Saving Seafood

Opponents say Dominion’s offshore wind farm endangers whales. Scientists reject the claim.

December 11, 2023 — A series of whale deaths along the East Coast early this year has spurred an ongoing dispute over the burgeoning offshore wind industry.

Several of the deaths happened in Virginia Beach and Cape Charles. Two were humpbacks; one was a critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale, later determined to have been struck by a vessel. Another right whale was also caught entangled in fishing line off the Outer Banks.

Around the same time, more than a dozen humpback whales were found dead along the coasts of New Jersey and New York over the span of a few months – the latest in what scientists call an “unusual mortality event” stretching back to 2016. Warming waters driven by climate change are bringing humpbacks closer to shore, while cargo shipments carried on big ships are also on the rise.

Scientists later said most of the deaths were caused by ship strikes.

But some local politicians and national conservative pundits pointed the finger somewhere else: offshore wind development.

More than a dozen offshore wind projects are in various stages of permitting along the East Coast. The Biden administration considers the nascent industry a key part of its climate policy, setting a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of electricity generated from offshore wind farms by 2030, or enough to power more than 10 million homes.

In January, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson accused offshore wind projects of killing “a huge number of whales” on his show. Fox News also linked the right whale death in Virginia Beach to Dominion Energy’s project.

Thirty mayors in New Jersey called for a moratorium on offshore wind activity until further investigation into the whale deaths. The uproar also fueled a few “save the whales” rallies, including in New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Read the full article at WHRO

As the US begins to build offshore wind farms, scientists say many questions remain about impacts on the oceans and marine life

November 16, 2023 — As renewable energy production expands across the U.S., the environmental impacts of these new sources are receiving increased attention. In a recent report, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examined whether and how constructing offshore wind farms in the Nantucket Shoals region, southeast of Massachusetts, could affect critically endangered North Atlantic right whales. The Conversation asked marine scientists Erin L. Meyer-Gutbrod, Douglas Nowacek, Eileen E. Hofmann and Josh Kohut, all of whom served on the study committee, to explain the report’s key findings.

Why did this study focus on such a specific site?

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior and regulates offshore energy production, asked the National Academies to conduct this study. Regulators wanted to better understand how installing and operating offshore, fixed-bottom wind turbine generators would affect physical oceanographic processes, such as tides, waves and currents, and in turn how those changes could affect the ecosystem.

For example, offshore wind turbines decrease wind speeds behind them, and the presence of their structures makes the water more turbulent. These changes could affect ocean currents, surface wind speeds and other factors that influence hydrodynamics – the structure and movement of the water around the turbines.

The Nantucket Shoals region is a large, shallow area in the Atlantic that extends south of Cape Cod. Our report focused on it because this is the first large-scale offshore wind farm area in the U.S., and the region has been included in several recent hydrodynamic modeling studies.

Why are North Atlantic right whales of special concern?

North Atlantic right whales are critically endangered. Scientists estimate that the population is down to just 356 animals.

This species was almost driven to extinction after centuries of commercial whaling. Even though the whales have been protected from whaling for almost 100 years, they are still accidentally killed when they are hit by vessels or become entangled in fishing gear. These two sources of mortality are responsible for most documented juvenile and adult right whale deaths over the past 25 years.

There are options for protecting them, such as slowing or rerouting boats, shortening the fishing season or even modifying fishing gear to make it more whale-safe. However, regulators need to know where the whales are going to be and when they’ll be there, so they can put those protections in place.

It’s usually hard to figure out where whales are – they have a large habitat and spend most of their time below the surface of the water, where observers can’t see them. Recently it’s gotten even harder, because climate change is causing whales to shift where and when they feed.

Currently, right whales are spending more time around the Nantucket Shoals region. This means scientists and managers need to make sure that wind energy development in the area is happening safely and that threats to whales in the area are reduced.

Read the full article at The Conversation

Scientists say North Atlantic right whale decline may have slowed

November 7, 2023 — The endangered North Atlantic right whale population may have grown slightly with new calves born between 2021 and 2023. But human activities in the ocean could still be killing as many whales as are born, scientists have found in a new assessment.

In a report released for its annual meeting in late October, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium updated its estimate for the 2022 whale population at 356 animals, based on 18 calves born in 2021, according to a summary from the New England Aquarium.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Ropeless gear shows promise in Canadian snow crab fishery, but full adoption faces challenges

November 6, 2023 — Canadian commercial fishermen are hopeful ropeless gear could be a solution to address concerns of right whale entanglements in snow crab fisheries, and recent trials are showing that innovative technology can work along the East Coast of Canada.

New ropeless gear that eliminates the vertical lines that can entangle right whales is one possibility, and fishermen have had positive experiences with it in trials along the East Coast of Canada.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Delano: Biden administration won’t leave lobstermen alone

October 26, 2023 — Lawmakers and a federal appeals court last year defeated a federal plan to save endangered whales by eradicating New England’s lobster industry. With those plans undone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is crafting a workaround scheme to regulate lobstermen out of the fishery.

Recent years have been brutal going for lobstermen, such that the survival of our trade is highly uncertain. Lobstermen are at once negotiating higher fuel costs, higher bait costs, higher shipping costs, and an agitation campaign from dark money nonprofits trained on major buyers of Maine lobster products. NOAA’s new regulatory plan is poised to decimate our inventory.

NOAA’s new plan – a rule promulgated under the Marine Mammal Protection Act – would expand an existing restricted area, where lobster fishing is banned for three months each year. The scope of the expansion is unclear as of this writing, but any expansion is unwelcome as a matter of precedent and a practical business matter.

As with the previous plan, NOAA is allegedly crafting its new rule to protect the endangered north Atlantic right whale. The agency maintains vessel strikes and entanglements with lobster gear are killing these marine mammals.

Read the full article at the Boston Herald

 

Scientists say right whale decline may have slowed

October 24, 2023 —  The endangered North Atlantic right whale population may have grown slightly with new calves born in 2021-2023. But human activities in the ocean could still be killing as many whales as are born, scientists say in their latest assessment.

In a report released for its annual meeting this week, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium updated its estimate for the 2022 whale population at 356 animals, based on 18 calves born in 2021, according to a summary from the New England Aquarium.

“While certainly more encouraging than a continued decline, the ‘flattening’ of the population estimate indicates that human activities are killing as many whales as are being born into the population, creating an untenable burden on the species,” said Heather Pettis, a research scientist in the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium and executive administrator of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium.

The aquarium and science partners at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration work together on coordinating surveys of the right whale population – one of the most endangered species on Earth – and NOAA published a detailed technical memo on the latest assessment Oct. 23.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

NOAA analysis finds right whale strikes and entanglements must be cut to save species

October 25, 2023 — A NOAA Fisheries analysis found that North Atlantic right whales will go extinct unless vessel strikes and gear entanglements are “considerably reduced.”

The comprehensive population viability analysis was conducted by the NOAA Fisheries North Atlantic Right Whale Implementation Teams and considered three threats to the species: Entanglements in fishing gear, vessel strikes, and changes in prey abundance and availability. Looking at each factor individually, the analysis showed that reducing entanglements was the most effective way to help the right whale population recover. Reducing vessel strikes also had the most positive impact.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

After long, steep decline, the North Atlantic right whale population appears to stabilize

October 23, 2023 — There are about 356 North Atlantic right whales left in the world, according to data released Monday from the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. That’s actually a bit of good news for the critically endangered species, signaling that the population may be starting to stabilize.

“After years of the population trajectory in being in steep decline, that decline is leveling out,” said Philip Hamilton, a senior scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. Hamilton said he wouldn’t quite frame the population numbers as “optimistic,” though: “I guess I could say it eases the weight on my heart a little bit, but we have a long ways to go.”

Right whales still face significant threats. The leading causes of death and injury to right whales are entanglements in fishing gear and getting hit by boats; climate change and noise pollution are added stressors.

So far this year, researchers from the New England Aquarium have counted 32 injuries to right whales after they were hit by boats or entangled in fishing gear. There have also been two detected deaths of right whales in 2023: a 20-year-old male struck and killed by a boat and an orphaned newborn calf.

“Not only are human activities leading to the deaths of whales, but they’re also leading to these injuries that aren’t outright killing the whale, but they’re stunting their growth. They’re delaying reproduction in females,” said Heather Pettis, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium. She said the whale population can only recover if their birth rates go up, while their death rates go down.

Read the full article at wbur

Decline of rare right whale appears to be slowing, but scientists say big threats remain

October 23, 2023 — The decline of one of the rarest whales in the world appears to be slowing, but scientists warn the giant mammals still face existential threats from warming oceans, ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear.

The population of North Atlantic right whales, which live off the U.S. East Coast, fell by about 25% from 2010 to 2020 and was down to only about 364 whales as of 2021. Now the whales are at around 356 in total, according to a group of scientists, industry members and government officials who study them.

This suggests the population is potentially levelling off, as equal numbers of whales could be entering the population as are being killed, the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium said Monday. However, getting an accurate count of the aquatic creatures involves certain ranges of error, which put estimates for 2021 and 2022 at roughly around the same number.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Speeding ships and whales: NOAA sees progress, advocates not so much

October 23, 2o23 — A new analysis by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows more vessel operators are abiding by ship speed limits the agency sets to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales from ship strikes along the U.S. East Coast.

A few hours before the agency’s study came out, the environmental group Oceana issued an update in its own series of analyses tracking ship speeds. Its conclusion: far too many vessels are still breaking the recommended 10-knot limit when right whales are known to be in waters near U.S. ports.

Both reports rely on data from Automatic Identification System transmitters carried by most commercial vessels, which record their tracks at sea. AIS is chiefly a safety system – allowing vessel operators to broadcast their real-time positions and see where other ships and boats are in relation to them.

AIS data also allows observers to calculate real-time and past vessel tracks and speeds. NOAA and Oceana used the same data, but different methodologies to draw somewhat divergent conclusions.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman