Saving Seafood

News for the South Atlantic Region

NORTH CAROLINA: Thousands of pieces of fishing gear removed from coastal NC waters over past decade

April 1, 2024 — Protecting our state’s coastal waters is an ongoing effort, and one nonprofit recently hit a major milestone in that endeavor.

The North Carolina Coastal Federation marked 10 years of working with commercial fishing crews to find and remove thousands of pieces of lost fishing gear from the water.

Matt Littleton and Carson Whetherington spend their mornings in Swansboro searching for bouys — but these crab pots aren’t providing their next meal; they’re looking to pull lost and forgotten gear from the water.

“The areas we’re working, continuously we’re seeing lost pots or leftover or one that might have gotten moved around from a storm. In this area we’re running up on just pots that are derelict, debris that’s been discarded somewhere or it’s been hit by a boat or hit by a prop because it’s been in the water for so long,” says Littleton, with Friendly City Fishing Charters.

For years Littleton, who’s a charter boat captain in Swansboro, worked alongside his father as part of the North Carolina Coastal Federation’s lost fishing gear recovery project- but now he continues that effort with his own team.

Read the full article at WRAL

South Atlantic council mulling use of ropeless gear in black sea bass fishery

February 20, 2024 — The South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC) is mulling whether to include new regulations for on-demand or “ropeless” gear on black sea bass pots as a means of preventing adverse impacts on whales.

The black sea bass pot fishery uses pot traps that rest on the bottom and vertical line with a buoy attached for retrieval – similar to other pot fisheries like lobster or crab. The fishery has been experimentally using various types of on-demand gear since 2021, which can include a pot that releases a vertical line only when it gets a signal, or a pot that uses inflatables to rise to the surface for easy retrieval.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NOAA Fisheries seeks solutions to reduce red snapper discards in the South Atlantic

February 15, 2024 — On February 12, 2024, NOAA Fisheries recommended five projects for funding totaling $879,211 to explore new, innovative approaches to better understand and reduce red snapper dead discards and increase fishing opportunities in the South Atlantic snapper-grouper fishery.

NOAA Fisheries recognizes that recreational and commercial fishers, fishery managers, and other stakeholders are challenged and frustrated by short fishing seasons for red snapper and high levels of dead discards. The most recent South Atlantic red snapper population assessments indicate the stock is recovering but experiencing too much fishing mortality due to the number of discarded fish and subsequently dying. We identified a need to study effective alternative management strategies that reduce dead discards to improve the status of snapper-grouper stocks, including red snapper, and to optimize the social and economic benefits for the snapper-grouper fishery better.

In September 2023, NOAA Fisheries requested proposals under a Notice of Funding Opportunity for projects that explore new approaches to understand better and reduce red snapper dead discards and increase fishing opportunities in the South Atlantic snapper-grouper fishery. Proposals were accepted from September 7 through November 20, 2023. NOAA Fisheries is recommending funding the following five projects, totaling $879,211.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NORTH CAROLINA: Extensive study aims to help state better manage fisheries

February 13, 2024 — A study ordered by the legislature has scientists taking a deep dive into North Carolina’s fisheries management to help the future of state-regulated coastal marine species.

The North Carolina General Assembly in the 2021-22 state budget tasked researchers with a “Study of the Coastal and Marine Fisheries of the State” to come up with recommendations on ways the state might improve how it manages 13 regulated species.

To do this, researchers are examining a multitude of information gathered over the past few decades and study trends in everything from water temperatures to commercial harvest patterns.

The study, led by a team of nine researchers who fall under the umbrella of the North Carolina Collaboratory, is expected to wrap sometime next year. The legislature created the policy research entity in 2016. The Collaboratory is to share its recommendations to state lawmakers no later than June 30, 2025.

That deadline was bumped from June 30 of this year, which marks the 27th anniversary of the Fisheries Reform Act of 1997 and the 50th anniversary of the Coastal Area Management Act, or CAMA.

Read the full article at CostalReview.org

From Bubba Gump to bust? American shrimpers face extinction

January 31, 2024 — On a chilly December morning, the captain of the Miss Patti is ready to throw his lines and go shrimping – well, almost. Brian Jordan’s deckhand is in a foul mood, and it’s no wonder why. Is any of this worth it?

Here on the tiny working waterfront of Tybee Island, Georgia, the hesitancy is logical. Shrimp prices cratered this year, and hundreds of boats from Brownsville, Texas, to Harkers Island, North Carolina, remained dockside.

The problem hasn’t been a lack of shrimp or the price of diesel. Instead, freezers across the United States are filled to the gills. A glut of imported shrimp has dropped the price to about half of what shrimp boats received in the 1980s.

At stake is the livelihood of Mr. Jordan and shrimpers like him nationwide. They can’t compete with overseas rivals who raise and harvest shrimp in lower-cost “aquaculture’’ farms. There, baby shrimp essential to the marine life food chain are raised in artificial saltwater ponds, then harvested in bulk and sold for reduced prices around the world.

Because shrimp is the most valuable marine product traded in the world today – growing from a $10.6 billion industry in 2005 to over $60 billion in 2022 – the shift is consequential on many fronts. The practice is generating substantial income for developing countries such as Thailand, Indonesia, India, Vietnam, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bangladesh.

But the trend, some experts say, hurts more than just seafaring boaters like Mr. Jordan: Much of the overseas aquaculture industry is damaging to the environment, they say

Read the full article at the Christian Science Monitor

U.S. shrimpers struggle to compete as cheap foreign imports flood domestic market

January 22, 2024 — Shem Creek, South Carolina — Off South Carolina’s coast, shrimper Rocky Magwood has a jumbo problem: plummeting prices for his catch.

“It’s worse right now than we’ve ever seen,” Magwood told CBS News. “…I mean, people are dropping like flies out of this business.”

The cause is cheap shrimp imported from Asia, grown in pond farms and often subsidized by foreign governments. It’s idled many of this state’s roughly 300 shrimpers.

“I would love to be out here at least six days a week,” Magwood said.

Instead, he’s shrimping only two or three days a week because, as he explains, there’s “no market.”

Read the full article at CBS News

 

NORTH CAROLINA: NCCF Lost fishing gear recovery program underway

January 10, 2024 — Throughout this month and with the help of 25 commercial fishermen and women, the N.C. Coastal Federation will undertake efforts to find and remove potentially harmful lost fishing gear. This is the tenth year the federation has held the annual Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project.

Throughout the month watermen will scour parts of the northern and central coast looking to find and remove lost crab pots. Every year, crab pots and other fishing gear are lost in our sounds in various ways.

Lost gear can get hung up or drift into channels, creating serious hazards to boaters, wildlife, and other fishermen. Since 2014, the federation led the Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project to remove lost crab pots from North Carolina sounds.

With the help of various partners, commercial fishermen and women are hired to collect the pots during the annual closure of internal coastal waters to all crab, eel, fish, and shrimp pots, January 1-31 north of the Highway 58 bridge to Emerald Isle. In 2023, commercial watermen and women in partnership with N.C. Marine Patrol removed 2,077 pots from select areas within all three Marine Patrol Districts.

Read the full article at Carolina Coast Online

Agencies acknowledge confusion fisheries conflict creates

January 9, 2023 — Third and final in a series investigating why, after years of consistent seasons for inland, joint and coastal waters, recreational anglers found themselves negotiating different flounder and mullet rules in 2023.

Disagreements between the two commissions that manage state waters began to flare in 2019 after they formed an interagency committee to work on the required 10-year review on rules for the joint waters they both manage.

With the threat of these rules expiring in 2022 looming over the Wildlife Resources Commission that manages inland waters and the Marine Fisheries Commission manages coastal waters and the two never coming to an agreement, the governor’s office directed the agencies in February 2022 to adopt the existing joint rules without any changes.

The joint rules address scope and purpose, the classification of inland, coastal and joint waters, posting dividing lines, applicability of rules and special regulations for joint waters, and estuarine striped bass management.

Though there was mounting conflict evident between the agencies, what highlighted the impasse was the two recreational flounder seasons in September 2023. The WRC season was the first two weeks and MFC’s was the second two weeks, leading to confusion and even warnings issued to some fishers for breaking one agency’s rules.

North Carolina Fisheries Association Executive Director Glenn Skinner told Coastal Review that with the two agencies trying to decide who has authority over what, “you’ve got a lot of stakeholders that are really caught in the middle. And that’s a shame whenever it comes to that.”

What kept the inland and coastal seasons concurrent was a 2011 Wildlife Resources Commission rule to mirror the recreational seatrout, flounder and red drum seasons set by the Marine Fisheries Commission or Division of Marine Fisheries, which carries out the Marine Fisheries Commission’s rules. The Wildlife Resources Commission amended this rule in late 2021 to establish its own flounder season and limits as well as dozens of species-specific rules that went into effect March 2023.

Read the full article at CoastalReview.org

NORTH CAROLINA: Hook, line and sinking: What’s the future of NC’s commercial fishing industry?

January 3, 2023 — With a well-trained hook of the line by one of the founders and co-owners of Wilmington’s Seaview Crab Company, a few loops around the puller and a flick of a switch, the crab pot soon emerged.

Inside the pot, a dozen or so blue crabs scampered around, some using their impressive claws to attach themselves to the mesh-sides of the cage.

“It’s not always easy, but this never gets old,” Romano, 44, said as he emptied the crabs into a holding bin before checking to make sure they were all of legal size, the lucky ones getting tossed back into the waterway. The others were divided by size into containers to be sold individually − “These are the ones everyone wants,” Romano joked as he held up a good-sized crab − or to be sent to a crab house to be picked apart for their meat.

“It just clears my head when I’m out here,” Romano said with a Cheshire cat-like grin as he prepared to toss the now-empty pot back into the water. “I can leave most of my other problems behind for a few hours.”

For generations, fishing has been a way of life in coastal North Carolina. The industry, which used to provide much of the seafood served along the U.S. East Coast, provided jobs and a good livelihood for the hardy souls who put in the long hours on the water. Communities evolved around the routines of fishing and the requirements of different fisheries, and local traditions and histories became intertwined with water.

But driven by factors as varied as rising operational costs, the declining health of many fisheries, the changing face of coastal towns as more retirees and property investors move in, increased foreign competition and even climate change, commercial fishing and the fishermen themselves are changing in North Carolina.

The industry isn’t in danger of disappearing, but what it will become in the coming years and decades is still to be determined.

Read the full article at the Star News Online

USDA to purchase USD 36 million worth of domestic shrimp, awards USD 1.2 million in pollock contracts

December 21, 2023 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is purchasing up to USD 36 million (EUR 33 million) of wild shrimp from the U.S. Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic, U.S. Representative Garret Graves (R-Louisiana) announced in a press release.

The purchase is possible thanks to funds available under the USDA’s Section 32 Funds for Strengthening Markets, Income, and Supply, Graves’ office said.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource