Saving Seafood

New technology promises to save the whales by reducing the need for crab fishing lines.

July 16, 2020 — After a slightly better year in 2017, the number of whales getting entangled in fishing gear has gone back up, according to a new report from the National Marine Fisheries Service. Researchers confirmed 105 whale entanglements nationwide in 2018, the latest year for which data is available, noting the number is “much higher” than average.

These findings come as a possible solution emerges out of a collaboration being led by Monterey Bay conservationists, fishermen and fishing gear designers.

On the Pacific coast, whales pass through stretches of ocean that are important for Dungeness crab fishing and they sometimes get caught in lines connecting traps on the ocean floor to buoys at the surface. Technology that is under development would all but eliminate vertical lines and buoys. Using ropeless or pop-up innovations, these new crab traps would sit idly on the ocean floor until receiving an acoustic signal from the fisherman. Only then would the trap release a rope and buoy to the surface.

“We are working with fishermen to see what works and what doesn’t and what allows the fisherman to survive economically,” says Geoff Shester, a Monterey-based scientist with nonprofit Oceana. “The Monterey Bay is the epicenter of the whale entanglement issue.”

Read the full story at Monterey County Now

US government officially joins the Global Ghost Gear Initiative

July 16, 2020 — The United States has become the 16th country to join the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), a multi stakeholder consortium dedicated to tackling the problem of ghost fishing gear around the world.

On Thursday, 16 July, the U.S. government announced its induction into the alliance, which is comprised of more than 100 member organizations, including 15 other national government and 13 U.S. seafood companies.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Agreement Reached To Protect Dwindling Shark Species

July 2, 2020 — A threatened shark species is poised to see new protections against overfishing under a deal with federal officials, conservation groups and a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, according to Earthjustice.

More than 300,000 oceanic whitetip sharks have died as bycatch in commercial fishing nets off Hawaii and American Samoa since 2013, and the species is believed to have declined by as much as 95% since the mid-1990s, according to a release from the nonprofit law organization.

It’s been listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act — but it’s never been designated as “overfished,” the release stated.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Civil Beat

California Plans to Protect Whales From Crab Traps Rankle All Sides

June 30, 2020 — At a public hearing Monday on proposed regulations for managing whale and sea turtle entanglements in commercial crab fishing gear on California’s coast, one thing was clear: No one’s happy.

Stakeholders on both sides of the aisle had complaints — environmentalists don’t think the protections go far enough, while industry groups say the regulations threaten the economic viability of the crab fishing industry.

Set to take effect Nov. 1, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Risk Assessment Mitigation Program (RAMP) will serve as the primary mechanism for mitigating entanglement risk to humpback and blue whales and leatherback sea turtles whose populations are endangered and could suffer additional casualties due to getting caught in Dungeness crab fishing gear.

The regulation would replace the interim authority given to the director of the Department of Fish and Wildlife under Senate Bill 1309, a 2018 law which gave the director the ability to restrict take of Dungeness crab in response to significant risk of marine life entanglement.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Bycatch Analyses and NEFOP Observer Sea-Day Schedule Released

June 12, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries monitors commercial fishery catch to understand how much fish is removed from the ocean and how discarding of unwanted catch varies among species groups and fleets. This information helps us understand the condition of fishery stocks, and helps us develop management actions to reduce discarding.

Today, we have posted four new reports related to required federal fishery discard monitoring for April 2020-March 2021 in Northeast commercial fisheries. Together these documents show how many sea days must be monitored by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Fisheries Sampling Branch in order to obtain data needed to estimate discard for 15 federally managed species groups and sea turtles in 62 fleets across the region, how the days are determined, and how they are allocated to each of the three trip selection systems used for Northeast federal fisheries.

We are also releasing the sea-day schedule for trips selected for coverage through Northeast Fisheries Observer providers. NOAA Fisheries will reimburse 100 percent of industry sea-day costs for the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery in FY2020 using the funds Congress has specifically appropriated for this purpose.

A temporary waiver of this monitoring requirement has been in effect since March 20. We intend to begin redeploying observers and at-sea monitors on vessels fishing in northeast fisheries on July 1.  This month, we continue to work with regional observer and at-sea monitoring service providers to finalize their observer redeployment plans, conduct outreach with industry, and finalize internal programs and policies that will support the safe and effective redeployment of observers and at-sea monitors in the region.

National Report on Large Whale Entanglements Confirmed in the United States in 2018

June 11, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries has released a National Report on Large Whale Entanglements Confirmed in the United States in 2018. Many large whale populations are increasing in the United States, but entanglements in fishing gear or marine debris are a growing threat to the continued welfare and recovery of these species. Severe entanglements can kill or seriously injure large whales. Entanglements involving threatened or endangered species can have significant negative impacts to the population as a whole.

