13 minute read
Crew Shot
Nordic Aquafarms plans a $500 million land-based salmon farm near Belfast, Maine.
navigating local, state and federal permitting. It had originally planned to break ground in 2019 in order to begin growing out 66 million pounds of farmed salmon annually. The site proposal includes nine buildings, featuring hatcheries, freshwater smolt facilities, grow-out facilities, and support facilities that include o ce space, a central utility plant, and a water treatment plant.
“As a commercial sherman in northern Penobscot Bay, I did have some questions pertaining to the supply of water going into the sh as well as any discharge they would be introducing into my area,” said Travis Otis, from nearby Searsport, after a public meeting hosted by Nordic in 2018. “With the facility being entirely land based, with the sole exception being the supply and discharge pipes for the brackish water, that really helped to give me a certain level of peace of mind. When they further explained the process during their presentation as to how they would reduce the levels of discharge in comparison to a water-based operation — claims of 90 percent — I was very pleased to hear about how important the local environment is to them.”
Opponents of the project led multiple objections. And according to Heim there are still some outstanding appeals on some of the company’s permits.
“We have assessed those thoroughly and are very comfortable with the risk. We won every argument against local opponents and their misinformation in the permitting process. We look forward to moving ahead in short order,” Heim said.
A separate dispute over the ownership of intertidal land where the company plans to route in ow and out ow pipes may be nearing resolution after the Belfast City Council voted unanimously in August to pursue eminent domain to take over the area. — Chris Chase and Jessica Hathaway
Harwich Port, Mass.
Sergio Lima, the tuna buyer for Seafresh, gives Stella Rose a lesson on grading tuna after the bluefi n was caught by her grandfather, John Our, and dad, Jesse Rose, on the F/V Barbara O out of Harwich Port.
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— Travis Otis, Maine lobsterman
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Gulf/South Atlantic
Florida fi shermen work with NMFS to track red tide
Battered by 2018 outbreak, captains carry water test kits and report data
Dead fi sh washed up on southwest Florida beaches after a massive 2018 red tide.
nother eruption of red tide on
Athe southwest Florida coast has brought sh kills and public health advisories to beaches, and commercial shermen are pitching in the help scientists map out the e ects.
Fishermen who work o shore of the Tampa Bay region are providing oceanographic data to NMFS’
— Casey Streeter, fi sherman and organizer Southeast Fisheries Science Center, as part of the center’s ongoing collaboration with Florida Commercial Watermen’s Conservation.
The non-pro t group is dedicated to science-based water quality testing and marine stewardship, founded and operated by commercial shermen in response to devastating red tide blooms of the last ve years.
The group trains and out ts shermen with water monitoring kits, for its mission “to quantify the environmental and oceanographic conditions before, during, and after red tide blooms to better understand their dynamics and provide timely decision-support to increase the resilience of shermen and shing communities on the west coast of Florida to red tide events.”
The group got its start with those outbreaks, culminating with the extreme bloom and sh kills of 2018, said sherman and organizer Casey Streeter of Matlacha, Fla.
“It just wiped out our sheries completely… the red tide went way o shore,” said Streeter. The Southeast Fisheries Science Center was seeking information on what e ects shermen had seen on red grouper, and Streeter said he contacted Mandy Karnauskas, a research shery biologist at the center.
That led to a meeting between shermen and biologists, and “they had more
MARKET REPORT: Florida Stone Crab
Crabbers look forward to good year, despite shorter season
D
espite the lingering covid pandemic and new state regulations that shortened the season and upped the minimum size for claws, Florida’s 2020-21 stone crab harvest appears to have improved from the year before and looks strong going into October’s 2021-22 season opening.
“This year was better than last year,” said Gary Graves, operator of Keys Fisheries in Marathon — the state’s major stone crab producer. “The market was good. Even with restaurants closed, there was enough ecommerce business. I expect a normal year. Prices will be strong. I feel good about the season coming.”
