Virginia Saltwater Fishing

After an extensive scientific review, NOAA recently announced that Atlantic bluefin tuna currently do not warrant species protection under the Endangered Species Act.

NOAA is formally designating both the western Atlantic and eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean stocks of bluefin tuna as “species of concern” under the Endangered Species Act. This places the species on a watchlist for concerns about its status and threats to the species.

NOAA’s status review, released with today’s decision and peer-reviewed by The Center for Independent Experts, indicates that based on the best available information and assuming  countries comply with the bluefin tuna fishing quotas established by ICCAT, both the western and eastern Atlantic stocks are not likely to become extinct.

NOAA conducted the status review of Atlantic bluefin after determining on Sept. 21, 2010, that a petition for listing under the ESA from a national environmental organization warranted a scientific status review.

NOAA has committed to revisit this decision by early 2013, when more information will be available about the effects of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill, as well as a new stock assessment from the scientific arm of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, the international body charged with the fish’s management and conservation.

To read the status review report on Atlantic bluefin tuna, the federal register notice and other information on bluefin tuna, please go to: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/stories/2011/05/bluefin_tuna.html

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has launched a voluntary program to encourage commercial and recreational fishermen to safely release Atlantic shortfin mako sharks alive and report the releases to NOAA for posting on an online map.

The new program is designed to encourage the conservation of North Atlantic shortfin mako sharks. Scientific research shows many of these sharks are being caught and kept, damaging the long-term sustainability of the population. The most recent assessment of North Atlantic shorfin makos found that the population had declined about 50 percent from the 1950s.

Commercial and recreational fishermen can submit an online form to NOAA with information about where and when they release shortfin mako sharks, and their information will be posted on an online map. The map will enable fishermen to see how they are making a difference in the conservation of shortfin mako sharks and encourage others to release sharks. By charting how and where fishermen release sharks, NOAA hopes to encourage other fishermen to do the same.

“We are working with the fishing community to encourage fishermen to voluntarily release these sharks alive to help sustain the shortfin mako population,” said Eric Schwaab, assistant NOAA administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “By releasing sharks that are unintentionally caught or caught for sport, U.S. fishermen will be leaders in encouraging fishermen from other nations to conserve this shark species.”

Shortfin mako sharks, like other shark species, grow slowly, mature late, and produce few young, making them vulnerable to fishing. The average female shortfin mako shark becomes sexually mature at 18, while males are mature at 8. This highly migratory species is managed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, to which the U.S. is a member. The U.S. has been a leader in urging the international commission to adopt conservation measures to help rebuild the species.

Shortfin makos are often caught unintentionally by commercial fishermen who are targeting swordfish and tuna with longline gear. They are also caught by recreational fishermen and are a popular catch in shark tournaments. An increasing number of these tournaments encourage the live release of sharks to promote conservation.

It is legal for commercial and recreational fishermen to retain the sharks. However, recreationally caught sharks must not be smaller than 54 inches from the tip of the shark’s nose to the fork of its tail. While some fishermen continue to retain shortfin makos for food, fins, and jaws, NOAA’s Fisheries Service encourages fishermen to consider the effect on the stock in the long-term and choose to release them.

NOAA encourages fishermen to learn how to safely release sharks so that they are not injured and the sharks are released in good condition. Fishermen may obtain a brochure at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/Compliance_Guide/index.htm on the safe release of sharks and other highly migratory species.

For more information about the program, to view the interactive map and learn how to submit information on a live shark release, go to http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/shortfinmako/index.htm

source: NOAA press release

Several bills dealing with menhaden have been introduced in the current session of the Virginia General Assembly.

They include:

SB765/HB2280 – Sen. Northam and Del. Cosgrove

Would transfer the authority to execute ASMFC menhaden fishery management plans from the General Assembly to the VMRC where all other ASMFC directives are handled.  http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+SB765

HB1656 – Del. Purkey

Would prevent menhaden harvesting within one mile of shore in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Newport News, and Hampton.

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HB1656

HB2369 – Del Knight

Would reduce current cap on menhaden harvest in Chesapeake Bay (109,020 metric tons) by 20% each year starting 1/1/12.

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HB2369

HB1913 – Del. Miller

Would prohibit the harvest of menhaden by purse seine in the Rappahannock River and its tributaries.

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HB1913

HB2165 – Del. Abbitt

Would assess a fee of $10 per ton on menhaden harvested in Virginia waters.  Funds would be used to study the condition of menhaden in the Chesapeake Bay.

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?111+ful+HB2165

Stakeholders can track these bills at  http://legis.state.va.us/

Billfish and tuna, important commercial and recreational fish species, may be more vulnerable to fishing pressure because of shrinking habitat according to a new study published by scientists from NOAA, the Billfish Foundation, and the University of Miami.

An expanding zone of low oxygen, known as a hypoxic zone, in the Atlantic Ocean is encroaching on these species’ preferred oxygen-abundant habitat, forcing them into shallower waters where they are more likely to be caught.

While hypoxic zones occur naturally in many areas of the world’s tropical and equatorial oceans, scientists are concerned because these zones are expanding and occurring closer to the sea surface, and are expected to continue to grow as sea temperatures rise.

source: NOAA Fish News

The Chesapeake Bay is showing encouraging signs of rebounding but is still in critical condition as a result of pollution, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) 2010 State of the Bay Report. The report comes as the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is preparing to release its pollution budget designed to reduce pollution and dramatically improve water quality.

“That the Bay is getting better is a huge development, but sadly not the whole story,” said CBF President William C. Baker. “Dead zones, fish kills, and water contact advisories are constant reminders of how far we still must go.”

The numeric index of the Bay’s health jumped three points from 2008 to 2010, with eight of 13 indicators rising. The indicator for the health of the blue crab population spiked 15 points, as the Bay’s population increased significantly last year. Also, underwater grasses showed steady progress over the past four years.

But the overall health index of the Bay is 31 out of 100, which means it is still a system dangerously out of balance.

The report is a comprehensive measure of the Bay’s health, evaluating 13 indicators: oysters, shad, crabs, striped bass (rockfish), underwater grasses, wetlands, forested buffers, resource lands, toxics, water clarity, dissolved oxygen, and phosphorus and nitrogen pollution. CBF scientists compile and examine the best available historical and up-to-date information for each indicator and assign it an index score and letter grade. Taken together, these indicators offer an assessment of Bay health.

The unspoiled Bay ecosystem described by Captain John Smith in the 1600s, with its extensive forests and wetlands, clear water, abundant fish and oysters, and lush growths of submerged vegetation serves as the benchmark, and would rate a 100 on CBF’s scale.

“We are at a tipping point,” Baker said. “If EPA stands firm, and the states deliver on their commitments, the Bay will become resilient and bountiful. At the same time, reducing pollution will create jobs and improve local economies.”

By the end of December, EPA must issue a pollution diet for the Bay watershed called a Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL). The TMDL is required under the federal Clean Water Act and court rulings.

This diet will require Maryland and other Bay states, and ultimately each local jurisdiction, to ratchet down pollution to local creeks, rivers, and the Bay from all sources, including farms, sewage treatment plants, urban and suburban streets, parking lots and lawns. State and local governments will be held responsible for those reductions or potentially lose federal funding and be denied federal permits.

The Bay states and the District of Columbia were required to submit a Watershed Implementation Plan (WIP) to EPA specifying how it planned to meet the new pollution diet. The preliminary version of the each jurisdiction’s plan was deficient in specific details, the agency concluded. CBF has urged the EPA to stand firm in its expectations and to impose consequences on jurisdictions that fail to establish and fully implement plans that meet pollution reduction goals on schedule.

“We applaud Maryland for creating a substantial and high quality WIP, and for the work put into producing the document. This high level of dedication will be needed from all leaders over the next 10 years if we hope to see a restored Bay,” said CBF Maryland Executive Director Kim Coble.  “Maryland will need to aggressively pursue a number of commitments in its Bay clean-up plan. For example, to get pollution reductions from agriculture the state must continue funding cover crops, but also must target that funding to fields where manure is applied and corn is grown. We look forward to working with the state to ensure the WIP produces real results.”

The copy of the full report is available at: www.cbf.org/sotb2010.

source: Chesapeake Bay Foundation

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission has been awarded a $276,000 grant from NOAA to help give recreational fishermen conservation information. A portion of the national grant will support a collaborative workshop in spring 2011 to examine how best to reduce barotrauma – the injury to deepwater fish when pulled to the surface rapidly – in recreational fisheries, in order to improve survival of fish caught and then released.

“The resulting mortality due to barotrauma is a contentious issue among stakeholders,” said John V. O’Shea, executive director of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. “The workshop will provide recreational fishermen, scientists, and managers the opportunity to develop a common understanding and approach to address this important issue.”

“Collaboratively, the recreational fishing community is a leading player in this program that will introduce stewardship to new anglers and reinforce the stewardship of existing anglers to reduce mortality of caught and released fish,” said Andy Loftus, coordinator for the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission project. “The workshop will develop the best information available on catch-and-release practices that will be communicated to anglers for implementation. It’s a win-win in the best tradition of the recreational angling community and NOAA.”

source: NOAA press release

NOAA has released the Recreational Saltwater Fisheries Action Agenda, a national plan to address the complex issues facing marine recreational fisheries. The plan will improve science and stewardship and build a stronger partnership with the recreational community. It is a direct outcome of input received from recreational fishermen during the April 2010 Recreational Saltwater Fishing Summit organized by NOAA.

The Action Agenda includes a set of broad national goals, while focusing immediate attention on five priority issues:

- ensuring balanced recreational representation in the management process;

- more fully integrating recreational fishing values into the NOAA mission and culture;

- improving data on recreational fishing and fisheries;

- addressing recreational interests in NOAA’s catch share policy; and

- supporting cooperative research and monitoring.

“The Action Agenda is the roadmap for us to fulfill our commitments made during NOAA’s Recreational Fishing Summit,” said Eric Schwaab, NOAA assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “We know it is the strength of our actions that matter in the end, and we are committed to moving forward aggressively.”

source: NOAA press release

NOAA’s Fisheries Service has proposed that five populations of Atlantic sturgeon along the U.S. East Coast receive protection under the federal Endangered Species Act. The Gulf of Maine population is proposed for listing as threatened, and endangered status is proposed for the Chesapeake Bay, New York Bight, Carolina, and South Atlantic populations.

Species listed as endangered receive the full protection of the Endangered Species Act, including a prohibition against “take,” defined to include harassing, harming, pursuing, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing, or collecting. Similar prohibitions usually extend to threatened species. An endangered listing offers protections designed to prevent extinction. For threatened populations, protections are focused on preventing a species from becoming endangered.

A formal status review was completed for the Atlantic sturgeon in 2007 by a team of biologists from NOAA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The review found that unintended catch of Atlantic sturgeon in fisheries, vessel strikes, poor water quality, dams, lack of regulatory mechanisms for protecting the fish, and dredging were the most significant threats to the fish.

Atlantic sturgeon are large, slow-growing, late-maturing, long-lived, estuary-dependent fish that live the majority of their lives in salt water, but hatch and spawn in freshwater. Historically, their range included major estuary and river systems from Labrador to Florida. Atlantic sturgeon populations are currently documented in 35 U.S. rivers and spawning is believed to occur in 20 of these. Because the marine range of an individual sturgeon can be very broad regardless of where it originated, threats along the East Coast can affect fish from any of these populations.

Historical catch records indicate that these fish were once abundant, supporting important colonial fisheries. In the late 19th century, demand grew for sturgeon caviar and the first major U.S. commercial fishery for them developed. This lasted from about 1870 until the 1950s with landings peaking in 1890. The commercial fishery collapsed in 1901 when landings were about 10 percent of the peak. Landings by fisheries targeting sturgeon declined to even less in subsequent years, persisting until a moratorium on landings was established in 1998. It is currently illegal to fish for, catch or keep Atlantic sturgeon from U.S. waters.

NOAA’s Fisheries Service is accepting comments on the proposed listing through January 4, 2011. NOAA’s Fisheries Service is seeking comment particularly on abundance and distribution, viability, threats, and efforts being made to protect Atlantic sturgeon belonging to these populations. You may submit comments by any one of the following methods. The agency also plans to hold public hearings.

To submit comments on the Gulf of Maine, Chesapeake Bay and New York Bight proposed listing, identified by the XRIN 0648-XJ00, use any of the following methods:

- Submit comments online via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments;

- Fax comments to the attention of Lynn Lankshear at 978-281-9394;

- Mail or hand deliver written comments to the Assistant Regional Administrator, Protected Resources Division, NMFS, Northeast Region, 55 Great Republic Drive, Gloucester, MA 01930.

To submit comments on the Carolina and South Atlantic proposed listings, identified by the XRIN 0648-XN50, use any of the following methods:

- Submit comments online via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at http://www.regulations.gov. Follow the instructions for submitting comments;

- Fax comments to 727-824-5309;

- Mail or hand deliver written comments to the Assistant Regional Administrator for Protected Resources, NMFS, Southeast Regional Office, 263 13th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701.

source: NOAA press release

The 2010 peer-reviewed stock assessment for Atlantic croaker indicates that the resource is not experiencing overfishing. Although model estimates of spawning stock biomass (SSB) were too uncertain to be used to precisely determine overfished stock status, biomass has been increasing and the age-structure of the population has been expanding since the late 1980s. Atlantic croaker are considered to be a single stock on the Atlantic coast. The previous stock assessment divided the stock into Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic regions and assessed only the Mid-Atlantic region. This assessment used data from both regions to produce a single, coastwide assessment. Data from 1988 to 2008 were included.

The South Atlantic State/Federal Fisheries Management Board first reviewed the findings of the 2010 assessment in May. Upon the advice of the Peer Review Panel, the Board directed its Technical Committee to produce an additional analysis that would provide for a more certain stock status determination. With the extra analysis complete, the Board approved use of the stock assessment for management decisions.

Landings of croaker have fluctuated widely over time. Total reported landings (recreational and commercial) in 2008 were 24.7 million pounds, down from the most recent high of 39.7 million pounds in 2001, but still above the long-term average. Commercial landings make up about 75% of total reported landings. The majority of the landings come from North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia, which report 78% of the coastwide recreational landings and 95% of coastwide commercial landings.

The major source of uncertainty for the assessment is the magnitude of Atlantic croaker bycatch in South Atlantic shrimp trawls. Most croaker caught in this fishery are less than 1 year old, too small to be marketed, and thus are discarded. Croaker are one of the largest components of the shrimp trawl catch; some studies found that shrimp trawls caught more croaker than shrimp. There are no continuous monitoring programs to account for these discards. This is a problem because the best available estimates of these landings are, in some years, as large or larger than reported landings.

Because of the high degree of uncertainty in the amount of shrimp trawl discards, the estimated values of stock size and fishing mortality are not considered reliable. However, the estimated trends showing increasing biomass and decreasing fishing mortality were very similar whether estimates of shrimp trawl discards were included in the model or not. A series of sensitivity runs conducted over a range of plausible values of shrimp trawl mortality all indicated that overfishing was not occurring, thus the Review Panel and the Management Board agreed that Atlantic croaker are not subject to overfishing. Estimates of SSB based on the same range were less stable, therefore a biomass determination could not be made. The Review Panel stressed the importance of developing valid estimates of shrimp trawl discards to improve the certainty of future stock assessment results.

Given that biomass is increasing and overfishing is not occurring, the Board did not initiate any changes to the management program at this time. It did approve the development of an addendum to modify the reference points and remove the distinction of two separate management regions based on the stock assessment. The draft addendum for public comment may be available for Board review at the Commission’s Annual Meeting in November.

A more detailed overview of the stock assessment is available on the Commission website (www.asmfc.org) under Breaking News. It was developed with the intent of aiding media and interested stakeholders in better understanding the Commission’s stock assessment results and process. Copies of the Atlantic Croaker Stock Assessment Report and Assessment Peer Review Report are also available on the Commission website (under Breaking News). For more information, please contact Nichola Meserve, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at (202) 289-6400.

The 2009 peer reviewed stock assessment for red drum indicates that abundance of young fish for both the northern (NJ to NC) and southern (SC to FL) stock complexes have remained relatively stable since 2000. The stock assessment concluded that sufficient numbers of young fish are surviving to move offshore and join the adult spawning population, indicating that overfishing is likely not occurring.

Data limitations resulting from red drum’s life history characteristics and management regime present unique challenges to scientists as they try to assess the status of the stock. Relatively little is known about the adult (spawning) population of red drum (ages 4 and older) as these fish are primarily found in offshore waters where fishing for red drum is prohibited under federal law. As such, there is little fishery-dependent information on the larger, reproductive fish and limited fishery-independent data. Existing data are largely for the juvenile component of the resource (ages 1 – 3) found in inshore waters. Fishery-dependent data are constrained by the fisheries slot limit, which ranges anywhere from 15 to 27 inches (again limiting the amount of information about larger fish) and fishery-independent data are supplied by multiple state inshore surveys.

The end result of these limitations is a stock assessment that adequately describes abundance and exploitation rates for the pre-adult component of the population (ages 1 – 3), particularly for the northern region, but provides no reliable information on the adult component. Additionally, the stock assessment model was considered to be informative only about the relative, not absolute, trends in age 1 – 3 abundance and exploitation for the southern region. Therefore, only general conclusions about trends in stock status could be provided for the southern region.

In the northern region, abundance of age 1 – 3 red drum increased during 1990 to 2000 after which it widely fluctuated. The initial increase in abundance of these age groups can be explained by the reduction in exploitation rates in the early part of the time series with relative stability since then. Fishing pressure appears to be stable, and there is a high probability that the stock is not subject to overfishing. It is likely that the fishing mortality rate is at or above its target (Figure 1).

In the southern region, the relative trend in abundance of age 1 – 3 red drum increased during 1989 – 1992, declined during 1992 – 1998 and has fluctuated thereafter. As with the northern stock, the initial increase in abundance of these age groups can be explained by the reduction in exploitation rates in the early part of the time series. There appears to have been a slight increase in exploitation rates since 1990 (Figure 2).

Given these findings, the Commission’s South Atlantic State-Federal Fisheries Management Board did not initiate any changes to the management program at this time. A more detailed description of the stock assessment results will be available by mid-December and can be obtained via the Commission website at www.asmfc.org under Breaking News. For more information, please contact Nichola Meserve, Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at (202) 289-6400.

source: ASMFC press release