Saving Seafood

Mid-Atlantic Seismic Blasts Halted

October 14, 2020 — Oil and gas drilling companies are standing down from seismic testing in the Atlantic Ocean this year, to the relief of environmental groups and wildlife advocates in the Chesapeake Bay region.

The industry said in a status conference before the U.S. District Court in South Carolina that it will not move ahead with testing for oil and gas reserves this year. The current seismic blasting authorizations expire November 30, and renewing them would require another round of environmental review and public comment.

Bay Bulletin first reported two years ago the federal approval for five companies to do seismic surveys in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Maryland and Virginia, as a first step to gas and oil offshore drilling.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Congress extends Bay Program, related conservation efforts

October 5, 2020 — The U.S. House of Representatives has approved a sweeping conservation measure that provides continued support for several key Chesapeake Bay initiatives and creates a new program to support fish and wildlife habitat restoration efforts in the watershed.

The America’s Conservation Enhancement Act provides support for two dozen conservation initiatives around the nation that were rolled into a single piece of legislation and overwhelmingly approved by the House on Oct. 1.

The Senate had already approved the bill without controversy, and it is expected to be signed by President Trump.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

Shad recovery efforts not paying off, study shows

September 21, 2020 — The American shad’s Atlantic population remains at a historic low, despite longstanding commercial fishing bans in several states and millions of dollars invested in restoring the fish’s habitat.

That sober news comes from the most comprehensive survey yet of the species’ status on the East Coast and the first of any kind in 13 years. The sprawling assessment by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission designates the shad population as “depleted” from Maine to Florida.

“There should be a lot more shad than there are out there,” said Michael Bailey, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service scientist and one of the assessment’s authors.

In the Chesapeake Bay region, the study suggests that the rate of death among adult shad — a key measure of a population’s health — is “unsustainable” in the Potomac River but “sustainable” in the Rappahannock and York.

Once one of the largest commercial fisheries along the coast and around the Bay, shad catches have bottomed out at about 1% of their late-1800s levels. Although the shad fishery has all but disappeared in the Chesapeake, scientists contend that the species serves a critical ecological role in the estuary as a vital link in its food chain.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

MARYLAND: Land-based salmon farm proposed for Chesapeake’s Eastern Shore

September 3, 2020 — The Chesapeake Bay is known to many for the seafood it produces: blue crabs, oysters and striped bass.

In a few years, though, the Bay region could become a major producer of an even more popular seafood that doesn’t come from the Chesapeake. A Norwegian company, AquaCon, has unveiled plans to raise salmon on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

AquaCon executives intend to build a $300 million indoor salmon farm on the outskirts of Federalsburg in Caroline County. By 2024, they aim to harvest 3 million fish a year weighing 14,000 metric tons — an amount on par with Maryland’s annual commercial crab catch.

If that goes as planned, the company expects to build two more land-based salmon farms on the Shore over the next six or seven years, bringing production up to 42,000 tons annually. That’s more than the Baywide landings of any fish or shellfish, except for menhaden, and more valuable commercially.

AquaCon’s announcement comes amid a rush by mostly European aquaculture companies to supply Americans with farmed salmon. Another Norwegian company is preparing for its first full harvest later this year from a facility south of Miami, and plans have been announced to build big indoor salmon farms in Maine and on the West Coast. Two small U.S.-based salmon operations in the Midwest also are moving to expand production.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

DELAWARE: DNREC Sinks Ex-Military Freighter for Artificial Reef

August 17, 2020 — The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has another vessel in its artificial reef.

On Thursday, the agency sunk the Reedville, originally a World War II and Korean Conflict-era coastal freighter. The supply ship is part of DNREC’s artificial reef 16 miles offshore and 87 feet deep. The reef also includes decommissioned ferries and the “Perfect Storm” ship, the Zuni-Tamaroa. DNREC says the artificial reef helps the local fish habitat and has become a popular angling destination.

“We continue to enhance the angling and recreational diving experience in Delaware by expanding our reef system, which includes 14 separate reef sites in the Delaware Bay and along the Atlantic Coast,” said DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin. “When we sank Twin Capes two years ago as a centerpiece of the system, it was unmatched as an artificial reef for both providing fish habitat and a spectacular dive with its five decks for underwater exploration. Now with the Reedville, we’ve got four reefed vessels of the same class and we are putting it in a place that will be accessible, attract the most fish and where divers will want to explore, too.”

Read the full story at WBOC

Army-Navy freighter added to artificial reef off the Delaware coast.

August 14, 2020 — DNREC continued to bolster Delaware’s artificial reef system today by sinking the Reedville, originally a coastal freighter and supply ship, at a reef site 16 miles offshore.

