Saving Seafood

Gulf ‘dead zone’ costing seafood industry, environment $2.4 billion in damage each year, study says

June 9, 2020 — The massive “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico is causing up to $2.4 billion dollars in damage to fisheries and marine habitat every year, a new report says.

Covering an area about the size of New Hampshire, the 6,700-square-mile zone of low dissolved oxygen has long been the bane of shrimpers and other fishers off the coasts of Louisiana and eastern Texas. A report released this month from the Union of Concerned Scientists offers the first comprehensive assessment of the dead zone’s economic impact, and warns the root problem — agricultural pollution from the Mississippi River — is likely to grow in severity as the world’s climate changes.

“Gulf Coast communities know that the dead zone impacts their livelihoods, but research has never put a dollar value on its damage to the fishing industry,” said Rebecca Boehm, a UCS economist and the report’s author. “This study quantifies both the amount of nitrogen flowing to the Gulf from farms upstream, and the toll it is taking economically on the foundation of the Gulf fishing industry.”

Read the full story at NOLA.com

‘Another punch in the gut’: Gulf Coast shrimpers navigate the coronavirus crisis

May 1, 2020 — David Chauvin of Dulac has worked in the shrimp business since 1986, the year he graduated from high school. His father, grandfather and great grandfather also fished the waters off Louisiana’s Cajun coast.

Gulf Coast shrimpers, who bring in three quarters of the nation’s catch, have been battered with waves of bad luck. Hurricanes. A flood of cheap imports. The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Fresh water diversions that kill seafood. And now the coronavirus.

“You always wonder how you’re going to die,” Chauvin said. “I always thought it would have been Thailand or India that would have wiped the domestic shrimp out. I never would have dreamed that it could possibly be a virus.”

Restaurants buy 80% of both imported and domestic shrimp, according to the Southern Shrimp Alliance. With restaurants closed or offering only takeout, no one is buying much shrimp. Next month would typically launch the peak of shrimp season as Gulf states begin their annual opening of nearshore waters to shrimping.

The United States caught 289.2 million pounds of shrimp, worth $496.1 million, in 2018, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (a full 2019 report has not yet been released). Louisiana shrimpers, working in both state and federal waters, brought in 90.7 million pounds of that catch, followed closely by Texas with 72.1 million pounds.

Read the full story at Houma Today

The Deepwater Horizon Disaster Fueled a Gulf Science Bonanza

April 23, 2020 — After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded a decade ago this month, killing 11 workers and spewing a massive black curtain of crude oil across the Gulf of Mexico, thousands of first responders and cleanup workers arrived on the scene. So too did an army of scientists. Aboard seagoing research vessels and wading along beaches and marshes, they came to assess the catastrophe and track it over time. British Petroleum, owner of the rig, agreed to fund a scientific stimulus package of $500 million just a few weeks after the April 20, 2010, blowout.

The 134 million gallons of oil devastated wildlife from Texas to Florida, killing thousands of marine mammals, such as dolphins and sea turtles, according to federal officials, and destroying shoreline and underwater habitats for commercially important fish, crabs, shrimp, and oysters. More than 25,000 fishermen and seafood industry workers were suddenly out of work, with a 10-year price tag of $4.5 billion in total economic losses, according to a 2019 study by a trio of researchers funded in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Read the full story at Wired

COVID-19 Is Hurting Texas Fisheries, But Eating Local Seafood Helps

April 20, 2020 — Typically, spring is a high-demand season for commercial fisheries, and many in the industry rely on these peak months to carry their income throughout the year. But, this year the widespread disruption from COVID-19 has caused seafood demand to come to a screeching halt.

Fortunately, there are ways to support these fisheries, and that means consuming more locally sourced seafood.

“One of the best ways to support local economies is to know where your food comes from and support local sources,” said Laura Picariello, fisheries specialist at the Texas Sea Grant program at Texas A&M University.  “Restaurant managers should be able to tell you where they source their seafood. You can call the restaurant in advance, or ask your server to check with the kitchen if it’s not printed on the menu.”

Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, like shrimp and oysters, are Texas cuisine classics. These foods are rich in vitamins and minerals, low in sodium and a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and protein. Gulf seafood is healthier and more sustainable because of the highly regulated practices implemented by American fisheries, including using safer handling practices and fewer antibiotics.

Read the full story at Texas A&M Today

TEXAS: How a Battle Between Recreational and Commercial Fishermen Spawned a Conservation Movement

April 16, 2020 — On fall and winter nights through the better part of the twentieth century, Rudy Grigar would wade into Galveston Bay and listen to the roar of the redfish. Swimming in schools up to five hundred strong, they sounded to him like freight trains churning through the dark. “The closer they got,” he recalled in a 1997 memoir, “the louder the noise.”

Occasionally, the schools would plow right into Grigar, a pioneer of wade-fishing in Texas, thumping against his legs and chest as he cast in the moonlight, trying his best to land two or three on a silver spoon lure before they swept past. Then he’d wait for another school to come along. “I’d repeat the process until I had a full stringer,” Grigar wrote in Plugger: Wade Fishing the Gulf Coast, a book that remains a saltwater-angling bible long after Grigar’s death in 2001 at age 86.

Grigar, who owned a tackle shop in Houston, had been fishing the state’s shallow bays and estuaries since the Great Depression. In the early seventies, he was still landing countless bounties of redfish, also known as red drum, and up to a hundred speckled trout in a day. By the end of that decade, though, the glory days had come to an end. Trout were in steep decline, and more than half of the redfish had disappeared.

Read the full story at Texas Monthly

Coast Guard breaks up Mexican poachers’ red snapper incursion off Texas

April 10, 2020 — Thirteen Mexican fishermen were detected poaching red snapper far north of the U.S. maritime boundary off south Texas Monday when the Coast Guard moved in to break up their longlining operations, Coast Guard officials said.

Three lanchas – small, slim-hulled outboard boats of 20 to 30 feet that can run at 30 knots – were corralled about 50 miles inside the boundary and detained by crews on a Coast Guard cutter, small boat and helicopters.

The haul brought in 12 miles of longline gear, other fishing equipment illegal under U.S. law, and 2,020 pounds of poached red snapper.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

TEXAS: Oysters in Galveston Bay are on the rebound. Will it stay that way?

March 31, 2020 — Joaquin Padilla steered his white oyster boat, MISS KOSOVARE, in deliberate, counter-clockwise circles on an unusually placid Galveston Bay. The boat’s oyster dredge — a chain mesh net with a heavy steel frame – dragged on the port side of the boat along the floor of the bay, raking up dozens of oysters of various sizes.

Padilla lifted the dredge out of the water using a crank, and the net dumped a pile of oysters on a small table. His deckhands, Jaime Martinez and Miguel Vasquez, quickly went to work cleaning and sorting oysters, hammering with mechanical precision and chucking rocks and dead or undersized oysters back into the water.

As a kid growing up in San Leon and working as a deckhand for his fisherman-uncle, Padilla remembered seeing up to 150 oyster boats in Galveston Bay, competing for an abundant harvest.

Read the full story at The Houston Chronicle

The toxic reach of Deepwater Horizon’s oil spill was much larger — and deadlier — than previous estimates, a new study says

February 13, 2020 — The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found.

As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers shows that a significant amount of oil and its toxic footprint moved beyond fishery closures where it was thought to be contained and escaped detection by satellites as it flowed near the Texas shore, west Florida shore and within a loop current that carries Gulf water around Florida’s southern tip up toward Miami.

In their study, published Wednesday in Science, the researchers dubbed it “invisible oil,” concentrated below the water’s surface and toxic enough to destroy 50 percent of the marine life it encountered. Current estimates show the 210 million gallons of oil released by the damaged BP Deepwater Horizon Macondo well spread out over the equivalent of 92,500 miles.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Rep. Huffman Completes First Stop of 2020 on Fisheries Listening Tour, Announces Miami Session

February 6, 2020 — The following was released by The Office of Congressman Jared Huffman (D-CA):

On Thursday, January 30, Representative Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), Chair of the Water, Oceans, and Wildlife Subcommittee, traveled to the Gulf Coast region as part of his nationwide listening tour on federal fisheries policy. This was the first listening session of 2020 and the fifth session overall. The Gulf of Mexico fishery management region includes the federal waters off of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, and the west coast of Florida.

Rep. Huffman also announced today that he will be hosting the next stop on his listening tour on Friday, February 14, 2020, in Miami, Florida, to discuss federal fisheries policy in the context of the South Atlantic fishery management region, which includes the federal waters off of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and east Florida to Key West.
 
These events are designed to engage diverse perspectives, interests, and needs of individuals who have a stake in the management of ocean and fisheries resources. During the listening session in New Orleans, Chairman Huffman heard from industry stakeholders, advocates, scientists, and members of the public, who gave feedback on the current state of fisheries management under the Magnuson-Stevens Act and what they hope to see in future federal fisheries policy. 
 
“Like the other places I’ve visited on this listening tour, fish and fishing are a way of life throughout the Gulf,” said Rep. Huffman. “The commercial and recreational fishing industries support tens of thousands of jobs and billions in sales annually. Communities all around the Gulf are deeply connected to healthy oceans and coasts, and it was extremely valuable to continue the conversation on fisheries management with these passionate local experts and stakeholders, including my colleague Rep. Garret Graves, who is an active and spirited participant in our debates on these issues in Washington, D.C. I heard a lot about the significant impacts of fishery disasters, data needs and successes, and how climate change is impacting the region in a very unique way.”
 
Miami Listening Session
WHO:             Congressman Jared Huffman, fisheries and oceans experts
WHAT:          Discussion on federal fisheries management focused on the South Atlantic region
WHEN:          Friday, February 14, 2020 @ 8:30-10:30 a.m. EST
WHERE:       Southeast Fisheries Science Center*
                        Seminar Room
                        75 Virginia Beach Drive, Miami, Florida, 33149
RSVP:            Please click here to RSVP
 
Rep. Huffman’s goal for this listening tour is to assess whether improvements to the Magnuson-Stevens Act are needed and if so, what they should be. More information, a public comment page, and the full press release for this tour can be found here.
 
The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act (also referred to as the Magnuson-Stevens Act or MSA) is the primary law governing the management and conservation of commercial fisheries in federal waters. 
 
The MSA was last reauthorized and extensively amended in 2006 (P.L. 109-479). Although the authorization of appropriations expired at the end of Fiscal Year 2013, the law’s requirements remain in effect and Congress has continued to appropriate funds to administer the act.
 
Videos from the listening sessions can be accessed through Representative Huffman’s Facebook page here. Didn’t have a chance to provide feedback during the session? You can visit his website to submit a comment at any time.
 
*The Fisheries Science Center is a federal building. Foreign nationals must RSVP in advance to obtain clearance.