NOAA Fisheries coordinates the Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Response Program, which includes partners in the Large Whale Entanglement Response Network. They help us track and document as many of these incidents as possible. Entanglements represent a serious human-caused threat to large whales at the individual and population levels. Scientists and managers analyze entanglement data to determine:

  • Rates and severity of entanglements
  • Type of gear or debris causing the entanglement
  • Injuries and impact to the animal

Managers use that information to evaluate existing conservation measures and implement new ones as warranted to reduce the threat of entanglements in the future.

There were 105 confirmed entanglement cases nationally in 2018. This was above the 11-year average (70.8 + 21.8) and more than 25 percent higher than the number of cases in 2017. Some of the entanglements involved North Atlantic right whales on the East Coast, which could impede recovery of that critically endangered species. The National Large Whale Entanglement Response Network responded to 37 of 92 cases involving entangled live whales and successfully removed entangling gear from 16 whales. This increased their chances of survival as well as collected important documentation.

Read the full release here

New rules for California Dungeness crab fleet seek fewer whale entanglements

May 18, 2020 — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife on Friday unveiled a batch of complex new rules designed to reduce the risk to endangered whales and sea turtles of becoming entangled in commercial Dungeness crab fishing gear.

The draft regulations are set to be finalized before the next commercial season starts in November after a period of public review.

They expand on a framework established under a legal settlement reached last year that allows for the state’s $60-million-a-year crab fishery to be delayed or closed when surveys and other observations suggest a high risk of concentrated fishing gear and marine life overlapping in the same place. The new rules are meant to allow more nuanced risk assessment and precise management actions rather than the closure of large swaths of ocean, as seen in recent seasons.

Among the provisions are options to restrict fishing in certain depths, require crabbers to set only a share of the traps for which they’re permitted or limit intervention to any of six newly established geographic zones, rather than the larger Northern and Central California management districts that currently exist.

Read the full story at The Press Democrat

In another significant ruling for right whales, a federal judge rules that Massachusetts is violating the Endangered Species Act

May 4, 2020 — In another shot across the bow of the lobster industry, a federal judge ruled Thursday that state regulators have violated the Endangered Species Act by licensing lobstermen to use fishing gear that entangles North Atlantic right whales.

The ruling requires Massachusetts officials to obtain a permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service to license vertical buoy lines, the ropes that connect lobster traps on the seafloor to buoys at the surface.

Those lines are vital to the fishery but have been the leading cause of death of right whales over the past decade, accounting for more than half of all known causes. In the past three years, 30 right whales have died, reducing their population to around 400.

In her ruling, Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court in Boston said the continued use of buoy lines was likely to cause further harm to right whales, which scientists say could become functionally extinct within the next 20 years.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

NMFS Approves Final Measures for Atlantic Sea Scallop Management Plan for 2020 Season

April 1, 2020 — The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) approved Framework Adjustment 32 to the Atlantic Sea Scallop Fishery Management Plan ahead of the season which is set to open on April 1, 2020.

The plan will help set scallop specifications and other measures for the 2020 and 2021 fishing seasons. The adjustments will help protect small scallops and reduce bycatch of flatfish, according to a notice on the Federal Register.

Read the full story at Seafood News

ISSF Awards Grand Prize in Seafood Sustainability Contest

March 10, 2020 — The following was released by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation:

Doctoral student Melissa Cronin of the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the Grand Prize winner in ISSF’s International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) Seafood Sustainability Contest. She receives a $45,000 prize from ISSF for her contest entry, “Incentivizing Collaborative Release to Reduce Elasmobranch Bycatch Mortality,” which proposes handling-and-release methods that purse-seine vessel skippers and crew can use to reduce the mortality of manta rays and devil rays incidentally caught during tuna fishing.

Her winning proposal calls for cooperative workshops with purse-seine skippers and observers, offering financial rewards for the design, testing, and onboard implementation of feasible, scalable techniques for safely removing rays from vessel decks.

It also includes training observers in tagging rays to track their post-release survival. Rays, in addition to sharks, are the species groups most vulnerable in the purse-seine fishery. In the Indian Ocean, for example, rays comprise the majority of bycatch in tuna fishers’ free-school sets: bycatch overall on such sets represents 0.9% of the total catch, and 34% of that is rays.

Ms. Cronin is a Ph.D. candidate in the Conservation Action Lab at UC Santa Cruz studying Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Learn more about her research experiences and winning idea in her ISSF blog post and video.

In addition to the $40,000 Grand Prize, the award includes a trip, with an estimated $5,000 value, to a tuna event. ISSF will arrange for Ms. Cronin to present her proposal at a Regional Fisheries Management Organization (RFMO) event this year.

Read the full release here