Saving Seafood

Old Line Fish Co. delivers Chesapeake Bay seafood in Maryland’s first community-supported fishery

August 9, 2016 — As a lifelong Maryland resident, Stephanie Hall has eaten plenty of oysters. But she’d never shucked one herself until she received a share of the shelled mollusks from Old Line Fish Co. this summer.

Hall was among the earliest customers of the region’s first community-supported fishery. Similar to community-supported agriculture, Old Line Fish Co. allows customers to buy shares of local seafood for biweekly pickups. The seafood in each delivery varies from week to week depending on fish and shellfish in local watermen’s catches.

An offshoot of the Oyster Recovery Partnership, a nonprofit that works to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s oyster population, Old Line Fish Co. is as much about educating customers as delivering fresh seafood. In its first season, the organization introduced customers to the watermen who caught their meals, provided some unfamiliar foods and suggested new cooking processes.

Oysters were just one of the species that made it into Hall’s reusable bag stamped with an “Old Line Fish Co.” seal — the Annapolis resident didn’t even have a shucking knife until she bought one on the way home from picking up her share and grilled the oysters on the half-shell.

“If I’m going to say I’m a Marylander, I better be able to shuck an oyster,” said Hall, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources biologist who monitors water quality.

Read the full story from The Baltimore Sun

ASMFC Atlantic Menhaden Board Approves Addendum I

August 4, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA:

Alexandria, VA – The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s Atlantic Menhaden Management Board approved Addendum I to Amendment 2 to the Interstate Fishery Management Plan for Atlantic Menhaden. The Addendum modifies the bycatch provision of Amendment 2 by allowing two permitted commercial fishermen working together from the same vessel using stationary multi-species gear to land up to 12,000 pounds of menhaden per trip per day. In this case, stationary multi-species gears are defined as pound nets, anchored/staked gillnets, and fyke nets. Interested states may implement the new bycatch provision as their regulatory processes allow, but no earlier than August 15.

The practice of two permitted fishermen working together from the same vessel to harvest Atlantic menhaden primarily occurs in the Chesapeake Bay pound net fishery.  This practice enables the fishermen to pool resources for fuel and crew.  However, the practice was constrained under Amendment 2’s bycatch allowance provision, which stipulated a 6,000 pound/vessel/day limit.

Board members also discussed 2017 specifications but postponed final action on these measures until the Commission’s Annual Meeting in late October. Addendum I will be available of the Commission website, www.asmfc.org, on the Atlantic Menhaden page by mid-August. For more information, please contact Megan Ware, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at mware@asmfc.org or 703.842.0740.

AMY MACKOWN: Marine monument drowns antiquities

July 27, 2016 — Let’s talk Antiquities. In 1607 when Capt. John Smith, Admiral of New England, sailed the Chesapeake Bay, he lowered a net, hauled in his catch, and fed his crew. Jamestown, and similar settlements were developed and despite disease and famine, early colonial America, by the skin of its teeth, held on through trade with the American Indians for produce, meat, and fish. And there you have it—commercial fishing in America was born.  It’s a time-honored tradition that has fed our nation’s families for years and there is no place better known for its seafood than New England.

Now, an ironically named act, The Antiquities Act, threatens that culture, that heritage, that living history. About a year ago the movement to establish a marine monument in the North Atlantic stirred anger and distrust among New Englanders, and rightfully so. That’s because the area proposed for a marine monument means eliminating fishing from some of the richest fishing grounds our nation has to offer. Fish from these waters has been the keystone to our country’s development and sovereignty. Oil from New England’s historic whaling grounds produced the light by which our nation’s Declaration of Independence, and Constitution were written. The favorite vacation spot of American presidents, Cape Cod, is named for the codfish native to our waters. Lobster boils, clambakes, and chowder festivals, are every bit American as baseball and barbeques.

The motivation behind shutting down commercial fishing in areas of southeastern Georges Bank and beyond is for one reason, and one reason only—to preserve our nation’s historic coral habitats. Corals? Yes. And there is a reason why none of us had heard about these corals in any of our American history classes. That’s because these coral grounds are the corals our nation has respectfully left in peace and ignored since 1607.  And what a time-honored tradition it has been.

Read the full opinion column at Southern Rhode Island Newspapers

Dolphins more common in Potomac than previously thought

July 19, 2016 — A waterfront house on Virginia’s Northern Neck promised to be a getaway for Janet Mann from three decades of studying dolphins, primarily in Australia’s Shark Bay.

But the day after Mann and her husband closed on the place in Ophelia, VA, four years ago, she spied an all-too-familiar sight from the shore where the Potomac River joins the Chesapeake Bay.

“I said, ‘Oh, look, dolphins!’ And then I thought, ‘Oh, no,’” Mann recalled. “I think we’ve given up on getting me away from my work.”

A professor of biology and psychology at Georgetown University in the District of Columbia, Mann has since embraced the Potomac as the next frontier for her research. In fact, she’s turned that riverfront retreat into a field station for observing a surprising number of bottlenose dolphins that venture up the Bay’s second largest tributary every summer.

Though dolphins have been spotted occasionally in the Potomac for at least the last six years, Mann said she hasn’t met anyone outside of those who live near her summer house who realize how many of the marine mammals are visiting on a regular basis. Last year, she and her research team of students and other Georgetown faculty tallied nearly 200 different animals in just a two-week span.

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

MARYLAND: More sturgeon turn up in Bay, raising new questions – and worry

July 13, 2016 — For years, scientists thought there might not be any native Atlantic sturgeon in the Chesapeake Bay. That idea changed in recent years, as biologists began netting hundreds of adults in the James River, and others began turning up in other tributaries.

Now, genetic analyses show the Chesapeake is home to at least two — and possibly more — distinct populations of the endangered fish.

DNA analysis shows that James River sturgeon and those recently found spawning next door in the Pamunkey River, a tributary of the York River, are not even particularly closely related, despite their geographic proximity.

The 138 Pamunkey fish sampled seem more closely related to what could be a third population farther up, and across, the Bay in the Nanticoke River where 15 adult fish have been caught — and released — the last two years.

It’s too early to say whether the sturgeon netted in the Nanticoke and its tributaries constitute a unique population, said Tim King, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who did the genetic analysis. King said he would like at least 25–30 samples before offering a more concrete opinion about the Nanticoke sturgeon.

“It is way too early to draw any conclusions,” King said. “But it would seem that they are not James fish. They are genetically more similar to the Pamunkey fish than they are the James, but I am not willing to say that they are Pamunkey fish.”

Read the full story at the Bay Journal

How to Find Out If the Crabs You’re Eating Are Local

July 5, 2016 — Seafood traceability is a global concern—and the bay isn’t exempt: The crab on Chesapeake menus may come from elsewhere in the country, or might be an entirely different species from Asia. Here are a few tips for determining whether the crab you’re eating is local.

Know your species

Callinectes sapidus, Atlantic blue crab, is harvested from the bay as well as the Carolinas and the Gulf. The usually cheaper Portunus pelagicus, Asian blue swimming crab, is imported. Beware ambiguous descriptors such as “blue crab” (versus “Chesapeake blue crab” or “local blue crab”) and, in preparations like crabcakes, “Chesapeake-style.”

Know your season

Legally, the Chesapeake crab harvest runs from April to mid-December, with the fattest, heaviest crabs typically arriving in late summer/early fall. Those Memorial Day–weekend jumbos? Likely not local.

Read the full story in the Washingtonian 

Long slog ahead for new attempt to move shad past Conowingo, other dams

June 15, 2016 — Leon Senft remembers a time when he and other fishermen lined the shore of the Susquehanna River below the Conowingo Dam and hooked American shad almost as fast as they could cast their lines in the churning water.

“We really had a bonanza there for a while,” recalled Senft, 85, who’s been angling for the big migratory fish longer than most people are alive. “It was not unusual to catch 50–100 a day. My personal best was 175.”

That catch-and-release heyday for Senft was maybe 20 years ago, when American shad appeared to be on the rebound from a severe decline in their springtime spawning runs. Optimism abounded, as a big new fishlift hoisted more and more of them over the 94-foot dam on their way upriver to reproduce.

But the rebound went off the rails. Although the number of American shad getting a lift over Conowingo rose steadily for a decade, it then dropped and kept dropping.

