Saving Seafood

U.S. refuses calls for immediate protection of North Atlantic right whales

January 26, 2023 — The U.S. government has denied two petitions to immediately protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales during the species’ calving season, raising concerns that this population of whales will continue to decline without intervention. There are currently about 340 of these whales left, making them one of the most threatened cetaceans in the world.

The two petitions — one filed by a consortium of NGOs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), and the other by the NGO Oceana — asked the U.S. government to provide emergency protection for North Atlantic whales (Eubalaena glacialis). They called for three measures aimed to reduce vessel collision, a leading cause of death for these animals. The proposed rules included establishing speed limits for ships in designated coastal zones between North Carolina and Florida during the calving season; requiring speed reductions outside of these zones when a single whale or a mother-and-calf pair is spotted; and making such rules applicable for vessels 35 feet (about 11 meters) in length and longer.

There are already some seasonal speed zones on the southeast U.S. coast, but experts say they’re not big enough to encompass the species’ entire range, especially as climate change alters the whales’ movements. Additionally, vessels don’t need to slow down outside these zones unless in the presence of three individual whales, and the current rules only apply to vessels larger than 65 feet, or about 20 meters. However, as experts point out, smaller vessels have been responsible for right whale deaths, as seen in a collision between a 54-foot (16.5-m) sportfishing yacht and a calf and mother off St. Augustine, Florida, in February 2021. The calf’s dead body washed onto the beach the next day, and the mother, known to researchers as Infinity, hasn’t been seen again.

Read the full article at Mongabay

Whale deaths in NC and along the East Coast have officials searching for answers

January 25, 2023 — On Jan. 7, a critically endangered North Atlantic right whale calf was found dead, wedged under a pier in Morehead City. In the previous month, three humpback whales washed up on beaches between Beaufort and the northern Outer Banks.

The four North Carolina deaths are part of at least 14 whales that have washed up on East Coast beaches since Dec. 1.

Federal officials, scientists and conservation groups have said there could be multiple factors contributing to the rise in whale strandings, including an increase in the population of the Western North Atlantic humpback whales.

But one idea that’s gained traction online and among some coastal residents and politicians is that huge offshore wind farms planned off many East Coast states, including North Carolina, could be harming the marine mammals. After nine whale deaths off their state in less than two months, several New Jersey GOP lawmakers have openly questioned if wind farms planned for the Garden State’s near-coastal waters are impacting the animals, with Fox News host Tucker Carlson calling the projects “the DDT of our times.”

Read the full article at Citizen Times

CONSTANCE GEE: ‘Strategy’ to protect right whales from offshore wind development is recipe for extinction

January 25, 2023 — The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published a draft of their strategy to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW) from the hazards of offshore wind development this past fall.

The report is a heartbreaking portrayal of the plight of the 336 remaining right whales. Approximately 230 animals have died over the past decade. Autopsies and photo documentation conclude that fishing gear entanglement and vessel strikes have caused the deaths. “Stressors” of industrialized ocean noise and dwindling food sources have contributed to reduced health and compromised body condition in 42% of the remaining population.

“Human-caused mortality is so high,” BOEM scientists state, “that no adult NARW has been confirmed to have died from natural causes in several decades; for a species that might live a century, most animals have a low probability of surviving past 40.”

Read the full article at The New Bedford Light

14 whale deaths along US East Coast remain a mystery

January 24, 2023 — Local officials and environmentalists are trying to find out what is behind the mysterious death of 14 whales along the US east coast since 1 December.

Some are blaming the deaths on the development of an offshore wind farm in the area.

Officials, however, say they have found no evidence to suggest wind farms are to blame.

Since 2016, they have been tracking the “unusual mortality” of humpback whales along the eastern shores.

Over the past six years, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tallied 178 dead humpback whales from Florida to Maine.

NOAA performed necropsies on about half the whales and found that of those, 40% of the deaths were caused by human interaction, either being caught in fishing gear or struck by vessels.

Sperm whales, an endangered species, have also been found dead along the eastern coasts.

The most recent death of a humpback whale, which washed ashore in Maryland on 16 January, prompted a press conference by NOAA officials and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), as it came amid mounting concerns a local wind farm development was to blame.

Read the full article at BBC News

Right whales still declining despite protections

January 23, 2023 — In its latest five-year review, the National Marine Fisheries Service says existing efforts to protect North Atlantic right whales have proven inadequate and that the population continues to decline.

“The North Atlantic right whale faces continued threat of human caused mortality due to lethal interactions with commercial fisheries and vessel traffic,” concludes the review, released December 27, 2022. “There is also uncertainty regarding the effect of long-term sublethal entanglements, emerging environmental stressors including climate change, and the compounding effects of multiple continuous stressors that may be limiting North Atlantic right whale calving and recovery.”

Right whale protections have had a significant impact on the Maine lobster industry because of the danger that gear entanglement poses for the highly mobile mammals. While the review says that “mortalities and serious injuries of North Atlantic right whales in U.S. gear and first seen in U.S. waters” continue to contribute to the species’ decline and inability to recover, Maine lobstermen have argued that there have been no confirmed entanglements in Maine gear since 2004.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

Whales navigate a perilous route off the NJ Shore

January 23, 2023 — At any given time, 50 or more vessels, ranging from massive cargo ships to small fishing boats, are motoring off New Jersey’s 127-mile coast from New York to Delaware.

The smaller vessels often travel at just a few knots per hour, while larger ones run to 20 knots (23 mph) or more.

Little wonder whales sometimes crash into one of them, receiving what amounts to giant-sized headaches or fatal blows.

Two whales that died in January and were stranded in Atlantic City and Brigantine showed evidence of blunt force trauma associated with vessel collisions. Opponents of  have suggested survey vessels are to blame, but officials suggest otherwise.

Walt Nadolny, a professor emeritus at SUNY Maritime College in New York, has been teaching students for two decades how to avoid whale strikes before they head to sea as merchant mariners.

“The odds are ridiculously low” that the whales struck a slow-going survey vessel, said Nadolny, who has no affiliation with an offshore wind company.

Orsted, a global offshore wind company that started in Denmark, is set to build New Jersey’s first wind farm but has not started construction. In January, it has had one vessel at a time on the water totaling little more than seven days.

Nadonly surmises that it’s highly unlikely an offshore wind surveying vessel, which normally would travel at 8 to 10 knots (9-11 mph), could cause a fatal blow to a whale. Rather, he said, fatal collisions typically occur with bigger ships traveling at least 18 knots (21 mph) or more. Usually only large commercial ships travel that fast.

For example, on Friday morning the Maersk Pittsburgh container ship with a gross tonnage of 74,642 was traveling off the coast of Long Beach Island from New York City to Charleston at almost 21 knots (24 mph), according to tracking provided on marinetraffic.com. Multiple other container ships were traveling at similar speeds.

Many of those fast ships, Nadolny noted, often come from, or are headed to, the busy ports of New York/New Jersey or the Delaware Bay toward Philadelphia. The ships are required to reduce speed only as they near the ports, but they often follow voluntary speed restrictions farther out.

Read the full article at phys.org

NEW JERSEY: A Battle Over Wind and Whales Is Brewing in New Jersey

January 20, 2023 — Several New Jersey environmental groups are defending offshore wind development after seven dead humpback and sperm whales washed up along New York and New Jersey coasts in the past month.

Last week, environmental group Clean Ocean Action called for a pause in ocean-floor preparation work for future wind projects. The group and other supporters called on President Joe Biden to investigate the recent whale deaths recorded in New Jersey and New York. “The federal government should have been here with busloads of people really doing an examination if they were taking this seriously,” Cindy Zipf, the executive director of Clean Ocean Action, told NJ.com.

Read the full article at Gizmodo

Lobsters versus right whales: The latest chapter in a long quest to make fishing more sustainable

January 13, 2023 — Maine lobster fishermen received a Christmas gift from Congress at the end of 2022: A six-year delay on new federal regulations designed to protect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

The rules would have required lobstermen to create new seasonal nonfishing zones and further reduce their use of vertical ropes to retrieve lobster traps from the seafloor. Entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with many types of ships are the leading causes of right whale deaths.

Maine’s congressional delegation amended a federal spending bill to delay the new regulations until 2028 and called for more research on whale entanglements and ropeless fishing gear. Conservationists argue that the delay could drive North Atlantic right whales, which number about 340 today, to extinction.

This is the latest chapter in an ongoing and sometimes fraught debate over fishing gear and bycatch—unintentionally caught species that fishermen don’t want and can’t sell. My research as a maritime historian, focusing on disputes tied to industrial fishing, shows the profound impacts that particular fishing gear can have on marine species.

Disputes over  and bycatch have involved consumers, commercial fishermen, recreational anglers and environmentalists. With conservation pitted against economic livelihoods, emotions often run high. And these controversies aren’t resolved quickly, which bodes poorly for species on the brink.

Read the full article at phys.org

NOAA reports entangled adult right whale, dead whale calf

January 12, 2023 — NOAA Fisheries reported it has spotted a “heavily entangled” North Atlantic right whale 20 miles off the coast of Rodanthe, North Carolina – just days after a right whale calf was documented dead near Morehead City, North Carolina.

The entangled whale, NOAA Fisheries said, had several wraps of line around its mouth and tail, with additional line trailing behind it. According to NOAA Fisheries biologists, the images indicate that the entanglement constitutes a “serious injury,” meaning the whale is likely to die from the entanglement.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

NEW JERSEY: Offshore wind critics call for investigation of New Jersey whale strandings

January 10, 2023 — Groups opposed to offshore wind energy developments called on federal officials to suspend all survey work on those projects off New Jersey and New York, and investigate recent humpback whale strandings including two dead juvenile whales that washed up at Atlantic City, N.J. two weeks apart.

The New Jersey-based environmental group Clean Ocean Action organized a Monday press conference at Atlantic City and a joint letter to President Biden, demanding a shutdown of all offshore wind development activity in the New York Bight pending an investigation into “the unprecedented number of dead, predominately juvenile, whales washing up in the last 33 days on the New Jersey/New York coastline.”

“Six whales washing-up on the New Jersey/New York coastline in just over a month is unprecedented,” the groups wrote. “As concerning, none of the whales exhibited obvious causes of death such as ship strikes, entanglements, or predator attacks. With one major exception, no clear differences can explain or suggest this alarming number of deaths in the region.

“The exception is the ongoing geological seafloor-mapping and surveying and other pre-construction and construction actions by numerous offshore wind energy developers.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman