State and Local

February 7, 2014 — Quick: what’s the last commercial fish species still caught in San Francisco Bay? Nope, not oysters, not Dungeness crab. It’s herring, and right now, our herrings’ winter spawning run is in full swing. If you’ve ever wanted to go hyperlocal in your seafood eating, now’s your chance to get these healthy, delicious, and very sustainable fish onto your table. Fresh herring is popping up on restaurant menus and fish markets around the Bay Area. (The second annual Sausalito Herring Festival was planned for Sunday, Feb. 9, but has unfortunately been cancelled due to the weekend’s storm.)

If you have Scandinavian, German, Eastern European or Jewish roots, you’ve probably eaten herring before–probably pickled, maybe smoked, often doused in sour cream sauce with sliced onions. Sometimes fat chunks of pickled herring were wrapped around olives, onions, or pickles, in a preparation typically known as rollmops. As a Jewish kid in New Jersey, I grew up with a perpetual jar of herring in the fridge, and that’s where I thought herring came from: out of the fridge, from a jar.

Not so. The Pacific herring’s spawning run from the open ocean into San Francisco Bay typically happens between mid-January and mid-March, to the delight of both commercial and sport fishermen. Many thousands of sea gulls, cormorants, pelicans, murres, ducks, sea lions, and more go into a squawking, barking feeding frenzy when the fat, roe-filled herring arrive. So far, the herring population this year looks quite robust, good news after the near-collapse of the population in 2009, when the state closed down the commercial herring fishery completely in hopes of letting the spawning fish rebuild their numbers. As a “forage fish” for dozens of predators, herring is a valuable food source for a wide range of bird and marine life in the area, supporting many migrating birds along the Pacific Flyway, as well as sea lions, salmon, even whales.

The golden roe, or egg sacs, of the female herring are treasured in Japan, where they are known as kazunoko and are especially prized as a delicacy for Shogatsu, or Japanese New Year. Until quite recently, most of the local herring catch focused on the roe, which were salted and sent to Japan. The rest of the fish were often used for fishmeal, pet food, or even discarded.

Now, however, local awareness of this tasty, seasonal fish has grown, and more and more restaurants and fish markets are featuring it during its short winter season. Herring is rich in omega-3 fats and vitamin D, and since it eats low on the food chain, feeding on drifting phytoplankton (tiny plants) and zooplankton (mostly tiny crustaceans and larvae), it typically contains very low levels of mercury and other heavy metals that large fish like tuna and swordfish can accumulate.

Read the full story at Bay Area Bites 

 

 

February 6, 2014 — The $75 million in fisheries disaster relief approved by the federal government has been good news for the fishing industry as a whole, but South Shore fishermen are uncertain as to how much relief they will receive.

“The good news was the overall package, the things uncertain to me is how much would be for Massachusetts itself,” said state Representative Jim Cantwell, a Marshfield Democrat who also represents Scituate.

Competition will be high for the funding, which was approved in mid-January as part of a $1.012 trillion spending bill. According to staff in US Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office, the money will support those impacted by six fishing disasters declared around the country.

In New England, the 2012 groundfish fishery failure affected fishermen from Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey. The disaster was declared due to low fishing stocks key to the industry.

Funds will be distributed in the form of block grants to each state, and distributed based on need. Government agencies from each affected area were compiling loss totals in the interim.

Whatever Massachusetts eventually receives, Cantwell hoped Scituate and Marshfield fishermen would see some relief.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe 

 

 

BOSTON — February 7, 2014 — A marketing program encouraging Bay Staters to buy locally caught seafood is what some Cape lawmakers and the Senate majority leader think will do the trick to turn around Massachusetts' lagging seafood industry.

"It could be transformative," Senate Majority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, said after testifying in support of the program and its accompanying bill at the Statehouse on Thursday. "It could be one of the things that helps to be a lifeline for the survival of the industry."

The proposed marketing program would receive $250,000 a year to fund its efforts, collected from the money raised by commercial harvester and dealer permits under the Division of Marine Fisheries. It would also have a committee staffed by legislators and representatives from all corners of the state's seafood industry that would steer the program.

