Cape Ann Fresh Catch

2011-09-05T22:22:00.004-04:00

Most plants and animals adhere to a seasonal pattern of feeding and reproduction. Fish and other ocean bound animals are no exception. Most of the fish that you get from Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC) spend the summer getting fat on the abundant prey of herring, sand eels, lobsters, juvelnile fish etc., that abound in our rich ewaters in the the summer months. That is why I find that fish tastes the best in the fall. Or shall I say fish feels the best in the fall, because really the difference is in the texture of the fish as much as any difference in the flavor of the fish.

One of the great things I have learned since I've been getting CAFC shares is how very different the same fish can taste at different times of the year. Again, its more of a texture difference than a taste difference, but once you have one of those sublime meals that are part and parcel of the CAFC experience, you'll know exactly what I mean. (I hope!)

For me personally, fall is when most of the fish are at their finest. I also find that New England's other land based harvest foods pair exceptionally well with fresh seafood. Its the best time of year to enjoy the hard work of the sun!

___________________________

Healthy oceans and a secure source of day-boat fresh seafood are not guaranteed! Part of supporting a Community Supported Fishery is lending your voice to support the values you are supporting. If you care about CAFC please consider taking the pledge to support a diverse fleet. A critical vote to stop rapid uncontrolled consolidation of the local fleet is taking place in three weeks. Please consider signing a pledge to support your local community based fishermen.

Fleet Diversity gets a boost

2011-08-14T13:07:00.002-04:00

In the ongoing battle to protect the community based fishermen from being consolidated out of the fleet, a small but important victory happened last week. The Groundfish committee of the New England Fisheries Management Council voted to approve a scoping document that begins the formal process of initiating an amendment to Magnusen Stevens that will put protection in place for smaller vessels.

If that all sounds like fisheries gibberish, here it is in plain English: the people who make the fish rules voted to start working on rules to protect a diverse fleet.

The process is somewhat long and cumbersome, but this was an important step to get things going. NAMA (in case you are new here, NAMA is the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance and we are one of the organizations that helped launch Cape Ann Fresh Catch and we continue to work very closely with CAFC. I, the primary author of this blog, am Sean Sullivan and I work for NAMA)...NAMA has worked hard to try to get regulators to listen to fishermen who are feeling pinched under catch shares. The primary complaints are that under catch shares they are under economic pressure to get big or get out. We know that the "get big" scenario doesn't work. In fact it can be argued that the whole problem of overfishing is the result of the governments last push to have the fleet "get big".

In any case, over 200 people signed a pledge to support Fleet Diversity. We are still encouraging people to sign the pledge to show fisheries managers that people care about who fishes matters.

Click here to read the pledge and add your name!

In other news, the new CAFC season will be coming along shortly. Fall is typically my favorite season for seafood. Much like terrrestrail plants and animals, fish are often the most "ripe" in the fall having eaten well all summer and adding reserves of fat. Most species will begin to put the feedbag on over the coming weeks and begin schooling up for their migrations. Almost all fish migrate to a certain extent whether it is from rocky shores to deep water, such as lobsters or from deep to inshore such as cod. In my opinion most fish species taste the best in the fall and have the best texture.

Lastly, NAMA has its own blog, and there is some interesting stuff there about fishy events around the area.

100 Dead Fish and Amendment 18

2011-08-08T10:07:00.010-04:00

100 Dead fish are 100 dead fish. We can either have one large factory trawler catch all those fish or we can have a diverse fleet that is appropriately scaled to the size of the eco-system, that enriches our communities with local healthy food and provides more jobs.

Quite literally, as seafood consuming folks we have a say in how the fish we eat are caught. Most of us take for granted that there will be folks catching fish in New England from small vessels plying the harbors that dot the coastline of New England - because its been that way for four centuries. But as we look at the current state of the fishery:

Three permit holders control 41% of the George's Bank Winter Flounder (which is a choke species*)
The groundfish fleet lost 458 crew positions last year.
Vessels over 50 ft. increased landings by 8.4% and increased revenues 21.5%
Vessels under 50 ft. had landing drop 51.7% and decreased revenues of 34.2%

All of this points to a picture of consolidation of the fleet to larger and fewer vessels. There may always be small vessels plying the waters, but we should not take it for granted or before our eyes we could not only lose the small day-boat fleet and the jobs associated with it, but also the high quality seafood we have come to love at CAFC.

What can you do? Pledge to support a diverse fleet!

Over the coming months, the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) will debate Amendment 18 to the Magnusen Stevens Fishery Act about whether and how to enact regulations (many of which existed prior to the Catch Shares program) that will help preserve a diverse fleet through allocation caps, quota set-asides for new entrants and owner-operators and measures to foster an affordable fishery through leasing restrictions.

Without these controls in place, we are very likely to see the fleet consolidated further over the coming years, so please consider signing the pledge and lending your voice to a diverse fleet.

* Fishermen are allocated a variety of fish species to catch. Once they catch all of any single allocation they have they cannot fish anymore unless they lease allocations from another fisherman. "Choke species" then are the ones typically considered to be low in allocation.

For example, a fishermen from the South Shore recently reported that he had already caught all of his allocation of Winter Flounder. His choice to continue fishing is to either lease Winter Flounder at $1/lb or stop fishing. Winter Flounder sells for $1.40/lb at the dock. If someone controls a large amount of a choke species they can control who gets to fish.

From the dock...

2011-08-01T12:35:00.003-04:00

Local fisherman Doug Maxfield writes a blog about fishing (among other things - fair warning sometimes the content is spicy) and late last week he penned a post about some of the issues we have been concerned about, specifically consolidation of the fishing fleet into fewer boats. We consistently hear that consolidation is happening and it is driving out the small guys most. Doug's view is something we hear all the time from fishermen up and down the coast.

In recent and likely in coming years the costs to go fishing will continue to rise. Everything from fuel to the cost to lease fishing quota (a necessity for many fishermen under the new catch shares management plan). Meanwhile fish prices have remained largely unchanged in the last decade, ranging from 1.50/lb to 2.50/lb.

The resulting picture is not pretty for the smaller day-boat vessels that have the least impact on the ocean and provide the highest quality seafood. Supporting CAFC is a great way to support the local dayboat fleet, but in the long run, more will need to be done to ensure a healthy diverse fishery.

In the coming weeks, NAMA will be making a push to put protections in place for smaller inshore vessels and we hope that some CAFC folks will help us get the message to fisheries managers that people other than fishermen care about who fishes!

Behind the scenes

2011-07-25T18:07:00.006-04:00

CAFC is featured on WGBH!

A special shout out to Steve Tousignant who works diligently behind the scenes to make sure everyone gets their fish. Beyond being the man behind the curtain at CAFC, Steve is a great cook so if you get the chance ask him about cooking seafood. He does a mean smoked bluefish.

Mackerel and other fishy fish

2011-07-18T09:30:00.004-04:00

One of the great things about a CSF like Cape Ann Fresh Catch is that you get fish you might not normally eat or purchase in a market. For those of us who like whole fish, oftentimes it is hard to even find whole fish at the fishmongers. Still, for most folks there are just some fish that people do not like. Or, let's phrase that differently, there are fish that people don't know they will like yet.

The most common complaint about these types of fish are that they are too "fishy". I love hearing that, it reminds me of when people complain that a wine is too "grapey". The irony of the language however cannot detract from the real feelings that most people have to the strong taste of some oily fish such as herring, mackerel, and bluefish.

I have yet to get a mackerel in any of my shares, though I did get a bluefish or two and once got four or five herring (which I admit I converted into Striped Bass by placing chunks of them on a hook at the end of a line!) If you talk to "old-timers" you'll hear about people eating and loving mackerel "back in the day".

There was a recent article about macks in the Gloucester Daily Times. And an even more fascinating link in the comments from Joey Cimartaro of Good Morning Gloucester about a trap fishery for mackerel with some really nice pictures.

The article though makes great points about how healthy macks are to eat. I also find that the "fishy fish" can be prepared without too much fishiness in particular if they are fresh, you cut away some or all of the dark meat (which is also unfortunately the meat with the most Omega 3 oil), and lastly, you cook them with a vinegar dressing.

I didn't realize it, but when I was a kid we would catch bluefish all the time and cook and eat them ourselves (believe it or not, the parents were more finicky about this than the kids) and we'd coat the fillets in mayonnaise and let then sit for a few hours before cooking to reduce the fishy flavor.

More recently, I had Mackerel at 5 Corner's Kitchen in Marblehead (which unfortunately suffered a fire from the adjoining building last week and will be closed for a month). Chef Barry Edelman grills the mackerel and serves it with a vinegar dressing that is just delightful.

Tangent alert: As a seafood aficionado 5 Corners Kitchen should be on your list of places to eat. Barry is not afraid to serve what is fresh, in season, and sometimes considered "trash fish". He recently had on the menu, bluefish, skate, mackerel and a fish stew made from redfish (courtesy of NAMA - shameless plug). And you will no longer find the albatross of real seafood on the menu - the awful farmed salmon.

In any case, one of the things we discuss at our CAFC meetings is whether folks would like to get mackerel in their shares? One of the problems is finding mackerel that is fished sustainably. Currently other than the trap caught mackerel, most macks are caught in large pair trawlers which have a bad record of huge by-catches of striped bass, haddock and other fish which are just dumped overboard to slowly die on the surface.

Sometimes macs come in as by-catch from the dayboat fleet, and hopefully you'll find a few in your shares at some point and you'll learn to love this very pretty little healthy seafood.

Fish are just birds underwater

2011-07-08T14:57:00.003-04:00

Short post this week with some recent comments from fishermen. At the Spatial Sales Conference I wrote about last week, the last panel was a group of four fishermen and one sector manager. They were asked about their observations on the water and how they reconcile with some of the emerging scientific consensus that was the focus of the conference.

One fisherman when asked if his experiences on the water match what the scientists are finding out responded by saying he always thought of fish as flocks of birds moving underwater. Most of the other fishermen had similar analogies.

When it came time to talk about new management ideas one fishermen said to the room full of scientists, NGO staffers and NOAA/NMFS/NEFMC staff, "You all are the fishermen now. You are the ones with steady jobs, benefits."

He went on to say what a lot of fishermen have said in recent years, that there are more people employed in regulating, lobbying and managing fish than there are people catching fish. He concluded by saying, "Whether this science is right and the old science is wrong, or the new way is better at managing fish I don't know. I just hope you get it right, so the fishermen can get back to fishing."

All of the fishermen agreed that the numbers of fish "out there" in the Western Gulf of Maine was the largest they had seen in their fishing careers. They all said they no longer have to think to catch fish, they just go to whatever area is not closed drop their nets and pull them back full of fish.

Emerging scientific trends shake up fisheries management

2011-07-05T10:36:00.005-04:00

Everyone knows that Salmon are born in rivers, spend their adult life in the ocean and return to the very same river they were born in to spawn. Until recently most people thought that Salmon were the exception among fishes. It was commonly thought that most other fish were dispersal spawners and did not exhibit natal homing. In other words the eggs of the fish were released into the ocean's currents, the fish eventually grew and settled somewhere among a school, then spawned with that school.

It turns out that most fish are more like salmon than we ever thought. In fact, most fish return to the location they were born (or nearby that location) to spawn. Cod for example may return to the exact same hump of rock where they were born to spawn year after year. This is just one of the emerging scientific trends that was reported recently at a Reconciling Spatial Scales and Stock Structures for Fisheries Science and Management Conference.

The implications of this emerging scientific consensus are fairly drastic if you are a fisherman, fisheries manager, fisheries scientist or as in the case of us at NAMA, advocates for small scale community based fishermen. The conference produced a slew of other earth shaking ideas and notions, but before we get to those, lets walk down the path of understanding just the example above, our beloved codfish.

One of the great mysteries scientists, fishermen and others have been struggling to understand is how some populations of over-fished cod have rebounded, such as in the Western Gulf of Maine, while those in the Eastern Gulf of Maine and George's Bank are still struggling. It has always been thought that a dispersal breeding fish would necessarily over time re-stock the ocean just through the magic of winds and currents moving those very young cod around.

But if Cod are like Salmon, and humans put up a barrier - in the case of Salmon say a dam, in the case of Cod say a net, that prevents them from returning to their natal spawning grounds, an entire population or stock of fish may disappear. A river may regenerate, but it is thought that the timeframes for nature to re-stock a river may be in the hundreds if not thousands of years. If a cod breeding ground is wiped out by overfishing, the fish that have that genetic code that tells them to return to say the Eastern Gulf of Maine to spawn are gone. Let's repeat that, those fish are GONE.

Cod population crashes are well documented most spectacularly in Canada, but have also happened in the North Sea and here in the Eastern Gulf of Maine. A recent sentinel fishery (a fishery designed to gauge fish populations) in the Eastern Gulf of Maine conducted in conjunction with our friends at the Penobscot East Resource Center, showed that there are more Halibut in the Eastern Gulf of Maine than there are cod (and the numbers of Halibut are still extremely low). And with little to no fishing pressure these formerly abundant fish are still not returning.

Why they are not returning could in fact be the result of fishing pressure resulting in an "extirpation" of a stock. So, in other words somehow the breeding fish for that area were wiped out and because of that, there are no adult fish in those areas. Quite literally, the Eastern Gulf of Maine used to be one of the most productive fishing areas, equal to Stellwagen Bank, George's Bank and other well known historical fisheries. Today there is no commercial fishery there at all.

To make things even more complicated, additional research presented at the conference shows an inter dependency between some species, again we will use cod as an example, and their main prey. For example, Cod in parts of Canada fed primarily on Capelin, a small fish related to herring. The Capelin provided the nutritional basis for Cod to spawn successfully. If there are no Capelin, Cod will feed on shrimp. However, if they are feeding on shrimp, they are less successful and in some cases will not spawn at all.

I am not a scientist, and I am sure there are nuances I may not be getting right. But, the first example of Cod returning to their natal grounds is a "spatial" relationship. This connection argues that the animals are related more closely to a particular spot in the ocean than was previously thought. Fisheries managers largely manage fish as though they are a single uniform stock. We now know that is not true. Management will have to change to acknowledge this "spatial" relationship.

The example of the Cod being interdependent on Capelin to successfully breed is an example of an "Eco-system" dependency. In the past fisheries managers have managed fish stocks as if there are no eco-system dependencies. Specifically, managers are by law required to manage commercial species to attain a maximum sustainable catch of all species. However species do not exist in a vacuum, they exist in an eco-system where fish eat other fish.

Now these emerging scientific ideas are forcing an new understanding that not only must we look at the ocean spatially, but temporaly (fluctuations over time) in a much more detailed way if we want to be successful at managing the ocean.

Freezing fish

2011-06-27T07:01:00.003-04:00

Despite my grandest plans to film a short video about my week with my CAFC seafood, life intervened and my fish sat in the fridge for two days before I even got a chance to get it out. I also knew I would be busy in the coming few days so I faced that dillemma that everyone that gets CAFC shares eventually faces: what to do with fish you wont be able to eat fresh.

The most obvious answer is to freeze your fish. If you plan to use the fish in the near future, freezing fish is pretty straight forward. Get as much air out of the bag as you can, make sure any water is drained out and throw the fish in the freezer.

If you plan to keep your seafood longer, freezer burn can become an issue. Freezer burn is when things dry out in the freezer. Seafood is particularly vulnerable to freezer burn as it has a high water content. One way to avoid freezer burn and prolong the life of your seafood then is to freeze your fish in a block of salted water.

Basically you make a solution of salted water, about 1/4 cup of salt per two pints of water and fill the bag you are freezing the fish in with the solution. This technique can extend the life of your filets and keep a much nicer texture than just plain freezing.

Back when there were no CSF's around I used to catch a bunch of Cod just before I took my boat out and freeze a bunch in a brine and we enjoyed cod filets all winter.

There are some other ideas about freezing fish here if you want to try some more elaborate techniques.

2011-06-12T18:00:00.004-04:00

A friend was recently asking me for some seafood cooking tips. Of course that gave me the opportunity to talk about freshness as perhaps the biggest factor in cooking really good seafood. And, of course the freshest fish you can get anywhere is right here from Cape Anne Fresh Catch (or one of the other CSF's that might be in your area).

If you are a CAFC member, you know about fresh seafood. But did you know that 84% of the seafood eaten in this country is imported? How fresh can that possibly be? Let's take the Pacific Cod as an example. These fish by the way are given the highest marks on the seafood buyer cards such as Monterey Bay Aquarium's seafood buyers guide.

The Pacific Cod is the less good looking sister to the Altantic Cod, with a slightly less firm texture, it is sometimes also called the Grey Goo. The Pacific Cod fishery catches and processes large numbers of Cod and freezes them and ships 30% of the catch to China to be re-processed into fillets or fish sticks, then re-imported to the U.S. or another country. If you see "Previously Frozen" Cod at the supermarket and it is not listed as being Atlantic Cod, chances are that fish has been to Alaska and China before arriving at your market. That's a well traveled fish!

In contrast, CAFC's fish is usually landed the same day it is caught, often in the morning. It is weighed and sorted, then delivered to Turner's Seafood - all of this happens before 9AM, where it is either filleted or bagged whole, then put on the truck for delivery. It really doesn't get much fresher than that.

But, I began talking about cooking tips. Here are some I use. Let me know what your secrets are!

When in doubt, 1 tblsp butter per person
The fresher the fish, the less you should do, as fish get older spice up the recipe.
Fish spoil being in water, ideally your fish should be on ice free to drain
10 minutes per inch of thickness

I am off to fry up my share from last week for fish tacos! What did you do with your share?

A meal so good I cant stop thinking about it...

2011-06-05T22:04:00.000-04:00

Welcome to Cape Ann Fresh Catch's (CAFC) summer season. As an introduction, or re-introduction for those of you who may have read the blog before or are here for the first time, my name is Sean Sullivan. I work for the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA), which is one of the partner organizations that helped start CAFC and continues to support and encourage the CSF movement any way we can.

I am also a CAFC shareholder and I pick up my seafood in Marblehead. I've had some truly incredible meals from the seafood I've had from CAFC. Several stand out in my head because it was the first time I tried that species. I'd never had Acadian Redfish before, also know as Ocean Perch and just Redfish. Not only are these fish beautiful to look at, but they have a unique texture that makes them one of the few fishes we get you can throw right on the grill.

Another one of the memorable meals was the time I sauteed some whiting, whole, for my kids. I figured there was a 60/40 chance they would eat a whole fish where they had to pull out the bones. They loved it.

Still though, as a lifelong seafood lover, having worked in restaurants that specialize in seafood, and being something of a fresh/local/healthy food dork, I was unprepared for yet another meal that would leave such a lasting impression upon me that I continue to savor it now almost three weeks later.

The recipe was grilled monkfish kebabs. I served it with sauteed fiddleheads and asparagus. My mouth is watering as I type this. My daughter, the arbiter of all things good and evil, declared it the best seafood she's ever had. We eat fish at least twice a week.

That is why I am a CAFC member.....

.......ok, well thats only partly why. The other reason is that I care about the ocean, and I want my kids to grow up with a local ecology that is healthy and provides us with healthy protein. You can't get much more organic, fresh, healthy and local than CAFC fish.

I'll be talking more in the coming weeks about more fisheries issues as there is a lot going on, and there are ways you can get involved if you do care about the ocean. You can start reading here. Or you can read through previous blog posts.

Here is a blog from a Gloucester fisherman. It can get a little spicy over there, so if you can't handle dock talk be forewarned.

And here is another blog that you might find interesting and relevant to the issues of seafood and sustainability.

And lastly, feel free to get in touch to share recipe experiences, write a guest blog, or tell me what you want me to write about.

Thanks for reading.

What will the future of fishing look like?

2011-05-23T07:48:00.002-04:00

Our fearless leader Angela Sanfilippo made an interesting point at our weekly meeting last week. We were discussing some of the issues Gloucester faces as a fishing port. One of them is the loss of infrstructure (and this applies to most if not all fishing communities).

We all know that along with the decline of the value and size of our fisheries over the last 50 years, there has been a commensurate decline in the shoreside infrastructure that is necessary to land and process fish. Along with the decline we have also seen coastal real estate values skyrocket and commercial lands converted to residential.

Angela's point was made in the form of a question, "If we rebuild this fishery, according to NOAA'a projections, but 2014 we will be catching twice as much fish as we are today. Where are all those fish going to go?"

The value of the fish landed in Gloucester last year is somewhere around $5o million with around 122 million pounds of fish landed. If catches do indeed double, are we doomed for a repeat of the great fish glut that followed the imposition of the 200 mile limit? (You can see the entire landings totals and values since 1980 here.)

Back when the US imposed a 200 mile exclusive economic zone and forced the factory ships offshore, Gloucester fishermen were suddenly landing so many fish there were not enough places to land them. Apparently at times fishermen were getting so little for their fish that they were dumped or left to rot on the docks.

Hopefully that will not be the case in the coming years as hopefully restrictions are eased and catches go up commesurate with increasing fish populations. It is sometimes hard to remember that for the hundreds of years that people have been fishing, and for thousands of years before that, our waters were one of, if not the most productive fishing ecosystems on the planet. If we manage it correctly, there should not only be a healthy fishing industry, healthy stocks of fish, and healthy fishing communities.

But, we do have to remember to save some shore front.

2011-05-15T19:17:00.002-04:00

Last week, we discussed the amazingly Orwellian life of a commercial fisherman. When people hear how regulated and heavy-handed regulations are for commercial fishermen they often ask, "What I can do to help change things?"

The first and easiest (and admittedly something that most of you who may be reading this blog are already doing by buying shares at Cape Ann Fresh Catch or another CSF) is to stop buying seafood from the great international fish conspiracy. Here is the easiest and best thing you can do for your health and the health of the oceans and fishermen everywhere:

Stop buying imported farmed shrimp.

Farmed shrimp have a terrible track record.

They are often pumped full of antibiotic's, live in crowded conditions and are farmed in sensitive environments like mangrove swamps.

Also, the testing of imported seafood for contaminants is questionable enough that states have taken it upon themselves to test seafood with less than stellar results.

Not only that but at least to me, they taste awful, a bit like rubber mixed with cardboard and ammonia.

So that's easy right? Just eat local Maine shrimp, fresh in season or frozen out of season. Or support Gulf of Mexico fishermen and buy shrimp from the gulf. (No time here to go into the health and safety aspects of whether Gulf of Mexico shrimp are OK to eat or not. Some reading on that here and here if you care to delve into it.)

And, feel free to lecture your buddies on this subject, you'll be doing them favor!

Another way to get involved is to submit comments to the government on policy issues. This week you can weigh in on state operated permit banks. Its a bit of a complicated issue, but you can find all you need to know here.

A Day in the Life of a Commercial Fishermen

2011-05-08T21:27:00.000-04:00

Imagine a world where you have to call the government 48 hours before you go to work and get permission to go to work. No permission, no work.

If you do get permission, you might be assigned an observer. This is a governemnt employee who's job it is to check to make sure you are following all the regulations and rules of your job. If they catch you doing something wrong you can be fined. For now, the government is paying the observer, but in the future you will have to pay to be monitored.

As you head to work, you must turn on your electronic monitoring device which tracks your position by satellite. If for some reason you electronic monitoring device, which you have to pay for and costs a couple thousand dollars stops working you must stop working and return home. If not you will be fined.

But you've made it this far, time to make some money! You start working. The tools you use are all regulated, where you can work is regulated, the size and type of product you make is regulated. If you do any of these things wrong, you can be fined.

But its a good day, you get your work done and head home. Now you have to call in and report that you are returning from work. The government tells you you will be met by yet another observer of your work who will weigh and scale your work, and of course they will fine you if they find anything that does not comply with the regulations. Oh, and in the coming years you will also have to pay for this observer. $75/hr to monitor your work.

Wouldnt it be great if you could bring home some of your hard earned work to share with your family. After all, your work is providing food. But you can't. It is illegal for you to bring home a single fish to put on your family's table. In fact, before you leave the observer(s) they will search your vessel to make sure you are not hiding anything.

When nothing is found and you somehow make it through the day of work, you now have to fill out the paperwork. Pages and pages of paperwork. And if any of your paperwork is out of line, well don't even bother to call in to ask permission to go to work.

But, at least the information from your paperwork is helping to develop a better picture of what is going on in the environment in which you work, right? Wrong. The data is not used for anything.
_________________________________

Last night I had dinner with fisherman Steve Walsh from the South Shore of Massachusetts. He's been fishing for 33 years. Also at the table were two friends of mine who enjoy seafood, but were relatively unaware of what is involved in commercial fishing. As Steve described the above scenario, they became incredulous. Then they became angry, then depressed.

"How can this be happening in America?" They asked.

"What can we do?" They asked.

The latter question stunned me. In all the years I've been around fishing, boats and involved in fishing regulations no has ever asked what they can do. CAFC members are already doing a small part by supporting local community based fishermen. But can we do more?

In the coming weeks, I will be focusing on finding effective ways for folks who do care to get involved. By it's own admission NOAA has admitted the regulatory process is deeply flawed. We'll delve into that in a couple weeks, and in the following weeks I'll present opportunities for those of you who think fisheries can be managed in a way that:

doesn't treat fishermen like criminals
still save our oceans
improve the safety of fishing
reward fishermen who fish clean
improve the overall quality of our local seafood to be a global leader
support coastal communities

The impact of CSFs

2011-05-01T19:58:00.005-04:00

Just in case you missed it, CAFC just announced the summer season. Accompanying the announcement was a note from Gloucester Fishermen's Wives association President, Angela Sanfillipo:

It's unbelievable to think we're starting our third year...

Remembering back when the program was just an idea, before our first season, and how apprehensive we were as to whether it'd be our first season... or last.

Things are different now, and we're grateful...

Because of you, CAFC members, it is with great pride and tremendous gratitude we're announcing our 8th new season and that CAFC is starting its third year.

Your support and encouragement has meant so much to us and the fishing community of Cape Ann. It's as if through the seasons of CAFC, Gloucester has gained an extended family.

Through your support of CAFC and in turn the fishermen and shoreside operations, Gloucester and Eastern Massachusetts has helped us all by lowering the carbon footprint to put dinner on your table, by keeping your food dollars in our community by supporting local businesses, and by supplying you with the freshest, locally-caught sustainable seafood possible...

Together, we've built a community, an extended family if you will, greater than the sum of its parts.

To that, our gratitude knows no bounds.

We hope that you have enjoyed and continue to enjoy the great seafood that the Cape Ann fishing fleet has provided to you. We remain committed to providing the freshest and best seafood that our local corner of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Maine, has to offer.

Thank you for your support and we look forward to another great season.

As one of those who was there in the beginning of the program, to see where we are now is truly humbling. While Port Clyde Fresh Catch is the the first CSF, Cape Ann Fresh Catch is a close second and is certainly the largest CSF. In many ways these two CSF's are the birth of a movement. Today there are almost 20 CSF's in the US and Canada.

Beyond providing people with fresh seafood and establishing a connection for seafood lovers to those who harvest seafood, the CSF movement has started a conversation around seafood that did not exist before CSFs. Most foodies and locavores are accustomed to knowing where their meat and produce come from, but seafood was conspicuously absent from the conversation.

All of that is changing as people start to see that the connections fostered by CSFs highlight the fact that we go fishing for food. Being a part of CAFC and watching the CSF movement grow has indeed been humbling and gratifying. So, when you are enjoying your shares this week, take a minute to give yourself a pat on the back for supporting something that is good for your health, good for the local economy, good for the oceans and good for our community.

Variety and the seasonality of seafood

2011-04-24T18:12:00.005-04:00

Seafood like most things we eat has seasons of abundance and scarcity. Most things in life in temperate climates grow in abundance over the course of the summer and use an abundance of stored energy to survive over the winter. Spring typically is not a great fishing season in New England. The fish are often "thin". Fish that migrate long distances such a Striped Bass often arrive with an elongated starving look. Also, many groundfish spawn in the spring. Those of you with whole fish shares have seen the glands and eggs in the flounders.

The weather in spring is also pretty miserable on the water, which means that many fishermen haul their boats for repairs and painting in the spring. And finally, fishing regulations discourage fishing in the typical "day boat" locations closer to shore. The fishing calender, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, begins on May 1. Under the new sector system, fishermen have to face the question of how and when to fish their quota. If they fish all of their quota, they are done for the year. So, many fishermen, knowing they will get a new allocation of quota in May have fished out their quota.

All of these factors mean that it can be hard to find fish in the spring as fewer boats go out and there are fewer fish to catch according to the seasons and the government. In a way, its a natural time in the eco-system for everyone to rest, recuperate, take care of business (spawning for fish, fixing vessels for fishermen) before the abundance of summer arrives.

Part of being part of a program like CAFC is to understand the fishermen and the seasonality of seafood. No one would expect a local farmer to have fresh corn in April. A few folks have asked CAFC when "non white fish" will be available. Mackeral and herring start to show up in our waters soon. Usually just behind the right whales. And the herring and the mackeral are the favorite prey of just about everything in the ocean humans like to eat.

One old salt told me once to look for the apple trees to bloom. "You wont catch a striper out there until the day the apple trees bloom." In my experience chasing fish around, I've found that to be some sage advice. As I write this, the forsythia are blooming, which means the fish are on their way, as are the new quota allocations and the warmer weather and greater diversity of seafood in our local corner of the planet's ocean.

Happy Earth Day!

Draggers are they sustainable?

2011-04-17T21:35:00.000-04:00

Continuing from last week's series on the types of gear that local fishermen use to catch fish for CAFC, this week I will discuss draggers. Draggers are the predominate type of gear used to catch groundfish in New England. Draggers tow nets along the ocean floor (and sometimes in the mid-water column for fish such as herring). The nets are held open by metal 'doors' that help spread the mouth of the net open. A chain runs along the bottom often lined with 'scrubers' or 'rollers' which help the net to bounce over rocks and other impediments. The fish cannot outswim the net and are forced into it, ending up in the 'codend'.

By the criteria we discussed last week: selectivity and ocean impact, draggers score low on both counts. They are indiscriminate fishers, however many modern draggers use large mesh, and sophisticaed electronics to reduce by-catch. And, they have arguably the greatest impact on the ocean bottom.

Some dragger fishermen argue that in some cases dragging is much like tilling the soil and may actually result in increased fecundity. There is some evidence for this in species like scallops and flounders.

Many CAFC folks ask whether dragging (sometimes also called trawling, which is not the same as trolling) is sustainable, andthe answer like most things in the fish business is a little yes and a little no. Small scale draggers are incredibly efficient fishers. When the fish are in close to Gloucester, a dragger can go out and back in less than twenty-four hours with a full hold of fish.

Further, Captains like Joe Orlando argue that he has been fishing the same grounds for thirty years and that if draggers were wiping out the habitat, they would not be abl to continue to fish over and over in the same spots. As with most things in life, it is really a question of moderation vs. excess. Small scale day-boat draggers while not the ideal gear type are relatively benign. The problem is when you have large vessels with nets the size of football fields systematically towing patterns over the bottom that large scale habitat destruction occurs.

Another huge problem is when draggers target spawning aggregations. As we've come to learn many of our local groundfish are a lot more like salmon than we ever thought in that they return to the same breeding grounds over and over. When a dragger (or a gillnetter) wipes out a spawning mass, that sub-population could be wiped out for decades or even as they are seeing in Atlantic Canada and Downeast Maine, populations just cannot rebuild despite the absence of fishing.

I am loathe to incite gear conflict issues. There really is a place out there in the ocean for all the types of fishing. Some areas/fisheries are better suited for dragging, others work well as hook and line fisheries. The answer is a diverse fleet and a better understanding of ocean eco-systems to help protect sensitive areas and spawning biomass's.

Sustainability and gear

2011-04-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

In the last couple blogs I've been talking about sustainability. One of the questions we always get at events is about whether the fish CAFC gets is from boats that are fishing sustainably. And invariably within that discussion is a question of whether we get fish from draggers. There is a widespread perception that draggers harm the ocean bottom by destroying habitat. There no doubt that some types of gear have more of an impact than others. However within that discussion you have to consider the question of scale. But before we get to scale, lets take a look at the some other common gear types and the positives and negatives of each in the context of sustainability. In next weeks blog I'll tackle the dragger/sustainability question.

Hook and Line/Long line
Hook and line gear can range from using a fishing pole with one or more hooks to a tub-trawl (the traditional "long line" of the northeast which uses baited hooks and is laid on the ocean bottom) to a long-line which is typically a suspended line which can be several miles long and is most often used for pelagic species such a swordfish and tuna (pelagic fish are fish that do not live on the ocean bottom).

Hook and line gear arguably has the least impact on the ocean floor, but as anyone who has fished in our local waters can tell you, a baited hook is indiscriminate. When I used to fish tub trawls we'd often pull up our trawl full of short cod. Some of these fish were very small. In my case, we took care to remove the fish from the hooks alive and return them to the ocean. We also used a hook called a "circle hook" which is more likely to catch a fish in the corner of it's mouth than in its gut.

However, hook and line gear besides being indiscriminate is also the source of many of the issues related to turtle and dolphin by-catch problems. And, unlike the trawls we used to set and retrieve in the same day, many long-lines are left to soak in the ocean long enough that much of the by-catch is dead by the time the line is hauled.

So, small scale hook and line is arguably the "cleanest" most sustainable way to catch fish. "Hook and line" caught though, while evoking a Hemingwayesque Old Man and the Sea vibe, more often than not refers to some sort of long-line, which is not necessarily the most discriminate means of fishing.

In the New England groundfish fishery there are very few hook and line fishermen left. Regulations have passively discouraged this type of fishing in the past where "days at sea" were the regulatory currency. Essentially fishermen were given 24 hours to catch a certain amount of fish. Dragging is the most reliable way to catch more fish quickly, so most fishermen converted to dragging or gillnets.

Currently, as far as I am aware, there are less than six fishermen actively fishing hook and line gear out of Gloucester. There may even be less than that. It should also be noted that some species of our local fish cannot be caught commercially solely by hook and line.

Gill Nets
Gill nets are large nets hung vertically in the water column, weighted on the bottom with buoys on the top. They are very common in our local fleet. They have very little impact on the ocean bottom. They are somewhat indiscriminate fishers, essentially sorting fish by size and catching fish that are not large enough to pass through the mesh. In terms of sustainability, as long as by-catch is limited, Gill nets are a decent choice. However by-catch can also be a big issue for gill nets.

The other knock on gill nets is that the fish quality of net caught fish is the least desirable. If fish are left too long in the net, say more than 24 hours, they start to get eaten by small ocean creatures and they lose their scales. They are known as "scalers" and typically fetch a low price at market. One local fish processor told me that he hates getting net caught flounders because the quality of the meat is poor.

Many of the fishermen who are hook and line fishing also fish gillnets as they can both be fished fairly easily from a small boat. In particular you'll find that many fishermen who lobster and fish will fish nets as the conversion is fairly easy. And typically, fishermen who fish multiple gear types from small boats are some of the most sustainable fishermen around as they will suit the gear to the species they are after in the seasons in which those fish are plentiful.
Coming next week, the great trawler debate...

2011-04-04T08:15:00.005-04:00

Seafood sustainability is such a difficult topic because ultimately it boils down to the idea that we humans have the ability to determine the exact right level of seafood we can take from a complex and not always well understood ocean that will allow seafood populations to not only maintain, but to function more or less as if we were not harvesting seafood.

Wait, does that make sense at all? Is there really some magical line in the ocean that allows us to have our cake and eat it too? What about complex highly interdependent ecosystems? What do we use as a baseline? Do we use historical abundance or recent abundance? How does the harvesting of one species like herring impact the health and abundance of other species that depend on it?

The "truth" if there is one is that sustainability is a "best guess" when it comes to seafood. If you Google "Sustainable Seafood" you'll find a number of species specific seafood buying guides. There is some value to these guides. Most folks that want to do the right thing don't necessarily want to spend their time reading some random blog about seafood sustainability and these guides can be a decent starting point for folks that want to do the right thing.

We think a better way to approach seafood is to have a set of principles.

But, to understand how seafood cards can get things wrong, we have to gain an understanding of how fisheries are determined to be sustainable. Usually this has to do with many sceintific assesments, but the two biggies are TAC (Total Allowable Catch) and MSY (Maximum Sustainable Yield).

TAC is a hard number that defines how much fish fishermen can catch. It is based on fish population assessments and is supposed to be scientifically vetted. MSY is a bit harder to understand, but it is essentially the amount of fish that can consitstently be taken from a population of a single species that will allow the population to maintain over the long term. In simple terms, it is usually around 30% of a "healthy" population of fish.

In some ways they define the same thing, however MSY is more like the speed limit, while the TAC is the actual speed that can get you a ticket. In other words, the numbers are not always the same and are subject to the discretion of the managers.

So, let's get back to sustainable. In effect the TAC defines what fisheries managers think is sustainable. Fishermen have little to no impact on this number. It is defined, determined and vetted by the Science and Statistical Comittee (SSC) of the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) and accepted or rejected by the NEFMC. So in effect, how much fishermen will catch - whether or not that fishing is sustainable - is determined by managers not fishermen.

So, how can sustainable seafood cards put things like Atlantic Cod on a list of sea foods to avoid when managers, vetted by the best available science, are saying that Cod are no longer overfished? This article is a great exploration of the complexities in particular concerning our local codfish.

So, in sum, managers/regulators are defining sustainable ideally based on science that determines a level of seafood that can be caught indefinitely. As a principle, its a good place to begin to approach sustainability. But if you are like me, you have a healthy skepticism of the ability of scientists and managers to know the ocean well enough to consistently and impartially determine the magical number of fish we can eat without any impact. It just sounds silly to me and reminds me of one of my old friends' skepticism of another magical animal.

CAFC Meet and Greet and Sustainability

2011-03-28T09:35:00.003-04:00

It was great to see folks come out for the CAFC Meet and Greet at the MIT last Thursday. The folks I was able to talk to had some very interesting questions and observations of the program. It seemed pretty consistent that everyone loved the seafood.

There were several god questions raised about sustainability, and I've had a few emails about that as well. Seafood sustainability, in my view, is not a black and white issue for the very simple reason that we do not and cannot control all the variables that determine if our harvest of a given species will result in the long term decline or health of that species.

For wild seafood in particular, we are dealing with some many unknowns that scientific population plotting has been spotty at best. That is not to say that the science of fishing is not improving and that it is not a valuable part of the sustainability debate. Rather, ocean currents, global warming, eco-system imbalances, ocean acidification and hosts of other complex issues intertwine making it hard to predict seafood abundance. It is a bit like predicting the weather.

A good recent example of this is that National Marine Fisheries scientists said that pollack abundance was low last year. Well it turns out they were wrong. 600% wrong.

So, before we talk about sustainability, I hope we can agree that we are talking about a moving target. In many ways I find it more useful to ask if we are moving towards sustainability or away from it. In the coming weeks, I'll talk about how and why we feel that CAFC (and other CSFs) is moving the catching of seafood toward greater sustainability.

Feel free to chime in in the comments and air out your thoughts/concerns about sustainability. Next week I'll tackle the issue of sustainability in terms of the seafood cards that treat seafood like a traffic light.

Is "Rationalizing" rational?...and Blackback Flounder talk...

2011-03-21T12:51:00.006-04:00

Imagine for a minute that on St Patty’s Day a Leprechaun came up to you and offered you this choice: You can have a job which pays you a decent if unspectacular wage, but that job is among the most dangerous in the country, will require constant hard work and is among the most heavily regulated industries in the country. Or you can make 75% of the wage of the previous job but you don’t have to do anything, you are free to take up other jobs and there is little to no risk you will ever lose the job.

Most sane folks would choose the second job. The first job is of course being a commercial fisherman. The second job is also being a commercial fisherman – except you don’t fish. It may seem absurd but that is quite literally the choice regulators have crafted – intentionally or unintentionally – under the sector management system.

Under sectors, permit holders are allocated quota – whether they fish or not – which they can then lease to other fishermen. So in effect fishermen are being given life annuities when they are allocated quota.

The surprising thing is that most of the fishermen who have been given this choice have chosen to continue fishing. It is not surprising since most of them have been through the lean years and have stuck with it despite years of increasing regulations, onerous enforcement, not to mention lean fishing.

The fact remains however that in every single fishery that has been "rationalized" there ha been considerable consolidation. (I have no idea how the word "rationalized" applies here, but it is the common lingo for a fishery that is converted to an individual quota system with a fixed catch - e.g. you catch the fish you are allocated then you are shut down for the year. Rational?) Consolidation in other fisheries has followed the same path with an accumulation of permits and leased allocations among a few large players who can reap profits from economies of scale.

Economically, it all seems to make sense - until you see the loss of jobs, loss of communities, impact to the environment that goes along with "rationalization". As fisherman Mike Love of Portland, ME testified last week at the groundfish subcommittee hearing of the NEFMC, "Once the fleet is consolidated, there wont be any more fishermen at these meetings, you'll have lobbyists."

_________________________________________

I'd also like to share some food talk/seafood love in this space. Last week I received Blackback Flounder, also known as Winter Flounder in my share. The fish was so fresh it was still in rigor mortise, which usually means it is less than 24 hours dead, usually quite a bit less than that. The fish smelled very clean with the scent of the ocean and no "fishiness" whatsoever.

I mentioned this to Steve T at CAFC and he told me that one of the flounder from that batch started flopping around when they went to bag it at Turner's so they threw it into the lobster tank. I guess that didn't last too long or well for the flounder, but it attests to the freshness of the fish we get.

My first standby recipe for thin fillets is usually just to saute the fillets in browned butter, a la Sole Meunier. I find this works great on our local Sole (aka Witch Flounder) as well as Yellowtail Flounder (which are my favorite CAFC seafood.) I served the flounder over a bed of Kale sauteed with garlic, onions and olive oil with some flavored salt someone brought back from France for me, which says something like "Vianses Poissons" which according to my high school French means "Meat Fish". Its an amazing salt blend that makes any seafood sparkle.

I've never been a huge fan of Blackbacks for two reasons. One is that they sometimes taste dirty or muddy, especially in the spring. The other is that they can sometimes have a mushy texture. In the case of the browned butter the fillets were tasty, but the texture was not great.

So for my second attempt I made Baked Flounder with Tomato Caper Sauce. Its not unlike the recipe that was sent out in the reminder email. It came out great and is super easy to do. I skipped the anise/fennel because you either like fennel or you hate it. I hate it. I also laid the fillets flat so they would cook more quickly.

They cool thing about this recipe is that the texture problem was solved. The flounder blended so well with the tomato and the bread crumbs gave it just a touch of crunch. Sorry forgot to take pics as I was starving.

What have you been doing with your fish? Take some pics and we'll post your recipe/story/adventure.

Thanks for reading!

The more things change...

2011-03-14T09:30:00.002-04:00

There is a decent chance that some things will change in the coming year for fisheries management. At the very least we know that there will be some turnover in the NEFMC (New England Fisheries Mnagement Council) as several positions on the council including Chairman John Popallardo's hit their term limits. We also know that the lawsuit filed by the citites of Gloucester and New Bedford and joined by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against the federal government and the Cape Cod Hook Fishermen's Association will be heard this week.

Both of these things could shake up the current state of management...or they could just be more of the same.

Commercial fishing is one of the most heavily regulated industries in America. And, in my opinion one of the best examples of bad management leading to bad outcomes. One can make the case that the overfishing that is the crux of the problem for fishers and regulators is the direct result of management decisions to encourage fishing after the introduction of the EEZ. Low cost loans were given to fishermen to encourage them to replace the international factory boat fleet that was decimating our local waters. So they bought bigger better boats and caught all the fish.

Are we bound for a repeat? Current regulations have created an essentially unregulated commodities market for fish quota. In effect, an investor could come in and buy up all of the rights to fish. In fact this may be happening already. Since there is no regulation, it is impossible to know. Its a bit ironic given that fishermen face a web of regulations on a day to day basis in order to go fishing. Here is one firsthand account of what fishermen face. (There is some spicy language in that blog, so fair warning.)

There is an alternative, and there is a growing chorus from fishermen up and down the coast that the fundamental composition of the fleet is at stake. I've heard from fishermen from Maine to New York who were given such low allocations of fish that they cannot make a living. Leasing quota is possible, but also means that you make very little to no money.

For example, the current price for Cod quota is around $1.50 per pound. The ex-vessel prices for cod (the price fishermen get at the dock for their catch) varies between $2-$3. So fishermen who lease quota receive roughly half of what they do if they fish un-leased quota.

Meanwhile, the lessor of quota gets $1.50 a pound to do nothing, and benefits from a quota constrained market that has kept fish and quota prices high. The only vessels that can actually make money on leased quota are the larger vessels as their leasing costs are a smaller portion of their overall costs. In effect, yet another perverse regulatory incentive that favors the large vessels and the well capitalized at the expense of the smaller vessels.

There is a place for large vessels, but there should also be a place for the smaller vessels as well. Are we seeing the last of the dayboat fleet? Could be...unless something changes...

A new season dawns...

2011-03-07T07:42:00.002-05:00

Welcome to yet another season of Cape Ann Fresh Catch. Part of our mission at Cape Ann Fresh Catch is to make sure that you are not only getting the freshest possible sustainable seafood, but also that we try to help explain some of the complex issues that make seafood, sustainability etc., such difficult topics.

This year has been a challenging one for fishermen in many ways. An entirely new system of rules was put in place last May called "catch shares". The system has, as expected, resulted in consolidation among the fleet. The unfortunate part of consolidation is that it is tending to favor the larger boats at the expense of the smaller day boats and the community based fishermen. In other words, the big boats are buying up all the quota and the little guys are still struggling. All this despite news that most of the stocks of groundfish are rebuilt.

Once again this May quota's will be given out, and fishermen will begin a new "fishing year." As if fishing were not hard enough, many fishermen are nearly out of quota, while it seems that others are holding on to quota to get a better price at the end of the fishing year. This has led to variability in landings, which some days very nearly no fish is landed in Gloucester.

So, it will be an interesting year as fishermen anticipate new higher quotas. Meanwhile, we'll be doing our best to continue to bring you the freshest seafood anywhere!

If you've been following this blog and are interested in more about some new thinking in fish science, there is a great interview with Ted Ames of the Penobscot East Resource Center about the connection between alewife runs in Maine rivers and the lack of ground fish in coastal Maine.

The tide is always rising for NOAA press release

2011-02-14T08:46:00.004-05:00

If you hang around fisheries long enough, you'll hear some pretty absurd things. One of the more absurd and obtuse things I've read recently is this press release from NOAA. Take the following quote as an example:

“Rebuilding economically valuable fisheries goes hand-in-hand with protecting fishing jobs and supporting coastal communities,” Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke said.

and

“This is another instance of our continuing effort to use whatever flexibility is available to us to protect fishing jobs and the long-term vitality of local fishing communities as we continue rebuilding the valuable groundfish stocks in the Northeast,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service.

Sorry, but NOAA has done little to nothing to protect fishery jobs and they have had ample opportunity to do so. In fact they have publicly said they want to consolidate the fishery.

In this case they are allowing an increase in the Yellowtail Flounder Catch and saying they are doing it to preserve fishing communities. The sheer hypocrisy of these statements leads me to believe that they actually think people are stupid. When they talk amongst themselves, they are saying quite a different thing.

It would in fact be nice if NOAA could get behind efforts to ensure a diverse fleet and sustainable fisheries. One might think it would be an obvious choice to help create more jobs rather than eliminate them. One might think it would make sense to have a fleet that can provide higher quality product (like the fish we get at CAFC) while preserving and even creating fishing industry jobs.

But what if your aim is not really to protect fishing communities and a diverse fleet, but rather to create investment opportunities for the big wigs?

I can say however that there are folks working hard to actually preserve a diverse fleet and fishing communities. CAFC's Angela Sanfilippo has worked tirelessly for decades to support, protect and ensure the safety of the New England fleet.

Currently, NAMA (Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance) is pushing hard for new rules that will place restrictions on the rapid consolidation of fishing rights. It is an uphill battle. Those who have much to gain from a consolidated fleet are working around the clock to stave off any restrictions on their ability to buy up fishing rights.

If you have any interest at all in preserving a diverse fleet, now is a great time to speak up. You can let the decision makers at NOAA/NMFS/NEFMC acronymville that you care about a diverse fleet by doing a video testimony, submitting a written testimony or testifying in person at the next NEFMC meeting. If you would like to testify, please contact me and I will help you through the sometimes confusing process of getting NOAA to listen to real people.

Marine Spatial Planning

2011-02-07T07:44:00.000-05:00

Last week, I mentioned that the idea of Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is becoming the next big thing in fisheries management. At the most basic level the idea is akin to zoning laws on land.

The ocean, of course exists in three dimensions and many of the creatures in the ocean migrate from and through zones. However, the idea is that by taking what we know about the ocean we can make plans that will balance the desires to maintain and improve the ocean environment, extract resources from the ocean etc.

A frequent example used to explain how the concept works is the recent change to the shipping lanes approaching Boston Harbor to protect marine mammals, specifically whales, and in this case even more specifically, the North Atlantic Right Whale which is an endangered species. You can see from the image below how moving the channel can reduce the likelihood of a ship striking a whale.

In the image above (Example of the Potential Benefits of CMSP: Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary (Photo Courtesy NOAA)) the dots represent Right Whales and the colors represent baleen whale densities.

Another example that can help explain MSP is how the Lobster Fishery is managed in Maine, where regional councils of fishermen set the rules for their "area". In this case they are managing a single species in a specific area as opposed to an entire eco-system, but the idea is the similar. In the case of the Maine lobster fishery, it is and has been one of the few examples of a prolific fishery that fishermen voluntarily chose restrictions to their catch to ensure the species would be around for future generations.

Some people argue that catch shares serve the same purpose in that giving fishermen a share of the fishery will encourage stewardship over the resource. However, the reality is that fishermen become stewards of the economic value of their share rather than stewards of the resource itself. They only have incentive to care about the resource when it would negatively affect the value of their share. Think of it like the difference between leasing a car and owning a car.

In general MSP does have a lot of potential as a means to deal with the ocean resources and competing interests, and the science to effectively do it is improving all the time. I always suggest reading some of Ted Ames' work on gaddiform populations in the Eastern Gulf of Maine as a way to understand how fish can fit into manageable areas.

Other News and Notes
I think it is about time to blow the lid off the cooking pot here at Cape Ann Fresh Catch blog. We started this blog because we want our members to be informed. Initially we felt that there were so many critical things happening in fisheries issues that we had a responsibility to inform and maybe educate a bit along the way.

However, most every time I talk to CAFCatchers (thats the new name I am giving to members, ) all we ever talk about is cooking fish and fish recipes. To that end, I would like to offer that anyone who would like to contribute an article, recipe, fish experience with the blog should please get in touch.

I am also in the process of trying to line up some guest columnists who can provide different takes on all things seafood.

Last but not least, remember to sign up for the spring season, and make sure to tell folks about CAFC!

2011-02-02T09:31:00.003-05:00

Last week a reader asked me what I thought about the Obama administrations Ocean Policy Task Force. The task force was created to:

"strengthen(s) ocean governance and coordination, establishes guiding principles for ocean management, and adopts a flexible framework for effective coastal and marine spatial planning to address conservation, economic activity, user conflict, and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes."

Sounds good in principle. One of the common themes of failed regulation and management is that it tends to be reactive. We've seen this time and again with the NEFMC, which only tends to deal with issues after they are already a problem. And even then it can be argued that the NEFMC has failed to do much of anything that includes any kind of vision for how the coastal fishery can and should operate. For example, they could strive to become a model fishery that is sustainable, delivers the highest quality product and preserves jobs and coastal communities. But they dont.

So, on the heels of Massachusetts own spatial planning effort, it looks like the federal government is endorsing the concept of "marine spatial planning". Marine spatial planning is somewhat similar to zoning laws on land. The idea is to manage competing or in some cases conflicting interests. Well done, zoning can enhance the utility of a given space. And of course, there are often problems with bad zoning.

So, to start with, it seems that any attempt to get out in front of these issues with a long term plan and vision for our oceans is a step in the right direction. And, it seems that the first and foremost concern is protecting the environment, which as an oceans objective is certainly admirable. However it remains to be seen what this means specifically for fisheries. NAMA has long advocated for eco-system based management/marine spatial planning and area based management, which are all essentially different flavors of ice cream in the same cone.

Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) is a big topic however and one that cannot be covered in one single blog post, however it is an important topic and so next week I'll delve into more detail about and what effect it might have on ocean management.

Dont forget to sign up for the spring season!

A Day in the Life

2011-01-24T08:38:00.004-05:00

Saving me the effort of typing it all up myself, South Coast today has an article on the recent history of fisheries management. It's a decent summary of what has happened and what has not happened, but I do think it fails to capture exactly what is going on on the docks. There is still a high degree of uncertainty for fishermen as the fishing year draws to a close. Recently several large quota holders expressed support for Catch Shares, while small owner-operators continue to struggle. Additionally smaller ports are losing out. According to data assembled by Aaron Dority from the Penobscot East Resource Center,

"...between 2009 and 2010, we’ve seen a shift in the types of vessels landing fish, and where those fish are landed. While we all acknowledge that new ACL’s needed to reduce catch across the board, small boats (under 50’) have experienced a far greater catch reduction (47% reduction of landings compared to 2009, as of Nov 30), while landings for boats over 50’ have increased 8%. Similarly, where those fish are being landed has changed. Maine (outside of Portland) is down 50% - I’m sure that much of that reduction is reflected in Port Clyde. New Hampshire landings are similarly down 50%."

This article, by Richard Gaines of the Gloucester Daily Times, talks in more detail about the lawsuit by the cities of New Bedford and Gloucester against NOAA, which the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is trying to join. Curiously, a side note of this lawsuit is the Conservation Law Foundation's opposition to the Commonwealth joining the suit as well as opposing 'discovery' of emails between CLF and NOAA/NMFS. If one were a conspiracy theorist, one might wonder what they have to hide?

Well, some people think wind power is the driving force behind the desire to consolidate the fishing industry. One might think that fishing and wind turbines could co-exist. In Ireland there is a wind farm and you can walk and bike right around and between the turbines and listen to the sounds much like reams of paper being ripped apart as the blades slice through the air well overhead. Are we really the kind of country that can't find a way to balance competing needs?

Lastly, as the Coast Guard issues a frost warning this morning, one might keep in mind that fishing in New England in the winter is a hard way to make a living. I've been on boats in icing conditions, and its really amazing just how quickly a vessel can get covered in ice. One night returning from the North River in Scituate around this time of year on a small tugboat, an unexpected shift in the wind brought heavy increasing seas and heavy icing. The vessel quickly lost its smooth running style and started fighting the waves. We lost visibillity completely to the ice, and going up front to clear ice was out of the question as the seas mounted to 8-10 feet.

The vessel, a Duffy 31
quickly lost its smooth running characteristics and started heaving and lumbering through the waves. My mate on board and I struggled to make it to the lee of Nahant where the seas calmed enough that we could properly assess the icing. We were able to clear some ice, but with the wind NNE shifting to N then NNW, we were soon in calm seas on our way back to Salem Harbor. We'd taken such a beating it took several strong drinks to get the chill out of our bones. Nearly a month later my mate was still complaining that his knees hurt from the pounding we took that night.

As you enjoy your fish this week, spare a thought for the men and women who put their lives at risk to do the job they love to bring us the seafood we love. Enjoy and stay warm!

2011-01-16T18:34:00.000-05:00

A recent spate of news about the state of our fisheries left me feeling genuinely conflicted. At first reading the headline:

Has overfishing ended? Top US scientist says yes

I was ecstatic. Finally the mainstream press is reporting what we have been hearing on the docks for a while now from fishermen. As our friend, Gloucester fisherman Joe Orlando says, "The story here is one of a success. We've rebuilt the stocks. But no one wants to hear about it." Now it would seem that the story is starting to emerge.

Yet as I read further I began to have mixed feelings. If the stocks are coming back, why are we still eliminating fishing jobs? If the stocks are healthy, why are the people that fish them still suffering? In the article there is a quote from Pete Shelley of the Conservation Law Foundation,

Peter Shelley, senior counsel of the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group, said the industry's problems are rooted in years of overfishing, especially during the 1980s, not regulation.
"It was a bubble," he said. "Fishermen were living in a bit of a fantasy world at that point, and it wasn't something you could sustain."

I could not disagree more with Mr. Shelley. Yes fishermen caught too many fish, that much we all know. But to suggest that it was fishermen living in a fantasy land of greed and plenty denies the real world economic and regulatory issues that led to the overfishing. It is a fact that regulations encouraged the growth of the fleet that resulted in overfishing.

The sad part is that now that there are supposed to be healthy stocks of fish, regulators are forcing policies designed to consolidate the fleet and eliminate jobs. The reality is that the shape and size of the fleet is a direct result of regulations and for some reason fisheries regulators are trying to consolidate the fleet at the expense of coastal communities and community based fishermen.

A second spate of news covered the rejection by the federal government of a request for emergency action to increase fishing quotas. It is not surprising that the request for emergency action was turned down. It would have in effect been admitting that the new regulatory scheme of catch shares is not working and that the science it is based on is not valid.

I am sorry to say that in all of this news, there is the conspicuous absence of any kind of discussion for a better, safer, greener, more sustainable fleet. The pieces are in place, you have recovered stocks, a still fairly diverse fleet (though that is changing rapidly) and an opportunity to build a success story in a fishery that many have left for dead ten years ago. The hard work is done, but perhaps the most difficult work remains.

Understanding Ecosystems from a Fisherman's Perspective

2011-01-10T11:15:00.005-05:00

One of the great things about a Community Supported Fishery is how it connects people to the local eco-system. For most of us that live along or near the coast our connection to the ocean is going to the beach in the summer, or maybe boating. But these activities can only give us a glimpse of the ocean eco-system. Fishermen have a unique perspective of the ocean from their constant presence on it and their working in it.

One of the things you often hear from fishermen is about imbalances in the ecosystem. A recent article in my hometown newspaper is a great example of a fisherman's perspective.

“Twenty years ago, it was hard to find and catch a striped bass,” Michaud said. “Now, thanks to regulations, we have seen a massive explosion of these predators who arrive when the new crop of lobsters start to arrive in July.”

In the summer, the lobstermen used to be able to provide lovely soft-shell lobsters, but now the striped bass get them all. The bass, which can reach 4 feet in length, can eat their weight in lobsters every day and travel under the lobster boats, so when the shorts get thrown back into the water, they never make it to the bottom.

The other protected predators are dogfish or small sharks, a good-tasting fish, but now there are billions of them, leading Michaud to believe they are the predominant species in Massachusetts Bay. The problem with dogfish is that they eat everything: cod, lobster, even themselves.

Predation is a problem out of control, Michaud claimed.

“You will hear people talk about over fishing, but I have always felt it’s under fishing,” he said. “We are not allowed to catch the predators."

In this case, there is a direct connection between regulations and an eco-system imbalance. This is directly the result of single species management without consideration for how fish really behave as part of an integrated system. It sounds beyond obvious to say it, but fisheries regulators are reluctant to acknowledge that fish eat other fish, in addition to people eating fish!

Another point that strikes me from reading this article is that if we lose the fishermen who are part of our communities, we lose the connection to the eco-sysytem that fishermen provide. If a factory trawler comes and fishes an area, they have no connection to the community and consequently we lose our connection to the ocean. If we lose our communities connection to the ocean, will we care more or less about the health of the ocean? I suspect we will care less simply because we will know less.

One fisherman turned researcher is finding out some amazing truths about how ecosystems work. Ted Ames' research is painting a very clear picture of how we got to where we are, and more importantly how we can go forward with eco-system management to restore and enhance an enduring marine environment.

In the meantime, your support of a community supported Fishery is a great way to make sure there is support for small scale community based fishermen. Please encourage friends and seafood lovers to give it a try. We are always working hard to come up with more creative share plans, such as the Neptune's Choice share and the bi-weekly share. Let us know what works for you so we can better serve our seafood loving customers!

2010-12-20T07:35:00.003-05:00

One of the questions people often ask about CAFC is what do we mean by "sustainable"? "Sustainable" is defined as capable of being continued with minimal long-term effect on the environment. And by that definition, the fish we get are in fact sustainable. All of the stocks of fish that we purchase are not considered to be "overfished". In addition according the best and latest science, the stocks of fish that CAFC delivers are all growing.

But, just because a population of fish is growing does not necessarily mean that the fishing is sustainable. Some would argue that the way fish are caught is an important consideration of sustainability. The concern is that some fishing methods may do long term damage to the environment. These concerns usually focus on draggers, by-catch and extreme overfishing.

The draggers we buy fish from are fishing with a 5 inch mesh size, which is one of the largest mandated mesh sizes in the world. The large size of the mesh allow smaller fish to escape the net. Additionally it is not always clear that draggers "damage" the seafloor. It is certainly true that they can damage the seafloor, but it is also possible that small draggers may enhance an ecosystem by in effect 'tilling' the soil. More research needs to be done in this area, but as one fisherman said recently about the ecofriendliness of nets vs. hook and line, "There is no more indiscriminate killer in the ocean than a baited hook."

Here's a good take on how dragger fishing can be minimal impact.

One of the other key factors for sustainable harvesting of seafood really falls at the feet of the regulators who set the catch limits. Fishermen in the US fish under some of most restrictive rules in any fishery in the world. One of the things we can all agree on is that until the industry is rewarded for making changes to fish more sustainably, the status quo will prevail. So while we believe our program is sustainable, there is no question that making fishing more sustainable can happen if regulators create rules and laws that reward fishermen for fishing in area and with gear that results in decreasing long term negative impacts to ecosystems. We beleive that CAFC is a program that shows people care about sustainability, rewards sustainable fishing and encourages sustainable fishing. What do you think? Post a comment and let us know what you think about sustainability.

Consolidating the fleet won't save the fish

2010-12-12T21:08:00.001-05:00

There are some really interesting things happening in fisheries management right now. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would have my hands full trying to figure out who or what puppet master is pulling the strings behind the curtain when it comes to fisheries management.

In this recent op-ed in South Coast Today, there is a statement about the number of boats not fishing:

"Two-thirds of New Bedford's fishing boats are tied up at the dock, according to data Mayor Scott W. Lang plans to release today. About 35 boats have caught and been allocated 80 percent of the catch, Lang said, while some 140 boats share the rest. That means they're fishing very little or staying home."

Advocates of "Catch shares" have not hidden their agenda to consolidate the fleet. They argue that reducing the fleet is the key to restoring fish populations, but in every catch share system ever implemented, consolidation does not lead to reduction of effort, rather it leads to consolidation of effort. In other words, just like the giveaways of family farms to corporations in the name of efficiency, the fishing fleet is being essentially offered up to the highest bidder.

Why? And who gains? Follow the money...One might think large vessel owners and processors would be in favor of consolidation, yet last Thursday the largest vessel owner in New England and the owner of the New Bedford Seafood Auction spoke out vigorously against the current management regime at a forum hosted by the mayor of New Bedford.

This is compounded by a transfer of wealth and consolidation of revenue. 55 of the 247 boats fishing are now realizing 61% of the revenue. The remaining 192 vessels account for only 39% of total revenue.

I can only say that at a time when people need jobs, the government seems intent on getting rid of fishing jobs.

Shrimp Season Begins!

2010-12-06T07:52:00.003-05:00

December 1 marks the opening day for the Gulf of Maine Shrimp season, and with any luck we'll be getting some shrimp in our shares in the coming weeks or months. The following article is a re-print of an article you can find here. Thanks for reading!

Gulf of Maine Shrimp are back!

Gulf of Maine (GOM) Shrimp may be the best tasting least known seafood that comes from our local waters. Having fished and eaten fish since I was a kid it came as a surprise to me that there are locally caught edible shrimp, and that seafood connoisseurs consider them to be among the best tasting shrimp in the world. Yet, when I first heard of them I also found them hard to find.

People told me I would have to drive to Maine and find a roadside vendor if I wanted to find super fresh high quality catch. That sounded a little sketchy to me. Should I just go to Maine and drive around and hope to see some guy in a dark alley saying, "Hey you looking for shrimp?" My days of buying things from strange people in alleys being well behind me, I did manage to find a local fishmonger who told me all about GOM Shrimp.

The GOM Shrimp season runs in the winter when the adult shrimp come inshore to lay their eggs/roe. The shrimp were over fished for years and largely fell off the radar for consumers, processors and fishermen, but in one of the few success stories of single stock management the shrimp stock has rebounded nicely. One could argue that the resurgence of the stock has as much to do with other factors as management, but let's save that argument for another day. Yet while the stock continues to grow, consumers and processors are lagging behind in appreciating and consuming this tender, sweet delicate shrimp.

One of the great pleasures of being involved with CAFC in its inaugural season is hearing people talk about fish they had never eaten before. Whiting seemed to be a favorite discovery. Yellowtail flounder also elicited many "Best Meal Ever" exclamations from members. GOM Shrimp are sure to have the same effect. Those of us that have been aware of these shrimp eagerly await the beginning of the season (usually early Dec.). We shun those rubbery blobs of farmed "shrimp" imported from Asia, and the sometimes good but recently plagued by quality issues Gulf of Mexico Shrimp. We preach the GOM Shrimp's virtues, noting that it is prized as sushi  in Japan (amiebi - sweet shrimp), and that once you eat GOM Shrimp you will never go back to other shrimps. Convinced yet?

Cleaning, Cooking and Eating GOM Shrimp
The first thing you will notice about GOM Shrimp is their color, a deep pink/red. They are also relatively small shrimp (50-70 count/ lb). You may also notice light blue eggs on most if not all the shrimp you get, which is because they are all females. Depending on what you plan to do with your shrimp, you can either peel them raw and cook the meat or cook them whole then peel them. GOM Shrimp do not need to be de-viened before cooking or eating. If you plan to freeze or store some shrimp, it is best to clean them and freeze the meat in a salt or stock broth. If you are a roe fan, try the eggs.

The key to cooking these shrimp is to understand that they are delicate and lose much of what makes them special if they are overcooked. Most recipes I have seen say to cook the shrimp for two or three minutes no more. The shells make an excellent stock as well that can be used as a base for all kinds of sauces. The real key however is to not overcook them and combine them with foods that allow the tender, delicate flesh and sweet flavor of the shrimp to emerge.
As to eating GOM Shrimp, well that's the easy part. Enjoy!

2010-11-24T10:01:00.004-05:00

Solutions to seemingly intractable situations often require a paradigm shift of some sort. Something has to change that fundamentally alters the dynamic of the conflict. What does this have to do with fishing? Everything.

In the last twenty years fish in our waters became scarce, some environmental groups lobbied, filed lawsuits and campaigned against the pillaging of the ocean. In some cases directly other cases by insinuation fishermen were billed as "greedy", "rapacious" people who would only stop fishing when there were no more fish.

Meanwhile, fishermen's distrust of environmental groups grew into hatred. In this mix of antipathy NOAA probably received the most scorn. Enviro groups loathed the agency for not living up to the law, cowering to industry pressure and general incompetence. Fishermen and the fishing industry rightly felt persecution and heavy handed strategies to keep them from fishing such as the absurd idea of "days at sea" management regime, and regulations based on "science" that time and again proved to be lacking in rigor.

Looking back into this stew of acrimony and conflict, one thing seems exceedingly clear: management of fisheries is and has been bad for as long as people have tried to manage fisheries. Why is this? And, is there a better solution to this seemingly intractable mess?

I've been pondering this question for some time and every solution fails in some aspect to address the fundamental economic problem of the tragedy of the commons. I'm no economist, but the tragedy of the commons argues that individuals will deplete a common resource because it is in their own rational self-interest to get as much of the common before someone else does.

The solutions for problems of the commons, it is often argued, are to privatize the resource. In fishing this means "catch shares". For us in New England it is called "sectors". However privatization alone will not stop overfishing because it does not remove the incentive to catch as much as you can, rather it creates an incentive to make the worth of your "share" more valuable - be it by fishing or leasing your share or selling it. The only incentive to not deplete the resource is that it devalues the overall value of "shares", much like the value of the New York Stock exchange is higher than the the value of the Iraq Stock Exchange because the value of the individual shares that make up the market are worth more in one than the other.

However, realistically for fishermen, the value of their shares are completely out of their own control (unless you have enough shares to monopolize the market). The primary incentive not to over fish is actually a disincentive - a hard cap on the amount of fish you can catch. In the bizarre world of fish politics acronyms, it is called TAC for Total Allowable Catch.

Furthermore, "owning" shares of a TAC does not convey normal ownership rights such that you would invest in the value of your shares as you would make improvements to your house to increase its value. Instead fishermen only own the right to extract an amount from anywhere they can get it by the most efficient means (not always the most sustainable or environmentally friendly - in fact and in practice it is often the least environmentally friendly means that drives the value of the "share" higher).

Which brings again to the question/problem of how to regulate fishing in an effective, logical way. If you were given a "share" of fish and were told you can only catch those fish is this section of the ocean. No one else can catch fish in that section. All of a sudden the fisherman has a vested financial interest in the health and viability of the ocean under his or her control. In this scenario, catching up all the fish would be illogical and irrational.

This idea is called "Area Management". In area management, fish are allocated according to the scale of the ecosystem and its ability to sustain fishing - with fishermen considered as part of the ecosystem.

The problem for Area Management has always been the idea that fish populations are homogeneous, especially in New England and that fish naturally migrate between areas. In fact emerging science is showing that fish are much more sedentary than previously thought. Additionally they do not disperse as readily as had been assumed. A good example of this is that cod populations in the Eastern Gulf of Maine have crashed and are not rebounding even though cod populations in the Western Gulf of Maine are robust. In reality, cod are much more like salmon than we ever thought, they go back to the same spawning grounds, feeding grounds and breeding grounds and do not mix with other sub-populations on a large scale.

There is much much more to share on this topic, but a great place to start is this paper which gives a scientific background to the idea of Area Management. Thanks for reading!

A plug for the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance, Gloucester Fishermen's Wives and bad weather....

2010-11-14T18:48:00.003-05:00

Some of you may know that CAFC began (and continues) as a partnership between the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association (GFWA aka., "The Wives") and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA). Many of you hopefully have heard of the good work the wives have done through the years to protect and represent the fishermen and fisher-women of Gloucester. GFWA president Angela Sanfillippo has tirelessly advocated for the safety and well being of fisher's, advocated for a healthy marine environment and led battles against oil drilling among other things.

She is also a fantastic cook. As are all the wives really. One of the great pleasures of working with the CAFC folks is our weekly lunch meetings where one of the wives cooks an amazing meal for us to eat as we discuss the weeks deliveries. (Nina deserves a special shout out for her effortless efforts that always result in something amazing.)

One of the things that always occurs to me at these meetings and with conversations with CAFC members is the connection we all have; namely a deep love of seafood. I know personally that I can talk for hours and hours about cooking fish and seafood, and one of the greatest pleasures of working with CAFC is being able to talk to fellow seafood lovers about how they cook their fish.

This week though, my thoughts turned to the weather. A steady blow from the North/Northeast drove swells that topped out at around 16 feet to our shores keeping the boats at the docks. Weather is a fact of life for fishermen. Aside from making the job dangerous, it can impact the fishing as fish move to deeper waters to ride out the storm. There are even tales of fish caught with rocks in their bellies as they ballast for a big storm.

I was talking to my co-worker at NAMA, Brett Tolley who is the son of a fisherman on the Cape as we watched giant waves break at Halibut Point last week.

"You ever get caught out in a storm like this?" I asked.

"Yup. No fun." he replied. That simple acknowledgment contained the kernel of why I love seafood. The people who fish do so because they have a passion for it. A passion they are sometimes willing to risk their lives for. Seafood is real food, wild food, brought to you by real people, passionate people, independent people. Its a profession worth saving, worth keeping from turning into just another corporate industry where workers are paid too little and risk too much.

____________________________________

NAMA and the GFWA are both small non-profit organizations working hard to support our fishermen and fishing communities. Please consider supporting either of these organizations with a donation.

Gloucester Fisherman's Wives Association

Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance

2010-11-05T12:06:00.006-04:00

One of the main purposes of this blog is to keep CAFC members informed about fisheries issues. If you go back and read previous posts from the first to the most recent, you can get a decent sense of the issues fishermen are facing. Since we are at the beginning of a new season, I thought it would be a good time to revisit some of the issues that have been raised and give a glimpse into the regulatory process as it stands today.

So, a quick summary: In May 2010 management of the "groundfish complex" changed from a system that allocated fishermen "days at sea" to fish to a "catch shares system. In other words, fishermen previously were told, you can go fish for X number of days and each "day" you can catch X pounds of cod/haddock etc. The new system fundamentally alters the equation by giving groups of fishermen (called "sectors") an allocation of fish based on their fishing history. Fishermen in the "catch shares" scheme can fish whenever they want for as long as they want until they run out of allocation.

If a fisherman runs out of allocation for any single species he/she is done fishing for that year. If a sector runs out of allocation, the entire sector is shut down. So obviously fishermen are doing anything they can to spread their landing out over the year so they do not run out of allocation.

The initial reactions to sector fishing were mixed. Fishermen liked that they were no longer forced to discard all of their by-catch as they were under the previous system. The negatives as you can hear about here from Joe Orlando, a Gloucester Fisherman, are many including some of the onerous tracking requirements.

It is really not exaggerating to say that fisherman are tracked as tightly or more tightly than criminals. And while some people will say that fishermen brought it upon themselves by fishing the stocks to the point that the regulations were necessary, the real story is quite a bit more complex, and it could be argued that failed government policies had as much to do with the decline of stocks as the avariciousness of fishermen.

One of the things that those of us who regularly attend the meeting of the New England Marine Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) meetings note is that the structure of the NEFMC meetings are reactive. In other words, the council tends to ignore issues until they absolutely have to. The upcoming docket of issues, called "Framework 45" is a perfect example of the hodgepodge way that the council fixes problems.

Here is the agenda for the next NEFMC meeting Nov 16-18. There are two items that ilustrate this point. One is a discussion of dockside monitoring, the other is a change in the allocation of pollack.

The current policy requires dockside monitoring of 50% or more of vessels - whether or not they have an onboard observer or not. Currently the government pays for the observers, however in the next year fishermen are required to pay for the observers, which can be hundreds of dollars per trip. Many fishermen and most council members agree that dockside monitoring is redundant, to onboard observers as well as dealer reporting requirements. For some small ports getting a monitor to show up at all can be challenging and costly.

Aaron Dority of the Penobscot East Resource Center and manager of the Downeast Coastal Communities Sector reported that in one case the monitor cost more than the value of the fish! Just about everyone knew this was going to be the case when the requirement was put in place, yet in the rush to push through "catch shares" the issue was put off...until now. There does not appear to be a clear resolution at this point.

When it comes to pollack, the initial allocations of pollack were so low that many fishermen feared their sectors would be closed down by the end of the summer because they would catch too many pollack. Fishermen argued that the pollack stocks were healthy and there was no basis for such a small allocation. Well, lo and behold, the scientists found more pollack. 600% more to be precise.

For fishermen, the regulatory landscape has been anything but stable. The constant churn of regulations is dizzying, complex and oftentimes contradictory. There have been few bright spots. However, there are two things that encourage fishermen that there may yet be a light at the end of the tunnel. One is that in many places the fish stocks are doing really well. The second is Cape Ann Fresh Catch, and for being a part of something that is doing something positive for fishermen, the community, your own health and for the eco-system you can certainly feel good about that!

A New Season and a Time to Look Back

2010-10-28T16:21:00.010-04:00

Welcome to the latest CAFC season. It's hard to believe its only been two years since CAFC started with the idea that maybe 70 people would sign up to support local fishermen and sustainable seafood. Since those rose coloured glasses days we've served over 3000 shares!

We recently conducted a survey to which over 700 of you responded. We are happy to report that most of what we heard from the survey results are positive. A large majority who sign up for Cape Ann Fresh Catch are happy with the program. After reviewing the results of the survey and conducting a top down and bottom up review of the program, we have a few areas we feel we can improve, specifically seafood diversity, logistics share sizes and communication, each of which I'll tackle below.

But, before we get into the nitty-gritty of our plans for improving the program, some interesting items came out of our program review. Most everyone felt that supporting community based fishermen was one of the main reasons to support CAFC. In the last two years CAFC has created a number of new jobs and brought almost $500,000 dollars into the community. In this economy that is something you can feel good about.

Other successes:
- In the last season alone fishermen made 50% more than they would have selling their fish at auction.
- In the last season alone CAFC bought 17,000 lbs of fish. As our fish buyer Lenny Parco from Ocean Crest Seafood noted, "Frankly I was surprised how much fish went to the program. I had no idea it was so big."
- Bought fish from at least 16 different boats, which means we are making an impact across a large part of the fleet.

All of this is well and good, and a strong foundation to take forward but we are not resting on our laurels. Let's now take a look at some of the issues pointed out by the survey and what we plan to do about them.

First, the number one complaint was the lack of diversity of seafood. This was a problem we heard loud and clear some time ago. We began seriously addressing this issue at the beginning of our last season. Our new seafood buyer, Lenny Parco from Ocean Crest Seafood (who's company also makes Neptune's Harvest Fertilizer for all you gardeners out there) made sure that diversity was his top priority.

The result is that we brought 11 species of seafood in the nine weeks Lenny was buying for us. There are about 16 species commonly available to us in our local waters, so we feel that our selection is now pretty diverse. However we're not stopping there, we are working on ways to include other seafood into shares. We'd love to hear what you'd like to see in your shares?

A second issue people found were the hours when we have our deliveries. Everyone's so busy these days. When the shares can be picked up can be a challenge for some. This issue is a lot more complex than the variety issue, but we are working on it. To address this, we've started a pilot partnership with a local business. Our new location in Melrose, MA--at Turner's Seafood Market & Grille--matches their hours of operation to a certain degree and allows members to pick up their shares until 8pm on Tuesdays. We're exploring extending/adjusting the hours at our other locations as well. However, significant changes to our delivery logistics can only happen with
proper planning that often take several months to implement.

Another issues some folks have raised is the size of the shares. Or in some cases not just the size of the shares but just getting fish every week is too much. You probably have already seen that we've created a new share type with an alternating week share. So far this option seems popular. However I have one request for everyone getting an bi-weekly share: SPREAD THE WORD!!! Half shares are great but it also means we have to have twice as many people signed up at each location to cover the programs expenses. If each alternating share member gets one other family to sign up, we'll be in great shape.

And last but not least, communication to members can always improve. We've beefed up our weekly fish notices to include more pertinent and relevant information. We started this blog last season to explore some of the regulatory issues fishermen face. This season the blog will be working on profiles of the people who make up CAFC from the fishermen to the fish cutters to the truck drivers.

Last but by no means least is that we want to hear from you!. Post comments here, check out the website, let us know what we can do to better serve you! Thanks for being part of a program that does seeks to do good socially, economically, environmentally and for the food system!

End of One Season Beginning of Another...

2010-10-04T11:14:00.002-04:00

As we get close to the end of the fall CSF season, I am going to do some housecleaning here in the CAFC Blog.

First of all, we want and need salespeople! And our best salespeople are share-members who love the CSF. PLEASE help us get the word out about CAFC to fish loving friends. Write a letter to your local paper, put up a flyer at your church, cafe, CSA Newsletter or community center. This is after all a COMMUNITY SUPPORTED fishery, so we hope you all can help us continue the program's success by pitching in and spreading the word.

Another item that I want to highlight is that CAFC works really hard to listen to sharemembers. Some complaints that we've addressed recently are a lack of diversity and the problem of too much fish for some folks. We are trying out an every-other-week share now to better accommodate those who feel an entire share is just too much fish. Please help us spread the word!

We've also really upped the ante on the variety. In general, many of the species we get in the temperate months tend to move to deeper water as the weather cools, and other species migrate out of the area entirely. This typically means less variety, however it also means that we'll be getting closer to Dec 1, which is the beginning of Gulf of Maine Shrimp season, which is one of my favorites.

And lastly a quick update on the fishing regulations. The scuttlebutt on the docks is and has been the same for a few months now, "There's plenty of fish, but no one is fishing." A lot of this has to do with fishermen not wanting to squander their quota too soon in the fishing year and/or spread their fishing out over the year. Some are also trying to time their fishing to coincide with higher fish prices around the holidays. The problem with trying to time fish prices is a lot like trying to time the stock market. There are too many variables to fish prices to reliably predict the daily price.

The price of market Cod today for example is $2.54/lb, which is relatively high for this time of year. However since the implementation of sectors prices have been higher than in years past. We did have some concern that prices and availability of fish might be an issue for CAFC. High prices may be a challenge in the coming months, but for now it looks like the fishermen will not be shut down because of 'choke species' or because they have fished out their quotas.

2010-09-27T10:48:00.003-04:00

Last week I went by Turner's Seafood in Gloucester to pick up some Bluefish that Jim and Kathi Turner donated for a Sustainable Seafood Cooking Demonstration at the Healthy Living Expo (thanks again Jim and Kathi!). Turner's is one of the partners in Cape Ann Fresh Catch, and I have to say they are great people and a real pleasure to work with. They are committed to to helping and improving on every aspect of the program, and all of us are glad to be working with them. I'd never been to their facility, which has a retail storefront as well as the fish processing plant in the back. The video below is a snapshot of a day in the life at Turner's unloading and filleting Yellowtail flounders for CAFC.

Because of the way the rules work, fish must be landed, handled and processed at a facility that not only meets the legal health and safety requirements, but also has the legal status to report landing fish etc., I'll get into some detail about how Cape Ann Fresh Catch actually works, from the dock to your plate in a later post. But I will say that I have been around fish for years and one thing you can always tell right away about a fish facility is how it smells.

The best fish handlers and processors do not smell 'fishy' they smell like the ocean. They do not smell 'chemically', they smell clean. I walked into Turner's and could tell right away that they keep a clean shop. Everything smelled nice. The fish that you see in the video were so fresh they had an almost sweet smell.

A couple more notes before the video:
- The sanitizing system Turner's uses is state of the art. Jim explains it in the video, but the real important thing to understand is that using this technology, Turner's does not use any chemical sanitizing agents.
- Turner's also has a retail store and restuarant in Melrose, please support great local businesses like these that are making a commitment to helping fishermen and consumers get really fresh seafood, and making a long term commitment to sustainable fishing by supporting the small scale fishermen and fishing families who have a generations long commitment to our local seafood.

And lastly, Turner's along with Cape Ann Fresh Catch, the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance will be hosting tables at the upcoming Boston Local Food Festival. We'll also be doing cooking demonstrations and hosting a Seafood Throwdown cooking competition between to local celebrity chefs, Didi Emmons from Haley House and Jason Bond from Bondir Restaurant this Saturday Oct 2. The Seafood events will be on the Seaport Blvd end of the festival in Boston.

Now on to the video:

2010-09-20T09:57:00.004-04:00

Here is the third and final part of my interview with Joe Orlando owner operator of the f/v Padre Pio. (f/v stands for "fishing vessel" in case you were wondering.) Though Joe does not catch fish for CAFC (yet!) He is very much typical of the fishermen we work with. He is a dayboat fisherman - he goes out and comes bak in the same day for the most part. His vessel is a small dragger, which is the predominate gear choice for fishermen out of Gloucester. He has been fishing for at least two decades and has seen everything from a fishery in decline to the current state of the fishery which is nearing its target goals to be considered 'rebuilt'.

Several things stand out for me from my talk with Joe. One is the amazing amount of regulation New England fishermen face. Not only do fishermen have to tell the government when they are going fishing, but they may have to bring a government employee on board to monitor everything from gear and safety to the size and composition of their catch, they are digitally tracked via satellite, and when they get back to port there could be another government employee waiting at the dockside to observe unloading.

But all that is just the tip of the iceberg. When they are out fishing they have strict limits on what gear they can use, where they can fish, closed areas, Coast Guard enforcement and State Environmental Police.

As if that were not enough, our fishermen are almost all independent businessmen and women. They have to figure out when and where to fish amidst the regulations so that they can make a living. Its a daunting task, and one that unfortunately not too many younger people are choosing as a way to make a living.

At one of our recent CAFC weekly meetings a bunch of us were talking about how much people like to watch fishing boats unload. I know for myself I can stand there and watch boats and fishermen for hours. Fishing has always had a certain romance about it; men heading out to sea to battle the wind and waves to bring back seafood. Their boats color our harbors, and their tales color our history.

When you hear Joe talk about the regulatory environment he works in, it is hard to see the romance of the job. Fishermen in New England are no longer battling just the seas and the fish.

In the coming weeks we'll move away from regulations and get into more details about the fishing vessels we use, how CAFC works with fishermen and shore-side operations and finally hopefully we can talk more about the fish we are eating. Now for more Joe:

2010-09-13T16:09:00.003-04:00

Here is the second part of my conversation with Joe Orlando about fishing regulation and the current state of fish stocks. Joe fishes out of Gloucester on his boat "Padre Pio". One more installment to come next week.

2010-09-08T06:31:00.006-04:00

The Blog took a week off for the holiday weekend, but we are back with a video of Gloucester Fisherman Joe Orlando talking about fishing and fishing rules. Enjoy. Part 2 Next week.

Fish Rules

2010-08-22T11:14:00.004-04:00

Short post today as this blog writer is travelling in Costa Rica. The day before I left I was talking to a fisherman from Gloucester who is not a CAFC fisherman. We had an extensive conversation about fisheries regulations - which I will post some video of in the coming weeks. One of the points he made stands out.

He noted that 80% of the seafood in the US is imported and that most if not all of those fisheries are LESS regulated than the Northwest Atlantic groundfishery. In fact the New England groundfish fleet might well be the most regulated fishery in the world.

Now I dont know if that is statistically true, but we do know that most other countries do not regualte their fisheries as tightly as the US. Here in Costa Rica I went fishing with a commercial fisherman from a very small town on the Pacific coast in his Panga. We caught a number of small yellowfin tuna. When I asked the fisherman what the size limit was for yellowfin he just stared at me blankly.

"Size limit?" he said.
"Yeah, do you have any rules about how big fish have to be to keep them?" I asked.
He laughed and said, "Maybe they do, but no one knows them. Who is there to enforce that?"

In the US, fisherman endure a sea of rules about how they fish, what they fish for, how big the fish have to be to keep, how many they can catch and when and where they can fish. Enforcing those rules are th National Marine Fisheries Service, On-board observers, Dockside monitors, the Coast Guard, and beyond all that fishermen have a slew of mandated safety regulations the costs of which are in the thousands of dollars.

The point? As always, eat local fish!

2010-08-18T12:46:00.002-04:00

This week the Gloucester Fishermen’s Wives Association and CAFC along with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance met with a group from Healthcare Without Harm. The group was comprised of foodservice managers, chefs etc., from several area hospitals. The topic of the day was how hospitals can improve their seafood purchasing decisions to improve patient health, reduce the environmental impact of their purchases and if possible support the communities in which they live and work. Sounds a lot like why people join a CSF!

I was not able to attend the entire presentation as we were having another one of our famous Seafood Throwdowns at the Gloucester Sidewalk Days Festival. (Check out some video here of local Gloucester impresario Joey Ciamartaro – owner/operator of Goodmorninggloucester.com - talking about the virtues of Dogfish aka Cape Shark.) However the parts I was able to attend I was thoroughly impressed by the attendees ambitions to increase local seafood in their hospital menus. There were some tough questions asked, and truthfully, these are also some of the main questions we get at CAFC from members as well as critics.

One of the presenters was Vito Giacalone, a Gloucester Fisherman as well as the owner of the Boston Seafood Display Auction in Gloucester where CAFC fish is landed. One of the hospital administrators asked how most of the fish in Gloucester were caught. Vito said that most of the boats are draggers with a small percentage of net boats. Her follow up question was, “We hear all the time that draggers are bad for the environment and are listed on the seafood buyer’s guides as an ‘avoid’ fishing practice. How can we buy seafood from draggers if that is the case?”

Vito’s response was that people have been dragging the same local waters for fifty plus years. In that time, they are finding the fish in the exact same spots that his father caught fish forty years ago. There are no secret spots, the fish tend to go to the same places and the fishermen go to the same places. If they were destroying the habitat how and why are the fish populations coming back? Not only that, but most of the draggers are small day boats that use technology to stay just off the bottom.

Now, keep that anecdote in mind. The next story was told by one of the folks from Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington, VT who is at the forefront of the local and healthy in hospitals movement. They did a survey of all the kinds of seafood they could serve and used several criteria including the seafood buyer’s guidelines. One of the seafoods they came across that is recommended highly by most of the seafood buyers guides is Alaska Pollock.

But Fletcher Allen dug a bit deeper than the seafood cards and found out that not only is Alaska Pollock on of the most industrialized fleets in the world, but they use huge drag nets to catch the Pollock. Once the Pollock is caught and flash frozen, it is shipped to China for processing then shipped back to the US for sale. Yet according to some seafood buyer guides, Alaska trawl caught Pollock is more sustainable than Atlantic trawl caught Cod.As with most purchase decisions these days the confrontation for the conscientious buyer is between a cheap product with an unknown social and environmental cost .vs a more costly product that has social and environmental integrity. I don’t know about you, but I know I feel a lot better getting my fish from a small local producer with a known social and environmental footprint than from a far-flung factory operation where the real social and environmental costs are buried in a huge carbon footprint and a factory in China.

And don’t even get me started on the difference in the taste…

2010-08-02T08:35:00.002-04:00

I had a great opportunity to speak with a bunch of CAFC members recently at one of the Seafood Throwdowns we do in conjunction with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. Cape Ann Fresh Catch will be co-hosting several Seafood Throwdowns this summer in Gloucester. There is a calendar of events here. I also got to talk to a bunch of folks who were interested in the program but questioned what we mean by ‘sustainable’. For some reason when this conversation comes up people always bring up Cod and whether it is sustainable. The other common question is whether the fishing methods are sustainable. (We’ll tackle the latter issue in another blog post.)

There are several aspects to this discussion, and for many people, even those of us who deal with this issue on a daily basis; we have to admit that it can be confusing. The simplest way to begin is to go back to an earlier blog post where we noted that the New England Fisheries Management Council (the NEFMC is one of eight regional councils established under the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act to advise the government on regulations) has recently improved the assessments of most of the fish stocks you will see from CAFC, including noting that the Cod stocks that CAFC fish come from are no longer overfished.

The most important misconception people have in understanding Cod sustainability is to think that Atlantic Cod are all one population. This could not be farther from the truth. Canada, for example fished their cod to the point of extinction, the US has not. They are separate populations of fish of the same species that have as much to do with each other as human population levels in the US and China. We are even learning that within the GOM there are distinct sub-populations, thus the reason Western GOM cod are recovering while Eastern GOM Cod are not. It is possible, even likely, that currently one of the strongest populations of Cod in the Western Atlantic is just off Gloucester at Middle Bank. (For further information on this subject, check out the work NAMA is doing to promote finer scale management.)

Still, there is much that we do not know. I am sure you have heard the adage that we know more about outer space than we do the oceans, which is even true on the fishing grounds we have been fishing for centuries. Our approach is to pay attention to the latest science, listen to the fishermen and listen to those who purchase shares in CAFC.

We know there are other views out there. And, I should add that we also hear a lot more of “I love the Cod!” than complaints about cod. So chime in, post a comment below, let us know what you think and what you want to know more about. We'll be

Also, don’t forget to sign up for the new 8 week season beginning Aug 8. Also please feel free to post a flyer at your work, church, community center, coffee shop, CSA etc. (LINK).

Thanks for a wonderful summer season so far. Looking forward to seeing you all again in a couple weeks.

2010-07-26T14:10:00.001-04:00

We get a lot of questions (and an occasional complaint) about the prevalence of Cod in your shares. And, we can assure you we do try our best to deliver as much variety as we can. But, we will not compromise quality for variety. We are Cape Ann FRESH Catch after all, and we can say that over the last two years no one has ever complained that the fish were not fresh.

With a program like CAFC CSF, you sign up to get a share of what our fishermen are catching. (By the way we now have over a dozen boats participating in the CSF). But if Cod are close and are fetching a good price that is what all the fishermen will bring in, and there’s not a lot we can do to change that except tell some other fish to swim in closer, but they never listen to us. Typically the variety increases as the summer progresses and we should start seeing some of last year’s favorite, whiting, soon. (And we will delve more into the issue of Cod sustainability in a future blog post.)

The gatekeeper for CAFC fish is Steve Parkes. Steve has been working in fisheries for years, starting out selling fish out of a van in Western Massachusetts to eventually starting Pigeon Cove Seafoods which he later sold to Whole Foods where he continued as their head seafood buyer before coming to CAFC. Steve knows more about seafood than just about anyone and has seen the ups and downs of the fishing industry. We asked Steve a few questions about CAFC fish:

CAFC News: Steve, what is the criteria for selecting CAFC fish?
SP: Number one, two and three is freshness. 99% of our fish are dayboat fish and are only a few hours out of the water by the time we get them. (Ed: “Dayboat” means that the boat left and returned to the dock in the same day vs. “tripboat” fish where the boat may stay out for several days or more).

CAFC News: How are our fish being caught?
SP: Mostly draggers. The draggers can go out right now and be back in a few hours with a full boat on one tow. So in reality it is the best way to get fresh fish to the dock quickly. In fact the problem for some guys right now is that with the new sector system they don’t want to catch too much at once and right now we are seeing the best fishing as long as I’ve been doing this.

CAFC News: So tell us more about what fishermen are seeing and saying about fishing conditions and the new rules?
SP: Well number one is that the guys are really happy that they can land whatever they catch, there is no more by-catch. Guys just hated throwing over healthy fish because of a trip limit. So they are really happy about that. Number two they are happy the fish are coming back so well.

CAFC News: We’ve been getting a lot of cod lately why?
SP: Well, there’s a lot of them out there. It is also the traditional Cod fishing season. We’ll start to see more flatfish as the summer wears on and the cod move to deeper waters. Guys are so used to the old rules they tend to still fish where they did then, so things may change but right now the price is up and the cod are close and plentiful so that’s what they bring in.

2010-07-20T16:35:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the CAFC Blog.

Starting this week and each week hereafter we will be writing a new blog entry covering issues related to fishing, eating fish, fish politics and relevant fish events. One of our objectives as a CSF is to build on the “Community” that we have been able to establish. The CAFC Blog is a way for us to get news out to you about what is going on in the world of fish. You will still receive separate notifications on the day of your delivery about what types of fish and/or any problems with weather etc.

One of the things we know our community care’s about is the sustainability of the fish you get from CAFC. And on that front there is increasingly good news to report. Most, if not all of the fish you are receiving are from stocks that are growing. For example, the following quote comes from a June 25 press release from the New England Fisheries Management Council (NEFMC) (The NEMFC is one of 8 regional Councils set up by the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act of 1976 to advise the government on fisheries policies. We will go into this in more detail next week):

“Gulf of Maine haddock are rebuilt and are being harvested at sustainable levels. Gulf of Maine cod is no longer overfished and is at a stock size that has not been seen in 30 years. Acadian redfish is very close to or fully rebuilt, although that determination awaits confirmation by a stock assessment. While they are not fully rebuilt, increases in many of the stocks in the groundfish complex are being observed for the first time in nearly a decade.”

Indeed a recent Pollack assessment changed that fish from overfished to abundant. So, after years of sacrifice and struggle, fishermen are encouraged by the rebounding stocks. Indeed for some fishermen the problem is that they are catching too many fish - a topic we will cover next week. So while there are still lots of issues, problems and challenges facing local fishermen, for the first time in a long time a scarcity of fish is not the main problem.

Each week we will try to tell you a little more about the fish, fishermen (and women), where and how they catch their fish and the shore-side processors – without who’s participation CAFC could not exist, as well as some of the fun events going on involving seafood.