Saving Seafood

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

Oyster Reef Restoration Efforts Could Use Your Help—And Your Oyster Shells

May 28, 2020 — A couple of centuries ago, oysters were ridiculously prevalent in the Chesapeake Bay, which stretches nearly 200 miles from Havre de Grace, Maryland to Virginia Beach, Virginia. At that time, more than 17 million bushels of everyone’s favorite bivalve were pulled from its waters every year, but that number has since dropped by 98 percent due to a depressing combination of overfishing, degradation of their habitats, and water pollution.

But part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s mission to “Save the Bay” includes a number of oyster restoration programs, including small-scale oyster farming and “oyster gardening,” which allows amateur aquaculturists to spend a year caring for baby oysters, which are then transplanted onto protected reefs when they’re a year old. These restored reefs not only help to increase the oyster population, but they also provide food and shelter for a variety of fish and other marine life.

In order for an oyster to live past the larval stage, it has to find a solid object to attach to. Once it’s safely anchored, it can put its energy into feeding itself and growing its own shell. It also happens that the best things that baby oysters—also called spat—can attach themselves to are the discarded shells of other oysters.

Read the full story at Food & Wine

VIRGINIA: Jobs safe for Omega Protein employees

May 20, 2020 — Omega Protein is no longer threatened with a moratorium on its menhaden fishing operations. Thursday, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission notified the U.S. Secretary of Commerce that Virginia is now in compliance with the menhaden catch limits set by the commission and exceeded by Omega last year. Thus, the Reedville operation is no longer facing a possible closure.

In 2019, Omega, faced with bad weather outside the Chesapeake Bay, took 15,000 metric tons more from the Bay than the ASMFC 51,000 metric tons limit permitted. The fish were targeted from a school that was just inside the Bay Bridge-Tunnel. Had the school been on the other side of the bridge-tunnel, there would have been no violation since that side is not in the Bay.

The ASMFC asked the Secretary to find Omega out of compliance and subject to a moratorium. The federal regulatory commission was supported by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a long-time opponent to the industrial menhaden operation and the secretary found Omega out of compliance and subject to a moratorium.

Read the full story at News on the Neck

Study: Bay Rockfish Die at Twice the Rate of Those in Atlantic

May 18, 2020 — Striped bass that stay year-round in the Chesapeake Bay are dying at nearly twice the rate of those that migrate each year to the Atlantic Ocean, a new study has found. The cause or causes aren’t clear, but the lead researcher said that it needs to be addressed to right a troubling decline in the prized finfish.

An electronic tagging study led by scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science found that large mature striped bass leave the Bay every year to roam coastal waters until the next spring. Those smaller, younger fish that remain in the Chesapeake died off at the rate of 70% a year.

“The mortality rate is alarming,” said Dave Secor, a professor at the UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons. “If fish are dying at greater than 50% or 60% a year, that’s a problem.”

The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS One, appears likely to draw further attention to disease and overfishing, two suspects in the decline of striped bass, also known as rockfish, which are among the most sought-after fish in the Chesapeake and along the Atlantic coast.

UMCES scientists implanted acoustic transmitters in 100 striped bass from the Potomac River and tracked their movements over four years. Signals emitted by their tags were picked up as they swam by receivers stationed in the Bay and along the coast — a kind of E-Z Pass network for fish, as Secor described it.

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Large rockfish leave Chesapeake Bay to become ocean migrators

May 15, 2020 — A new electronic tagging study of 100 Potomac River striped bass sheds light on rockfish migration in Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Coast. University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science researchers found that when rockfish reach 32 inches in length they leave Chesapeake Bay and become ocean migrators. Small fish stayed in the Bay had higher mortality rates than those that undertook ocean migrations.

“Knowing the size at which they leave, we can do improved management that is tailored better to commercial and  sectors those related to catch and size limits,” said study author and Professor Dave Secor of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “It allows us to bring different parts of the fishery into an assessment model to evaluate stock health and test how effective regulations will be.”

Chesapeake Bay striped , also known as rockfish, (Morone saxatilis) were implanted with two-inch acoustic transmitters and their coastal shelf migrations recorded over a four-year period by telemetry receivers throughout the Mid-Atlantic shelf waters and southern New England. Researchers found that only large striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay migrate to ocean waters when they reach 32 inches in length, and smaller fish remain resident to the Chesapeake Bay, regardless of sex.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

VIRGINIA: Multi-year menhaden quota conflict could finally be at an end

May 15, 2020 — The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) has rescinded a noncompliance finding for the U.S. State of Virginia’s menhaden fishery, potentially ending a conflict over the quota that has been going on for more than two years.

The noncompliance finding was initiated in October 2019 after a multi-year battle over the state’s menhaden catch limits in the Chesapeake Bay. The conflict was initiated in November 2017, when the ASMFC made changes to the menhaden quota up and down the U.S. East Coast.

Read the full story at Seafood Source