One of the fundamental concepts of marine ecology and modern fisheries management is that fish and other ocean wildlife need various types of habitat to feed, grow, and reproduce. Healthy ocean habitat is crucial to the well-being of ocean ecosystems and also provides spawning grounds for commercially important groundfish. New England’s ocean waters are home to several special places that deserve permanent protection.

Cashes Ledge, an underwater mountain range 80 miles off the coast of Maine, supports the largest and deepest kelp forest off the Northeastern United States and is home to an enormous diversity of ocean wildlife – from whales, Atlantic wolffish, and blue sharks, to fields of anemones and sponges. This kelp forest provides an important source of food and habitat for a vast array of ocean wildlife. Other places such as Jeffreys Ledge and Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary provide rich habitat for highly depleted cod and haddock, sea turtles, and four species of whales.

Most of these three areas in the Gulf of Maine currently benefit from fishing regulations which prohibit harmful bottom trawling, but these protections are temporary. Some of the largest commercial fishing trawlers in the region are pushing for changes in regulations to allow bottom trawling in Cashes Ledge, Jeffreys Ledge and the only protected portion of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary.

After the last cod crisis in the 1990s the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), after a court decree spurred by a CLF legal action, designated Cashes Ledge and an area known as the “Western Gulf of Maine” which holds Jeffreys Ledge and 22% of Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, as “mortality closures.” The action restricted destructive trawling, but it allowed a wide array of other commercial fishing gear such as bottom gillnets, purse seines, hook and line and more the questionable practice of “mid-water trawls,” which despite their name, often catch groundfish. Recreational fishing and charter boats were not restricted.

This single protective measure restricting commercial bottom trawling helped to restore seriously depleted populations in these areas. Moreover, protecting areas like Cashes Ledge created the “spillover effect” where larger populations of fish migrate out of the boundaries of the protected area. This is why commercial fishing vessels often “fish the borders” of protected areas.

After a new stock assessment released one year ago showed that populations of cod, haddock and other groundfish were at all time lows, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under pressure from some of the largest trawlers in the New England fleet started to hint that allowing bottom trawling in previously protected habitat areas – places like Cashes Ledge – might help to increase falling harvest amounts. At a time of the lowest recorded groundfish populations in history, how does it make sense to increase trawling in the best, remaining habitat areas?

This is why we must urge NOAA to keep our habitat protections in place.

Cashes Ledge is important not only to fish and ocean wildlife but also to scientists hoping to learn about the health and function of New England’s oceans. Many scientists believe that Cashes Ledge represents the best remaining example of an undisturbed Gulf of Maine ecosystem and have used Cashes Ledge as an underwater laboratory to which they have compared more degraded habitat in the Gulf of Maine.

The basic fact is that opening scarce protected habitat in the Gulf of Maine to bottom trawling at a time of historically low groundfish populations is among the worst ideas for recovering fish populations and the industry which depend upon them. But fisheries politics in New England remain. On Dec. 20^th the NEFMC may take action through a backdoor exemption process to allow bottom trawling in a large portion of Cashes Ledge and other areas. NOAA needs to keep current protections in place. CLF is committed to securing permanent protection to ensure the long-term health of this important and vulnerable ecosystem. Click here to urge NOAA to protect New England ocean habitat and help ensure a healthy future for New England’s ocean.

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  Monkfish with apple butter and shaved vegetables prepared by Chef Matt Jennings of Farmstead & La Laiterie - get his recipe on TalkingFish.org! (Photo credit: Matt Jennings)

  “Ask an Expert: Chef Matt Jennings never compromises on serving fresh and local seafood” - TalkingFish.org interviews Matt Jennings, Executive Chef, Co-owner and Master Cheesemonger of Farmstead & La Laiterie, who buys locally-caught whole fish from dependable sources he knows personally and trusts wholeheartedly – and he has a great recipe for monkfish as well!

• “Talking Eeelgrass” – When we talk about fish, it’s good to remember that they not only come from somewhere but that that somewhere makes the fish. Habitat is essential; without it even many migratory fish won’t have a place to call home. Many North Atlantic fish spend an important part of their life cycles in coastal eelgrass habitat, and eelgrass is declining.
• “Fish Talk in the News – Friday, February 3″ – A weekly roundup of stories we think will interest readers. This week: a new system to estimate recreational catch, Massachusetts’s new Commercial Fisheries Revolving Loan Fund and its efforts to brand Massachusetts seafood, raising tilapia in garbage bins in the Bronx, the latest in CLF’s work to protect estuaries and fish habitat, and updates on Gulf of Maine cod.

Robin Just is a volunteer for CLF with an educational and professional background in biology and water quality issues. This blog was originally published on TalkingFish.org.

When we talk about fish, it’s good to remember that they not only come from somewhere but that the somewhere makes the fish. Habitat is essential; without it even many migratory fish won’t have a place to call home.

An eelgrass bed beneath the waters of New Hampshire's Great Bay (Photo credit: Ben Kimball, courtesy of NH Division of Forests and Lands).

Many North Atlantic fish spend an important part of their life cycles in coastal eelgrass habitat, and eelgrass is declining. Eelgrass is a native submerged aquatic plant found in shallow waters from Nova Scotia to North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In the northern areas this hearty plant spends part of each year under sea ice. It is not a true grass, but a flowering plant that evolved from terrestrial flora. With thin, streamlined leaves, and an extensive root system, it is uniquely adapted to thrive in ocean tides and swell. What it isn’t adapted to deal with is nutrient pollution, dredging, and other anthropogenic stressors that have our productive eelgrass meadow areas on the decline.

Why does this matter to fish? Eelgrass is one of the most valuable habitats in the northeast. For example, in the early 1930s a “wasting disease” decimated 90% of the Atlantic eelgrass communities. This decline took a heavy toll on, among other things, bay scallops. Bay scallops are a commercially important shellfish that range from Cape Cod to Florida, and are very dependent on seagrass meadows. Not only do they attach to living eelgrass leaves after their larval stage, but they consume decaying leaves for a significant portion of their diet. Bay scallops declined dramatically throughout their range, coincident with the wasting disease, and populations didn’t begin to recover until the mid-1940s. Some populations, such as those in the Chesapeake Bay, have never come back.  Lobsters, clams, and other invertebrates also declined.

Loss of eelgrass habitat has an effect on other commercial fishery species as well. Some of these animals, such as cod, winter flounder, and lobster use eelgrass meadows as a refuge in their early life stages. The eelgrass provides places to stay hidden, feeding opportunities, and shelter from wave energy. Some species, such as striped bass, bluefish, tautog, and fluke will use eelgrass habitat as adults, as a place to hunt and forage.

A tautog in an eelgrass bed (Photo credit: MA Divison of Marine Fisheries).

In addition to providing a place to eat and live, eelgrass is part of the foundation of our marine food web. Eelgrass is a primary producer – turning aquatic carbon dioxide into food and energy through photosynthesis; it is then eaten by many animals that are then consumed by our commercially important species. In short: eelgrass matters a lot to New England fishery resources, and its decline is not good news.

The impact of the loss of eelgrass on these fisheries is hard to tease out from the many drivers of the decline in fish populations, including fishing pressure, habitat destruction, nutrient pollution, climate change, and other stressors. There has been almost no research done to numerically link the decline in eelgrass with population-level changes in commercial fisheries species. However, an 11-year study in Buzzards and Waquoit Bays found that loss of eelgrass was accompanied by significant declines in fish biomass, species richness, and other measures of community integrity. Worryingly, a recent investigation of New Hampshire eelgrass populations found they are declining by about 9% a year, and eelgrass mapping efforts in Massachusetts show significant declines as well. This is an issue the Conservation Law Foundation’s new Great Bay-Piscatqua Waterkeeper will be addressing.

While the link has yet to be fully characterized between commercial fish populations and healthy eelgrass, it is vital that recovering species have functioning near-shore ecosystems to support their reproduction and growth.

Why is eelgrass declining? The decline is worldwide. Our local populations are suffering from a combination of coastal development and nutrient pollution, dredging activities, over-grazing by Canada geese, and climate change. Here’s a brief description of each of those stressors:

• Eelgrass is extremely sensitive to light levels. Urban build-up and construction activities in our coastal areas put sediment in the water, which decreases water clarity, and that takes a toll on eelgrass populations . Nutrient pollution from wastewater, stormwater, and other human activities can promote blooms of algae that block light to these photosensitive plants and prevent them from growing.
•  Dredging activities uproot eelgrass and can completely decimate an eelgrass meadow. It can take ten years or more for eelgrass to recover from this kind of stress.
• Grazing pressure from Canada geese is on the rise as the warmer winters encourage more of them to stay local instead of heading south. More geese means competition for food, and the geese increasingly turn to eelgrass to get them through the winters.
• Climate change: as ocean temperatures rise, native plants feel the heat. There is evidence that northern populations of eelgrass will not be able to adapt to warmer waters as easily as the southern populations might.

Efforts to restore eelgrass are underway around New England, but it’s not a simple process. Areas that once supported thriving eelgrass meadows can be re-planted, but unless the factors involved in eelgrass decline are addressed, the efforts will probably fail. For example, if construction activities degrade nearby water quality, leading to eelgrass loss, and then the water quality recovers, restoration is possible. But if the water is still dirty, it’s not going to help, and the habitat is lost.

Waiting until we know exactly how eelgrass ecosystems and commercial fish populations are linked before we address eelgrass decline is a dangerous path to follow. Since we know for sure that many of our economically important species utilize this habitat, it makes sense to try and protect it. We need good science about the utilization of eelgrass habitat, and we need effective restoration efforts that address water quality and other physical stressors. This will give our recovering fish populations every opportunity to grow and thrive.

Stellwagen Bank, outlined in red, is located only 25 nautical miles from Boston and three nautical miles from Gloucester and Provincetown.

Located at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay, only 25 nautical miles from Boston and three nautical miles from Gloucester and Provincetown, lies Stellwagen Bank, an underwater plateau that is home to a wide variety of marine life and is one of New England’s special ocean places. Stellwagen has been known for its highly productive fishing grounds since the early 1600s, and it is one of the few remaining hotspots of the Atlantic wolffish, a bottom-dwelling fish with a distinctive mouth full of sharp and wayward teeth that is facing extinction in the United States. However, because of its heavily-trafficked location and desirable biological abundance, Stellwagen has been faced with a multitude of human-induced pressures, leaving its ecosystems at risk. Species such as the wolffish, along with commercial species such as cod, are threatened when modern fishing gear is dragged along the bottom of the ocean, leveling the seafloor and destroying habitat features like biogenic depressions, burrows, nooks or small caves that allow fish to hide to catch prey, avoid predators, and protect their eggs.

In 1992 Stellwagen Bank was designated as a National Marine Sanctuary, which  meant that some harmful activities (including sand and gravel mining, drilling for oil and natural gas, and discharging pollutants) were prohibited – but all fishing activities were allowed to continue. In 1998, however, an amendment to the groundfish fishery management plan established a closed area in the Gulf of Maine (the Western Gulf of Maine Closure, or WGOMC) that overlaps Stellwagen and prohibits the use of particularly destructive bottom-tending fishing gear within its boundaries. (Recreational fishing and less-destructive commercial fishing are still allowed within the closure.) The idea behind this closure is that if gear that destroys the sea bottom is kept out, ocean wildlife and features on the seafloor will have the chance to rebuild and a rebuilt thriving benthic habitat will mean healthier fish stocks.

A pair of Atlantic wolffish

If the WGOMC has this desired effect, it will be important not only for the marine life within its boundaries, but also as an indication that this strategy should be replicated in other areas in need of protecting and rebuilding ocean communities and associated managed species. A recent NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries report compares protected areas within the WGOMC with areas of initially similar habitat type outside the WGOMC for the period 1998-2005 to see if the closure was indeed having a positive effect. What do the results say? Overall, the study’s findings indicate that the fish and wildlife inside the WGOMC closure area are recovering from impacts of destructive fishing gear. However, the report cautions that the seafloor community is changing over time and may not attain a stable state (in theories of ecology, ecosystems change over time until they reach a final, stable phase). Still, the WGOMC is recognized as an important area for conserving biodiversity, and the report concludes that the use of closures remains a valuable tool for maintaining ocean habitat. While this certainly indicates that further study of the WGOMC is needed and that recovery is not complete, it also supports the case for protecting vulnerable underwater habitats in order to allow our healthy ocean ecosystems to grow and thrive.