Management & Regulation

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Decisions this week by the Gulf of Mexico  Fishery Management Council could bring better science to the Gulf and give a bounce to the area red snapper economy, local experts said Friday.

Meeting in Austin, Texas, this week the council agreed to increase the daily bag limit on red snapper from two to four.

The council also agreed to conduct stock assessments in 2012 and 2013 that will give a better understanding of how many red snapper are actually in the Gulf.

A “standard” assessment early next year could help maintain or increase the 48-day season that occurred June 1 to July 18 this year, said Pam Anderson of Capt. Anderson’s Marina.

But more importantly, a more in-depth “benchmark” assessment in 2013 could help scientists understand something that boat captains already are experiencing: There are more fish out there than some believe, said Bob Zales II, president of the Panama City Boatman’s Association and a charter fishing captain.

“It’s critical,” Zales said.

Concerning gag grouper, the council increased commercial quotas by 567,000 pounds for 2012, but shortened the 2011 season for recreational gag grouper from Sept. 16 to Nov. 15, or 61 days, said Steven Atran, a fisheries biologist for the council.

Anderson said gag grouper is not as important along the northern Gulf as red snapper, however.

Anderson said scientists determined from a standard stock assessment in 2009 that fishing stock had fallen dramatically, probably from a massive red tide along Florida coastal regions in 2005. Zales thinks the data was flawed.

 

Read the complete story from The Miami Herald

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, met with some Morro Bay city officials and local fishermen to get feedback on how well a controversial new catch-share program is working. She also took a boat tour of the Morro Bay harbor.

Lubchenco said her Morro Bay visit was an opportunity to visit with fishermen from a smaller harbor and get feedback on how the catch-share program can be improved. Her harbor tour included stops at two boats involved in the catch-share program — the 35-foot Dorado and the 63-foot trawler South Bay.

Roger Cullen, captain of the Dorado, said that one improvement would be loosening the requirement that every catch-share trip have an observer onboard, which costs $350 per day. He said a better solution for smaller boats such as his would be to use video cameras to monitor what is brought aboard.

Lubchenco agreed that the program still has problems to work out, and it is not suitable for every fishery. The program was developed over a five-year period with input from the industry and is intended to give fishermen a stake in the future.

Local fishermen involved in the catch-share program have formed the Central Coast Sustainable Groundfish Association. They plan to use the group as a way to pool risk and involve the community in the program.

Read the complete story from The San Luis Obispo Tribune

 

 

 

 

 

The 15-state commission charged with regulating the Atlantic fishery is considering action to significantly reduce the amount of menhaden allowed to be harvested each year. The action, if approved, could have far-reaching effects in the Northern Neck where approximately 250 workers are employed at Reedville Omega Protein factory, the last of its kind on the east coast.

On Aug. 2, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted to send for public comments measures to "establish a new fishing mortality threshold and target with the goal of increasing abundance, spawning stock biomass and menhaden availability as a forage species," according to Tina Berger, public affairs specialist with ASMFC.
State Senator Richard Stuart (R-Westmoreland), Virginia's legislative appointee on the ASMFC, came back from Alexandria on Aug. 2 "very disappointed and frustrated."

At a March meeting, the menhaden management board backed shifting to a "multi-species model" to oversee the forage species, which examines menhaden as part of the food chain. At that time, the board also embraced a 15 percent maximum spawning potential (MSP) figure, which means that 15 percent of reproduction-aged fish would be prevented from harvest. The current MSP is 8 percent.

On Aug. 2, the board's March action was ignored, Stuart said, pointing out that the chairman of the ASMFC's technical committee pushed through an MSP as high as 40 percent.

"Forty percent MSP would be devastating to the industry," Stuart said, referring to both the reduction and bait-fishing sectors.

Currently, Omega Protein accounts for nearly 80 percent of the menhaden harvested annually, according to ASMFC calculations, with the remainder attributed to fishermen who harvest menhaden for use as bait.

Read the full article at the Northumberland Echo.

 

 

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, which regulates summer flounder, recommended increasing the 2012 harvest by 1.6 million pounds to 35.55 million pounds, at a meeting this week.

The proposed harvest for 2012 is a 125 percent increase over the lowest year, the 2008 quota of 15.77 million pounds.

The recommendation, which still has to be approved by the National Marine Fisheries Service, would set the commercial harvest at 19.59 million pounds and the recreational harvest at 15.96 million pounds. The actual catches would be lower as some fish are reserved for a program called "research set asides." There can also be an allowance for dead fish that are discarded. The actual catch is projected to be 12.63 million pounds for anglers and 18.95 million pounds for commercial net fishermen in 2012.

The news was welcomed by an environmental group that had pushed for strict flounder regulations as a way to increase stocks. Lee Crockett, of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Federal Fisheries Reform Project, called it a "success story" for policies put in place to stop overfishing and rebuild depleted stocks.

"If we get the fishing rate set at sustainable levels, or with depleted stocks reduce catches so they can rebuild, they will. What's good about this is it means more fish rather than cuts. This is what we hope happens with sound management," Crockett said.

 

Read the complete story from Press of Atlantic City

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sidney Hillman Foundation announced Tuesday that Tom Gogola has won the August Sidney Award for excellence in socially conscious journalism for his story, "Bycatch 22: As a twisted consequence of overfishing regulations, commercial fishermen have no choice but to catch sea bass, flounder, monkfish, and tuna—and throw them dead back into the sea," which was published in New York Magazine and reported with support from the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute.

