February 22, 2016 —The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
Dear Interested Parties:
February 22, 2016 —The following was released by the New England Fishery Management Council:
Dear Interested Parties:
February 22, 2016 — The following was released by Maritime Gloucester:
Thursday, March 3, 2016, 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Registration : MGTalks are free of charge. Please consider making a donation at the door.
Audience: General Audience; students encouraged.
A Panel with Vito Giacalone, Volunteer Chair of Governmental Affairs, Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley, Senior Counsel, Conservation Law Foundation Massachusetts, with moderator, Sean Horgan, Gloucester Daily Times
A National Marine Monument for New England. Should the President designate the Cashes Ledge Closed Area and the New England Coral Canyons and Seamounts as the first Marine National Monument in the Atlantic? Come and hear experts Vito Giacalone from the Northeast Seafood Coalition and Peter Shelley of Conservation Law Foundation tackle the issues and the controversies surrounding Presidential action.
NOTE: THIS EVENT WILL TAKE PLACE AT THE GLOUCESTER HIGH SCHOOL LECTURE HALL.
February 20, 2016 — Gloucester needs to be relentless in promoting the benefits of its locally harvested seafood, as well as the fishermen and processors that send it to market, a city official told the Fisheries Commission this week.
Economic Development Director Sal Di Stefano said the city is addressing the challenges of operating in the modern, international seafood market with a marketing strategy designed to promote the city, its fresh seafood bounty, its fishermen and its shore-side businesses to the seafood-consuming world.
“If we don’t do this, other people will,” Di Stefano told the commission Thursday night during a discussion on the city’s plans for the upcoming Seafood Expo North America show in Boston. “And they will try to take it from us.”
The city’s new branding campaign, “Gloucester Fresh,” is at the heart of the promotional strategy aimed at helping consumers identify seafood harvested from the waters around Cape Ann and landed in Gloucester while appreciating its nutritional and sustainable benefits.
Working with Salem-based Sperling Interactive, the city is developing a website that Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken is scheduled to launch at the beginning of the Seafood Expo during the first week of March.
Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times
February 21, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Fishermen are making money on sushi in Maine, the only state in the country with a significant baby eel fishery, and lawmakers are looking to make it possible for them to make more.
Maine’s baby eels are wriggling gold, sometimes worth more than $2,000 per pound at the dock. The baby eels, called elvers, are sold to Asian aquaculture companies who raise them to maturity for use them as food, and they frequently end up in sushi and sashimi. Some end up back on plates in the U.S.
But fishermen must abide by a strict quota system that limits the state fishery to 9,688 pounds per year, and they caught only 5,242 pounds of elvers last year. Fishermen attributed the slow season to a cold spring, which state regulators said slowed the migration of elvers in the rivers and streams where they are caught.
Lawmakers are looking to change the restrictions on the elver fishery to give fishermen a better chance to catch the entire quota. A legislative committee recently approved a plan to extend the season by a week and allow weekend fishing, as opposed to the current limitation to five days per week.
Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe
February 20, 2016 — I received a letter from Jason Colby, who is a charter-boat captain and sits on the board of directors for non-commercial fishermen here in Massachusetts about the nasty — he calls it “corrupt” — goings-on in the scallop fishery.
He told me how Eddie Welch, a shellfish advisor, had written to him about the problem down on the Cape and wanted to share this with me and the readers. Here are excerpts from his letter:
“A recent controversial decision to open select scallop grounds off the coast of New England to certain select fishing groups undermines sustainable scallop management, and threatens the future health of one of the region’s most valuable resources.
“On Dec. 3, the New England Fishery Management Council allotted one component of the fishing fleet 300,000 pounds of scallops for harvest from an area of the Atlantic known as Nantucket Lightship. This allotment would open Nantucket Lightship too early, and goes against the principles that have made scallop management so successful.
“For the past two decades, the scallop fishery has been a resounding success thanks to a system known as rotational management. Under this system, scallopers are allowed into certain areas to harvest scallops, while other areas are left off-limits to allow the scallops in them to grow and re-populate. This has ensured that the region’s scallop population is healthy and stable, that no areas are fished prematurely, and that scallops are not over-fished.
Read the full opinion piece at Lowell Sun
February 20, 2016 — New York Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin has introduced a bill to divide Block Island Sound between New York and Rhode Island.
Currently, there is a federal area three miles out from Block Island, R.I.
Zeldin says, “For recreational anglers or charter boat captains, this shift in jurisdiction can mean the difference between a nice day on the water and committing a federal offense.”
The problem? Connecticut commercial fishermen wouldn’t be able to fish the waters.
Read the full story at Wide Open Spaces
AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine fishing regulators are shutting down more key scallop grounds as fishermen exceed targeted levels for the year.
The state Department of Marine Resources says it is closing Cobscook Bay, the most productive scallop fishing area in Maine. It is also shutting down the Owls Head area of Lower Penobscot Bay and limiting the St. Croix River to one day per week for draggers and one day per week for divers.
February 17, 2016 — Warming waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have increased the prevalence of diseases that are turning sea stars to mush and killing lobsters by burrowing under their shells and causing lesions, two new studies say. The outbreaks are so lethal, according to a biologist involved in both studies, that at least one species of sea star has vanished off the coasts of Washington and British Columbia and the lobster fishery, already decimated in southern New England, will likely be threatened in Maine.
In the Pacific, a wasting disease is blamed for the disappearance of the technicolor sunflower sea star. It’s also laying waste to the ochre sea star that scientists at Cornell University, the University of Puget Sound and Northeastern University, as well as other institutions, examined for the latest research. Their reports were published this week.
Numerous climate studies have shown that the oceans are warming. In addition, 30 percent of the carbon released into the atmosphere ends up there, leading to acidification that’s further destroying coral, shell life and other organisms.
The sea-star study was led by Morgan E. Eisenlord, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Both in a laboratory and at 16 sites on the San Juan Islands off Washington’s coast, researchers determined that ochre sea stars gradually became sicker as water temperatures rose slightly. Conditions simulated in the lab confirmed what the scientists observed in the field. As temperatures rose, the disease became more prevalent, and adult ochres died within days. The disease, plus death, was more prominent in temperatures between 54 degrees and 66 degrees Fahrenheit. For the adults, the risk of death was 18 percent higher at 66 degrees.
February 18, 2016 — The following was released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:
Katherine Thompson has been hired by the Maine Department of Marine Resources as the lead lobster sampling program scientist. Thompson, a Ph.D. student in Marine Biology at the University of Maine, will be responsible for the coordination, implementation, and participation in the lobster sea sampling program in all seven-lobster management zones as well as the juvenile lobster ventless trap survey.
Thompson’s responsibilities will include supervision of DMR scientific staff and contractors who participate in the sea sampling and ventless trap survey programs.
The DMR sea sampling program places trained observers onto commercial lobster boats to gather data on the near shore lobster fishery. The ventless trap survey uses specially modified traps distributed along the coast to help the DMR characterize the juvenile lobster population in Maine waters.
Thompson will also manage the lobster research program database, oversee data entry compilation and annual summary statistics/reports for publication and will assist in writing grant reports. In addition, she will present survey results at lobster zone council meetings.
Thompson brings to the position experience both in commercial fishing and fisheries research. Raised in a fishing family in New Harbor, Thompson served as a sternman for a Round Pond lobster fisherman during summers while she pursued a degree in Biology from Smith College. The vessel she worked on participated in DMR’s ventless trap survey, providing her first experience with cooperative research. After graduating, Thompson completed an internship in lobster research through Bigelow Laboratory focusing on the settlement index survey conducted by Dr. Richard Wahle.
In 2013 Thompson received her Master’s degree in Living Marine Resource Science and Management from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth’s School for Marine Science and Technology. Her Master’s thesis project provided the first conclusive evidence of semiannual scallop spawning in U.S. waters on Georges Bank, which has important implications for management of the fishery.
From 2013 to 2014, Thompson served as a Supervisory Research Biologist for Coonamessett Farm Foundation, a scientific research and education foundation based in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
In January 2015 she began her doctoral studies at the University of Maine focusing on northern shrimp reproduction and distribution.
“I’m excited about working closely with industry, especially here in my home state,” said Thompson.
“Katherine’s experience in scientific research of multiple fisheries provides a strong foundation for her work here at DMR,” said DMR’s Lead Lobster Biologist Kathleen Reardon. “She has the strong academic and practical experience in marine science and commercial fishing to help move our monitoring programs forward.”
February 18, 2016 — A recent controversial decision to open select scallop grounds off the coast of New England to certain select fishing groups undermines sustainable scallop management, and threatens the future health of one of the region’s most valuable resources. On Dec. 3, the New England Fishery Management Council allotted one component of the fishing fleet 300,000 pounds of scallops for harvest from an area of the Atlantic known as Nantucket Lightship. Proposed by council member and Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance CEO John Pappalardo, this allotment would open Nantucket Lightship too early, and goes against the principles that have made scallop management so successful.
For the past two decades, the scallop fishery has been a resounding success thanks to a system known as rotational management. Under this system, scallopers are allowed into certain areas to harvest scallops, while other areas are left off-limits to allow the scallops in them to grow and repopulate. This has ensured that the region’s scallop population is healthy and stable, that no areas are fished prematurely, and that scallops are not overfished. By creating an exception to this system that favors certain interests, the council is jeopardizing one of the greatest success stories in U.S. fisheries management.
Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times