Saving Seafood

Conservation & Environment

NOAA asks for help locating stranded sea turtles

August 30, 2021 — Federal ocean managers are asking beachgoers in New England and elsewhere to keep an eye out for stranded turtles.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office said several species of sea turtle will still be in the area for a few months. Healthy sea turtles normally should not be out of the water in the region, the office said.

The office asked anyone who sees a turtle on the beach to report it. Species that could be spotted include loggerhead, leatherback, green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, the office said.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

NOAA Asks for Help Locating Stranded Sea Turtles in New England

August 30, 2021 — Federal ocean managers are asking beachgoers in New England and elsewhere to keep an eye out for stranded turtles.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office said several species of sea turtle will still be in the area for a few months. Healthy sea turtles normally should not be out of the water in the region, the office said.

The office asked anyone who sees a turtle on the beach to report it. Species that could be spotted include loggerhead, leatherback, green and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles, the office said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at NBC Boston

White shark tracking organization releases findings after tagging 3 sharks during New England research expedition

August 30, 2021 — OCEARCH has released the findings of its 41st Ocean Research Expedition in New England where they were successfully able to sample, tag, and release three white sharks. The organization says the data collected from these sharks will support 23 science projects, helping “form a complete picture of the ecology, behavior and health of the white shark in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.”

Expedition New England departed from New Bedford on Aug. 1 and spent the first week fishing in federal waters outside of Cape Cod and Nantucket before heading to the Isle of Shoals off of New Hampshire, and ending in Gloucester on Aug. 20.

OCEARCH’s Northwest Atlantic White Shark Study is the most comprehensive research study that has ever been done on a white shark population and the data collected from the three sharks tagged and sampled on Expedition New England will support 23 different research projects including full health assessments, bacterial and microbiome studies and microplastic toxin exposure. In addition, the three tags added to each of these sharks will allow scientists to track their long-term movements as they grow into young adults.

Read the full story at WHDH

Right Whale Use of Southern New England Wind Energy Areas Increasing

August 27, 2021 — Southern New England habitat is important to the North Atlantic right whale. With offshore wind energy development planned in the region, working with stakeholders to minimize potential impacts on right whales and other protected species is crucial.

Right whales are increasing their use of southern New England waters, including regions slated for offshore wind energy development, according to aerial survey data collected during the last decade. Offshore wind energy installations are proposed in waters off the south coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Understanding and minimizing the potential impacts from construction noise, increased vessel traffic, and habitat alteration will be crucial to protecting and conserving this endangered species. This research supports the Administration’s goal of deploying offshore wind while protecting biodiversity and promoting ocean co-use.

The study was published July 29 in Endangered Species Research. Marine mammal researchers from NOAA Fisheries and colleagues at the New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies examined aerial survey data collected between 2011–2015 and 2017–2019. The data was collected in offshore waters including the Massachusetts and Rhode Island Wind Energy Area. The data from these two time periods were used to quantify right whale distribution, residency, demographics, and movements in the region.

“We found that right whale use of the region increased during the last decade, and since 2017 whales have been sighted there nearly every month, with large aggregations occurring during the winter and spring,” said Tim Cole, lead of the whale aerial survey team at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study.

Read the full story at Eco Magazine

Feds eye new rules to protect right whales from fishing gear

August 26, 2021 — Federal ocean regulators are considering new rules to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear.

The whales number only about 360 and are vulnerable to entanglement in the gear. Most of the government’s efforts to protect them has focused on regulating gear used to harvest lobsters and Jonah crabs.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said it is working on a new phase of rules that will focus on other fisheries, including those that use gillnets and those that use traps and pots. Lobster and crab gear in the primary threat to the whales, but they are also vulnerable to gear used to harvest fish, conch and other valuable species, said Allison Ferreira, a spokeswoman for the agency.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

Kui ‘ia ka lei moku e Kanaloa: The Ocean Unites Humanity to Clean Up Marine Debris

August 26, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Scientists and divers from NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center are teaming up with divers from the Papahānaumokuākea Marine Debris Project. They are on a 30-day mission to remove marine debris from the islands and atolls within the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. The team departed Honolulu on the M/V Imua on August 24, 2021. We expect the ship to return with more than 110,000 pounds of derelict fishing gear and other marine debris at the end of September. The team will focus on removing derelict fishing nets (ghost nets) and other entanglement hazards, which threaten green sea turtles and Hawaiian monk seals. They will be removed from coral reef environments shallower than 30 feet using breath-hold (free-dive) techniques.

Read the full release here

Fishers Struggle as Fish Head for the Poles

August 26, 2021 — As climate change raises the ocean’s temperature, some fish species are moving poleward to cooler waters. In the United States, as elsewhere, commercial fishers are trying to adapt. But as a new study of trawler communities along the US east coast documents, fishers’ efforts to adjust are being constrained by a regulatory environment that isn’t adapting with them.

The research, led by Eva Papaioannou, a marine ecologist with the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel in Germany, looked at trawl fishing communities in 10 ports from North Carolina to Maine, where rising water temperatures have been especially pronounced.

Papaioannou and her colleagues dug into government records and vessel trip reports, examining decades of data about vessel activity patterns, distributions of fish stocks, and fish landings. They compared two periods, 1996 to 2000 and 2011 to 2015, and confirmed that the fish these communities are primarily targeting, fluke and hake, had shifted northward by up to 200 kilometers.

The scientists also interviewed members of these communities to find out how they were responding to their changing fishing grounds. “Fishers are on the water every day, so they see these changes, and they’re incredibly adept at dealing with variability,” says Becca Selden, a biologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and a study co-lead.

The team found that the majority of fishers remained in their traditional grounds, but switched to targeting different, more abundant species. “Most prior work assumed that there wouldn’t actually be species switching,” says Selden. “But this was one of the dominant strategies that we observed.” As the scientists wrote in their study, this desire for “spatial stability” of fishing grounds was both the preferred strategy among all fisher communities surveyed, but also the most sustainable practice for local fish stocks.

Read the full story at Hakai Magazine

Declining Salmon Population Threatens Fishing Tourism in Pacific Northwest

August 24, 2021 — Beneath the vacancy sign at the Salmon River Motel, a black and white placard reads “Salmon Lives Matter, Give a Dam.” For years the motel has been a profitable business in this canyon town of 400 three hours north of Boise, with a mile-long Main Street that swells each summer with visiting sport fishermen.

Now the motel and other businesses here are at risk, as the fish that drive the local economy shrink in both number and size.

This year, regional fish and wildlife agencies recorded one of the smallest counts of adult spring Chinook salmon in a generation in the Snake and Columbia river basin. Last year was worse. A wide body of research connects their decline to rising temperatures and climate change, which have compounded the damage done to fish populations by hydroelectric dams.

The impact of this decline ripples along this species’ entire migratory route, from the tourist economies and tribal communities of the inland Northwest to the $2 billion commercial fishing industry in ocean waters as far as Alaska, where state fisheries report total harvest weight has dropped by half since the 1960s.

Across the inland Pacific Northwest, dwindling salmon runs have emptied motel rooms, tackle shops and restaurants. Business in Riggins this summer beat expectations as pandemic fears eased, but the continuing decline of the sought-after Chinook—the largest of all Pacific salmon—threatens to devastate economies and tribes throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

Read the full story at the Wall Street Journal

ISSF: Eastern Pacific Ocean tuna fisheries can’t wait for COVID to end before action is taken

August 23, 2021 — Eastern Pacific Ocean fisheries managers must ensure that effective management measures are promptly put in place for bigeye, yellowfin, and skipjack tuna stocks when the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) meets later this month, insists the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF).

In 2020, the IATTC conducted new assessments of bigeye and yellowfin tuna, which found that while yellowfin remains healthy, there was a 53 percent probability that bigeye is overfished and a 50 percent probability that overfishing was occurring.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

See a Stranded or Entangled Turtle? Call the NOAA Hotline!

August 20, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Report stranded or entangled sea turtles so that network responders can help

Although summer is coming to an end, leatherback, loggerhead, green, and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are still in our area for another few months.

Beached Turtles

Report any sea turtles you see on the beach. In most of the states in our region, healthy sea turtles should not be out of the water.

Report Distressed Turtles in the Water

When you are boating, report any distressed, entangled, or dead sea turtles in the water. Live turtles in need of medical assistance or wrapped up in rope or other debris need the help of the dedicated, trained responders in our stranding and disentanglement network. Your call will start a potentially life-saving response. Network members have training and experience to assess turtle health, provide medical care if necessary, and safely disentangle turtles. Turtles that are released with line still wrapped around their bodies may later die due to this entanglement. Well-meaning attempts to disentangle turtles without training and experience can put both the people and the turtle at risk.

Make the Call!

  • Call our stranding and entanglement hotline: 866-755-6622 (NOAA Hotline).
  • If out of cell phone range, call the Coast Guard on Channel 16.

Stand By Your Turtle!

After you report a turtle in distress, we need you to keep the animal in sight from a safe distance and wait for responders to arrive. Like any first responders, we need time to get on scene, so please keep an eye on the animal from a safe distance; responders will have a much easier time relocating the turtle with you at its side. Sea turtles are very strong, and a stressed animal can act unpredictably, so give them space.

The Sea Turtle Stranding and Disentanglement Network team includes animal care specialists, researchers, and veterinarians with years of experience disentangling and treating injuries to sea turtles. They will evaluate the animal and determine the best course of action.

Our network of dedicated, trained responders have years of experience in responding to sea turtles in distress. They need your help to stand by turtles without taking action. Just like waiting for an ambulance, please wait for the experienced responders to arrive to assess the turtle’s health and provide the care it needs. Standing by and guiding the responder to the turtle’s location are the two best things you can do to help the animal.

Find out more: Sea Turtle Disentanglement Network

Read the full release here