While state harvest data for the season that closed May 2 is incomplete, Graves estimates production at between 1.9 million and 2 million pounds — what he calls a “normal” year. He said boat prices ranged from $10 per pound for medium claws all the way up to between $28 and $29 for colossal.
Asked if he felt any impact from Florida’s new regulations that shortened the season by two weeks and increased the minimum size of claws by 1/8 inch, Graves said the shorter season “probably helped a little bit,” but that gauging the effects of the larger claw requirements would take about three to four years. Another provision will require escape rings on traps beginning in the 2023-24 season.
“The goal was a fi ve-year plan to gain 1 million pounds,” Graves said, adding “we are going to have to have some trap reduction. The state allowed too many [trap] certifi cates. The fi shery is over-capitalized.”
Captain Shane Dooley, who runs stone crab traps in the Gulf of Mexico near Fort Myers, was satisfi ed with last season and looking forward to the next.
“We had to work at it, but yeah, it was a pretty good year,” Dooley said. He said boat prices for jumbos were around $25. — Sue Cocking
questions than we had answers,” Streeter recalls. That led to shermen joining on a research trip.
“They were blown away, and we were blown away by the dead bottom,” said Streeter.
Florida Commercial Watermen’s Conservation got organized and raised $50,000 in the southwest Florida communities to buy testing equipment. Monitoring water quality bene ts the broader coastal economy, and in the long term, sheries management, said Streeter. Data from red tide e ects o shore have been very valuable for gauging impact on red grouper, and “saved us some sh” when managers set limits, he said.
NMFS o cials say the shermen’s data will help the agency plan research activities and choose the best locations to focus those e orts.
Red tides are di cult to track because they often occur as multiple, shifting algae blooms along the Florida coast and its estuaries. Most recently the Tampa Bay outbreak seems to be fading, but high concentrations of red tide continue o Manatee and Sarasota counties.
Equipped with monitoring kits, shermen can record data on temperature, salinity, oxygen concentrations and other physical characteristics, all “necessary information for forecasting bloom behavior. It also helps us to gather data faster and has been crucial in lling information gaps between research missions,” according to NMFS.
NMFS workers interviewed shermen about the impact of the severe 2018 red tide events and are looking to do the same this year. Fishermen who want to share their observations about red tide can contact Matt McPherson at (305) 365-4112 or Mandy Karnauskas at (305) 361-4592.
— Kirk Moore
Nation/World
Huffman starts Magnuson-Stevens reauthorization
Climate change, better science and data, and offshore wind top list of concerns
he Sustaining America’s
TFisheries for the Future Act, a bill to amend, reauthorize and update the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, was introduced in Congress July 26 by Reps. Jared Hu man (D-Calif.) and Ed Case (D-Hawaii).
Some of the most signi cant changes include mandating assessments for sheries’ climate readiness at the regional council level; changing the term “over shed” to “depleted”; streamlining access to disaster relief funds; increasing funds to support seafood marketing and working waterfronts; and improving exibility on rebuilding timelines for certain stocks.
“We’re not just reauthorizing a really important law. We’re trying to reset a really important process,” Hu man told National Fisherman. “Through our stakeholder-driven, science-based approach, we have crafted legislation that rises to the challenges of the 21st century and
Crew Shots
The Magnuson-Stevens Act is the primary law that governs marine fi sheries management in U.S. federal waters. includes critical updates to this landmark law,” he added in a release with the legislation on Monday.
Hu man, who serves as chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Oceans, and Wildlife, conducted a yearlong tour consisting of eight listening sessions at shing ports on every coast of the country. He and Case, a subcommittee member, introduced a discussion draft of the reauthorization in December.
The revamped bill incorporates more changes following feedback on the draft. Hu man, Case and their sta s took additional input from stakeholders and industry leaders in the intervening months to ensure that the bill meets the needs of the industry while also propelling shery management into the modern era and allowing exibility for each region to manage sheries based on local needs.
“You really have to do a deep dive and listen to everyone and think through the di erent proposals, including unintended consequences,” Hu man told NF. “The goal throughout has been to modernize and improve without doing harm.”
“There have been some stakeholders in some regions calling for exibility, feeling like some of the framework is too rigid or arbitrary,” Hu man told NF. “But I think there’s also very broad consensus that if you take the scienti c rigor and the teeth out of the framework, you’re going to be on the fast track to over shing. So that’s a tricky balance to strike. And we’ve really tried to hang onto the rigor, that I think is really one of the keys that has made Magnuson successful.”
“We heard concerns about climate change everywhere,” Hu man told NF. “But the concerns are di erent depending on where you are. So in the North Atlantic, it’s ground zero for shifting stocks. Back when Magnuson was written and reauthorized, nobody was thinking about that. Even though
Alaska
Salmon habitat protections return to Tongass forest
Agriculture Department reverses Trump administration tack to expand logging, mining
USFS/Joe Serio Pink salmon in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
n mid-July U.S. Department
Iof Agriculture announced it will bring back protections for critical salmon habitat in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest.
The department’s new Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy, which includes a proposal to restore watershed protections for more than half of the forest’s 16.8 million acres, is touted by the department as helping to “support a diverse economy, enhance community resilience, and conserve natural resources.”
“This approach will help us chart the path to long-term economic opportunities that are sustainable and re ect Southeast Alaska’s rich cultural heritage and magni cent natural resources,” said Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The Tongass National Forest provides critical habitat for 25 percent of the U.S. West Coast salmon catch and 80 percent of the commercial salmon harvest in Southeast Alaska. Twentysix percent of jobs in the region come from tourism or commercial sheries, which are supported by the forest and the 2001 Roadless Rule, according to the Department of Agriculture.
“We’re thrilled that this announcement recognizes how valuable the Tongass is, both to the people that live here and to the rest of the world,” said Mary Catharine Martin, communications director for SalmonState.
The Roadless Rule protected 9.2 million acres of the Tongass from the roads required for clearcut logging. In 2020, the Trump administration stripped those protections and reopened more than half of the forest to logging and industrial development. The decision ran contrary to feedback from public comment, in which 96 percent of commenters and more than 90 percent of rural subsistence commenters opposed removing the rule.
As a key part of the new strategy, USDA plans to initiate a rulemaking
MARKET REPORT: Alaska King Crab
Fleet awaits word on new season after highest prices on record
laska’s red king crabbers were A hopeful of having a season for 2021-22, and with trawl survey information becoming available in September, the eet was expecting an announcement about a potential season and the size of the TAC within the month.
Last year the eet shed on a TAC of 2.6 million pounds, and crabbers shed on a TAC of just 3.8 million pounds in the Bering Sea during the 2019-20 season. Low biomass brought king crab closures to the Bering Sea king during the 1983, 1994 and 1995 seasons. The most recent decline in the TACs began with around 20 million pounds for the 2008-09 season, and the TACs have fallen precipitously since then.
“We ended up having a small season,” says Miranda Westphal, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands area management biologist, in Dutch Harbor. “The numbers have been declining for a long time.”
The biomass threshold to open the shery remains at 14.5 million pounds of crab as determined by extrapolation of trawl surveys and other harvest-derived information. In recent years the biomass has seen a precipitous drop. A puzzling development among biologists in recent years has been that the average size of harvestable males has increased to more than 7 pounds, which launches the theory that crabbers are shing on the last of an abundant age class. This year, however, the average weight of the males dropped slightly, according to Westphal.
“Every year it’s been going up and up, but last year it dropped. We’re not sure exactly what that means,” says Westphal.
Ex-vessel prices last year averaged $9.10 per pound. The 2019-20 ex-vessel prices averaged $9.12 per pound, which is the highest on record, according to ADF&G data in Dutch Harbor. — Charlie Ess
