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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 37 Number 11
July 2010
Early fish raise hopes for bluefin season
HARWICH, MA – Three weeks into the harpoon and general category season, a trickle of fish were being landed, mostly around Gloucester, and there was some optimism that the 2010 bluefin tuna fishery might amount to something for New England fishermen.
“It’s nothing to get excited about yet, but if we stay on an even keel, we just may have a season,” said Bob Campbell, general manager of the Yankee Fishermen’s Co-op in Seabrook, NH.
While things were quiet for the most part off of Maine, there were signs of fish to the south. Early in June, one harpooner described Cape Cod Bay as being full of small bluefin, just under the legal commercial size of 73".
By the week of June 21st, spotter pilot Ralph Pratt said he was seeing plenty of bluefin in the 70"-to-76" range, moving close to shore, onto Stellwagen Bank, and occasionally onto Peaked Hill.
“Last year, we got spoiled by the heavy influx of 80"-to-mid-80" range fish at the season’s start,” he said. “Finding larger fish has been difficult so far (this year). But that could change any day.”
Campbell said he had handled two large mediums during the second week of the month, including one troll-caught fish. And then, on June 21, he got three fish off one boat, two of which he shipped to Japan.
Good exchange rate
The exchange rate of 91 Japanese yen to the US dollar in mid-June meant that a 4,000-yen-per-kilo fish would gross $19.94 per pound before expenses.
“The exchange rate is so favorable right now that it’s worth taking a risk and exporting to Japan,” Campbell said. “Even some lesser quality fish can bring more money back to the boat than selling it domestically.”
Along with long-time bluefin buyer Maguro America, headed up by Robert Fitzpatrick of Chatham, and North Atlantic Traders Ltd. of Lynn, Compass Fisheries had set up shop in Gloucester for bluefin season. This is the second year the Charlestown, RI-based dealer is working out of the Intershell International facility, marketing the big fish.
As of June 23, P.J. Mead of Compass said he had handled a fair number of fish.
“We had our first on June 7. They’ve been mostly 73"-80" fish, relatively small, early season, red meat fish, no fat,” he said.
That usually means short money, especially in the export market. But Mead said he got lucky on June 19 with two fish he shipped to Japan. One sold for 4,300 yen-per-kilo and the other for 3,000-yen-per-kilo, returning about $12.50 and $8 per pound to the boat respectively.
“For the first Boston bluefin of the season, they like to bid them up,” Mead said of the Japanese buyers. “Hopefully, the fish will stick around, fatten up, get rounder, and be worth more.”
Bait concerns
Andy Baler of Nantucket Fish Co. in Chatham and Dennis pointed out that new and more effective restrictions on fishing nations and bluefin farming operations in the eastern Atlantic are bound to have a positive effect on the market this season.
“The supply will be less and more spread out. We’ll be in the market with Canada, but the decreased supply will create better opportunities overall,” he predicted.
However, Baler was concerned that forage fish were not as abundant as they needed to be to entice the bluefin to stick around. In addition to reports of scant signs of herring and mackerel, he said local hook boats were working 100 miles offshore and bringing in “the skinniest, no-yield codfish” he’d ever seen.
“If the bluefin can’t settle in and feed for awhile, they won’t get fat,” he said. “We don’t have (much) out there for food for them. I don’t think we’re going to see the butterballs of yesteryear. You can’t rebuild any population if there’s nothing for them to eat.”
Domestic market
In the wake of the brouhaha over a trade ban proposal during the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) meeting in March, there were fears that domestic buyers would stop purchasing bluefin. And, at least in terms of marketing early, lean fish, that scenario was playing out to some degree.
“Domestic supermarket chains won’t touch them,” Baler said. “They hurt us bad with CITES.”
Mead agreed CITES had created some seriously bad press for bluefin sales.
“For some customers, yes. There’s a big push in the market for sustainability and some people are a little shy because of all the media attention,” he said. “But we’ve got a great fresh product that can’t be beat.”
As of late June, the domestic price to the boat was running around $5-$6.50 depending on shipping expenses, according to Mead.
Always diversifying, Baler said Nantucket Fish had recently taken delivery of a cold smoker and was planning to try creating a new smoked bluefin product. While it won’t use up a lot of fish, he said he hoped it would help.
“We’re just looking for one more avenue,” Baler said. “We’re going to try to get something going.”
Tagging findings
With the start of the commercial season, bluefin tuna scientists are reminding fishermen to be on the lookout for tagged fish. For years now, teams led by Barbara Block of Stanford University and Molly Lutcavage of the Large Pelagics Research Center (LPRC) have been affixing satellite pop-up tags to bluefin and implanting archival tags into the big fish.
The data collected has revolutionized researchers’ and fishery managers’ understanding of bluefin biology and migration and spawning behaviors.
Lutcavage recently moved the LPRC from the University of New Hampshire to the University of Massachusetts/Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Institute. Based on data returned from tags, she and several colleagues recently published a paper in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences that showed large adult fish leaving the waters off Nova Scotia and dispersing to several parts of the Atlantic.
“This could indicate that there are spawning areas in addition to the Gulf of Mexico or bluefin don’t spawn every year or a combination of the two,” she said.
The data also suggest that bluefin may return to the same feeding grounds year after year and that there may be “metapopulations,” meaning distinct groups of fish that share similar behaviors.
Understanding this is important to making effective fishery management decisions, Lutcavage explained.
“Thinking in terms of east and west stocks is far too simple,” she said. “Rebuilding is not occurring as we expect possibly because our assumptions are wrong.”
Gulf of Mexico
Block, too, has been tagging large giants off Nova Scotia and Cape Hatteras, NC. She emphasized several recent tag returns that showed fish traveling across the Atlantic and then heading into the Gulf of Mexico.
“The fish entering the gulf are extremely large with a set of unique behaviors,” she said. “The tags are producing very valuable information. Every tag is important.”
Part of Block’s work includes the study of bluefin behavior in the gulf. She said her research has shown that the fish congregate in very specific locations, which tend to be cyclonic eddies adjacent to slope water.
“We can find yellowfin tuna anywhere in the gulf but the bluefin are in specific places at specific times. They tend to choose the slightly cooler cyclonic eddies,” she said.
Block also noted that tag data from a 118" bluefin showed that, before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the fish went right through the area that is now flooded with oil.
Rich Ruais, executive director of the American Bluefin Tuna Association, acknowledged that the oil contamination is terribly difficult for the fishermen and other people directly affected. There also is concern about how it may affect spawning bluefin and their eggs and larvae.
Still, he said, that’s not the message that needs to go out to the public at this point.
“We know there’s going to be damage but we don’t know how much,” Ruais said. “But, from a market perspective, what people need to hear is that gulf seafood is healthy, nutritious, and protected by the fishing closures.”
Lorelei Stevens
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