Saving Seafood

Invasive Asian carp getting a new name, image makeover to draw more foodies, fishing fans

February 9, 2021 — Care for a plate of slimehead? How about some orange roughy?

It’s the same fish, but one sounds much more palatable than the other. The U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service gave the slimehead a rebranding in the late 1970s in an effort to make the underused fish more marketable.

Now, Illinois officials and their partners want to give the invasive Asian carp threatening the Great Lakes a similar makeover. The goal: To grow the fish’s image as a healthy, delicious, organic, sustainable food source — which will, in turn, get more fishermen removing more tons of the fish from Illinois rivers just outside of Lake Michigan.

Markets such as pet food, bait and fertilizer have expanded the use of invasive Asian carp in recent years. But “it’s been hard to get the human consumption part of this because of the four-letter word: carp,” said Kevin Irons, assistant chief of fisheries for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

A full-on media blitz is coming later this year to change that. The proposed new name for the fish is being kept tightly under wraps for a big rollout in June, prior to the Boston Seafood Show in mid-July. But other aspects of the “The Perfect Catch” campaign will point out that the invasive Asian carp species — silver, bighead, grass and black carp — are flaky, tasty, organic, sustainable, low in mercury and rich in protein and omega-3 fatty acids.

“To us in America, we think of carp as a bottom-feeding, muddy-tasting fish, which it is sometimes,” said Dirk Fucik, owner of Dirk’s Fish and Gourmet Shop in Chicago, who has had success with occasional serving of Asian carp to customers and is participating in the rebranding effort.

Read the full story at the Chicago Sun Times

Michigan’s commercial fishermen sue DNR over license delays

January 15, 2021 — A lawsuit filed against the Michigan Department of Natural Resources claims the state is withholding reissue of all commercial fishing licenses and calling for gear restrictions that will put the industry out of business.

“The things that were not renewed have been in place for well over 40 years in most cases, and the only the things that are a benefit to commercial fishers are gone,” says Amber Mae Petersen, who runs the Fish Monger’s Wife seafood retail outlet in Muskegon and serves as secretary-treasurer for the Michigan Fish Producers’ Association, which filed the suit in early January. “The answers are conflicting as to why they were not renewed. It seems off.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

New research plan sets the course for NOAA’s ocean acidification science

July 30, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA:

Today, NOAA unveiled its new 10-year research roadmap to help the nation’s scientists, resource managers, and coastal communities address acidification of the open ocean, coasts, and Great Lakes.

“Ocean acidification puts the United States’ $1 billion shellfish industry and hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk,” said Kenric Osgood, Ph.D., chief of the Marine Ecosystems Division, Office of Science and Technology at NOAA Fisheries Service. “Understanding how ocean acidification will affect marine life and the jobs and communities that depend on it is critical to a healthy ocean and blue economy.”

The research plan sets out three major objectives for ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes acidification research, and includes regional chapters for coastal zones around the U.S., Great Lakes, territories – including Puerto Rico and American Samoa – and deep ocean regions. The three national research objectives are:

1) Expand and advance observing systems and technologies to improve the understanding of and ability to predict acidification trends and processes;

2) Understand the ways acidification is impacting ecologically and economically important species and the ecosystems they live in, and improve our ability to predict how these ecosystems and species may respond to acidification and other stressors; and

3) Identify and engage stakeholders and partners, assess needs, and generate products and tools that support management decisions, adaptation, and resilience to acidification.

Read the full release here

How Purchasing Local Fish Can Support Communities and the Economy

May 12, 2020 — The spread of the COVID-19 virus has caused uncertainty for global food supply chains. Poverty and food insecurity are on the rise as a result of the pandemic. Yet, for many, these crises predate the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Overwhelming evidence demonstrates the vulnerability of global food supply chains and long-distance transportation networks embedded in a “just enough, just in time” approach.

This recent instability will affect everyone, but the impact will be far more severe for Indigenous people, precarious and low-wage workers and people living in poverty, struggling to meet their basic needs. While we must develop ways to address the immediate concerns, enhancing the resilience of local food systems has taken on new urgency.

