Saving Seafood

More than 260 dolphins found stranded along the Gulf Coast since February. Scientists aren’t sure why.

June 17, 2019 — Scientists are trying to determine why more than 260 bottlenose dolphins have been found stranded along the Northern Gulf of Mexico since the beginning of February.

The number of dolphin deaths is about three times higher than the average for the time period, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday.

The strandings in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the panhandle of Florida have been declared an Unusual Mortality Event, or UME.

A UME is defined under the Marine Mammal Protection Act as “a stranding that is unexpected; involves a significant die-off of any marine mammal population; and demands immediate response.”

Read the full story at USA Today

Dead dolphins keep washing up in Delaware. But why?

May 30, 2019 — Twelve dead dolphins have washed up on bay and ocean breaches in Delaware over the last two months.

Among the most recent: A decomposed bottlenose dolphin calf showed up on Memorial Day at Cape Henlopen State Park, and another was found Saturday on the coast in Rehoboth Beach.

What caused many of those deaths remains unclear: Most of the dolphins that washed ashore were largely decomposed by the time officials arrived from the Marine Education, Research and Rehabilitation Institute (MERR) in Lewes.

In an ocean filled with predators and scavengers, as well as the sun beating down on hot days, it can often be a challenge to get good enough tissue and fluid samples to figure out what happened.

“I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary whatsoever at this point,” said Suzanne Thurman, executive director of MERR. “It’s always note-worthy, but it’s not a spike.”

Read the full story at USA Today

NEW JERSEY: Whales in the bay? It’s rare, but happening thanks to a surge in these fish off Cape May

April 9, 2019 — Jeff Stewart clearly remembers one of the last times humpback whales descended on the Delaware Bay.

It was 1990 and there was an abundance of bunker in the waters, a type of forage fish that whales eat that are also called menhaden, said Stewart, captain of the Cape May Whale Watcher.

Those same conditions are bringing the cetaceans to the bays from Town Bank to Cape May Point yet again, he said.

Marine biologists say a combination of warming waters and an increasing bunker population in the south is bringing more of the fish to New Jersey’s coast — and in turn luring whales to bay habitats they normally don’t swim in.

“There’s a ton of (bunker) right now. I’d definitely say it’s above average, to see it this early and in these quantities,” Stewart said.

Typically, the whales are found 20 miles offshore in the ocean, Stewart said, but last week, one of his captains spotted a humpback whale in the bay about 1½ miles off Cape May’s coast. Another was found in the bay Sunday morning about 100 yards out.

The tour agency, founded in 1993, started taking people out to sea again for the season last month. Stewart said more bottlenose dolphins are also in the waters as a result of increased bunker.

Read the full story at the Press of Atlantic City

U.S. Withdrawal of California Gillnet Protections for Whales, Turtles Ruled Illegal

October 29, 2018 — The Trump administration unlawfully withdrew a plan to limit the number of whales, turtles and other marine creatures permitted to be inadvertently killed or harmed by drift gillnets used to catch swordfish off California, a federal judge has ruled.

The decision requires U.S. fisheries managers to take steps to implement the plan, which calls for placing numerical limits on the “bycatch” of bottlenose dolphins, four whale species and four sea turtle species snared in swordfish gillnets.

As currently written, the regulation in question also would mandate suspension of swordfish gillnet operations altogether off Southern California if any one of the bycatch limits were exceeded.

The Pacific Fishery Management Council endorsed the plan in 2015, and it was formally proposed for implementation by the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Marine Fisheries Service the following year.

The rule was expected to gain final approval but was abruptly withdrawn instead in June 2017 under President Donald Trump, whose Commerce Department determined the cost to the commercial fishing industry outweighed conservation benefits.

The environmental group Oceana sued, accusing the Commerce Department of violating U.S. fisheries laws and the federal Administrative Procedures Act. Oceana also asked the courts to order the agency to put the bycatch limits into effect.

U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner declined to force the National Marine Fisheries Service to immediately implement the restrictions in a decision handed down Wednesday in Los Angeles.

But he sided with environmentalists in finding the agency’s reversal exceeded its authority and was “arbitrary, capricious or an abuse of its discretion.”

Read the full story at U.S. News

Red Tide, Take Warning

October 1, 2018 — As the Spanish cartographer Juan López de Velasco sailed along southwest Florida in 1575, he was greeted by a sight that became odiously familiar this summer to those on the peninsula he mapped for the Spanish Empire so long ago. “The coast is all in ruin,” he wrote in his journal, “because in these four or five leagues of sea there is barely 1.5 fathoms of water where many fish are dying.”

It is possible that López made this entry within sight of the shell mound where my house of yellow pine has, since 1926, witnessed a time warp flow of conquistadors, past and present, and too many harmful algae blooms to count.

Rather than puzzle over the mystery of dying fish, López continued south to Cuba. A wise choice. The people who built the mound (contemporaries of the Aztec) disliked interlopers, as proved in 1521 when, on the same bay, near Sanibel Island, they sent Ponce de León packing with a lethal arrow to the thigh.The Calusa, as the indigenous are called, were no less hostile to conquistadors than was the land they inhabited — a lesson modern interlopers would do well to remember.

A typical lethal algae bloom, also known as red tide, moves like a slow-motion hurricane, piling itself ashore with an epicenter that, geographically, varies along the coast. Fishing might be great in Tampa Bay but a waste of time near Sanibel, as was true until recently. As history all but guarantees, it will happen again. As of now, though, the view from my dock includes islands where the beaches are clean and clear — and empty of tourists who still fear the stink and airborne toxins that irritate eyes and lungs. And possibly worse, if certain noxious blue-green bacteria flood into the mix, as was the case this summer. But more on that later

During my 50 years on this coast, I’ve experienced four killer algae blooms as a fishing guide (1972, ’82, ’96 and 2004). As a novelist, I’ve researched the subject, yet my understanding lacks the certainty of those newly acquainted with these blooms. Every 10 to 15 years after a rainy winter or hurricane, acres of bloated fish wash ashore, as well as bottlenose dolphins and manatees. These are lovable mammals with Disney faces — unless poisoned by lethal toxins. On the heels of public outrage come theories. Biologists squabble, environmental groups debate. Learjet conquistadors swoop in, aspirant politicians who see Florida as an untethered plum and who buy their way into office with big bucks and bumper-sticker cures.

Read the full story at The New York Times

Sharks, Dolphins, and Turtles are Turning Up in Strange Places Because of Climate Change

April 20, 2018 — Luke Halpin couldn’t believe his eyes. In the early morning hours from his spot on a research ship in the Pacific Ocean, he was seeing bottlenose dolphins. If Halpin had been on a ship off the coast of California, this wouldn’t be remarkable. But he was on a Canadian research vessel floating about 100 miles northwest of Vancouver. These dolphins had never been seen alive north of the waters off the coast of Washington state.

“My initial reaction was one of disbelief,” he told Newsweek. “But they’re an unmistakable species. They’re easy to identify.”

Halpin’s next reaction was to start counting and pull out his camera. In total, he spotted about 200 dolphins and 70 false killer whales—a very large group—that came within a few hundred feet of the ship. He and his colleagues published their observations in Marine Biodiversity Records on Thursday.

Read the full story at Newsweek

 

Dolphins in Chesapeake Bay: Unusual, or No Big Deal?

August 18, 2017 — Earlier this summer, we started hearing reports of dolphins in the Chesapeake Bay. Some thought it was unusual, others said it was no big deal. So Joel McCord went searching for them for Chesapeake: A Journalism Collaborative.

Dr. Helen Bailey, who did her PhD work on bottle nose dolphins, says she heard reports of occasional sightings of the marine mammals when she came to work as an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science in Solomons.

But then the underwater microphones the lab was experimenting with began picking up the tell-tale squeaks and clicks of dolphins foraging in the Chesapeake and its tributaries. Now, the scientists are finding out the dolphins are pretty regular visitors to the bay.

“We were discovering that we were actually detecting dolphins quite frequently during June, July and August,” she said. “And so then put another hydrophone in the Potomac River and there we were detecting dolphins every day.”

She says they’ve been detected throughout the bay and many of its tributaries. But what drew them into the Bay?

“We think that they’re following the prey into the bay,” Bailey says. “And getting a better understanding of how that is working is really important to understanding the eco system.”

Read and listen to the full story at WVTF

US probes dolphin death after Navy uses sonar

November 4, 2015 — HONOLULU (AP) ” The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday said it was investigating the death of two dolphins found washed ashore in California shortly after Navy ships were using sonar in nearby waters.

The animals are being analyzed to try to determine what caused them to get stranded, agency spokesman Jim Milbury said.

The dolphins were common bottlenose dolphins, Navy spokeswoman Lt. Julie Holland said. They were found Oct. 21 at Imperial Beach and at Silver Strand beach in San Diego.

Two Navy ships were using mid-frequency active sonar 80 nautical miles away from where the dolphins were found, Holland said. They used the sonar for slightly more than an hour over two days from Oct. 19.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at New Bedford Standard-Times