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.
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.
March 5, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Today we filed the final rule approving a new selective gear, the large mesh belly panel. This rule adds the large-mesh belly panel to the list of selective gears approved for use in the Georges Bank yellowtail accountability measure area. Gears currently approved for use in this area are the haddock separator trawl, Ruhle trawl, and rope separator trawl.
Use of the large-mesh belly panel is already allowed during normal fishing operations.
Approval of the large mesh belly panel, for the Georges Bank yellowtail area, as an additional selective trawl gear will provide the fishing industry with more flexibility in the use of trawl gear under the accountability measure, while minimizing bycatch of stocks of concern.
We denied the request to approve this gear for use in the southern windowpane accountability measure area because it did not meet the required standards for this area, and fisheries. To be approved selective gear must reduce bycatch of all species of concern, compared to the standard gear, by at least 50 percent. In the large-mesh fishery, within the windowpane accountability measure areas, the gear did not sufficiently reduce bycatch of two species of concern.
For more details please read the rule as filed in the Federal Register, and the bulletin.
February 20, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
Today, there are only about 400 North Atlantic right whales left and it is estimated that only 85 are reproductively active females. The survival and reproductive success of these remaining females and their offspring is critical to right whale recovery.
Female North Atlantic right whales are not living as long as they once did and more females than males have been reported dead in recent years. Today, females make up approximately 40 percent of the population. It is thought that the energetic stress of reproduction makes female right whales more susceptible than males to dying from entanglement or ship strike injuries.
Biologists also believe that injuries and stress caused by long-term entanglements is one of the reasons that females are calving less often. Studies suggest that more than 85 percent of North Atlantic right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once. About 60 percent have been entangled multiple times.
February 14, 2020 — The Dungeness crab fishery in California recently shut down months early after a 2017 lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) that required crab fishers to pull their gear out of the water with only 3 weeks notice. A settlement agreement was reached in March 2019, which included an early closure for the 2018-2019 Dungeness crab fishing season. Fishing gear is a serious threat to whales that live in, and migrate through, California waters. The California Dungeness Crab Fishing Gear Working Group, convened by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), informs regulators on ways in which to minimize entanglement risks and protect whales.
Why have there more whale entanglements recently?
According to a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications climate change could be responsible. According to lead researcher Jarrod Santora, warming events in recent years, combined with recovering whale populations cause whales to come in contact with crab fishing gear more regularly.
Crab season in California occurs between November and mid-July. Warming events in 2014-2016 caused an increase in the marine algae Pseudo-nitzschia which produce the neurotoxin domoic acid (the toxin causes shellfish poisoning in humans). In 2016, high levels of toxins delayed the crab season until March. In addition, the warmer waters changed feeding habits of humpback whales, steering them closer to shore where food was more prevalent. This perfect storm of events led to a sharp spike in observed whale entanglements in 2017. 70% of the whale entanglements reported in 2017 in the United States involved fishing gear.
February 13, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
NOAA Fisheries is implementing surfclam and ocean quahog quotas for the 2020 fishing year that we previously announced as projected on February 6, 2018. There have been no overages in 2019, and there is no new biological information, so we are now finalizing the 2020 quotas. The 2020 fishing year quotas will remain 3.4 million bushels for surfclams, 5.33 million bushels for ocean quahogs, and 100,000 Maine bushels for Maine ocean quahogs.
NOAA Fisheries is also suspending the minimum size requirement for surfclams. Discard, catch, and biological data show that 22 percent of 2019 coastwide landed surfclams had a shell length less than 4.75 inches, which is less than the 30 percent trigger for a minimum size requirement. This is closer to the trigger than in prior years. Vessels are encouraged to avoid areas with a lot of clams under 4.75 inches to reduce the chance of initiating the default minimum size in 2021.
For more details, read the final rule as published in the Federal Register today and the permit holder bulletin posted on our website.
February 12, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:
From 2011 to 2015, the John H. Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grant Program awarded more than $13.5 million to help stranded marine mammals. The funding was awarded through 160 competitive grants to Stranding Network members and collaborators in 24 states.
NOAA Fisheries sets aside a portion of Prescott funds for emergency assistance with unforeseen or catastrophic stranding events.The program provided $999,122 in emergency funds to help reimburse the Network for 15 events that required emergency support between 2011 and 2015. A review of how the funds were allocated and spent is now available in a 5-Year Report.
For the past 18 years, Congress has appropriated approximately $1 to 4 million annually to NOAA Fisheries to fund the Program. NOAA Fisheries funds eligible members of the National Marine Mammal Stranding Network and research collaborators through grants and cooperative agreements. The funding supports the recovery or treatment of marine mammals, the collection of data from living or dead stranded marine mammals for health research, and the support of facility operation costs.
February 10, 2020 — NOAA Fisheries announced on Wednesday, 5 February, that changes to the Gulf of Mexico Shrimp Fishery Management Plan will take effect next month.
The main purpose of the amendment is to change the amount of red snapper bycatch for shrimpers. In 2005, limits were enacted after a stock assessment determined that shrimp fishing was a primary factor in affecting the red snapper’s viability.
February 4, 2020 — On the heels of a new report indicating whale entanglements from buoyed ropes from crab traps could worsen in Monterey Bay, a Marina company has a technology that can eliminate the need for any entangling lines.
A study released last week by a researcher from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that conditions that have caused a marked increase in humpback whale entanglements are likely to get worse because of climate change.
The reasons can be complicated but essentially humpbacks are being pushed toward crab lines in search of food that isn’t available in their normal feeding areas.
Traditional crab traps lie on the ocean floor and are connected to identifiable buoys with roping. When a whale swims under the buoy it can get caught up in that roping and suffer severe trauma such as deep cuts.
January 30, 2020 — This week the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council (NPFMC) will hear from eminent scientists about prioritized research in Alaska that is underfunded, ways to change data reporting that maintains “best science available” standards, how to best fund the all-important observer program in areas not yet 100% covered, how to balance bycatch with directed halibut fishing, and what will done about the sablefish overage from last year, among other agenda items.
The solidly-packed agenda is not unusual, but among those weighty issues, the one that has illicited the most comments from industry — 62 compared to 5 for the next most commented-on topic — was the halibut catch limit for Gulf of Alaska (Area 3A) charter operators.