Saving Seafood

Judge bars boat from dredging for clams

November 19, 2015 — PROVINCETOWN — A judge has temporarily barred a Gloucester fishing vessel from dredging for clams off Herring Cove while a dispute about who governs such dredging in that area makes its way through court.

Barnstable Superior Court Judge Raymond Veary issued a temporary restraining order Nov. 3, after the Provincetown harbormaster’s staff followed the 70-foot Tom Slaughter as it dredged for surf clams the previous two days, Harbormaster Rex McKinsey said.

The Slaughter is one of three clam draggers whose owners are in court in separate actions fighting cease-and-desist orders issued by the Provincetown Conservation Commission to keep them from dredging up to 40 feet offshore without a permit.

Veary’s temporary order was to last until Friday, but according to Monte Rome, owner of the Tom Slaughter, it has been extended to Jan. 5 at his request.

Provincetown officials want to stop hydraulic dredging, a process that involves shooting water at 50 to 100 pounds of pressure into the sand to release the clams, because it disturbs the ocean floor and damages the habitat for fish, clams and other marine life, McKinsey said.

In 2007, the Conservation Commission passed a regulation banning hydraulic dredging in that area without a permit.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Mercury Levels Still Dangerously High in Freshwater Fish

October 23, 2015 — Mercury emissions from major Massachusetts sources have declined by 90 percent over the past two decades, but mercury levels in the state’s freshwater fish hold stubbornly high, with many species too contaminated for pregnant women and children to eat.

The inability to reduce mercury in fish to safe eating levels troubles environment and health officials — and added to that concern is growing evidence that some freshwater fish in similar northern latitudes, from the Great Lakes to Scandinavia, appear to have increasing mercury levels after years of decline. The New England Center for Investigative Reporting found six studies in the past decade that point to increasing mercury levels in freshwater fish.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post

 

 

UMass Dartmouth researchers developing open-source system for assessing fish movement

October 7, 2015 — UMass Dartmouth School for Marine Science & Technology (SMAST) Associate Professor Geoffrey Cowles is leading a collaborative research effort to develop geolocation methodologies to improve understanding of fish movement patterns of Atlantic cod, yellowtail flounder, and monkfish. The project will focus on the Gulf of Maine/Georges Bank and includes researchers from SMAST, Northeastern University, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, along with the fishing industry.

Geolocation, which is the process of taking data recovered from a fish archival tag and coming up with the best estimate of positions between release and recapture, can provide insights into catchability and fishery interactions. Using this technique, the research team will be able to guide behavior-dependent aspects of the model parameterization, as well as interpret the geolocated tracks. Researchers will also employ their collective skills in computer programming, oceanographic modeling, statistical analysis, and fisheries biology to assist in furthering the development of technology to geolocate fish.

This study will also use data acquired from previous studies on each of the example species, which all have their own characteristic behaviors and were tagged in different areas of the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank region. Most studies of fish movements have relied on fishery recaptures of conventional tags, which provide only the locations of release and recapture. Such tagging studies may bias perceptions of movement patterns.

Archival tags, which are attached to fish internally or externally to record temperature and pressure at regular intervals, enable estimations of fish location while at large. This type of information is often not fully utilized due to the technical difficulties of producing such movement histories via geolocation techniques.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard- Times

 

Legislator: Fed money for fish study a good sign

October 2, 2015 — BOSTON — One of the Legislature’s top fishing advocates has taken encouragement from the federal government approving funding for an industry survey of cod stocks.

As part of $6.9 million in federal disaster relief, the National Marine Fisheries Service approved federal funds for an industry-based survey of Gulf of Maine cod, a species whose apparent decimation led to drastic reductions in catch limits and a fisheries disaster declaration.

Gov. Charlie Baker and other Massachusetts elected officials have criticized federal fishery regulators for refusing to consider alternative scientific methods for estimating fish stocks. The School for Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth has developed new methods for assessing sea life.

Sen. Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, said he was encouraged that the industry study was included in the grant award approved by federal fishery regulators.

“It offers me a sign of hope that they will begin to take seriously collaborative research and consider the independent efforts to try to give us a better understanding of what’s happening with cod stocks,” Tarr told the News Service.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries on Thursday announced the award, which will send most of a $6.7 million pot toward direct aid for fishermen and use another $200,000 to fund the administration of a program to buy back fishing licenses, which would be industry-funded, according to the state. The division will work on developing a proposal for a buyback program, and will work on helping fishermen obtain experimental federal permits for small-mesh nets.

Read the full story at New Bedford Standard – Times

 

 

NOAA to pay for at-sea monitors through November

October 1, 2015 — NOAA Fisheries will continue bearing the cost for at-sea monitoring of Northeast multispecies groundfish vessels at least through the end of November, three months past the target date the agency initially set for the expense to shift to permit holders.

This extension — the second in as many months — is based on the same rationale as the first: with fishermen producing fewer fishing days because of slashed quotas and area closures, the money the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budgeted for at-sea monitoring for at least 24 percent of total fishing days is lasting longer than the agency expected.

NOAA initially said the money for at-sea monitoring — which runs to about $710 per vessel per day — would run out around Aug. 31 and then the responsibility for paying for the legally mandated at-sea monitoring would have to be borne by the fishermen.

In early August, NOAA said decreased effort by the fleet had reduced monitoring expenditures enough for the money to last through Oct. 31. Now that same reduction in fishing effort has given the fleet another month-long reprieve, but it has not solved the long-term dilemma of how to pay for the at-sea monitoring.

The issue certainly is not going away.