"The goal of the seafood marketing program is to raise the ex-vessel price, which is what the fishermen are paid ultimately," said Beth Casoni, associate director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association. — The program would put money back into fishing communities and boost seafood as a resource, she added.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times 

 

AUGUSTA, Maine — February 7, 2014 — A bill designed to protect Maine’s $340 million lobster industry by banning two pesticides that have been partially blamed for decimating lobster populations in New York and Connecticut is facing a headwind in the Legislature.

L.D. 1678 is sponsored by Rep. Walter Kumiega, D-Deer Isle. It would prohibit the use of methoprene and resmethrin, chemicals that were used during a massive mosquito spraying operation in 1999 to combat an outbreak of West Nile in areas along Long Island Sound.

Shortly thereafter, a severe die-off of lobsters wiped out the fishery there, although warming ocean temperatures and other factors are also believed to have played a role.

Rep. Michael Devin, D-Newcastle, told lawmakers on the Agriculture Conservation and Forestry Committee on Thursday that Maine should join Connecticut and ban the two chemicals, traces of which were found in dead lobsters studied in the sound.

“Whatever we apply in the terrestrial environment eventually makes its way to the coast and out to sea,” Devin said.

“The cigarette butt you saw this morning on the sidewalk will end up in the Kennebec River and then flow down to the ocean. Insecticides … all end up in our ocean.”

The proposal, however, lacks the support of the LePage administration and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, a trade group representing the industry. Patrice McCarron, the association’s executive director, told lawmakers Thursday that lobstermen are concerned about pesticides, but worry that banning methoprene and resmethrin could give a “false sense of security” while ignoring other chemicals that could be more harmful to lobsters.

McCarron said the association supports a more comprehensive analysis to determine which pesticides, if any, are affecting a fishery that pumps $1.7 billion into the state economy, according to estimates by the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald 

 

February 6, 2014 (Saving Seafood) — In a February 4 letter to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick expressed his support for recently approved federal disaster relief for New England fishermen, and presented several proposals for how the relief funds should be allotted. According to the Governor, the disaster funds “should be used to not only begin to remedy the economic harm caused by the fisheries disaster, but also to better position our fishery to weather this ongoing resource disaster.”

The federal relief funds are in response to the economic disaster declaration issued in 2012 by the Commerce Department for the New England groundfish fishery. The current economic crisis in the fishery was precipitated by drastically reduced catch levels on key New England groundfish species like cod. According to the Governor, these catch reductions resulted in $33.5 million in lost revenue in Massachusetts alone. When combined with indirect losses, the fishery and fishery-related businesses have lost over $115 million region-wide, with approximately 90 percent of the losses, $103 million, hitting Massachusetts alone.

The Governor concluded by offering the following 6 suggestions for how to allocate the relief money:

– “establish direct subsidy programs to fishermen and fishing businesses to provide temporary relief and deal with immediate changes in fishery management”

– “support crew and family service programs”

– “support loan assistance programs including a long-term revolving loan fund”

– “fund shore-side infrastructure support”

– “develop and implement industry and community plans to rationalize aspects of the groundfish industry and ensure future sustainability of the industry and fishing communities”

Read the full letter from Governor Deval Patrick here

February 5, 2014 — Did you ever wonder if a restaurant's crabcake was made with Maryland crab or some foreign import? Or if that was really red snapper you bought, or an impostor?

A bill introduced Wednesday in Annapolis would make it illegal for restaurants or markets to mislabel the seafood they sell, and moreover would require them to specify where their crabmeat came from.

"If I go to a restaurant and order a 'Maryland-style' crabcake, I'd like to know if it's made with Venezuelan crabmeat," said Del. Eric G. Luedtke, the bill's sponsor.

Luedtke, a Montgomery County Democrat, said investigations have found a significant share of seafood sold in restaurants is mislabeled. Such bait-and-switch winds up costing consumers more, he said, and sometimes can even have health consequences.