The structures that underpin the modern food system and the resulting food insecurity are evident in northwestern Ontario. Thunder Bay, the region’s largest city, serves as a hub for food, social services and other basic amenities for those living in surrounding communities, including dozens of First Nations.

The city is perched on the shores of Lake Superior, the world’s largest freshwater lake, which has more than 30 native species of fish and a long history of productive commercial and subsistence fisheries. Nevertheless, our research has shown that local fish is almost impossible to find on the shelves of regional grocery stores.

Read the full story at The National Interest

Senate allocates $11 million to prevent spread of Asian Carp

August 14, 2018 — An Interior Appropriations bill passed in the U.S. Senate aims to help scientists curtail the spread of invasive Asian Carp, particularly into the Great Lakes.

Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand, D-N.Y., announced Tuesday the bill contains $11 million for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s ongoing effort to halt Asian carp movement along the Mississippi and Ohio river basins and prevent it from entering the Great Lakes.

“The invasive and destructive Asian carp are no friend of the Great Lakes, and we need to do all we can to keep them out and protect our wildlife and Great Lakes,” Sen. Schumer said in a statement.

Fish and Wildlife Service scientists have spent decades researching and deploying various tools to impede Asian carp from traveling into new waters and outcompeting native fish.

Todd J. Turner, Midwest assistant regional director of fisheries for the service, said people imported Asian carp to eat the algae in their catfish ponds, but flooding and accidental releases, sent the non-native fish into the Mississippi River system. It has since spread to other river systems. Some populations have reached as close as 50 to 100 miles from Lake Michigan, although Mr. Turner said that hasn’t changed much in the recent decade.

As adept filter feeders, Mr. Turner said Asian carp can outcompete juvenile native fish species like bass and catfish for food like microplankton and zoo plankton. The silver carp, which has sensitive hearing, also threatens boaters because it jumps in the air when startled by loud noises and can strike someone in the head.

Read the full story at the Watertown Daily Times

Agency says US, Canada fall short on protecting Great Lakes

November 29, 2017 — TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — Despite recent improvements, the U.S. and Canada have a long way to go toward ridding the Great Lakes of pollution that endangers human health and the environment, an advisory agency said Tuesday.

Inadequately treated sewage, industrial chemicals and farm runoff are still flowing into the five lakes that provide drinking water for about 40 million people, the International Joint Commission said in its first checkup report since both nations last updated the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement in 2012.

The report calls for improving drinking water and sewage treatment facilities, and strengthening clean-water regulations, particularly limits on phosphorus runoff that is largely responsible for explosive growth of harmful algae in Lake Erie. Agencies also should work faster to identify newer types of contamination, such as fire retardant chemicals, and develop strategies for limiting them, the report says.

“While significant progress has been made to restore and protect the lakes, the governments of Canada and the United States and Great Lakes civil society as a whole are living with the costly consequences of past failures to anticipate and prevent environmental problems,” the report says. “By now, it should be clear that prevention makes environmental, economic and common sense.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

 

Federal Report Calls For $275 Million To Stop Asian Carp

August 8, 2017 — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proposed spending $275 million to upgrade defenses against an invading force. The enemy? A fish. Specifically, Asian carp that are threatening to break through to the Great Lakes.

In June, a live Asian silver carp was caught in the Illinois Waterway just 9 miles from Lake Michigan. Scientists fear that if the voracious carp establish themselves in the Great Lakes, they could devastate the region’s $7 billion fishing industry.

The Corps of Engineers wants to upgrade the Brandon Road Lock and Dam near Joliet, Ill., on the Des Plaines River. The waterway is a link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River, where Asian carp are already a big problem. The Associated Press writes, “The Brandon Road complex is considered a bottleneck where defenses could be strengthened against fish swimming upstream toward openings to the lake at Chicago.”

Read the full story at New England Public Radio

Usually the villain, invasive species odd hero for native fish

April 6, 2017 — A native fish may be poised for a comeback in the Great Lakes with the help of an invasive species.

Great Lakes cisco, also known as lake herring, are growing in number. Catch rates are increasing in recreational and commercial fisheries, said Kevin Donner, Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians’ Great Lakes fisheries program manager. Twenty years ago, it would have been notable to catch a single cisco in a year in Lake Michigan. In the bay, they’re now pulled up by the netload.

It’s a similar story in Chaumont Bay, Lake Ontario, where researchers have caught thousands of cisco in recent years, said Curt Karboski, a biologist with the Lower Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office in Amherst, New York.

There are different strains of cisco in the region, but Donner describes most of them, “like a whitefish with a shinier, pointed face.”

Cisco typically grow about 12 to 15 inches long and at one point supported one of the largest commercial fisheries in the region. They disappeared from much of the basin around the 1950s, Donner said.

Now it looks like the stage has been set for their return–by an unlikely ally.

Invasive quagga mussels have depleted nutrients in the lakes, said Matt Herbert, an aquatic ecologist with the Nature Conservancy. Cisco do well in low-nutrient environments, unlike competing species like the invasive alewife. That gives cisco space to thrive.

Wendylee Stott, who works with the Great Lakes Science Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, makes a similar observation: “There’s basically a hole in the ecosystem right now, and the idea is to fill it with a native species.”

Now that the quagga has done its part, the cisco are on a roll. Other than accidentally introducing the invasive species, humans can’t take credit for the comeback, according to Donner.

Read the full story at the Great Lakes Echo

Trump budget plan would slam Bay

March 7, 2016 — The Chesapeake Bay Program and other federal initiatives that could impact the Bay have been targeted for steep cuts in preliminary Trump administration budget plans sent to federal agencies, prompting alarm from conservation groups and lawmakers alike.

According to a report in The Washington Post, a budget blueprint for the 2018 federal fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, would cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s budget by nearly a quarter, from $8.2 billion to $6.1 billion, and slash its workforce from 15,000 to 12,000.

Included was a massive 93 percent cut — from $73 million to $5 million — to its Bay Program Office, which coordinates the state-federal partnership. The funding supports research, monitoring and modeling efforts, but the lion’s share — 72 percent — goes to states and local governments to support cleanup efforts.

“The proposed reduction in federal investment in Chesapeake Bay would reverse restoration successes,” said Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker. “The EPA role in the cleanup of the Chesapeake is nothing less than fundamental. It’s not just important, it’s critical.”

He noted that a bipartisan group of 17 House members from the Bay watershed last month called on the Trump administration to preserve full funding for the EPA’s Bay efforts, and said he hoped the agency’s new administrator, Scott Pruitt, would support the program.

The budget proposal was developed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, without input from agencies.

During his confirmation hearing, Pruitt said the Bay effort was something that should be a “model” for the nation, and that “EPA plays a leadership role in mediating cross-state air and water pollution.”

Besides the Chesapeake Bay, funding for the Great Lakes, the Gulf of Mexico and Puget Sound were also slated for similarly massive cuts of 90 percent or more.

Read the full story at The Bay Journal

Hey, don’t look at us for critter sneaking into lake, trade group says

November 18, 2016 — SANDUSKY, Ohio — There’s a tiny new creature in Lake Erie that’s not supposed to be there.

And the shipping industry that carries cargo in the Great Lakes says it’s being unfairly blamed for the uninvited guest.

Citing a report from scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, an industry trade group is arguing that it’s unfair to blame freighters for the introduction into western Lake Erie of Thermocyclops crassus, a tiny invertebrate plankton that has been found in western Lake Erie near Toledo.

“The best current evidence does not point to ballast water discharges in the past decade as the most likely reason for the recent discovery of T. crassus,” says a fact sheet issued by the Lake Carriers Association. “However, without any supporting scientific data or research to back their claims, the National Wildlife Federation and the Alliance for the Great Lakes have been quick to blame ballast water, particularly recent discharges from foreign vessels, as the vector of introduction.”

As the Sandusky Register reported on Nov. 2, scientists from Cornell University doing research aboard a U.S. EPA boat announced finding the creature in small numbers. While it’s considered non-native, it’s not known yet whether the creature will reproduce in large numbers and become a nuisance, allowing it to obtain “invasive species” status.

Read the full story at the Sandusky Register