Conservation regulations prohibit fishermen from eating or selling fish caught out-of-season, undersize, or without a permit. The rules are not without internal logic: If fishermen could profit from illegally caught fish, they'd have an incentive to break the law. However, as Gogola witnessed first-hand as a mate on a fish boat, fishermen inevitably catch some forbidden species, which must be discarded, even though they're perfectly good to eat.

Gogola writes:

 While concerned consumers fret over which fish are correct to order at their favorite seafood restaurant, heading to websites maintained by groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund for guidance on the “eco-best” and “eco-worst” fish to purchase, the truth about commercial fishing in the United States is that a regulatory framework designed to limit overfishing results in vast numbers of fish per year being scooped up on boats and dumped right back off, dead, never consumed by any ­human. Concerned about “endangered” bluefin tuna? Tell it to the tuna long-liners who’ve had to cut loose untold numbers of dead bluefins in recent years, owing to the restrictions that come with winding up on the endangered-species list.

Around the world, hundreds of millions of tons of edible fish are simply thrown overboard like garbage.

 

Read the complete story from The Big Think

 

 

 

 

 

They’ve been called “the most important fish in the sea.” Small, silvery, and packed with nutritional value, menhaden are filter feeders that consume plankton and in turn are food for striped bass and other important fish, as well as marine mammals and sea birds. They are in effect a critical link in the marine food web. 

But in 32 of the past 54 years, menhaden have been overfished, and they are now at their lowest level on record. Most of the harvest today is taken by Omega Protein, Inc.—a corporation based in Houston, Texas, which capitalizes off of menhaden’s nutritional value by running a fish reduction plant out of small-town Reedville, Virginia. Omega Protein’s catch makes up 80 percent of the East Coast catch, resulting in more than 150,000 tons per year of menhaden, which are then cooked, ground up, processed into oil and meal to be used for fish and livestock feed, pet food, paints, cosmetics, and dietary supplements.

“This is enough to make Reedville, Virginia, annually one of the top three ports in the whole country, including Alaska, in terms of tonnage landed,” says Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Fisheries Director and Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) Commissioner Bill Goldsborough. “And most of these ecologically critical fish are removed from Chesapeake Bay waters and the ocean waters just outside the Bay’s mouth.”

 Read the rest of the article at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Blog.

Analysis: While overfishing of menhaden has occured in the past, recent assessments have concluded that it is not currently occuring. However, overfishing is only one influence on the health and size of the menhaden population; other environmental factors, including water temperature and levels of predation, also play an important role. Current menhaden fecundity levels are at their target, and egg levels are high enough that they should be able to replace menhaden caught during reduction fishing, which is at the mortality threshold. Weak recruitment would then indicate factors other than reduction fishing influencing menhaden population size.

 

 

 

 

Each week on WBSM in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood joins host Phil Paleologos to discuss issues related to the fisheries with news-making guests.

Earlier this month, Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) spoke with Saving Seafood to describe new legislation he has introduced to make our nation's fishery management council meetings available on the Internet.  Under the proposed law, the proceedings would be broadcast live on the Web and archived for 3 years to promote greater transparency and accountability.  Later in the show, NOAA's director of communications, Justin Kenney — and Patricia Fiorelli of the New England Fisheries Management Council — express their strong support for the ideas advanced in this new legislation, and describe the steps some regional councils are already taking to make their meetings available online.  The bill is H.R. 2753 — The Fishery Management Transparency and Accountability Act.

[listen to this episode at Saving Seafood Radio]

 

 

 

Fishermen say red snapper were bigger and more abundant this season than any in recent memory. They hauled in piles of the bright pink fish, reportedly weighing an average of 15 to 20 pounds. They didn’t have to travel too far from shore to find the good spots, where a dropped line almost always produced a keeper.

At one time, fishermen were hard-pressed to find larger fish because the population had been so heavily harvested, he said.

Thanks to federal and state regulations over the years, the red snapper are back.

Federal regulators report that in 2009, the red snapper population was rebuilding and that the fish were larger and more abundant. The practice of removing fish at a greater rate than they could reproduce was projected to end.

Read the complete story from NWF Daily News.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fishery managers are set to vote next week on protections for the gag grouper and on a sweeping plan in the Gulf of Mexico by setting new catch limits on about two dozen species ranging from various snappers and groupers to jacks, tilefish and royal red shrimp.

The blueprint to prevent overfishing would extend throughout the Gulf.
 
Meeting details:   (Vote is likely on Friday)
August 15 – 19
Crowne Plaza
6121 North IH-35
Austin, TX 78752

 

 

 

 

 

 

Each week on WBSM in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Bob Vanasse of Saving Seafood joins host Phil Paleologos to discuss issues related to the fisheries with news-making guests.

The late opening of Closed Area 1 in the scallop fishery resulted in a derby that resembled a city at sea, according to a description in the Standard-Times.  The area was closed for so long that many scallops being caught are dead or diseased.  Others are older. Older scallops develop a gray appearance, which makes them less marketable and less valuable.  When they get very old, the meat becomes stringy and unpalatable.  Some of the grey scallops are still young enough to be eaten and are currently being landed, though they are commanding low prices at the docks.  Contrary to their coloring, however, the gray scallops that are still young enough to bring to shore can be as tasty as their younger, whiter counterparts, if just a bit less tender.  In this Saving Seafood episode, Dr. Kevin Stokesbury — chairman of the Fisheries Oceanography department at UMass Dartmouth — provides a scientific grounding for these discussions and details the pros and cons of closed area management.  Captain Paul Tetreault, a long-time scalloper, describes what his crew saw on a recent trip into the closed area and shares his insights on the many challenges of scallop harvesting. And Chef Victor Viera from the Country Club of New Bedford conducts an on-air cooking and taste test of white and gray scallops.

[listen to this latest episode at Saving Seafood Radio]