NOAA is adamant that it expects permit holders to ultimately assume the cost of monitoring, while fishermen flatly state that the additional expense — heaped upon already miniscule, if non-existent, profit margins — simply will sink the fleet.

In late July, NOAA flatly rejected the request of the New England Fishery Management Council to use its emergency powers to remove all at-sea monitors from groundfish boats for the remainder of the 2015 fishing season.

Instead, NOAA, as well as the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, advanced the idea that the cost of monitoring be covered by some portion of the $6.9 million remaining in the Bay State’s third phase, or Bin 3, of the federal fishing disaster assistance.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

 

 

MASSACHUSETTS: State won’t follow Gloucester fishery aid plan

October 1, 2015 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — With one day to spare before the grant period is set to begin, the state finally released details on its plan to distribute the final portion of federal fishery disaster aid to Massachusetts fishermen with federal permits.

It is not the so-called “Gloucester Plan” that would have spread between $6 million and $7 million to federally permitted fishermen who landed at least 20,000 pounds of groundfish in any of the fishing seasons 2012 to 2014.

Instead, according to Katie Gronendyke, spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the state will divide the federal assistance among fishermen with a Massachusetts homeport as of April 30, 2015, who either landed at least 10,000 pounds of groundfish in any fishing season between 2012 and 2014 or had an observer aboard their vessel for at least one groundfish trip in 2014.

The plan, according to Gronendyke, will “better target active fishermen in the groundfishery throughout the Commonwealth.”

The full grant of $6.9 million contained in the third phase, or Bin 3, of federal funding being funneled through the state is the final installment of the roughly $21 million in federal fishery disaster funds designated for Massachusetts from the $75 million appropriated by Congress in January 2014.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries, Gronendyke said, is in the process of identifying qualified recipients by auditing federal catch and trip data.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

STEVE URBON: Groundfish Industry Taking Another Hit With Addition of At-Sea-Monitors

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — September 6, 2015 — So this is how it looks. The gradual collapse of the New England groundfish industry continued last week as about two dozen people jammed into a meeting room of the state’s Division of Marine Fisheries office in the former voc-tech school on Purchase Street to argue about the distribution of disaster relief money allocated by Congress.

The discussion was about the so-called “Bin 3” money, the third piece allocated in the disaster relief bill that Congress approved to mitigate the effects of the collapse of the groundfish industry in New England.

Richie Canastra, president of the BASE seafood auction, pleaded with the fishermen and cooperative managers from New Bedford, Chatham and Scituate for civility and derided NOAA Fisheries for “throwing them under the bus” in the wake of failed regulatory policies that continue to heap regulatory costs on the back of the fishing industry.

Canastra, late in the two-hour meeting, pleaded with his colleagues in the industry to think about where the industry will go from here once it decides how to allocate the remaining $6 million of federal disaster relief money approved by Congress three years ago.

Read the full opinion piece from the New Bedford Standard-Times

Edgartown Mass. commercial fishermen continue to adjust to new realities

September 2, 2015 — Edgartown’s commercial trap fishing industry is tough work. It is evident as much in the number of working boats and fishermen seeking conch and sea bass as it is anecdotally. Those fishermen who remain put in long days and work under strict quotas and regulations. However, fishing is all they’ve done for most of their lives, and they say they are committed to riding out what wave is left of the local industry.

Island landings of channeled whelk, commonly referred to as conch, the most lucrative species caught in Island waters, are valued at more than $2 million each year since 2011, according to the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (DMF).

Behind conch are oysters, with Martha’s Vineyard landings valued at $1.3 million in 2014. There is one important distinction. Unlike conch, which are  wild-caught, oysters are for the most part raised in the protected waters of Island bays and ponds. Bay scallops, which are propagated as part of an extensive taxpayer-supported program, accounted for just over $700,000.

Even as conch fishing holds steady, the number of commercial fishermen registered as Island residents has started to decline, according to the DMF. In 2008, there were 360 registered Vineyard commercial fishermen. As of 2015, there are 263.

“Conch fishing is tough fishing,” commercial fisherman Tom Turner of Edgartown said as he replaced lost or damaged sea bass traps aboard his boat, the Sea Raven, docked at Memorial Wharf in Edgartown on a hot and sunny August afternoon.

The commercial sea bass season is short. Fishermen can only go out three days a week: Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and each day they fish, they’re allowed to catch no more than 300 pounds of sea bass, Mr. Turner said. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) sets quotas and updates fishermen as they change.

Read the full story at Martha’s Vineyard Times

 

Cape Cod legislators urge Baker to spread relief funds across the fleet

September 2, 2015 — CHATHAM, Mass. – Legislators from the Cape and Islands urged Gov. Charlie Baker to reconsider his current proposal to allocate $6.6 million in federal fisheries disaster money to fishermen who had caught at least 20,000 pounds of groundfish — bottom-feeding fish like cod, haddock and flounder — in 2013 and 2014. Cape fishermen said it would benefit only a relative few boats; they had proposed that the state Division of Marine Fisheries use $4 million to pay for monitors who ride along on groundfish vessels and report on what fishermen catch and what they discard.

“It became apparent to us that that was not going to work,” said Claire Fitz-Gerald, manager of the Georges Bank Fixed Gear Sector, representing 24 boats, and headquartered in Chatham.

There was strong sentiment within the Massachusetts fleet for direct aid to fishermen, and Gov. Baker and the state’s congressional delegation sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and House and Senate appropriations committee chairmen claiming that federal requirements for fishermen to carry observers was an unfunded mandate and the federal government should pay for them, not fishermen. The letter also said paying for observer coverage was not the intent of Congress when it appropriated the federal fisheries disaster money.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times