Saving Seafood

North American lobster industry confronts ‘ropeless’ traps after whale entanglements

June 7, 2023 — An emerging technology to fish for lobsters virtually ropeless to prevent whale entanglements is exciting conservationists, but getting a frigid reception from harvesters worried it will drive them out of business and upend their way of life.

Injuries to endangered North Atlantic Right Whales ensnared in fishing gear have fueled a prominent campaign by environmental groups to pressure the industry to adopt on-demand equipment that only suspends ropes in the water briefly before traps are pulled from the water.

Since the start of the year, four North Atlantic Right Whales have been injured after getting entangled in fishing rope, according to government data, including one filmed in North Carolina trailing a pair of lobster traps that U.S. authorities believe came from the Canadian province of Nova Scotia hundreds of miles away.

Such entanglements have killed at least nine North Atlantic Right Whales since 2017, making it the second biggest cause of death behind strikes from boats and ships, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

That is a large number, given there are fewer than 350 North Atlantic Right Whales remaining, including just 70 breeding females, say regulators, researchers and conservationists. North Atlantic Right Whales who live off the eastern North American coast stretching from Florida to the Canadian Maritimes provinces are now on the verge of extinction

Read the full article at Reuters

Judge rejects lawsuit by Nantucket residents to block wind turbines, protect right whales

May 19, 2023 — A federal judge has rejected a lawsuit brought by Nantucket residents who argued that the planned construction of dozens of wind turbines off the affluent resort island threatens the survival of endangered Northern Atlantic right whales.

Nantucket Residents Against Turbines said Vineyard Wind’s proposed project of some 62 turbines in waters 14 miles (22 kilometers) south of the island is in a crucial area for foraging and nursing for the dwindling species, which researchers estimate to number about 340.

In a ruling issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani found the group failed to show that either the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management or the National Marine Fisheries Service violated the Endangered Species Act or the National Environmental Policy Act in issuing a 2021 biological opinion or final environmental impact statement for the wind energy project.

Read the full article at the Gloucester Times

North Atlantic Right Whale, Harbor Seals Focus of New Offshore Wind Studies

April 26, 2023 — State environmental officials and utility regulators announced last week their coordinated Offshore Wind Research and Monitoring Initiative requested an updated proposal for the deployment of “archival passive acoustic monitoring equipment to understand better the distribution and habitat space of the baleen whale species, including the endangered North Atlantic right whale,” off the coast.

RMI is administered by the N.J. Department of Environmental Protection and the Board of Public Utilities. In a joint statement April 19, officials said the updated request for proposal is part of a larger project that includes coordination with other state, regional and federal agencies looking to protect marine mammals as offshore wind lease areas develop on the Eastern Seaboard.

Read the full article at The Sand Paper

Winning the fight for the lives of whales

April 23, 2023 — Massachusetts officially declared April 24 as Right Whale Day to raise awareness about the endangered. North Atlantic right whales, the state’s official marine mammal.

Right whales have been coming to Cape Cod Bay in April for as long as there has been a Cape Cod Bay. These sandy, shoaly waters warm faster than deeper, dark-bottom ocean realms. In the Gulf of Maine, a sea beside the Atlantic Ocean, seawater rotates counterclockwise fastest in April, driven by river water coming off the land. Nutrient-rich waters are upwelled on the threshold of Stellwagen Bank, defining the east boundary of Massachusetts Bay and drift on into Cape Cod Bay where phytoplankton blooms, feeding zooplankton feeding right and sei whales. Forage fish, including sand lance, herring, and mackerel eat zooplankton and are then scooped up by gaping-mouthed minke, fin, and humpback whales.

It’s time for the National Marine Fisheries Service to slow down to 10 knots or less the speeds of all vessels. Ships were slowed down from March 1 to April 30. There were no vessel-related right whale deaths during the spring season from 2008 until 2016.

On May 5, 2016, a right whale calf was found dead off Morris Island in Chatham. It was the first right whale fatality by ship strike since speed restrictions were implemented in 2008. The 30-foot-long calf weighing about 10,000 pounds was the eighth right whale born to a whale named Punctuation. Mother and calf were observed swimming together in Cape Cod Bay on April 28. As a result, speed restrictions were extended in the Race Point area after April 30.

On April 13, 2017, a juvenile female right whale was found dead off Barnstable, where speed restrictions were in effect from Jan. 1 to May 15. This second right whale death was the first ship strike death documented in or near a seasonal management zone since the speed rule was enacted.

Read the full article at Gloucester Times

Biologist warns that without new regulations, right whales will be ‘functionally extinct’ by 2035

April 19, 2023 — Maine lobstermen testified in Washington Tuesday against a bill that could put the industry back on the hook for regulations aimed at protecting endangered right whales. But without them, a marine biologist warns the whales could become functionally extinct within the next 12 years.

The warning came from Michael Moore of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who told federal lawmakers that based on their current trajectory, North Atlantic right whales are in “immediate jeopardy.” Fewer than 70 breeding females remain. And Moore said that number will plunge deeply if no conservation measures are taken within the next five years.

“The black arrow [indicates that in] 2035 [there will be] no more breeding females, no more calves,” he said. “The species will be functionally extinct in 2035.”

Read the full article at Maine Public

MASSACHUSETTS: Spring Migration of Right Whales Happening Off the Massachusetts Coast Inbox

April 18, 2023 — There are an estimated 350 North Atlantic right whales in existence. Most, if not all, will pass along the Massachusetts coast between now and late spring.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, “Every winter, many right whales migrate more than 1,000 miles. The right whales travel from their feeding grounds off Canada and New England to the warm, shallow coastal waters of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida’s east coast.”

“These southern waters are the only known place where right whales give birth and nurse their young,” according to NOAA.

In the spring, the right whales begin the slow migration north to their feeding and mating grounds in the Gulf of Maine and the eastern Canadian Atlantic.

Read the full article at WBSM

 

Right whales aren’t having a good year. The pressure is on to save this hard-to-track species

April 16, 2023 — It’s a chilly morning in early March. And New England Aquarium scientist Orla O’Brien and her team are preparing a small, twin propeller plane at the New Bedford Regional Airport for takeoff.

It’s perfectly clear, ideal for flying and, hopefully, for spotting North Atlantic right whales from about 1,000 feet in the air.

It hasn’t been a particularly good year for critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. Scientists have documented four right whale entanglements so far in 2023, which they say is a relatively high number for the first three months of the year. And with a population of fewer than 350 — scientists estimate the number is likely closer to 340 — the pressure is on to learn more about how and where the whales are becoming entangled.

But despite decades of research, biologists say tracking the species — and developing definitive answers about their encounters with fishing gear — are challenging tasks. And the answers that scientists have developed are often frustrating for New England fishing industries, which say the information has been used to unfairly regulate them.

For the New England Aquarium, the process starts with these monthly aerial surveys south of Martha’s Vineyard.

O’Brien points to one of two seats behind the pilot and co-pilot. “We sit there and then we’ll pop open that little square,” she explains.

Read the full article at Maine Public

Landmark law saved whales through marine industries change

April 16, 2023 — On a breezy spring day, scientists and conservationists methodically conducted experiments near 15 North Atlantic right whales that occasionally spouted and surfaced in a bay south of Boston.

The pod of adults and calves is about 4% of the worldwide population of a marine mammal that almost disappeared from the planet after many decades of commercial whaling. There now are only a few hundred of the behemoths, which can weigh 70 tons (63.5 metric tons) and subsist on small ocean organisms.

Although right whale numbers are dwindling, conservationists attribute their continued survival to the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

The landmark federal law — a half century old this year — has forced the fishing and commercial shipping industries to take important steps to help protect the critically endangered whales. And it’s spurred government agencies and scientists to undertake research.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Nearly 80 endangered North Atlantic right whales spotted off coast of Cape Cod

April 3, 2023 — Roughly a fourth of all the North Atlantic right whales left on Earth are roaming the waters of Cape Cod Bay — a remarkable sight for any whale species, but particularly one so critically endangered that experts warn they could go extinct within the decade.

A flight crew of four from the Center for Coastal Studies spotted 79 individual whales while aboard a low-flying Cessna Skymaster on Thursday. Inclement weather sent the plane home early, leading experts to believe that number was likely a conservative estimate.

“I would anticipate that we probably have at least 90 to 100 whales in the bay right now,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, the director of research for the right whale ecology program at the Provincetown-based center. “It’s quite extraordinary.”

Read the full article at the Boston Globe

Defamation suit marks shift in fight over lobstering

April 3, 2023 — A University of Maine Law School professor says it’s unlikely a judge or jury will actually settle the science around lobstering’s impact on North Atlantic right whale mortality in a recently filed defamation lawsuit against Seafood Watch and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation.

Instead, Dmitry Bam explained, the case—if it ever reaches trial—will probably turn on whether the aquarium’s seafood sustainability program was negligent or reckless about the evidence it actually used to claim that scientific data demonstrate that lobstering harms the endangered whale species.

Last fall, Seafood Watch put American lobsters on its red list of foods to avoid because it “is caught or farmed in ways that have a high risk of causing harm to wildlife or the environment.” Among the findings in a summary of its decision-making, the organization noted that nearly nine out of every 10 right whales bears scars from entanglement with fishing gear. Furthermore, “90% of entanglements cannot be linked to a specific gear type, and only 12% of entanglements can be linked to a specific location.”

It concluded that, given recent declines in an already low right whale population, lobstering in the Gulf of Maine and Georges Bank poses an unacceptable risk to the species.

The Maine Lobstermen’s Association fired back in its March 13 lawsuit that the aquarium’s claims “are in fact not supported by science, and that the aquarium’s false statements have caused substantial economic harm to plaintiffs, as well as to the Maine lobster brand and to Maine’s long-standing reputation for a pristine coastal environment protected by a multi-generational tradition of preserving resources for the future.”

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Pilot