Cod Damn It.

I picked up the Cape Cod Times this morning and what did I see? Terrible freaking news about scientific research on cod stocks in Stellwagen Bank. In 2008 apparently there was a massive explosion of baby codfish in the area and fishing rules were adjusted accordingly. Now scientists are saying that this huge litter of cod gave us false hope that cod stocks were healthy and now (again) because of this, our beloved cods are being overfished. I am always skeptical when it comes to scientific data and the fishing industry. How can they come to two completely separate conclusions regarding cod stocks from the same scientific data they gathered in 2008? Science research of course is funded mainly by environmental groups and as we all know MONEY TALKS. Trawlgate  the scandal of 2000 is another perfect example of scientists fucking shit up for the fishermen because of miscalculated research methods.

Outer Town Dock in Woods Hole by local artist Sean Boyce

Ask a seafood purveyor at Hunts Point in the Bronx, NY and they will tell you that there is nothing wrong with the biomass index of the cod species. Ask a cod fisherman who lands 113,000 lbs of cod per year and he will tell you there are plenty of fish in the sea. Enviro's point their fingers at fishermen saying that they are fishing the oceans clean. Fishermen don't want the cod to become extinct, that is their livelihood!

The wall of my house in Woods Hole by local artist Tammy

New stricter regulations on cod fishing is really going to razzle already economically marginalized Mass fishermen. Not allowing them to catch cod could put 90 percent of the codfishing fleet completely out of business. Codfish swim with other species that are caught commercially further complicating matters. Read more about the dilemma in this article from the NY Times. The fishermen might make it to the endangered species list if things keep going the way they are now...

FV Nobska my father's cod fishing boat painted by Martha Buckett

Governors Island Harbor School RULES!!!

The Harbor School seems to me like the NYC salty seafaring equivalent of the Jack Black movie "School of Rock." The inner city students who are studying and working at this hands-on public NYC high-school learn maritime skills such as boat-building, marine biology and aquaculture. They become scuba certified and boat safety certified. They breed fish and they manage a growing oyster farm of 600,000 oysters. Within 20 years they plan to purify all of NYC Harbor with this awesome bi-valve farm they got goin' on!  These juggernaut kids are INVOLVED in their own future and the future of their natural local environment. Are you as impressed as I am? It only gets better. The graduation rate from this high school is a whopping 74% and each student is required to obtain an acceptance letter from a college in order to graduate. Today I had the absolute pleasure of visiting the Harbor School. I spent the day with these wicked amazing and dedicated students, the schools founding father Murray Fisher and a few other interesting fish lovers such as David Isenberg of Woods Hole and NY Times Dot Earth blogger Andy Revkin. For me the Harbor School is an urban utopia.

STAY TUNED FOR A SHORT GTFB VIDEO OF THESE SUPER STUDENTS IN ACTION!

Cesar, Tatiana and I in the aquaculture room.

Baby oysters growing in their tanks.

Students driving a research boat.
The boats are used for work such as the oyster farm and the scuba research.

Algae: They grow their own!

Barney Frank's Retirement: Northeast Fishermen not Psyched.

Fishermen and fishermen's daughters love Congressman Barney Frank. Now after more that 30 years in the House of Representatives, he has decided to retire. Barney, a left-handed gay Jewish man knows what it is like to be part of the minority. He has always fought the good fight in Congress for fishermen's rights.

In 2009 Barney passed a  Coast Guard Reauthorization bill
containing safety improvements for the industry. 

Frank supports non-biased fisheries research, he is adamant that NOAA not pocket any money for seafood research. He also supports socio-economic research in fishing communities and believes that the government must analyze the economic impact that strict fishing regulations have on major fishing towns like New Bedford. Frank has worked hard throughout his career to improve laws in favor of scallopers and ground fishermen in Massachusetts. Barney is a legendary negotiator and get deals done. He has be known to side with other politicians who were looking out for fishermen's rights regardless of their party affiliation. Losing direct representation of the important fishing town of New Bedford was a major factor in Barney Frank's decision to step down from the House of Reps.

Barney's 11th hour rally for ground fishermen reported by Fisherman's Voice April 2010.

Saving Seafood Bob Vanasse Interview with Barney Frank and Dr. Brian Rothschild
Click above to hear good old Barn-dawgs stick up for fishermens rights in 2012.

Sleep Deprivation in the Seafood Industry

Many animals go into hibernation during the cold dark months. Most people catch their beauty rest during the night. To me this cycle feels pretty normal, even if some days I don't feel like waking up with the sun.

Imagine going into work at midnight and leaving at 7am five days per week. This is reality  for fishmongers waking and working during the darkest of hours. Big city fish markets do most of their business at night in order to feed the city the following day. Fishermen in a 9 man crew usually sleep in shifts. Four hours on and four hours off. Ouch. People in the seafood industry tend to be saltier than most but these strange hours and environments still take their toll.

Pretend you are an Apple Computer. Your biological clocks are synching with each other and backing up information under one master clock, sort of like Time Machine. Circadian rhythms are driven by our biological clocks and  controlled by factors inside of our bodies such as temperature, hormones, sleep-wake cycles and even genetics. Outside factors like the 24-hour light schedule and seasons have strong effects on our systems as well.

Sleeplessness in fishermen is not well documented, but it contributes to accidents in a high risk situation.  Obviously being on a boat in high seas, cold weather, wind, water and operating heavy machinery is a high risk environment. Varying home sleep and sea sleep schedules can also add to biological confusion and exacerbate risk at work. 

Truth be told, most of the commercial fishermen and fishmongers I know rarely ever sleep. To me the sleeplessness is just another sweet reason why this industry is totally nuts and not for the faint of heart.

Carlos Rafael and his Catch Heard 'Round the World

Less than a week ago, the story of Cape Cod commercial fisherman Carlos Rafael and his 881 pound bluefin tuna went from local headline to full-blown international controversy.  The serendipitous beast became entangled in his net while his crew was groundfishing for bottom dwellers off the coast of Cape Cod. Unfortunately for Rafael, catching bluefin in a net instead of on a line is illegal. Upon the fishing vessel's return to shore, the feds confiscated his potential money-maker. A similarly sized tuna was recently sold on the Japanese market for upwards of $300,000. In an update this morning, Monica Allen from NOAA reported that the fish, whose condition was said to have been deteriorated by contact with the net, was sold at a mere $5,000 by federal agents. Of those $5,000 Rafael received none.

Carlos Rafael and his world famous tuna.

To get an idea of how this news spread virally read this fascinating excerpt from Saving Seafood RSS:

"The news broke on Monday. By Tuesday, the story had hit the AP wire and was headlining in papers from coast to coast, from the Boston Globe to the San Francisco Chronicle. It went overseas for appearances in the UK's Daily Mirror and the Emirates 24/7 in Dubai. It bounced through the blogosphere, from the Drudge Report and the Outdoor Life Magazine blog to online news venues like Yahoo!, where it was Tuesday's top story. As of Wednesday, a Google search with the fisherman's name and the word "tuna" generates more than 150,000 results."


And that my friends is a tale of modern technology...


Everyone seems to have an opinion on this issue, but it looks like the grand majority is rooting for team Carlos. I believe that he should have been able to keep his lucky catch. I support the 100% Catch Rule: Whatever you catch in your net during a haul, you keep. This rule would prevent the wasting of fish that is "undesirable." Fish caught it a net, especially small species or baby fish, are often crushed by water pressure and other fish joining the bundle. If said fish are smaller than legal size limit, out of season, or worth less money than the others, they are thrown overboard only to die from injuries upon release. On the other hand, you have circumstances like that of Carlos Rafael where clearly the 100% Catch Rule would have worked in his favor.

The elusive bluefin: Perhaps the most controversial fish in the sea,

I am working on getting a brief interview with Carlos himself.  Stay tuned for updates!


Thanks MIKA GILMORE (Architect from Boston) for being the first to bring this article to my attention.

East River Fishing: Friendships, Stripers and a little PCB.

Down below the steel underbelly of the Williamsburg Bridge, there is a diverse community of fishermen casting lines into the East River.

Although many of them do not speak the same language, they know each other, and each others families. They help each other out where they are able to. Some of these fishermen choose to eat their catch and some do not. Fishermen who "catch and release" share what they harvest with those who will use it to feed themselves, their wives and their children.

At this point, you might be thinking the following:

"Hey, what the hell are you telling us this for?! It is very dangerous to ingest PCBs aka polychlorinated byphenyls aka harmful residual toxic waste!"

You are right, but not everyone cares or has the luxury of caring about PCBs. They are simply trying to eat or trying to make a living selling their catch to the seafood vendors in Chinatown. Don't buy striped bass from Chinatown if you are worried about PCBs.

You recognize this,  don't ya?

This weekend while strolling along the river, I got to talking with Lower East Side native, James Martin.

James with his 23lb. beauty of a striper.

James has been catching and releasing stripers, bluefish, toadfish, eels, flounder, blue crabs and more for 9 years on this turf. The day I ran into him was his last day of the season.

Bluefish put up a fight, but James won.

James has his finger on the pulse of the Lower Manhattan fishing scene.

 "The [fishermen] are very friendly people," he says. 

He knew the man to the left of where we were standing who showed up on a child-sized huffy bicycle rigged with a homemade tackle box. He also knew the man to the right of us who had caught what looked like a cusk and some small white perch. 

One man's dinner: Looks to me like a baby cusk and perhaps two white perch.
 I'm not 100% sure on the perch, but they don't really look like scup.

James never eats what he catches in the East River. Although he believes that a lot of the river garbage has been cleaned up some over the years, and fish populations are more plentiful than before, he still worries about PCB levels coming from the GE plant upriver. He sent me an article explaining that between the years of 1947 and 1977 two GE towers 50 miles north of Albany leaked 1.3 million lbs. of PCBs into the Hudson. The toxins are now found in sediment, water, wildlife and even people all the way down to New York Harbor. They are working on cleaning the mess up completely, reports the Riverkeeper...
Might take a while to scrub clean, but in the meantime people will keep on hookin' their East River fish.

Two for one deal!

-Thank you so much to JAMES MARTIN for making this article possible with your firsthand knowledge and professional photographs. Also, thank you for keeping it real down on the East River fishing scene. You are awesome!

Black Grouper and Bluefin: Save the Fishermen 9/22/10

Black Grouper: Tastes good, seasonal product, looks dumb on a shirt.

Your customers will not be able to resist the tantalizing flavors of the Black Grouper. Some say it is the most delicious fish in the sea. The best thing about black grouper is that is not being over fished, populations in the Charleston Bump are healthy and the season just opened. For all of you trying to get your seasonal ideas together, here is a delicacy to add to your menu and not feel stressed out about. 6.95/lb

Black Grouper are protogynous hermaphrodites, meaning that predominately they start off as female and then become male as they get older. Whether or not you include this "fun fact" on the specials board is totally up to you.

Although I do recommend eating black grouper, I do not believe that wearing a shirt with a grouper image will do anything for your sex appeal. As a matter of fact, I'd have to call it is a fashion "DON'T" for Fall 2010.





 Where do people come up with this stuff?

.......................................................................................................................................

Save the fishermen.  
A debate is going on within congress as to whether or not bluefin tuna should be added to the ESA (Endangered Species Act) as of May 2011. Many of you are aware of this. I hope that you are also aware that there are two sides to every story.

Maine's U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe (a member of the Senate subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries and Coast Guard) is opposed listing the bluefin tuna as an endangered species.

Here is what she has to say on the matter:

"No one disputes that bluefin tuna is overfished...for years, U.S. fishermen have led the world in efforts to conserve highly migratory fish stocks such as bluefin tuna. It would be inappropriate and counter-productive to repay them for their stewardship by blocking access to the lucrative foreign markets, particularly when those markets will be filled with bluefin tuna harvested from weaker stocks."

Senator Susan Collins and Maine's two congressional Reps. Mike Michaud and Chellie Pingree also agree that putting the Maine fishermen at an even further disadvantage after years of compliance with the rules would be cruel.

I feel that this is an important issue that must be driven home.  If you DO decide to purchase bluefin, you should be supporting the domestic fishery. At least then you know that these fish were harvested in a sustainable manner.

Scientists who come up with statistics and graphs based on simulated fishing trips are still only human. They are capable of making mistakes and may err on the side of environmentalists, the same people who advocate to save the species. Theirs is just like any other business. People have an agenda. If scientists are not utilizing the correct gear, if their net is faulty, if they went out on a bad weather day, or they just didn’t hit the spot where the fish are, it will likely appear as though the biomass of a species is more exploited than it really is. I know from experience that this happens because my own father was involved in the Trawlgate debacle of 2000.

To read more about Trawlgate click here:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2003/10/27/scientists_fishermen_in_standoff/
  
Also, remember that fishermen have families to support. Think about this: Why would fishermen want to deplete the stocks of a fish that their livelihood depends on? Save the tuna, yes, but shouldn’t we also save the fishermen?