Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Martha’s Vineyard ‘Permit Bank’ Looks To Buoy Small Fishermen

June 21, 2017 — Out on the docks of Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard, Wes Brighton rigged up lobster pots he planned to set the next day.

In an ideal world, he’d also be fishing for other species — like scallops and groundfish — but he can’t afford the expensive government-issued permits that would grant him the fishing rights.

“They’ve turned a public resource into a commodity, and they haven’t limited the people who can own that commodity to commercial fisherman,” Brighton said. “And so a fisherman who wants to go catch scallop quota inside of a small community, like we have here on Martha’s Vineyard, can’t access that … without coming up with a ton of money. “

The fishing boats and docks of Menemsha present a postcard view of Martha’s Vineyard. But through Brighton’s eyes, there’s more to the picture.

“Every time you look somewhere you are losing dock space on our own town dock, which has always been allocated to commercial fishing,” he said. “And just recently we lost a big chunk to a charter boat. It’s up to us to keep this fight because if we lose our tradition, we lose our heritage, and that’s something we just can’t let [happen].”

Read the full story at WBUR

MASSACHUSETTS: West Tisbury School students learn about sustainable seafood

May 25, 2017 — West Tisbury School students enjoyed clam chowder and a lobster boil for lunch on a recent Friday, part of their “local catch of the day” program, and learned from local experts how choosing sustainable seafood supports New England fishermen.

The event on May 19 at the West Tisbury School gave students the opportunity to learn firsthand what the ocean has to offer. It was part of a celebration of Island Grown Schools’ “harvest of the month.” The organization brings garden-based learning and locally sourced food to Island schoolchildren, and seafood was the local harvest for the month of May.

Jared Auerbach, the founder of Boston-based regional seafood purveyor Red’s Best, which supplies seafood to the school, shared with students the importance of eating locally-sourced and sustainably-harvested fish.

“Let mother nature dictate what you’re going to eat,” Mr. Auerbach said.

Read the full story at The Martha’s Vineyard Times

MASSACHUSETTS: How to Catch a Hungry Student? Bait the Hook With Fresh Fish

May 23, 2017 — Fish belongs in schools. Jenny DeVivo, head chef at the West Tisbury School, certainly thinks so. In November she began Fish Fridays at the school, partnering with Red’s Best, a seafood wholesaler, to provide the school with locally caught, underutilized fish on a weekly basis.

All year long students have been enjoying fresh fish lunches, and on Friday they met the whole fish food chain at the Massachusetts Farm to School’s Harvest of the Month seafood celebration.

The interactive event organized by Ms. DeVivo featured booths run by Cottage City Oysters, the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, Island Grown Initiative, the Wampanoag tribe natural resources department and the Martha’s Vineyard Shellfish Group. Throughout the day the students learned about sustainable fishing and how the latest lunch initiative supports local fishermen. Students also posed with monkfish, squid, lobsters and more at a photo booth. Then they enjoyed meals that included fresh pollock, mussels and lobster.

There were also numerous educational opportunities as they watched a demonstration of mussels cleaning algae-filled water, saw how fish create fertilizer that grows the salad greens they eat every day and learned about the efforts of the Wampanoag tribe to track the Island’s herring population.

In one presentation, Jared Auerbach, founder of Red’s Best, explained the process of how local fish ends up on their lunch trays. He emphasized that the school’s demand for fish is “playing a really important part in our thriving local fishing community.”

The partnership entails a weekly commitment to purchase a set quantity of fish at a fixed price. The fish­ — whatever is fresh and abundant at the moment — is caught by members of the Menemsha Fish House and then processed by Red’s Best and distributed to the school.

Ms. DeVivo described the initiative as “the missing piece to the local puzzle that I had been searching for,” supplementing the cafeteria’s Island sources for meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables and fruit. As she serves up the latest catch each week, she tells the students the story of who caught it and where it was caught.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Reality check for commercial fishermen

April 11, 2017 — Don’t put the injured on the raft first, they can slow down the evacuation.

Don’t stow survival suits below decks.

Don’t leave port without a Nerf football.

This was some of the wisdom imparted to a group of 35 commercial fishermen gathered at Coast Guard Station Menemsha on a gray, windy Thursday morning, where, appropriately, a storm front was bearing down on the Vineyard.

It was day one of two training days for commercial fishermen — along with sailors, harbormasters, and shellfish constables — provided by Burlington-based Fishing Partnership Support Services (FPSS).

The focus of the day one was safety and survival. Participants rotated among six training modules: man overboard procedure, firefighting and flares, survival suits, helicopter hoist operations, flooding and pump operations, first aid and CPR, and life raft equipment.

“Part of the success of this program is that it’s very hands-on,” Ed Dennehy, FPSS Director of Safety told The Times. “They will put out an actual fire. They will put on survival suits and get into the cold water. They control flooding and leaks in a simulator provided by the Coast Guard.”

FPSS has been providing this training all over New England, primarily in Massachusetts, for the past 11 years. The program has been so successful, it has spread beyond New England to New York.

Read the full story at the Martha’s Vineyard Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fishermen’s Trust Proposal Aims to Clear the Clutter in Menemsha

March 27, 2017 — The fishing cages, nets and other gear that lie scattered around Menemsha may soon have a place of their own behind the Chilmark landfill.

In an effort to support young fishermen in town and relieve congestion in the historic fishing village, the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust has proposed designating a one-acre lot at the landfill on Middle Line Road as a storage area for fishing gear and larger equipment.

The town owns an eight-acre parcel at the landfill that selectmen say could serve the purpose, and also provide space for the town shellfish and highway departments, and training for the fire department. The shellfish and highway departments currently use a 3.5-acre homesite at Peaked Hill.

At the selectmen’s meeting on Thursday, trust president John Keene, owner of Keene Excavation in West Tisbury, formally proposed the new site, and offered to create the required access road at no charge to the town — and idea that furthered the selectmen’s support.

“That’s not going to hurt,” selectman Bill Rossi said.

Trust board member Katie Carroll pressed for the project to move forward independently of plans for the town departments. But several questions remained, including how much land each fisherman would need, and whether to include a fence around the lot.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

After a record run of squid, local fishermen warily eye competition, regulatory challenges

March 24, 2017 — It was the best single run of longfin squid anyone on the East Coast had ever seen – and it happened fast and was over fast. In two months last summer, June and July, the East Coast-based squid fleet landed approximately 14 million pounds, with Rhode Island landing more than 50 percent of that quota, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration landing reports.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. The squid just kept coming,” said Point Judith fisherman Jeff Wise of Narragansett. “I’ve never seen volume and catch rates that high before.”

For those two summer months, the fishing port of Point Judith, or Galilee, was the squid capital of the world, the hub of squid commerce. Shore-side activity went nonstop as processors and others tried to keep pace with the volume of squid the fishing vessels carried in from the sea. Approximately 118 vessels, according to state landing reports, from as far south as Wanchese, N.C., used Rhode Island ports to offload their catch.

Although June and July are traditionally peak squid months, with average summer landings (May through August) fluctuating between 3 million and 19 million pounds, it was the high catch rates for those two months that was unprecedented last summer, which for the season saw 18.7 million pounds of landings.

“Though we’ve been seeing an upward trend in [longfin] squid since 2010, [last year was] one of the strongest we’ve seen since the 1990s,” said Jason Didden, squid-management-plan coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the agency, along with the National Marine Fisheries Service, responsible for squid policy.

Local fishermen, many of whom depend heavily on squid, enjoyed the bounty but are warily focused on regulatory issues they fear could bring the good times to a premature end.

Landings the past 30 years have shown peaks and valleys, as levels of squid abundance have changed – but there has been no need for quota cuts.

The Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council often works with advisory panels to identify problems within fisheries and to come up with solutions to those problems. It’s a long road, complex and full of red tape, to go from an identified fishery problem to an actual change in the policy. These advisory panels are composed of industry members, recreational anglers, environmentalists and academics.

Three policy issues surfaced in recent months that could affect Rhode Island squid vessels and processors. One concerns managing the number of squid permits allowed, an issue perennially raised by the commercial fishing industry. The other two concern the possible loss of fishing ground – one by proposed wind farms off Long Island, and the other from lobbying pressure for a buffer zone in a key squid area south of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

The buffer-zone issue was raised by a group of recreational fishermen from Nantucket.

“It’s hard to be optimistic right now,” said Wise. “It never seems to stop – we are constantly worried about losing fishing ground [due to] buffer zones, marine sanctuaries and wind farms.”

Read the full story at the Providence Business News

Long-term study planned in ocean south of Martha’s Vineyard

March 13, 2017 — A group of scientists is taking a deep dive into the salty waters and the food web south of Martha’s Vineyard.

Heidi Sosik, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, will use submersible robotic microscopes she helped design and build, as well as an array of other sophisticated scientific gadgets to gain a fuller understanding of the ecosystem on part of the continental shelf stretching from just south of the Vineyard to an area where coastal waters meet the open ocean.

The study, which will involve a group of scientists and researchers led by Sosik, is being funded with $6 million from the National Science Foundation.

“The goal is that these ecosystems will be studied indefinitely,” Sosik said.

The team of experts will scrutinize the very foundation of the marine food chain: tiny plankton invisible to the eye but which can be seen with the aid of powerful underwater microscopes. The goal is to determine patterns in the ocean’s food web and how and why they change over time, so better management practices can be developed.

Waters off the Northeast coast are rich in fish, which depend on plankton to survive and in turn support the vigorous regional fishing industry that’s existed there for centuries.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Right Whales Gather Early; Mariners Asked to Take Caution

February 28, 2017 — Sailors are asked to take caution in waters around Martha’s Vineyard after 10 critically-endangered North Atlantic right whales were seen feeding in waters south of the Island.

Last week NOAA fisheries announced a voluntary vessel speed restriction zone 16 nautical miles south of the Vineyard. Mariners are asked to either avoid the area or travel through at 10 knots or less. Coordinates are available at the fisheries website.

The speed restriction zone is in effect through Wednesday, March 8.

According to NOAA an aggregation of 10 right whales was spotted in the area on Feb. 21, including one whale south of Gay Head and Noman’s Land and several other whales directly south of the middle of the Island.

North Atlantic right whales weigh up to 79 tons and can grow to be 50 feet long. They give birth to calves from December through March in coastal waters off Georgia and Florida, and travel north to New England waters to feed on plankton. The first reports of North Atlantic right whales this season in Cape Cod Bay came in late December, and aerial surveys have shown aggregations of 25 to 30 whales in the bay since then, according to the Center for Coastal Studies, a larger than average number. Right whale sightings usually increase beginning in mid-March.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

MASSACHUSETTS: Selectmen Revoke Two Scallop Licenses Over Infractions

December 21st, 2016 — The Edgartown selectmen voted this week to revoke the shellfish license of two commercial bay scallopers for violating town shellfish laws. Mark Morri and Michael Hathaway both lost their licenses for unrelated infractions.

At a contentious public hearing Monday, selectmen voted unanimously to revoke the license of Mr. Morris for refusing to allow inspection of his bay scallop catch by shellfish constables.

The action followed the unanimous recommendation of the town’s shellfish committee.

The incident in question with Mr. Morris occurred on Dec. 5. According to a report filed by deputy shellfish constables Warren Gaines and Rob Morrison, Mr. Morris first agreed to allow the constables to inspect his daily scallop catch, but instead of pulling the boat onto his trailer, he turned and sped off through the harbor, leaving the sight of the constables. When he returned 10 minutes later, according to the report, there were no scallops aboard other than the legal limit.

“Whether there were scallops or not doesn’t really matter,” said Mr. Morrison. “What matters, he did not consent to a check.”

The next day, when constables again asked to inspect his daily catch, Mr. Morris refused.

“You guys are never allowed to check my boat and you’ll need a search warrant if you want to check my [expletive] boat again,” Mr. Morris is quoted as saying in the constables’ report.

At the Monday hearing, shellfish constable Paul Bagnall said a condition of a commercial license is consent to inspect catches in boats, vehicles, fishing shacks, and anywhere else other than a home.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette