Saving Seafood

Conservation & Environment

Study finds lobster population healthy off Maine, poor in southern New England

October 26, 2020 — The American lobster population is in decent shape off of Maine and Canada, but continues to decline in southern New England, according to an assessment by an interstate regulatory group.

The stock assessment released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission’s American Lobster Board lines up with previous analyses of the lobster fishery. Lobster fishermen pulled in record catches of the crustaceans off Maine in the last decade, but the catch collapsed off more southern states such as Connecticut.

Environmental changes have made the more southern waters less hospitable for lobsters, scientists have said. Warming temperatures off southern New England have made it difficult for them to grow and reproduce.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Portland Press Herald

Path to extinction continues for North Atlantic right whales

October 26, 2020 — Scientists say to avoid species extinction and rebuild their population, fewer than one North Atlantic right whale per year can be lost to human-caused mortality or serious injury. Entanglement in fishing lines or being struck by a vessel are the two main causes of human-induced death in the world’s most endangered great whale species.

After years of progress and cooperation with the shipping industry, vessel strikes again appear to be on the rise, with vessels ignoring speed restrictions imposed where right whales have been spotted. The number of whale entanglements also are headed in the wrong direction, with four confirmed entanglements in U.S. waters this year, including three recent sightings in New Jersey and Massachusetts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has said that a 60-80% drop in the number of whale mortalities is needed, but combined with stalled progress on a plan to reduce fishing impacts, the future for this whale again appears bleak.

If trends continue, the North Atlantic right whale could be the first great whale in modern history to go extinct, and those in the animal rights and conservation communities say the time to act is now.

“We’ve done the research, we have the evidence. The time is now to implement it,” said Amy Knowlton, a senior scientist at the New England Aquarium. Her specialty is assessing human impacts on whales and ways to address those threats. But there is frustration over a process led by NOAA that seems to only respond to litigation.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Two right whales found entangled in gear in past two weeks

October 23, 2020 — In just the past two weeks, two separate North Atlantic right whales have been discovered tangled in fishing gear off the U.S. East Coast.

The whales, which are one of the most endangered species on the planet – with only 400 estimated to be left – were spotted on 11 October and 19 October. Both whales were badly entangled when spotted, to the point that without intervention, death is likely, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New report reveals insights into the condition of natural and cultural resources of Papahānaumokuākea

October 22, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA:

The State of the Monument Report

NOAA has published a peer-reviewed State of the Monument report that was jointly produced by the co-trustees of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The report includes information on the status and trends of living resources, habitats, ocean conditions, maritime and cultural archaeological resources, and the human activities and natural events that affect them.

The data used in the report were collected from research over the last 10 years. Assessments of status and trends involved scientists and researchers from the monument’s management agencies and partners, and were based on the most recent data available as well as expert opinion.

An unrivalled reef ecosystem

Located northwest of the main Hawaiian islands, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument is virtually unpopulated. Because of its isolation, scale, and high degree of protection, the monument provides an unrivalled example of reef ecosystems still dominated by top predators such as sharks. This is not seen in most other island environments due to human activity.

Papahānaumokuākea is of great importance to Native Hawaiians, and has spiritual significance in Hawaiian cosmology. Cultural sites found on the islands of Nihoa and Mokumanamana are on both National and State Registers for Historic Places. Mokumanamana has one of the highest densities of sacred sites in the Hawaiian Archipelago.

The monument is also home to a variety of post-Western-contact historic resources, such as those associated with maritime heritage, the Battle of Midway, and 19th century commercial whaling.

What the report says

Impacts from local human uses have been relatively few, and the monument’s reefs and other marine resources are considered to be in nearly pristine condition. However, some marine habitat has been impacted by derelict fishing gear, large storms, aggressive nuisance algae, and coral bleaching. Most marine areas of the monument have not been significantly affected and are in relatively good to fair condition.

Read the full release here

Study: Most Of The Plastic Found In Seabirds’ Stomachs Was Recycleable

October 22, 2020 — The great shearwater is a seabird commonly seen off the New England coast. It’s not particularly striking — to the untrained eye, it looks like a brown seagull with long wings. It eats by diving underwater, grabbing prey and then returning to the surface to swallow it down. The birds aren’t rare or endangered, but they can live for decades, and this makes them especially interesting to scientists who study long-term environmental pollutants.

“Because they’re long-lived and are eating at similar food web levels as where a human might eat, they’re great indicators of the environment, and they really tell us a lot about the health of this Atlantic system,” says Anna Robuck, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

Humans dump an estimated 4.8 to 12.7 million metric tons of plastic into the ocean each year, and some of it gets eaten by fish, marine mammals and seabirds like great shearwaters. Though scientists have done a bunch of studies looking a how much plastic animals eat, very few have examined what type of plastic they eat. And knowing where the plastic came from could help us keep it out of the ocean.

Read the full story at WBUR

Marine heat wave ‘blobs’ are becoming more severe as oceans warm

October 20, 2020 — Off the coast of California this August a sea monster of record size was spotted: a patch of warm water that grew to the size of Canada, 9.8 million square kilometers simmering up to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than usual. “It’s off the chart,” says Andrew Leising, a fisheries oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is mapping the marine heatwave on his website, nicknamed the Blobtracker. By Leising’s reckoning, in September, the unglamorously-named “NEP20b” became the biggest-yet-spotted blob of warm water there since satellite records began in the early 1980s.

Researchers are now scrambling to chart or anticipate the impacts of the NEP20b blob on marine life, tracking how the step change in temperature throws ecosystems out of whack.

The phenomenon of a patch of abnormally warm water off the west coast of North America gained notoriety in 2014, when the first such “Blob” was spotted and given that name, after the horror movie creature that devoured everything in its path. That first Blob lasted years, from 2013 to 2016. It has been blamed for slicing some forage fish populations in half; starving seabirds; triggering a collapse in cod; shifting tuna as far north as Alaska; pushing whales into the path of crab fishing lines and ships; and allowing exotics, including glowing tropical sea pickles, to arrive in northern waters.

In 2019, a second blob emerged. With record-warm waters appearing again this year, some scientists believe the 2019 event, known as Blob 2.0, may have just never gone away. If NEP20b is now big enough and hot enough, Leising says, it may do what the 2013-2016 version did, creating its own microclimate that perpetuates the heat, forcing the warm water to stick around for years yet to come.

Read the full story at PBS

‘No other choice’: Groups push to protect vast swaths of Antarctic seas

October 20, 2020 — As a child, Rodolfo Werner used to dream about Antarctica — that vast, white continent with no fixed human population, and surrounded by icy seas teeming with krill, whales and penguins. In 2006, his dream became a reality when he started working in Antarctic marine conservation and traveled to the continent as a guide. Since then, he’s visited Antarctica more than 20 times, and the place never ceases to amaze him, he said.

“Antarctica catches you when you’re there,” Werner, now a senior adviser at Pew Charitable Trusts and the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), told Mongabay. “It changes your way of seeing nature because … [it] is so huge and [has] so much wildlife, and it really touches your soul. Every person that goes to Antarctica, when they come back, they are different.”

While Antarctica’s land mass is currently protected through the Antarctic Treaty (although this expires in 2048), vast swaths of its marine region are open to industrial fishing for species such as Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) and Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides). Conservationists say these fishing activities are endangering the Southern Ocean’s delicate marine ecosystem that hosts more than 15,000 species, and a region that plays a vital role in regulating the world’s climate.

A coalition of conservation groups, including Pew, ASOC, SeaLegacy, Antarctica2020, Ocean Unite, and Only One, are working together to advocate for the formation of three marine protected areas (MPAs) in East Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsula, and the Weddell Sea. Together, these areas would protect about 4 million square kilometers (1.5 million square miles), encompassing 1% of the world’s ocean. That’s two and a half times the size of Alaska, and nearly three times the size of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument in Hawaiʻi, which is currently one of the world’s largest marine sanctuaries.

Read the full story at Mongabay

Heat waves on Cape Cod may be tied to slowing ocean current

October 19, 2020 — We really baked this summer, with the Northeast and the East Coast experiencing intense heat waves.

In August alone, the Blue Hill Observatory in Milton recorded six days with temperatures over 90 degrees, four more than the average for the month. July had five days with temperatures over 90, two more than the monthly average.

While we often seek relief in the ocean, marine heat waves also occur, and those can adversely affect the creatures and plants that live there and have no refuge except deeper, colder water, if they can find it. Marine heat waves can be deadly: Researchers say “The Blob,” a large mass of warm water that extended down nearly 700 feet along 1,800 miles of North Pacific coastline, may have killed off over 62,000 common murre birds.

While most might expect that air temperatures may be driving those higher water temperatures, oceanic currents play a major role.

The Atlantic Ocean right off our doorstep is one of the fastest-warming ocean bodies on the planet, and some researchers say that may be due to a slowdown of what is known as the Atlantic conveyor belt, a massive offshore current that transports cold water from the Arctic south to the equator and returns warm water to the north and to Europe.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Lobstermen: Documents Reveal ‘Catastrophic Impact’ Right Whale Protections Could Have On Industry

October 19, 2020 — Newly released documents by Maine’s Department of Resources are providing a glimpse of what federal action to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales could look like — including the closure of extensive areas of offshore ocean to lobstering.

In an August letter to the head of the agency that reviews proposed federal regulations, DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher asked for a meeting to go over options for reducing the risk of right whales becoming dangerously entangled in lobster trap gear and rope.

That was after conversations with the federal Northeast Fisheries Science Center that brought to light a proposal that could put big swaths of ocean off-limits to lobstering — in federal waters known as Lobster Conservation Management Areas, or LCMAs.

LCMA 1, in particular, is heavily fished by Maine lobster boats.

“The concern was those areas in Area 3 could come across to Area 1 if, in fact, we don’t meet our risk reduction target,” Keliher says.

Read the full story at Maine Public

‘Like Christmas in October.’ Deep-sea corals get new protections in the Gulf of Mexico

October 19, 2020 — The federal government has approved new protections for 500 square miles of deep-sea coral habitat in the Gulf of Mexico.

The protected areas are scattered across 13 reef and canyon sites from Texas to the Florida Keys that support an abundance of sea life, including snapper, grouper and other fish favored by commercial and recreational fishers.

The rules, approved Thursday (Oct. 15) by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, prohibit fishing with bottom tending nets and other gear, which can rip apart corals that have lived for hundreds of years.

The environmental group Oceana has pushed for the protections for some 20 years.

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” said Gib Brogan, an Oceana campaign manager. “It’s like Christmas in October.”

Deep-sea corals, like their shallow and warm-water cousins, are actually colonies of small animals that build a common skeleton. But unlike tropical reef corals, deep-sea varieties live in cold, dark depths of up to 10,000 feet. Deep-sea corals form into tree, feather and fan shapes that host a variety of other species, including shrimp, crab and fish.

Read the full story at NOLA.com