Saving Seafood

In a settlement over whale entanglement, California’s Dungeness crab fishermen lose the spring season

June 3, 2019 — The worst-case scenario has been averted — no multiyear closure of California’s Dungeness crab fishery. But fishermen will feel the sting for years to come after a settlement in a lawsuit over whale and sea turtle entanglements has closed spring crabbing in the state for the foreseeable future. And the fishermen are not happy.

“The settlement is going to be extremely painful and extremely difficult to deal with,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, noting that millions of dollars in product will be left in the water this year. “But this was the best possible deal that was acceptable to all parties.”

At issue is a 2017 lawsuit in federal court by the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Biological Diversity that argued the state of California was in violation of the Endangered Species Act after a three-year spike in whale entanglements in Dungeness crab fishing gear from 2014 to 2017.

The lawsuit sought to force the state of California to obtain a federal incidental take permit for whales and turtles — a process that takes around three years to implement. It would have been possible for the fishery to remain closed during the intervening years, although the CBD says it never sought an indefinite closure through litigation.

In 2015, 50 whales, including humpback, gray and blue whales, were confirmed to have become entangled in fishing gear, up from an average of less than 10 annual entanglements in the 15 years prior. In 2016, the number of entanglements remained high at 48 confirmed whale entanglements. Numbers in 2017 were down, but still above historical norms, with 31 confirmed entanglements on the West Coast.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Entangled: Making The Sea Safer For Whales

November 1, 2017 — More than 30 times this year, the federal government has received reports of whales tangled in fishing gear along the West Coast. Sometimes the whales manage to wriggle free. Other times you see heart-rending pictures on the news or a rescue mission.

The culprit often involves Dungeness crab pot lines. Now Oregon crabbers are working with marine scientists to make the seas safer for whales and to avoid a black mark on their brand.

Bob Eder has fished commercially out of Newport, Oregon for decades.

“Over 45 years of pulling crab pots—I think I’ve probably hauled in close to a million—I’ve never encountered an entangled whale,” he said.

‘We want to be proactive’

Eder often sees whales at sea and recognizes just one bad outcome blamed on fishing gear could be all it takes to cause a PR nightmare. Whale numbers are up, but so are sightings of humpback whales, gray whales and the odd blue whale entangled in fishing lines and buoys—especially in California.

“We want to get out ahead of it. We want to be proactive,” Eder said. “We don’t want to be sued by the Center for Biological Diversity. We want to see what we can do to mitigate the situation.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is an environmental group and it did just sue the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The group wants a federal judge to order the state regulator to make crab fishermen do more to avoid harm to endangered whales.

Crab traps themselves are not the problem, but rather the heavy-duty ropes stretching from the seafloor to one or more buoys at the surface. Whales can snag a fin or a tail and get all tangled up if there’s too much slack in the vertical line or excess floating on the surface.

“They normally don’t come in where our gear is,” Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Executive Director Hugh Link said. “But when we get warmer water and the feed comes in closer to shore, then we have an issue.”

Link and Eder are two members of a work group of crabbers, marine biologists and government agency and nonprofit representatives. They’ve been meeting in Oregon since March.

A grant from NOAA Fisheries launched what is known as the Oregon Whale Entanglement Work Group, which is facilitated and now supported by Oregon Sea Grant. Washington state crabbers and other interested parties plan to meet in Montesano on November 8 to hear an update on whale entanglements and discuss whether the Washington-based/the local fleet should launch a proactive work group too.

The work group agreed to distribute a flyer to crab boat operators ahead of the season opener next month with best practices for setting and tending gear. Oregon and Washington also have programs to retrieve lost or derelict fishing gear. The work group next plans to survey the fleet about potential season modifications and area closures to keep whales away from gauntlets of ropes.

Read the full story at KUOW

 

California crabbers use GPS to find whale-killing gear

September 14, 2017 — HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Fisherman Jake Bunch leans over the side of the fishing boat “Sadie K,” spears his catch, and reels it aboard: an abandoned crab pot, dangling one limp lasagna noodle of kelp and dozens of feet of rope, just the kind of fishing gear that has been snaring an increasing number of whales off U.S. coasts.

Confirmed counts of humpbacks, blue and other endangered or threatened species of whale entangled by the ropes, buoys and anchors of fishing gear hit a record 50 on the East Coast last year, and tied the record on the West Coast at 48, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The accidental entanglements can gouge whales’ flesh and mouth, weaken the animals, drown them, or kill them painfully, over months.

This year, Bunch is one of a small number of commercial fishermen out of Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, and five other ports up and down California who headed to sea again after the West Coast’s Dungeness crab season ended this summer.

The California fishermen are part of a new effort using their cellphones’ GPS and new software pinpointing areas where lost or abandoned crabbing gear has been spotted. They retrieve the gear for a payment — at Half Moon Bay, it’s $65 per pot —before the fishing ropes can snag a whale.

Especially stormy weather this year has meant more wayward crabbing gear than usual, Bunch said recently on a gray late-summer morning at sea.

“Makes it all the more important to pick it up,” he says.

Read the full story at the News & Observer

This forecasting tool aims to keep ships and blue whales from colliding

January 16, 2017 — A new forecasting tool will help scientists predict blue whale traffic, as the ocean behemoths make their annual migration.

The tool allows researchers to post online maps showing likely “hot spots” for blue whales that will help ship captains avoid collisions with the animals.

“We can both see where they go and when they go,” said Elliot Hazen, a research ecologist with the National Marine Fisheries Service, who developed the forecasting program. “We can take their movements and combine that with remotely sensed oceanographic data, to find out not only where they go, but also some of the oceanographic conditions that trigger that.”

When the whales travel up the California coast, they navigate a marine highway of shipping vessels, fishing boats and cruise liners. There are several reported ship strikes per year, but there may be many more than that, said Helen Bailey, a research associate professor at University of Maryland, Center for Environmental Science, who coordinated the forecasting process.

“We’re probably underestimating the number that have been hit by ships, because they sink and don’t float,” Bailey said.

Blue whales are the largest creatures ever to live on the planet, with silvery bodies that can grow more than 80 feet and up to 165 tons. But there are just under 2,000 of them, and their numbers aren’t growing, Bailey said.

Read the full story at The San Diego Union-Tribune

Whale-finding phone app grows in use, helps mariners steer clear

May 27, 2016 — PORTLAND, Maine — With summer whale watching season fast approaching, conservation advocates and government agencies who want to protect whales say a mobile app designed to help mariners steer clear of the animals is helping keep them alive.

The Whale Alert app provides a real-time display of the ocean and the position of the mariner’s ship, along with information about where whales have been seen or heard recently. It also provides information on speed restrictions and restricted areas, and recommends routes shippers can take to avoid endangered species such as the blue whale and the North Atlantic right whale.

New England whale watching companies are gearing up for summer, and more than a quarter of the entire North Atlantic right whale population visited Cape Cod Bay this season. That means conditions are perfect to get more mariners and the public on board with protecting whales, said Patrick Ramage, whale program director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Andy Hammond, of Martha’s Vineyard, is one such mariner. He has used the tool aboard pilot boats to avoid whales in Boston Harbor.

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

The Oozing Whale Skeleton of New Bedford

April 8, 2016 — In New Bedford, Massachusetts, the setting of Herman Melville’s story of the Great White Whale, there is a suspended whale skeleton that has been oozing oil for over 15 years.

The New Bedford Whaling Museum is filled with cannibal forks, the world’s largest scrimshaw collection, canned whale meat, and 2,500 handwritten accounts of whaling voyages. Here the unusual is usual, including its collection of four whale skeletons hanging over the entrance. These giant marine mobiles include a humpback named Quasimodo, a fetal right whale and its mother Reyna, and the biggest — a blue whale called KOBO.

Read the full story at Slate

Say Goodbye to Bycatch: Fishing Smarter in the 21st Century

November 23, 2015 — Fishing nets are blind. They have been for thousands of years.

Just like our ancestors, today’s commercial fishermen drop their nets, or “trawls”, into dark, opaque waters. What they pull up is anyone’s guess.

In addition to the fish being targeted, their trawls also contain “by-catch”: unintended fish species and ocean wildlife that are tossed back because they cannot be sold. The thing is, by the time the nets are hauled up, most of the by-catch is already dead.

So what’s the problem with catching a few extra fish?

What if I told you that by-catch is a major contributor to overfishing and poses a significant threat to the world’s oceans? Currently, in the United States, approximately 1 in 5 fish caught by commercial fishermen are by-catch. That’s 2 billion pounds of fish and other marine species wasted each year. Imagine inadvertently capturing, killing, and disposing of 4,800 blue whales…what an enormous, destructive waste.

In attempting to solve the by-catch problem, Rob Terry, founder of SmartCatch, asked himself: what if commercial fisheries could see inside their trawls before they reel them in?

In 2014, the Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic (LEX-NG) Fund issued a grant to Rob Terry to develop SmartCatch’s Digital Catch Monitoring System, or DigiCatch for short. With DigiCatch technology, fisherman can reduce by-catch by having eyes underwater to monitor their trawls.

Read the full story at the National Geographic