see this as a positive – from a business standpoint and to satisfy our environmental responsibilities,’’ said Scott Hall, a spokesman for Black Bear Hydro Partners of Milford, Me., which owns the remaining dams.

Environmental advocates, fishermen, and a host of local, state, and federal officials have spent years seeking to restore the free flow of the Penobscot, the second-largest river in New England. 0ver the decades, as the dams churned out electricity, many of the river’s fish have disappeared.

Like other rivers in the region, such as the Kennebec, Androscoggin, Merrimack, and Connecticut, the Penobscot had massive fish runs until the early 1800s, when the nation began installing dams and log drives, mill waste, and other pollution began making many rivers into the equivalent of industrial dumps. There were as many as 100,000 salmon, 6 million American shad, and some 20 million river herring that migrated every year from the ocean to well north of Bradley to spawn.

There are now fewer than 1 percent that many fish of most of the 11 species that inhabit these waters, with less than 500 salmon counted this year, environmental advocates say. Most were bred in a hatchery. For years, the advocates prodded dam owners to build better fish ladders to allow the salmon to cross safely. But they found improved fish ladders didn’t do enough. The only answer, they decided, was to remove the three dams in the river’s lower 10 miles.

“The salmon population is now on life support, and it’s a miracle that we’re still finding all species that historically inhabited the river,’’ said Andy Goode, vice president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation in Brunswick, noting that many salmon die while trying to pass through the dams. “We think this is the last best chance to save the Atlantic salmon from extinction. They’ve already been lost on many other rivers.’’

Read the full story on The Boston Globe

June 11, 2012 – As he promised the gathering at a national fishermen's rally in March, U.S. Charles Schumer, D-N,Y., has secured a commitment for the Senate Commerce Committee to hold oversight hearings this fall on problems with the Magnuson-Stevens Act.

The announcement from the New York senator came last week, after he gained the commitment of Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Mark Begich of Alaska.

In a statement, Schumer said he hoped the hearings "will give a national voice" to concerns "about faulty science and excessively strict quotas that are decimating the industry."

U.S. Sen. John Kerry is the senior Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee. He has proposed his own legislation, to restore a dedicated funding source for fisheries research and development from seafood import quotas, but also has acknowledged the need to make changes to Magnuson.

Also supporting Magnunson reform is Sen. Scott Brown.

In April, the Republican-controlled House Natural Resources Committee, where the reform movement is stronger, began drafting "a comprehensive" change to Magnuson, the overriding fisheries management law, in an attempt to ensure that NOAA makes "informed decisions based on sufficient scientific information," Chairman Doc Hastings told the Times.

The presidential election and the Democratic control of the Senate all but insures that no substantive action on a rewrite of Magnuson will occur before the expiration of the 112th Congress.

House passage of a Magnuson reform bill is considered the highest goal for this year of industry leaders who organized the rally last March and have been pressing to write flexibility into Magnuson.

Read the full article at the Gloucester Times.

 

 

June 9, 2012 – To 21st century sport fishermen alewives are a freshwater pest, saltwater trespassers who compete for habitat with prized freshwater bass.

To Passamaquoddy tribal members, whose settlements on both sides of the St. Croix River separating Maine and New Brunswick date back 4,000 years, the prolific fish are seen as an important food source and as a critical element in the diverse marine ecology of Passamaquoddy Bay.

A two-day, 100-mile “sacred run” was held over the weekend between the Pleasant Point settlement and an ancient tribal fishing site at Mud Lake Stream near the New Brunswick community of Forest City. The run was organized by a group called Schoodic Riverkeepers, which is made up of tribal members from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border who are focusing on restoring their ancestral river and the indigenous populations of marine species in the St. Croix River.

“These fish populations, especially siqonomeqok [alewives], are especially important to the Passamaquoddy and are essential to the health of our ancestral marine waters,” said Vera Francis, one of the event’s organizers.

For 17 years, the annual freshwater migration of countless tens of thousands of saltwater alewives has been blocked by a barrier on the St. Croix River at the Grand Falls Dam fishway that keeps the fish from swimming farther upstream to spawn. The Passamaquoddy want that barrier removed.

In a letter sent May 24, 2012, to the International Joint Commission that works to resolve disputes involving the waters separating the U.S. and Canada, Clayton Cleeves, Passamaquoddy tribal chief of the Pleasant Point Reservation, said his people want to see all alewife barriers removed.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News.

 

 

June 11, 2012 – You won’t find Atlantic menhaden on restaurant menus, but if you take a fish oil supplement or eat farm-raised chickens and pigs, chances are you’re benefiting from the Chesapeake Bay’s small, oily fish every day.

It’s not just health-conscious humans who rely on menhaden; the fish are also a staple for predators throughout the bay. With so much demand for menhaden, some worry there may not be enough to go around. Now, the little fish is at the center of a big question — can healthy ecosystems coexist with profitable commercial fisheries?

Menhaden are important for big predator fish like striped bass, said Edward Houde, fisheries science professor at the University of Maryland. They are also hunted from the air.

“Diet studies of osprey, pelicans and eagles show they have a high dependency on menhaden as well,” Houde said.

Eagles and ospreys are higher-level predators that depend on Chesapeake Bay menhaden for food. Photo: NOAA
And while menhaden seldom wind up on human dinner plates, in a real sense they put food on the table. After blue crabs, the small fish are the Chesapeake’s second most profitable commercial fishery.

Omega Protein, a Louisiana-based company that hauls in about 80 percent of all menhaden caught, employs 300 bayside residents at its Reedville, Va. fishing and processing facility.

Ben Landry, director of public affairs for Omega, estimated the direct economic impact in the Reedville area at about $80 million. Nationwide, the company reported $235.2 million in revenue for 2011.

In the Chesapeake, Omega nets an average of 85,484 tons of Atlantic menhaden per year. Add in hauls from along the coast, and the company’s total catch of Atlantic menhaden is 174,457 tons.

Taking that many menhaden has some scientists worried.

“We’re very concerned about the status of the menhaden stock right now. It’s not about to collapse,” Houde said. “But there’s no doubt that the reproductive success of menhaden …  has been down for about 25 years.”

In the 1970s there were many times more menhaden in the bay, he said. Scientists are not sure of the reason for the decline.

Read the full story here.

 

 

June 7, 2012 – New Oceana report outlines how protecting the oceans can feed 700 million people a day

Today, surrounding the 20th anniversary of World Oceans Day, Oceana unveiled a report outlining how saving the world's oceans can help to feed the 9 billion people projected to be on earth by 2050.

The report explains how implementing science-based fisheries management in the 25 countries that control more than 75% of the world's fish stocks – specifically measures that reduce overfishing, protect habitat and limit bycatch – will increase fish stocks to the point that wild seafood could sustainably feed 700 million people a day. Putting in place these policies in the countries that control most of the world's marine fish catch will also help protect important ocean ecosystems.

"Putting in place proper management in the 25 countries that are responsible for more than 75% of the world's global marine fish catch will boost the amount of wild fish available to our increasingly hungry planet," said Oceana CEO Andrew Sharpless. "This is a rare win for both conservation and food production – we can save ocean ecosystems and feed millions of hungry people by establishing these proven conservation policies in the countries that control the world's wild fish catch."

Read the full release here.

 

 

June 6, 2012 — The state Department of Conservation and Recreation Tuesday heralded the completion of a three-year, $6.6 million restoration of the Upper Mystic Lake Dam.

The state Department of Conservation and Recreation Tuesday heralded the completion of a three-year, $6.6 million restoration of the Upper Mystic Lake Dam.

In addition to shoring up the dam's structural strength, the project added capacity to move and store water, installed a new emergency spillway, and created an outlet for spawning fish to reach breeding grounds upstream.

DCR officials undertook the project after a May 2006 storm nearly overwhelmed the structure, and was categorized as a "significant hazard" by the state. Construction began in 2009.

"The Dam's rehabilitation ensures that the multi-function uses, recreation, dam safety, flood reduction, environmental habitat enhancement, and historical preservation will benefit the Commonwealth for the future," said DCR Commissioner Edward Lambert, in a statement.

Before the improvements, wildlife faced the most obstacles, but now river eels have their own internal "eel-way," in addition to the fish ladder that allows the spawning herring to move upstream, said Mary Griffin, commissioner for the Department of Fish & Game.

 

Read the full story on the Boston Globe 

 

 

June 5, 2012 – The world’s oceans cover 140 million square miles and have remained stable for most of human history. But in the last 30 years, man’s impact on the seas has taken a heavy toll: global fish supplies are declining thanks to new technologies and overfishing. Climate change has led to a rise in ocean temperatures and the loss of 75 percent of large sea animals. Plastics and agricultural fertilizers are polluting our oceans and killing marine life. On this month’s Environmental Outlook: How humans are harming the world’s oceans and what can be done about it.

Callum Roberts, marine scientist, professor at the University of York, and author of The Ocean of Life, discusses the threats of serial overfishing, global warming, and polluiton in his interview with Diane Rehm. He mentioned, that while overfishing is a concern for global fish stocks, US fisheries are well-managed:

"The United States is doing well in terms of managing its domestic fisheries. After decades of intensive over-exploitation, finally, in the reauthorization of the Magnuson Act a few years ago, it was made illegal to overfish. And so essentially now, the Fisheries Management Councils, which are scattered around the United States, have to implement measures that will end overfishing, and that is leading to some benefits already. We're seeing the recovery of some fish stocks which were formerly knocked down to very low levels. In that sense, I think the US is leading, I think, internationally. Europe, for example, has among the worst fisheries management in the world." (24:18)

Listen to the full interview at the Diane Rehm Show.

 

 

The following is an excerpt from the Washington Monthly story by Alison Fairbrother:

May 10, 2012 – Harvested by the billions and then processed into various industrial products, menhaden are extruded into feed pellets that make up the staple food product for a booming global aquaculture market, diluted into oil for omega-3 health supplements, and sold in various meals and liquids to companies that make pet food, livestock feed, fertilizer, and cosmetics. We have all consumed menhaden one way or another. Pound for pound, more menhaden are pulled from the sea than any other fish species in the continental United States, and 80 percent of the menhaden netted from the Atlantic are the property of a single company.

To determine whether or not Omega Protein is overfishing menhaden, the government relies on a set of methods and calculations that are mystifying in their complexity. Every time Omega’s captains return to the Reedville port, they report their daily “unload”—how many tons of fish they have removed from the water. Onshore, a government agent periodically examines a handful of fish scooped from the ship’s hold and uses them to estimate the size and age composition of the day’s catch. Information from these samples, collected over the course of the fishing season, are collated with the captain’s logs, and the data goes to a single scientist for processing at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) fishery lab in Beaufort, North Carolina. There it is gathered together with harvest information from the handful of smaller companies that fish for menhaden along the coast to sell as bait, as well as trend data from a few independent scientific surveys. This stew of data is fed into a mathematical fishery assessment model that takes many scientists and several months to run. The process generates an estimate of how many eggs the current menhaden population is producing, compared to how many eggs there would be in an unfished, pristine environment. This information is handed over to a sleepy, part-time board of regulators called the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), who decide whether fish stocks are at a safe level or if there should be concerns about overfishing.

Read the full story at Washington Monthly.

Analysis: Alison Fairbrother’s, "A Fish Story: How an Angler and Two Government Bureaucrats May Have Saved the Atlantic Ocean," published on May 10 in Washington Monthly, makes several key omissions about the current state of scientific thought on the menhaden fishery. These omissions call into question the article’s portrayal of the fishery as being near-collapse due to a lax regulatory environment, and reveal a more complex picture of the fishery than the article’s reporting displays.
 
The central question of both the article and the current public debate concerning menhaden management is what the best available science says, and does not say, about menhaden. This is especially true when the article attempts to explain the scientific calculations that are used when setting fishing limits and determining when overfishing has occurred. The article misrepresents the calculation of the reference point – a value that, if exceeded, indicates that overfishing has occurred in a population.

In discussion of this reference point, the article states that it is based on the Maximum Spawning Potential (MSP), an estimate of the reproductive capability of a theoretically unfished population. It claims:

"This estimate then goes before the ASMFC Menhaden Technical Committee, which is made up of NOAA scientists and biologists from state fisheries agencies. Their job is to weigh the menhaden’s current spawning potential against an estimate of how many eggs menhaden would produce in an imaginary world with no fishermen. The ratio of these two figures is called “maximum spawning potential.”

It is from these estimates that the committee derives the real magic number: the threshold below which the menhaden population would be unable to replenish or sustain itself. This threshold, which is debated and then voted on by the full commission, is called a “reference point.” The reference point currently in use for menhaden is 8 percent of maximum spawning potential. That is to say: according to the ASMFC, the Atlantic menhaden population can safely be fished down to 8 percent of the spawning potential that it would possess in a natural state." 

The article inaccurately describes how the reference points were determined. While the reference point is expressed as a percentage of MSP, the reference points used in the 2010 benchmark assessment were not MSP-based. The reference points were, instead, based on measures of fishing mortality and fecundity. For a detailed explanation of how the reference points were calculated, see the “Biological Reference Points” section in “Addendum 1 to Amendment 1 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden,” beginning on page 4.  
 
The article also states that the reference point for menhaden is much lower than the reference point for striped bass. While the level of MSP in that assessment was 8%, that value was not used as one of the reference points. An updated assessment is currently being conducted. More importantly, comparing the menhaden reference point to the striped bass reference point ignores an important reality: that the average menhaden lays many more eggs than a predator species like striped bass, and thus are able to increase population size from a smaller starting stock biomass.
 
The article also fails to note that, historically, MSP levels appear to be poorly correlated with menhaden recruitment (the number of menhaden that survive to join the migratory population). It criticizes the current reference point of 8 percent as too low. But this is actually higher than historic averages. Since the 1950s, the reference point has averaged approximately 6 percent MSP. In the same period, menhaden recruitment fluctuated dramatically, rising to a high in the late 1970s when the reference point equaled only 2 percent MSP. Although reference points this low are not considered optimal for management today, it is important to be aware of the historic performance of the population to fully understand the current stock and the parameters used to analyze its health.
 
These scientific arguments are quickly dismissed by the article, which states:

"At every moment in this long history, the reduction industry has denied, counterintuitively, that fishing has any impact on the number of menhaden in the Atlantic. A publication of the United States Oil and Guano Association from 1884 asserted, ‘The plentitude or scarcity of sea fish is wholly independent of the operations of man, but is determined by the forces of nature.’ To this day, Omega Protein maintains that menhaden have been subject to a historical pattern of ebbs and flows, driven by external factors like pollution and poor recruitment."

But Omega Protein is not alone in its assertion. Both the commission responsible for regulating menhaden, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), and the agency responsible for US fisheries science, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), agree that environmental conditions, rather than commercial fishing efforts, are the greatest influences on the menhaden population. For example, in its 2010 stock assessment, the ASMFC writes, “past performance of Atlantic menhaden suggests it has gone from periods of low recruitment and fecundity to periods with high recruitment and fecundity, while sustaining moderate to high landings.” They conclude, “[menhaden] population fluctuations are almost entirely driven by non-fishery sources.” Similarly, NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office concludes, “menhaden recruitment appears to be independent of fishing mortality and spawning stock biomass, indicating environmental factors may be the defining factor in the production of good year classes.”
 
The article also alleges that the current rate of menhaden fishing is having a negative impact on predator fish species, such as striped bass, even though the science behind some of these claims is inconclusive at best. For example, the article claims that a lack of menhaden caused the spread of mycobacteriosis, a bacterial infection that is currently present in around 76 percent of the Chesapeake Bay striped bass population, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. The article goes on to state that striped bass, “were quite literally starving,” which lead them to contract mycobacteriosis, “a serious infection related to malnutrition.”

A 2009 study by Dr. David T. Gauthier in The Veterinary Journal reviewing the available scientific literature concluded that there is currently no consensus about the primary cause of mycobacteriosis, and it is not known which of several potential factors has the greatest influence. However, like much of the Bay’s current ecological problems, environmental degradation from nutrient runoff is likely to play a key role. Excess nitrogen and other nutrients that enter the Bay, from sources such as agriculture and urban development, lead to algal blooms, the excessive growth of phytoplankton and algae. When these blooms die off, the process of decay consumes the oxygen in the surrounding water, creating hypoxic (low oxygen) areas. These hypoxic areas are usually in deeper, cooler waters, which bass inhabit during the summer. But because the hypoxic conditions make them uninhabitable, the bass are forced into shallower, warmer waters for which they are not ideally suited. The sub-optimal temperature makes them unable to feed properly, and makes them more susceptible to disease. This phenomenon, known as the thermal niche/oxygen squeeze, was documented in striped bass in reservoirs by Charles Coutant, a scientist now retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Coutant published three scientific journal articles (one in 1988 and two in 1990) describing the same phenomenon for striped bass in the Chesapeake Bay.
 
It is possible that a relative increase in the striped bass population, which has coincided with a relative decline in the menhaden population, may be a contributing factor to the spread of the disease. But striped bass, despite what the article indicates, are not exclusively reliant upon menhaden for their diet. Striped bass are opportunistic predators, and consume a variety of prey species depending on their availability and location. The 2010 annual report of the Chesapeake Bay Multispecies Monitoring and Assessment Program noted that bay anchovies, small crustaceans, and worms are all significant parts of the striped bass diet in addition to menhaden. Therefore, Chesapeake Bay striped bass population stability is not dependant on menhaden population fluctuations.
 
Though the article asserts that ASMFC science, “has now become a huge liability,” for Omega Protein, the science is not as clear-cut as it indicates. As the article indicates, the ASMFC recently revised its stock assessment model. When this new model was applied to previous years, it was retroactively determined that overfishing had occurred in 32 of the last 50 years. This reflects the fact that Omega Protein and other fishing companies fished according to the regulations present at the time, which were only subsequently found to have lead to overfishing. More relevant to the current state of the fishery is that overfishing has only occurred once in the last decade, and then only .4% over the reference point.

And while the assessment judged that overfishing is occurring, meaning that the number of fish caught exceeds the mortality limit imposed by the ASMFC, the stock is not currently overfished, meaning that it is currently producing enough eggs to rebuild itself. Because the ASMFC has determined that there already are enough eggs being produced by the menhaden stock, it is most likely that a factor other than fishing mortality has led to low spawning. Equally important, this makes it unclear whether the decreased catch limits environmental advocates prefer would effectively solve the problem.

 

 

June 1, 2012 – The Maryland Legislative Sportsmen's Foundation (MLSF) has awarded the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Director of Fisheries Bill Goldsborough the organization’s "Sportsmen's Best Friend of the Year 2012" award in recognition of his leadership and determination to reduce the commercial harvest of Atlantic menhaden and rebuild the population of this ecologically critical species.

"This past year saw great victories that without his leadership, laser-like focus, courage, and determination, simply would not have happened," said Steve Linhard, a MLSF board member, in presenting the award. "Giving this depleted stock the ability to recover and end overfishing will rebuild this most important forage stock that is so important to the fish that we as fishermen pursue. His leadership in working with the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the fishing community, fishing constituents in other Atlantic states, Maryland Department of Natural Resources, and many others is what allowed these victories to be accomplished."

The award ceremony took place Thursday evening, May 31, at the Westin Hotel in Annapolis. Goldsborough is a board member of the sportsmen’s association, which works to support fisheries conservation. The award itself was an inscribed, poster-size, historic photo of a menhaden harvest vessel.

Goldsborough also represents Maryland as a commissioner of the ASMFC. The organization voted this past November to set new fishing limits for menhaden and new targets for a healthy population. The decision will allow the "most important fish in the sea," as menhaden have been called, to rebound from a dangerous population decline, and will boost the health of the coastal ecosystem and other fisheries that depend on the fish. Goldsborough and ASMFC are now working to draft a management plan to achieve those new standards.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.