Now, after years of study and negotiations, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Exelon Corp., Conowingo’s owner, have come up with a new plan for rebuilding the Susquehanna’s runs of American shad and river herring — related species that are even more depleted. In a press release announcing the deal in April, a federal wildlife official called it “a victory for everyone who lives or recreates on the Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay.”

But those close to the situation are still cautious. Given the discouraging track record so far, they say, bringing these fish back will take a sustained effort for decades — if it can be done at all.

“I was around when we did this last time, 25 years ago,” said Bill Goldsborough, senior fisheries scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “We thought that was going to do a lot more than it did.”

Read the full story at the Chesapeake Bay Journal

Virginia Institute of Marine Science deploys ‘Frankenturtles’ in effort to boost species survival

June 14, 2016 — A part of David Kaplan recognizes that his new research into sea turtle mortality is pushing the envelope.

The assistant professor and his graduate student Bianca Santos are doing something never before attempted: repurposing the carcasses of two dead loggerheads, outfitting them with GPS devices and setting them adrift in the Chesapeake Bay, all in the name of science.

“Most people have not had the reaction that this is disgusting,” Kaplan said Monday morning from the boat basin at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) in Gloucester Point.

“It’d be interesting to see what the public thinks, because I think of it as a really great thing. I mean, it’s pretty gruesome, but it’s taking animals that died tragically and reusing them for the (greater) good. A better purpose.”

Read the full story at the Daily Press

Chesapeake Bay health improves in 2015

May 18, 2016 — The overall health of Chesapeake Bay improved in 2015, according to scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. The largest estuary in the nation scored a C (53%) in 2015, one of the three highest scores since 1986. Only 1992 and 2002 scored as high or higher, both years of major sustained droughts.

“We’d expect to see improvements after a drought year because nutrients aren’t being washed into the Bay, fueling algae blooms and poor water quality,” said Bill Dennison, Vice President for Science Applications at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “However, in 2015 stream flow was below normal, but nowhere near the drought conditions in 1992 and 2002. Thus, the high score for 2015 indicates that we’re making progress reducing what’s coming off the land.”

The overall score for the Chesapeake Bay Health Index for 2015 was 53%, compared with 50% in 2014 and 45% in 2013. There were strong improvements in many regions throughout the Bay, such as the Choptank River, Upper Eastern Shore, Lower Western Shore, and the Rappahannock River. There were no regions that had lower scores in 2015 compared to 2014. Improvements could be related to a number of factors, including several years of moderate weather, sewage treatment upgrades, use of winter cover crops by farmers, and reductions in atmospheric nitrogen deposition.

Read the full story at Science Daily

Hatchery Is Breeding Better Oysters To Boost North Carolina Aquaculture

May 16, 2016 — To feed a hungry world, it’s no longer enough to catch wild seafood. Many fisheries are in decline because of overfishing, environmental stresses or both, and human demand for protein has never been greater. That means aquaculture has to be a growing part of the world’s food supply. Here in North Carolina, it’s also an essential component in growing the economies of our coastal communities.

A case in point is the state’s oyster fishery, which once supplied much of the East Coast, but now can’t even meet demand from within North Carolina. Our state is working hard to emulate our neighbors to the north, who through state-sponsored shellfish research hatcheries have bred a better oyster, able to thrive in Chesapeake Bay and other Virginia waters.

In 2011, North Carolina began supporting a hatchery, right here on the CREST Research Park in Wilmington. UNC Wilmington faculty researchers and student workers are using selective breeding techniques, supplemented by some high-tech genetic research, to develop new strains of oysters to suit our state’s waters. The hatchery is also working with scallops, which are more challenging to grow but more lucrative to sell, as well as sunray Venus clams. But oysters are its primary product.

A recent comparison of oyster cultivation in North Carolina and Virginia, conducted by the N.C. Rural Economic Development Center, showed that in 2005, the two states were roughly even, each producing roughly a quarter-million dollars’ worth of farmed oysters. But while Virginia’s production exploded, reaching almost $10 million in just seven years, our state’s aquaculture operations barely doubled their output.

Read the full story at Wilmington Biz