A study by Oceana, a Washington-based conservation group, found through DNA testing that one-third of more than 1,200 seafood items bought in stores nationwide were mislabeled, according to guidelines form the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In the Washington area, 26 percent of fish was mislabeled, the group said. Snapper and tuna were among the most frequently misidentified products.

Read the full story from The Baltimore Sun

February 6, 2014 — A Canadian businessman says he has a solution to the population explosion of green crabs, which are ravaging Maine’s valuable shellfish industry: Put the crabs on menus around the world.

“We are going to take that invasive species and turn it into gold,” said Ron Howse, president and CEO of the Tidalwater Seafood Co., based in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Howse has scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m. Thursday at Brunswick Town Hall to lay out his plan to process green crabs in Maine and market the meat and live crabs to customers in Japan, Korea, China, Spain and Portugal. He said he’ll boil some crabs and offer samples of the meat – which he said has a sweet taste – at the news conference.

Howse, who has no background in the seafood industry, said Asian and European consumers will pay good money for green crabs, which are pests in Maine because they eat clams and mussels, steal bait from lobster traps, destroy eelgrass beds and damage salt marshes.

Howse, 65, said he’s looking at opening a processing plant in the Brunswick or Bangor area to pick the meat from green crabs, and may set up holding facilities along the Maine coast. He said there’s also a significant market for live crabs, which could be shipped to Asia and Europe on flights from the Bangor International Airport.

Howse said there’s enough money to finance the business plan if he gets some financial support from community development groups in the state. He said he has significant private funds available, but he wouldn’t provide details about the amount of money he has or the amount he would need to raise.

Clam diggers and marine resource managers are cautiously optimistic that Howse has come up with a workable business solution, something that would be remarkable because all other attempts have failed.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

 

February 6, 2014 — Massachusetts, the epicenter of the groundfish disaster that has ravaged the Gloucester small-boat fleet, could be positioned to receive a favorable share of the $75 million in disaster aid approved for fishermen and fishing communities in the Northeast Groundfish Fishery under the developing guidelines for distributing the funds.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s office confirmed yesterday that the process for developing the distribution formula remains a work in progress, but with the underlying principle that the funds — specifically designated as assistance to the groundfish disaster proclaimed by the Department of Commerce in 2012 — should go to areas where the most groundfish fishermen have suffered the greatest level of economic distress from the disaster.

Within the Northeast Groundfish fishery, which encompasses all six New England states, as well as New York and New Jersey, that would be Massachusetts.

The great fear among fishermen and fishing advocates is that NOAA, as an agent for the Department of Commerce, will exact a steep cut of the $75 million for the administrative costs related to funneling the money to the participating states.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

January 28, 2014 — Police say they know who stole more than $40,000 in oysters and equipment from beds in East Dennis and Barnstable last summer, but they're not quite ready to publicly name the culprit.

Barnstable police Lt. Sean Balcom, who heads the Barnstable Street Crime Unit, called the anticipated end of the five-month investigation by multiple public safety agencies "the result of police work and the rewards" that were offered.

The street crime unit was tipped to the identity of the poacher by one of its informants, Balcom said.

Rewards totaling $2,000 are being offered to the tipster if the guilty party is caught.

"We've definitely identified somebody," Balcom said Monday. "We caught him red-handed and anticipate charging him in the next couple weeks.

"Where he sold the oysters is going to come as a pretty big surprise."

Balcom said police decided not "to make the quick arrest" but instead to have a grand jury consider the charges because of "the amount of money we're talking about."

"It also involves four or five different thefts, all quite old and occurring in separate district court jurisdictions. Dennis falls under the jurisdiction of Orleans District Court and Barnstable under Barnstable District Court."

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

February 4, 2014 — The North Carolina Division of Marine Fisheries has ordered a closing of all commercial and recreational fishing for speckled trout beginning at noon Wednesday.

The closure will continue through June 15.

Cold-stun events were confirmed over the weekend along coastal waters including the Pamlico, Alligator, Pungo, Scuppernong, Trent, Neuse and Cape Fear rivers, as well as adjacent bays.

Under North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission rules, when coastal waters are closed, inland waters and adjacent waters along the beach also are closed for the same species.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot