Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Rep. Moulton thrilled by GMGI’s progress

January 7, 2022 — U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Salem, joined local officials, including newly installed Mayor Greg Verga, during a tour of the nonprofit Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute’s waterfront facility on Main Street.

There, he learned how the institute is making a difference when it comes to spurring marine biotech research in this 399-year-old seaport undergoing a sea change from its legacy fishing industry to a community able to attract life sciences companies.

He saw firsthand programs that will be helped by $1 million from the state Legislature’s pandemic relief bill, a combination of money from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and the state budget surplus.

After a tour of the lab at 417 Main St. with GMGI Executive Director Christine Bolzan and science director Andrea Bodnar, the small entourage, including state Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester, state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, D-Gloucester, and GMGI Board member Bill Kane, drove five minutes up the road to GMGI’s Biotechnology Academy at 55 Blackburn Center to tour the biotech workforce training center with Education Director John Doyle.

“This is fantastic,” Moulton said afterward. “I mean this is exactly what we need to see more of in terms of education but also in terms of our economy. There’s a synergy between the economic lifeblood of Massachusetts and tremendous educational opportunities for our students, this is incredible.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Cod study could lead to better management

August 12, 2021 — When the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute opened its doors in 2013, the first major project undertaken by its researchers focused on the gene sequencing of the region’s iconic species of Atlantic cod.

It was fitting. The species was the very lifeblood of the regional groundfish fishery through centuries and the economic engine that drove the commercial fishing industry through its halcyon era.

The cod project led to GMGI’s first published paper in 2017. Four years later, GMGI researchers have built on that first study by publishing a second manuscript detailing the development of a new genetic tool to help distinguish between spring-spawning and winter-spawning cod, as well as males and females, in the western Gulf of Maine.

The study, published in the August edition of the journal “Ecology and Evolution” could prove a boon to marine researchers and fishery biologists by bringing sharper resolution to stock assessments and applying the best science to understand the complex fishery, said Tim O’Donnell, a senior research associate at GMGI and lead author on the study.

“The original work at GMGI was pretty similar to this, but they used a slightly different technique and way fewer individuals (cod),” O’Donnell said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Fishing industry rides out more regulatory, environmental gales in 2018

December 28, 2018 — The fishing year began with a changing of the guard at the helm of the regional headquarters of NOAA Fisheries and ended with a federal government shutdown that halted many of the agency’s administrative tasks.

In between, the local and regional commercial fishing industries were buffeted by the same regulatory and environmental gales that have come to define the current fishing crisis and the livelihood of those harvesting seafood from the oceans.

And this being Gloucester, there was — as always — something of the offbeat worth recalling.

So, here in no particular order are some of our most compelling stories from 2018 that chronicled the activity within the fishery and along Gloucester’s historic waterfront.

The Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute broke ground on its new Main Street research facility and headquarters in February. On Oct. 30, GMGI — with the assistance of Gov. Charlie Baker and other dignitaries — formally opened the new facility along the north channel of the Inner Harbor.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts: Budget funds GMGI project

August 1, 2018 — The new state budget Gov. Charlie Baker signed last week includes $150,000 for a new marine program to be run by the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute in coordination with the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries.

It also carries $125,000 in matching grant money for Gloucester’s approaching 400th anniversary celebration, and money for service programs such as The Open Door, Wellspring House and The Grace Center.

But while a $2 million package to boost the Fishing Partnership — which provides health care coverage, safety training, and legal and financial services to fishermen and their families — and $1.3 million for new infrastructure and technology for the GMGI project are included in a House economic bill, those dollars are not in the Senate version and must be hashed out in conference committee, Andrew Tarr, chief aide to state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, confirmed Monday.

The funding for the GMGI/stateprogram  and the money to help with the planning for Gloucester’s 400th anniversary celebration in 2023 were both part of the $41.9 billion fiscal 2019 budget signed by the governor last Thursday.

The budget also included $75,000 to improve Gloucester’s public safety communications systems, but that money was vetoed by the governor. The House overrode the veto, Tarr said, but the state Senate had not yet taken up its override veto of that money as of Monday morning, he said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: ‘A place to do great science’

July 9, 2018 — Chris Munkholm has lived with every phase of building Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute’s new research institute and laboratory, from the first rendering to the ongoing construction along the Gloucester waterfront by landlord Windover Construction.

But nothing really prepared GMGI’s chief operating officer for the impressions that washed over her as she stood Friday in what will be GMGI’s conference room with views of the Jodrey State Fish Pier across the north channel.

“This is really the first time I’ve experienced it as a three-dimensional space and seen how glorious it will be to look out these windows and recognize that we are a part of America’s oldest fishing harbor,” Munkholm said. “I’m almost in tears.”

Munkholm and other GMGI executives and board members got their initial look at their new digs Friday morning in a site walk-through that presented the first tangible experience of the work space to come.

“I don’t think we could have dreamt anything better,” said Marc Vidal, one of GMGI’s founders and a member of its scientific advisory board. “It’s taken us five years to get established here, with local people starting to recognize and accept us. In the next five years, I believe that recognition will grow to a national scale. Interestingly, that would be in the year 2023, which is the 400th anniversary of the discovery of Gloucester.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Gloucester Times: Good news arrives for Gloucester waterfront

April 10, 2017 — Gloucester’s fishing and waterfront communities received some good news on several fronts this past week.

First came the news that Massachusetts’ maritime economy grew faster than the state’s economy as a whole from 2005 to 2015.

The analysis, done by by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s Public Policy Center, said the segments of the maritime economy that performed best over the prescribed decade include tourism and recreation — the largest employer, though a smaller contributor to wages and GSP — and marine transportation and technology — which accounts for only 13 percent of employment but 35 percent of the maritime economy’s total wages. 

Those are segments Gloucester is and should continue working to build upon. 

The city’s new harbormaster and assistant harbormaster are working to find more transitional mooring for tourists arriving by boat and setting up best protocols and seasonal boating pricing.

It is also considering setting up visitors center downtown. The center, which would be on the second-floor of the American Legion Hall on Washington Street,would serve visitors who may not get to the city’s main visitors center in Stage Fort Park.

Gloucester was also recently awarded nearly $3 million in Massachusetts Life Sciences Center state grants to the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, Gloucester High School and O’Maley Innovation Middle School. 

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

$3M to ‘enhance’ marine research

February 17, 2017 — Gov. Charlie Baker traveled to Gloucester on Thursday to bestow nearly $3 million in Massachusetts Life Sciences Center state grants to the Gloucester Genomics Institute and four North Shore schools — including two in Gloucester.

Moments into his remarks, while discussing the $109,154 going to Gloucester High School and the $56,933 headed to the O’Maley Innovation Middle School, Baker hit a particularly dense passage about “providing the O’Maley students the unique opportunity to study disease processes through aquaponic systems.”

The governor leaned his towering frame toward the audience.

“Now I have absolutely no idea what that means,” he said to great laughter from the approximately 70 people gathered in the GMGI conference room. “But it sounds wicked good.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Can the nation’s oldest seaport reinvent itself?

June 19, 2016 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — The story of Gloucester trying to find its next act is not a new one. For years, the nation’s oldest seaport, like so many others, has struggled to reinvent itself in the shadow of a fading fishing industry.

But several developments in recent weeks could serve as a meaningful catalyst for change in the post-fishing economy.

Last week, the much-talked-about Beauport Hotel — a luxury 94-room facility and the city’s only large-scale hotel — opened on the site of the former Birds Eye fish-freezing plant, featuring three conference rooms to lure business travelers, along with a large restaurant and a rooftop pool with views of the harbor to entice tourists.

The hotel followed the May opening of the Gloucester Biotechnology Academy, a one-year certificate program for high school graduates that’s an extension of the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute, founded in 2013 by biotech entrepreneur Gregory L. Verdine to study marine genetics.

For this North Shore community, the waterfront additions are an important example of what they might call casting a line and waiting for a bite. Influential investors hope a growing marine biotechnology sector will support the working waterfront, not with fishing, but with year-round jobs rooted in science and tourism. A hotel like the Beauport only adds to the appeal.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

MASSACHUSETTS: No Saltonstall-Kennedy grant money headed for Cape Ann this year

June 7, 2016 — Cape Ann has been shut out this year from sharing any of the $11 million NOAA said it will distribute as part of the Saltonstall-Kennedy grant program.

Neither of the area’s two applicants — the Gloucester Fishing Community Preservation Fund (GFCPF) and the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute (GMGI) — were among the 50 applicants the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recommended for funding.

The recommendations are not absolute guarantees for receiving funding, according to NOAA. Final approval is subject to funding availability and a final review and approval by NOAA’s grants management division and the Department of Commerce’s financial assistance law division.

“It’s disappointing because we believe we had a great proposal,” GMGI Executive Director Chris Munkholm said.

The GMGI proposal was to use genetic-based testing to better classify the cod populations from various fisheries, Munkholm said.

“We believe this will help lead to developing the innovative technology that will be the future for classifying all species of fish,” she said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times