Saving Seafood

Whales have worse than average year for entanglement in gear

December 7, 2018 — Federal officials say last year was slightly worse than average for the entanglement of large whales, which is a major threat to the animals’ populations.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report Thursday on the subject. The agency says the number of cases nationally was 76, and that 70 entanglements involved live animals, while the rest were dead. The 10-year average is closer to 70 entanglements.

The agency says about 70 percent of the confirmed cases were attributable to fishing gear, such as traps, nets and fishing line.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the New Jersey Herald

Whale Advocates Plan to Put Forward Ballot Question in Mass. to Ban Vertical Buoy Lines

December 5, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A whale conservationist with a radical style says he intends to move forward with a “whale safety” initiative petition for 2020 in Massachusetts to ban vertical buoy ropes used in commercial fishing, among other efforts to protect whales and sea turtles.

“We have to have a paradigm shift,” Richard Maximus Strahan, of Peterborough, New Hampshire, said of his advocacy efforts to stop the death and injury of whales and sea turtles from entanglement in rope used in commercial lobstering, crabbing and gillnetting.

On Oct. 11, Strahan withdrew his lawsuit in federal court in Boston that sought more federal and state enforcement against the use by commercial fishermen of vertical buoy ropes. Vertical buoy ropes are seen by scientists and conservation groups as a source of entanglement and often injury and death of marine animals. In withdrawing the lawsuit, Strahan said that the 2018 fishing season is over and that the court and defendants hindered his lawsuit by actions such as ignoring motions for discovery.

For next year, Strahan says he and Whale Safe USA, a political group of about 200, intend to try a variety of tactics, such as the Whale Safe Fishing Act 2020 initiative petition in Massachusetts. He says he also intends to sue individual or small groups of fishermen and block the issuance of commercial fishing licenses in Massachusetts. He proposes a boycott of purchases of lobster, and he wants to identify “green” commercial fishermen who have environmental goals, such as whale and turtle protection and reduction of plastic in the ocean.

Strahan said he would no longer be filing lawsuits in federal court in Boston.

“We are going to go outside the whale biz,” said Strahan, who describes himself as an indigent and a graduate student in the Oct. 11 document.

Generally, Strahan said he views federal and state marine fisheries regulatory agencies as siding with commercial fishing interests rather than marine animal conservation interests. He also said a handful of nonprofit groups in the region, such as the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, are colluding with those regulatory agencies to the detriment of the animals.

“We have been over this with him several times before,” Center for Coastal Studies CEO and President Richard Delaney said in an emailed response.

Strahan’s reputation stems from the 1990s, when right whale entanglement protections lagged and he filed a lawsuit that forced major, costly changes to the fishing industry in Massachusetts. Those changes include trap gear and gillnet bans in Cape Cod Bay while North Atlantic right whales are present, starting early in the year and ending in May, and gear modifications such as breakaway features for gillnets and weak links for trap gear buoy lines.

Strahan returned to the courtroom in February following what scientists and conservationists considered a devastating loss of 17 right whales in 2017 in Canadian and U.S. waters. Particularly since 2010 the right whale population has been in decline, with decreasing numbers of newborns each year as well as a heavy death toll among adult females.

In the civil case first filed in February, Strahan sued the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the assistant administrator of the National Marine Fisheries Service. Other defendants in the lawsuit were the secretary of the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, the director of the state Division of Marine Fisheries, commission members of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association. No person was named specifically in the lawsuit other than Strahan, who represented himself.

Strahan sought to have a judge confirm that federal officials were shirking their duties under the Endangered Species Act by authorizing and failing to enforce certain regulations for commercial fishing; that NOAA had shirked its duties by handing over whale and turtle protections to the National Marine Fisheries Service without evaluating the possible harm to the animals; and that all defendants were violating the Endangered Species Act by allowing for the taking of whales and turtles, either by licensing commercial fishing or actually doing the fishing.

In May, a federal judge declined to issue a restraining order Strahan had sought to temporarily stop commercial lobster pot fishing in Massachusetts coastal waters to protect the right whales. In that ruling, the judge said that, unlike the 1996 federal court ruling, Strahan failed to show that he would likely win in the broader case due to the few rope entanglements that had been recently documented and due to the list of regulations now in place, such as annual lobster gear bans from Feb. 1 through April 30.

The Center for Coastal Studies provides airplane survey data on right whale locations to the state Division of Marine Fisheries, which is then used to make decisions about when to lift the trap gear bans in May, among other uses. The center’s data was cited in the federal lawsuit in an affidavit of Daniel McKiernan, who is deputy director of the state Divison of Marine Fisheries.

The federal lawsuit officially closed Oct. 18.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

California May Soon Unravel Controversial Nets Used To Harvest Swordfish

November 9, 2018 — Ocean activists seem to be on the eve of winning a long battle against a controversial type of fishing gear that has been banned in most of world’s oceans. But many fishermen are not ready to let go of what has been a reliable method for catching valuable swordfish.

A federal court ruling last week could lead to strict limits on using drift gillnets in California, one of the last places where the gear is still allowed. Drift gillnets are used to snag swordfish but prone to ensnaring other sea life, too. The court decision comes weeks after the state’s governor signed a law that would phase the nets out of use over the next few years.

Todd Steiner, an environmentalist who has fought for stricter regulations on drift gillnets since the 1990s, believes the time has come to ban them everywhere.

“Drift gillnets should no longer be in the ocean,” says Steiner, founder of the Turtle Island Restoration Network based in Forest Knolls, Calif. “Only one in six or seven animals caught in these nets is a swordfish. They’re indiscriminate in what they catch.”

Drift gillnets are essentially long curtains of nearly invisible mesh that hang from buoys and entangle large creatures that swim into them. The nets are notorious for catching high volumes of unwanted creatures, or bycatch — the primary reason Steiner and other activists want them banned.

But Santa Barbara fisherman Gary Burke, who has been using drift gillnets since the 1980s, says environmentalists who oppose the gear have set unrealistic expectations. “We’ve reduced our bycatch so much at this point that it would take some dramatic tech innovation to reduce it anymore,” he says.

Read the full story at NPR

MASSACHUSETTS: Losing lobster lines

November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.

The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.

“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”

Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Conservation group seeks judgement in California crab gear lawsuit

November 1, 2018 — A year after the Center for Biological Diversity filed a federal lawsuit against the state of California regarding its Dungeness crab fishery, the conservation nonprofit has requested the judge in the case issue a summary judgement ruling in its favor.

A lawyer for the CBD said the organization filed the motion for summary judgement last week in the U.S. District Court’s North California District in hopes of preventing more animals from getting entangled in the crab traps set by commercial fishermen. Through July, there have been 22 whale entanglements this year, according to the group.

The federal Endangered Special Act prohibits encounters with humpback whales, blue whales, and leatherback sea turtles that could lead to injury or death, and a favorable ruling would force state officials to take action, Kristen Monsell, the center’s ocean’s program legal director, said in a statement.

“Another crab season starts (this month), creating a minefield of heavy gear that migrating whales must navigate,” she said. “We need the court to order state officials to stop causing the injury and death of endangered whales and sea turtles while managing this fishery.”

Judge Maxine M. Chesney isn’t scheduled to rule on the motion until 8 February.

Earlier this year, the state’s legislature passed an omnibus fisheries bill that called for the state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife to adopt rules that take into consideration the potential risk for entanglements. Until the regulations take effect, the state could restrict fishing for Dungeness crab in certain areas where the fishery “poses a significant risk” for whales and other marine life.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Comments Requested: 2019 Exempted Fishing Permits and Other Related Permits for Atlantic Highly Migratory Species

October 31, 2018 — The following was released by the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council:

NOAA Fisheries will consider issuing exempted fishing permits, scientific research permits, display permits, letters of acknowledgment, and shark research fishery permits for the research and collection of Atlantic highly migratory species in 2019.

In general, exempted fishing and related permits authorize the collection of a limited number of tunas, swordfish, billfishes, and sharks from federal waters in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico. The purpose of these collections is scientific data, bycatch research, public display, and to evaluate the efficacy of environmental clean-up efforts, among other things. Letters of acknowledgment will document that scientific research activity is being conducted aboard scientific research vessels. The shark research fishery assists NOAA Fisheries in collecting valuable shark life history and other scientific data required in shark stock assessments.

Generally, NOAA Fisheries receives fewer than 50 applications with most relating to scientific sampling and tagging of Atlantic highly migratory species. This will be the only public comment opportunity before NOAA Fisheries issues this type permits. We will provide additional opportunity for public comment for applications outside of this scope.

Comments:
Comments must be received on or before November 30, 2018.

Electronic submissions: nmfs.hms.efp2019@noaa.gov

U.S. Mail: Craig Cockrell, Highly Migratory Species Management Division (F/SF1), NOAA Fisheries, 1315 East-West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910.

Permit applications and copies of the regulations pertaining to exempted fishing permits, scientific research permits, display permits, and letters of acknowledgment may also be requested from this address. Shark research fishery permit applications can be received via information found in the request for applications, expected to publish shortly.

Webinar Information:

NOAA Fisheries will host a webinar on November 14, 2018, from 2 to 4 p.m. EDT. Applicants and other interested members of the public will see a general overview of the exempt fishing permit program and have an opportunity to ask questions.

Call-in: 1-888-942-8612; passcode 6276326. We encourage you to log/dial in 15 minutes prior to the meeting.

Log-in:

https://noaaevents2.webex.com/noaaevents2/onstage/g.php?MTID=ee7c953be8b128d064d6557dbb5e5423b

password: NOAA

Requests for language interpretation or other auxiliary aids should be directed to Craig Cockrell at 301-427-8503 at least 7 days prior to the meeting.

Federal court rules against NOAA Fisheries over driftnet regulation reversal

October 30, 2018 — A federal judge last week ruled that NOAA Fisheries illegally withdrew a proposed rule that would have placed hard caps on bycatch of protected species caught in California’s swordfish drift gillnet fishery.

The decision by U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner in the Central District Court of California does not immediately put the caps in place. However, his order on Wednesday, 24 October, requires NOAA Fisheries to either reinstate the regulations or discuss any potential revisions with the Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Two years ago, NOAA Fisheries published a proposed rule to limit the amount of bycatch in the driftnet fishery. Federal officials opened a public comment period on the recommendations approved by the PFMC. Under the plan, the fishery faced closure if four bottlenose dolphins or short-fin pilot whales suffered injuries or died as the result of an encounter with a net over a two-year period. Closure could have also happened if two fin, humpback, or sperm whales; or two leatherbacks, loggerhead, olive ridley, or green sea turtles were injured or killed in the same time span.

However, in June 2017, the agency opted to not enact the regulations, which prompted the lawsuit from Oceana the following month.

“The court’s ruling protects whales, sea turtles, and dolphins and affirms the importance of public process and the role of the Pacific Fishery Management Council in regulating West Coast fisheries,” said Mariel Combs, the NGO’s senior Pacific counsel.

California’s swordfish driftnet fishery is considered controversial because the gear often ensnares animals other than what’s targeted. According to Oceana, the mile-long nets are used by 20 vessels and those boats discarded more than 60-percent of their harvest over a 13-year span ending last year. The number of marine mammals killed in the fishery outnumber those killed by all the other Pacific and Alaska fisheries combined.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

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

Challenge to Bycatch Rule Looks Likely to Sink

October 22, 2018 — The D.C. Circuit appeared primed Monday to uphold how the government counts bycatch — a term for various sea life unintentionally swept up in commercial fishing.

Led by the nonprofit Oceana, the challengers take issue specifically with procedures by which the National Marine Fisheries Service monitors for bycatch with less intensity than Congress allowed it.

But the arguments by Oceana attorney Lide Paterno before the D.C. Circuit this morning seemed unlikely to sway the court’s three-judge panel.

“I mean, no agency has enough money to do everything they would like,” U.S. Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins said.

Congress required the government to develop bycatch tracking methods in 1996 to address the concern that even those fish that are thrown back from the nets do not survive the ordeal.

The agency came up with a new procedure to cover the Greater Atlantic region three years ago after a plan from 2008 was found to have improperly given the agency “complete discretion” to depart from procedure.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Losing grounds: Self-report or report by force

September 21, 2018 — Effective lobbying by anti-fishing NGOs leading to public concern about the environmental impacts of fishing, are leading to increasing restrictions on commercial fishing far beyond any regulation needed to assure the sustainability of the fishery. Commercial fishing as a livelihood and economic activity is under threat in much of the world.

No country illustrates this better than Australia, where anti-fishing groups have allied themselves with recreational fishing interests to have more and more of the country declared as No Commercial Fishing zones. Pressure from environmental NGOs caused the Australian government to pass a law specifically banning an individual large fishing vessel. A similar alliance in New Zealand is also being very effective at demanding more restrictions on fishing and the public relations by these groups has caused the New Zealand public to believe that marine fish are more threatened with extinction than the native terrestrial animals where roughly half have gone extinct.

In Europe, anti-fishing groups have great power in the European Parliament, successfully banning trawling in waters deeper than 800 meters, enacting a no-discard ban that could cripple commercial fishing, and recently banning electrofishing with trawls, which largely eliminates bottom contact and reduces fuel use.

At the international level ENGOs are pushing for 30 percent of oceans to be declared no-take marine protected areas. The ENGO argument is that commercial fishing uses a public resource for their own profit largely without oversight and is riddled with illegal practices, such as fishing in closed areas, discarding protected species, and misreporting catch. Recent convictions of well-known fishermen for these crimes reinforces the public view of fishermen as pirates.

The commercial fishing industry is losing the battle over the social license to operate.

To maintain the social license to operate, I believe fishing industries worldwide need to step forward and accept levels of transparency in fishing activities that were unimaginable a decade ago. If fishermen were to have detailed position monitoring for all vessels available to government regulators, and 100 percent at-sea coverage of catch and discards by cameras, there would be no argument that fishing is taking place in closed areas, or that discards and bycatch are not being recorded.

Read the full story at National Fisherman