The Reedville was converted to a commercial fishing vessel after military decommissioning and today found another new life as fish habitat and diving attract through DNREC’s artificial reef program.

The sinking of the 180-foot long Reedville was the reef program’s first deployment of a vessel since a retired Chesapeake Bay cruise ship was sunk late last year.

It came after the nationally-publicized and viral-videoed 2018 sinking of the retired Cape May-Lewes ferry Twin Capes onto the Del-Jersey-Land Reef, second only to Reef Site No. 11 as a popular fishing destination.

Because of the ship’s profile featuring a cavernous hold, the Reedville is expected to be a boon to two fish prominent in Delaware inshore waters, black sea bass and tautog. The area where vessels have been sunk does not have suitable habitat for some species.

Read the full story at Delaware Business Now

Menhaden steamer launches from Mississippi; Maryland builder makes oyster boat with a bed

July 20, 2020 — Omega Shipyard at Moss Point, Miss., delivered the 180′ x 40′ x 7′ menhaden steamer Little River to the Omega Protein plant in Reedville, Va., to fish the Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean.

The vessel was motored in April from Moss Point, up the Atlantic Coast to the plant and now Omega’s corporate headquarters in Reedville. The firm started fishing the vessel in May.

The steel hull vessel was converted from an offshore oil supply vessel on the Gulf of Mexico named Black Diver II. Little River is powered by two 399 Caterpillar Diesel engines rated together at 2,250 hp, working through 4:1 ratio Caterpillar marine reduction gears.

There are two generators on the boat powered by two new John Deere 6068 Tier III engines, 150 kw. The vessel will travel at 12 knots consuming 100 gallons of fuel per hour. Little River has a fuel capacity of 9,000 gallons.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab populations are healthy, report finds

July 6, 2020 — The bay’s blue crabs aren’t being over-harvested and the population isn’t depleted, which means there’s no need for significant changes in how many watermen catch, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s annual Blue Crab Advisory Report said.

Although crab numbers declined from 594 million last year to 405 million this year, that’s in line with natural variation, according to the report, which was released Wednesday.

At that level, there’s no need for significant change in the rules the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, or its counterparts in Maryland and the Potomac River, set for when and how watermen catch crabs, the report noted.

The key issue for those regulators, and the Bay program, is that the stock of female crabs remains robust. If too many are harvested when they could be reproducing, the overall population could crash, as happened in the late 1990s.

While the current count of female crabs declined by 26% from last year’s total, to 141 million, that’s well above the 70 million minimum fisheries scientists say is needed to maintain the population of crabs, the report noted.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

Maryland’s wild oyster harvest doubles from last year

June 16, 2020 — Despite having fewer days to work, Maryland watermen harvested nearly twice as many wild oysters last season as they did the previous year, state officials report. Even so, a new study finds the state’s population of bivalves is in much better shape now than it was two years ago, with abundance up and overfishing down.

As a result, state fisheries managers say they’re weighing whether to maintain catch restrictions put in place last season or relax them for the next wild harvest season, which normally begins Oct. 1.

Data presented Monday night to the Department of Natural Resources’ Oyster Advisory Commission indicates that the overall abundance of adult, market-size oysters in Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake Bay has rebounded considerably since 2018 and is now at the fifth highest level since 1999.

Preliminary figures indicate the wild harvest last season topped 270,000 bushels, a nearly 90% jump from the 145,000 bushels landed in the 2018–19 season.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

STUDY: MATURE OYSTER REEFS COULD BOOST BLUE CRAB NUMBERS BY 80%

June 9, 2020 — Restoring oyster reefs is a priority on the Chesapeake Bay, as we know healthy oyster populations can buoy Bay-wide clean water efforts. But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) wanted to know just how much restored reefs can help, and how that could translate to the Bay region’s economy.

So NOAA Fisheries’ Office of Habitat Conservation used a high-tech model to predict long-term benefits of restored oyster reefs in the Choptank River system. Spoiler alert: the predicted benefits would be remarkable for both the ecology and the crab industry.

Together with six partner institutions, NOAA published a technical memorandum that looks at oyster reefs in Harris Creek, the Little Choptank River, and the Tred Avon River, all parts of the Choptank system that have been targeted with large-scale oyster restoration under the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement. These reefs are considered “young” today (Harris Creek’s oyster sanctuary was just completed in 2015, and the other two are still underway), but the research model also looked at what may happen when the reefs are “mature,” roughly 15 years after restoration.

Read the full story at Chesapeake Bay Magazine