September 17, 2020 — Environmental conservation group Oceana announced on Monday, 14 September, that it contributed USD 1 million (EUR 845,500) to California’s efforts to end the drift gillnet fishery in the U.S. state.
Oceana’s contribution matches state funding and goes toward a buyout program for fishermen who have been using the controversial gear to catch swordfish. The buyout program was part of a state law passed two years ago that calls for their elimination by 31 January, 2024.
September 10, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Bycatch reduction is a top priority for NOAA Fisheries and this week the agency announced over $2.3 million in grants to support 13 projects under our Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program. This year’s projects focus on priority bycatch issues related to a variety of species, including whales, turtles, sharks, sablefish, and flounders. Left unaddressed, bycatch can contribute to overfishing, can threaten endangered and threatened species and protected marine mammals, and can close fisheries, significantly impacting U.S. economic growth. Three projects in the Northeast were chosen for funding.
NOAA Fisheries’ Bycatch Reduction Engineering Program has resulted in innovative technological solutions to some of the nation’s top bycatch challenges. We are proud to continue to partner with fishermen, fishery managers, industry, and the environmental community to avoid and minimize bycatch.
For more information about this year’s recipients and selected projects visit our website.
August 26, 2020 — Is the so-called “ropeless” fishing gear the silver bullet for solving the perceived problem of marine mammal interactions in California’s crab fisheries?
Several profit-driven environmental groups, including Oceana, would like the public and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to believe these baseless claims.
That’s because these groups are ramping up efforts to force California’s historic and economically most important fishery — which helps create $400 million annually for working families — to adopt expensive, impractical and unproven new fishing gear which would force most crab fishermen out of business.
But the problem is that neither the science, nor any other reliable data, support their false claims. “Ropeless” gear is not a silver bullet — in fact, it’s actually dangerous — and ironically, it still has ropes. Nor are marine mammal populations currently at any significant risk.
Francine Kershaw, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, has misleadingly asserted that “off the West Coast, the number of deaths of humpback whales caused by entanglements are now high enough for the population to slip into decline.”
July 17, 2020 — The following was released by the U.S. Department of State:
On June 12, 2020, Jonathan Moore, the Department of State’s Senior Bureau Official for the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, signed a statement of support for the Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), pledging continued U.S. government support for addressing abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) in our ocean.
Addressing marine debris, including ALDFG (also known as “ghost gear”), is a key administration priority. By signing this statement of support, the U.S. Government joins more than eighty-five organizations and fifteen other countries in acknowledging the significant impact ghost gear has on marine ecosystems and human health and livelihoods. The U.S. Government recognizes that mitigating these adverse impacts will require a global multi-stakeholder approach supporting a variety of multilateral initiatives such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Voluntary Guidelines on the Marking of Fishing Gear. The United States played a key role in drafting these guidelines, and GGGI serves as FAO’s sole civil society partner in implementing them.
Ghost gear is the main type of submerged marine debris; when improperly discarded in a natural environment, it can indiscriminately entangle fish and other animals while severely damaging marine habitats. An estimated 640,000 metric tons of ALDFG enter the ocean every year, and surveys suggest that derelict fishing gear comprises up to 70 percent of floating macro-plastics in the ocean by weight. ALDFG is the deadliest and most harmful form of marine debris to marine animals, primarily due to entanglement. Nearly 80 percent of animals that become entangled in ALDFG are injured or die as a result. GGGI is the preeminent international initiative addressing this problem of ghost gear and has broad representation across industry, government, and civil society. Managed by the Washington-based NGO Ocean Conservancy, GGGI conducts much needed work to quantify the impacts of ghost gear and to develop, share, and document best practices for addressing it.
The signed statement of support can be found here: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/United-States-Statement-of-Support-for-GGGI-508.pdf. For more information on U.S. efforts to address marine debris and promote ocean conservation, visit the websites of the State Department’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, Office of Marine Conservation, and the NOAA Marine Debris Program.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.