Saving Seafood

Swarms of Huge Sharks Discovered, Baffling Experts

April 13, 2018 — Swarms of up to over a thousand basking sharks have been spotted along the northeastern U.S., puzzling experts who study the normally solitary species.

Aerial surveys meant to locate endangered North Atlantic right whales in recent decades have revealed massive groups of the world’s second-largest fish. Found worldwide, these slow-moving filter feeders pose no threat to humans.

As big as basking sharks are—at 32 feet long outsized only by the whale shark—the deep-sea dwellers can be tricky to track down.

And without those opportunistic sightings, “that data was hiding away,” says Leah Crowe, leader of a recent study on the phenomenon and a field biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “Our goal is not to do that with our research.” (Read about a huge basking shark caught off Australia.)

In the study, published in the Journal of Fish Biology, Crowe and colleagues documented 10 sightings of large groups of basking sharks between 1980 and 2013 along the coast of Nova Scotia to Long Island.

Read the full story at National Geographic

 

Cooke Aquaculture named to Canada’s Best Managed Companies list

April 11, 2018 — Cooke Aquaculture has secured a spot as a 2018 platinum-winning enterprise on Canada’s Best Managed Companies list, the New Brunswick, Canada-based firm announced on 10 April.

To qualify for the Best Managed Companies program, businesses must be based in Canada and generate a revenue of CAD 15 million (USD 11.8 million, EUR 9.6 million). Further, to achieve platinum status, a company must have been named to the prestigious list for seven or more years.

Each enterprise applicant is evaluated by a panel of judges in four areas for the program: strategy, as in the company’s vision and how that vision is communicated and managed; capability, with regards to whether the company has the ability – the people, processes, and systems – to execute; commitment, meaning does the applicant engage and align its culture effectively and appropriately; and financials, the numbers that prove the first three are driving results.

The program aims to reward well-run companies in Canada, including Cooke, which offer the country a healthy economic future, according to Lorrie King, who is a co-leader of the Best Managed Companies program.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Whale-protection grant to fund study of how Maine lobstermen deploy their gear

April 10, 2018 — Maine is getting a $700,000 federal grant to collect details about how the lobster industry deploys its fishing gear, especially rope, in an effort to help protect endangered right whales.

The species recovery grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will underwrite a three-year project scheduled to start this summer to collect information that federal regulators need for future deciding right-whale protection regulations. The government is considering what steps it could take to protect the roughly 450 surviving members of the species in the wake of 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths last year in Canadian and U.S. waters.

“This research will ensure that future regulations are based on current, relevant data,” said Erin Summers, biological monitoring division director of the Maine Department of Marine Resources and the person who will lead the collection project. “Maine has been involved in the development and evolution of whale protection regulations over the past two decades. … This study is another example of Maine taking a leadership role in the protection of whales.”

Regulators will need to know how and where fishing gear is used throughout the Gulf of Maine to understand the relative risk of whale entanglement. That’s one of several factors known to play a role in the dwindling number of right whales – ship strikes are the other major cause of death, and scarcity of the whale’s favorite food, copepods, also contributes to dwindling reproduction rates.

The project will ask harvesters from Maine to Connecticut to voluntarily share information about how they rig and fish vertical lines, the rope that extends from the floating buoy to the string of lobster traps on the ocean floor. Data will include rope type and diameter, trap configuration and depth, and distance from shore. The project also will include a study on the breaking strength of vertical lines and the amount of load put on the lines during different hauling conditions.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

 

Decline found in Canada’s cod stocks no surprise to scientists

April 10, 2018 — Newspaper headlines in Eastern Canada are reporting northern cod stocks have suffered a significant and surprising decline.

A recent Department of Fisheries, Oceans and Coast Guard (DFO) report revealed cod stocks in the Labrador to Avalon Peninsula dropped 30 percent in 2017 over estimates on the 2015 population.

The decline is significant, scientists studying the fishery agree, but they find fault with reports calling the situation a surprise. It was pretty much predicted by experts, according to Sherrylynn Rowe, a research scientist with the Centre for Fisheries Ecosystems Research at Memorial University in St. John’s.

“Last year, when it became evident that the recent burst of cod productivity had started to slow, my colleague George Rose and I wrote a paper in the journal Nature where we urged the Canadian government not to act on proposals for increased fishery access because we were of the opinion that ramping up the fishery in the face of declining productivity stood to derail the come back that we have seen of late,” Rowe said. “Unfortunately, shortly after that article was published, policymakers opted for a management plan that essentially ignored our pleas, and those by DFO’s own scientists which encouraged keeping removals to the lowest possible levels. Instead, they went ahead and changed the management plan in such a way that allowed removals in 2017 to amount to about three times what they were in 2015.”

This increased the reported catch to 13,000 metric tons in 2017.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Salmon survival: ‘We need more lethal removal of sea lions. Hazing is not the answer’

April 6, 2018 — Ted Walsey’s shotgun cracked like thunder, lobbing a cracker shell into the Columbia River and sending the big brown sea lion beneath the surface in search of friendlier waters. But the boat and the noises emanating from it weren’t far behind.

Just as crews from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission have for a number of years, Walsey, Bobby Begay and Reggie Sargeant patrolled the river just below Bonneville Dam on Wednesday afternoon, harassing but not killing sea lions with cracker shotgun shells and so-called seal bombs — both essentially big firecrackers, the former shot from a shotgun, the latter dropped by hand — downstream and away from the fish ladders, where endangered migratory salmon congregate.

For the salmon, it’s the first chokepoint on a long journey to their spawning grounds. For hungry sea lions, it’s like a quick trip to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division estimates about 45 percent of spring chinook salmon are lost between the mouth of the Columbia and Bonneville Dam, with sea lions being primarily responsible.

Sea lions — as well as whales, dolphins and porpoises — are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. For the last 15 years or so, states and tribes have been able to kill some sea lions, but they have to go through a long and laborious permitting process to do so on an animal-by-animal basis.

Read the full story at TDN

 

New Canadian marine protected areas not totally closed to fishing

April 5, 2018 — Canada’s government has initiated the designation process for three new marine conversation areas, according to a March announcement. This proposed action is part of a commitment to put 10 percent of Canadian marine and coastal areas under protected status by 2020.

The new areas of interest are the 2,000-square-kilometers encompassing the Eastern Shore Islands, a 7,100-square-kilometer portion of the Fundian Channel-Browns Bank, and the 36,000-square-kilometer Eastern Canyons section off Sable Island, all located off the coast of Nova Scotia.

According to Stephen Bornais, a communications advisor with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the protected status doesn’t mean that each marine protected area (MPA) is totally off-limits to fishing.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Lobster fishery reduces floating rope in hopes of protecting North Atlantic right whales

April 4, 2018 — Lobster fishers on P.E.I. are taking new measures this season to help protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement.

In January, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced changes to the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to protect the right whales, including reducing the amount of rope floating on the surface and mandatory reporting of all lost gear.

Fishermen are also required to report any sightings of the endangered whales.

At least 18 North Atlantic right whales died in Canadian and U.S. waters last year.

Necropsies on seven of the carcasses determined four whales died of blunt force trauma from collisions with ships, while the other three likely died from entanglements in fishing gear.

There are only an estimated 450 to 500 of the whales left in the world.

‘Delicate balance’

This winter, the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association set up a special working group focused on helping to protect the right whale, with members representing all 13 species fished around Prince Edward Island.

“It’s a delicate balance between the fishery and the survival of these species,” said Melanie Giffin, a marine biologist and program planner with PEIFA.

“So our members will do everything they can in terms of reducing rope and to try to help reduce those entanglements for the whales.”

Giffin said most of the measures are being mandated by the federal department of fisheries.

“There’s a reduction in the amount of floating rope on the surface of the water and that’s being done in numerous species,” she said.

‘It’s not specific that it has to be lead rope but the rope needs to be sinking.”

In the snow crab fishery, there will also be colour coding of ropes, with different colours woven into the rope to identify where it’s from, including P.E.I.

“That’s to ensure that if there is a whale entangled, we have an idea of where that whale was entangled,” Giffin said.

“If they’re all entangled in the same area, then maybe management measures need to be looked more closely in that area, rather than the Gulf as a whole.”

There is no colour coding for lobster ropes yet, she added.

Read the full story at CBC News

 

Bullard’s right whale challenge angers lobstermen

April 4, 2018 — In January, on his way out the door of NOAA Fisheries and into retirement, former Regional Administrator John K. Bullard didn’t hesitate when asked for the most critical management issue facing the federal fisheries regulator.

Clearly, he said, it is the desperate plight of the North Atlantic right whales.

Bullard may have left behind the daily responsibilities of running the Greater Atlantic Regional Fisheries Office, but he took his bully pulpit with him.

On Monday, he published an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe challenging the U.S. commercial lobster industry — predominately based in Maine and Massachusetts, where Gloucester and Rockport are the top ports — to take the lead in trying to head off the extinction of the North Atlantic right whales.

“The $669 million lobster industry must assume a leadership role in solving a problem that it bears significant responsibility for creating,” Bullard wrote in his piece. “Entanglements occur in other fixed-gear fisheries, but the number of lobster trawls in the ocean swamps other fisheries.”

While he also carved out a role for scientists, non-governmental organizations and fishery managers in the hunt for solutions, Bullard’s emphasis on the lobster industry did not sit well with local lobstermen, who believed their industry was being singled out.

“Most of what I have to say you probably couldn’t print,” said longtime lobsterman Johnny “Doc” Herrick, who ties up his Dog & I at the Everett R. Jodrey State Fish Pier. “We’ve done everything that they’ve asked us to do.”

“And then some,” said Scott McPhail, the skipper of the Black & Gold lobster boat, which also docks at the state fish pier. “They won’t be happy until we have to drop and haul all our gear out of the water at the end of every day we fish.”

‘Canada needs to get on board’

Beth Casoni, executive director of the Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association, said her membership continues to be concerned that the focus for solving the North Atlantic right whale crisis is zeroed in on the lobster industry.

“We feel like we’re continually in the cross-hairs,” she said.

Casoni and lobstermen cited, as examples of the industry’s cooperation, existing modifications to gear and area closures. They spoke of the lobstermen’s role in joint research projects and of a fishery that prides itself on self-regulation, where cheating often is dealt with in camera among the boats.

They also pointed out that the majority of whale mortalities are the product of ship strikes and that 12 of the 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths in 2017 occurred in Canadian waters.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

John Bullard: Lobster industry must lead on right whales

April 2, 2018 — A number of events over the past two weeks have probably gotten the full attention of the US lobster industry and increased pressure for it to take the lead in fighting the potential extinction of the North Atlantic right whale.

In response to the deaths of the endangered whale, including 12 in Canada last year, Canada has imposed new restrictions on ship speeds and snow crab fishing, as well as earmarked $1 million more annually to help free marine mammals from fishing gear.

In addition, survey teams on Saturday ended their aerial search for right whale calves off the southeastern US coast. For the first time since the spotters began their survey, in 1989, they recorded zero births this calving season. Last year only five births were recorded, well below what used to be the average of 15 per year. Last year there were 17 confirmed right whale deaths. Already this year, a 10-year-old female, who was just entering her breeding years, died after becoming entangled in fishing gear. She was discovered off Virginia.

There are only about 450 North Atlantic right whales, including about 100 breeding females. Females used to give birth every three to four years. Now they give birth only every eight years, if at all. Photographic evidence suggests that about 85 percent of right whales show signs of entanglement in fishing gear, which affects the whale’s fitness and is likely one of the reasons for the longer breeding cycle.

The $669 million lobster industry must assume a leadership role in solving a problem that it bears significant responsibility for creating. Entanglements occur in other fixed-gear fisheries, but the number of lobster trawls in the ocean swamps the other fisheries.

Read the full opinion piece at the Boston Globe

 

Tech to the rescue: The race to save the right whales

April 2, 2018 — The critically endangered North Atlantic right whale historically earned its name because its slow-moving coastal patterns made it the easiest, or right, whale to hunt.

Today, it’s nicknamed the “urban whale” – most notably by New England Aquarium biologists Scott Kraus and Rosalind Rolland in the title of their 2010 book – because ocean commerce off the east coast of Canada and the United States is accidentally killing off the species.

This modern conundrum has been the bane of existence for the school-bus-sized mammal for decades, and while conservation efforts have long been in place and led to a modest comeback in the 1990s, for the past seven years the species has shifted back into decline.

Today there are just 450 right whales left in the world. A record death toll of 18 over the past year including 12 in the Gulf of St. Lawrence last summer, coupled with zero calves this year, has raised the alarm for scientists and government. They’ve now shifted into high gear with several science, technology and management initiatives designed to trace migration patterns, prevent mammal and ship collisions, and contend with what they say is the biggest threat to the right whales: fishing-gear entanglements.

“If we’re going to save the right whales from extinction, tech is going to be part of the solution,” said Patrick Ramage, director of marine conservation for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Cape Cod, Mass.

“It’s going to require a lot more technology and some of the things just coming online offer new hope for this species, but the answers lie not so much in restrictions being placed on the fishing and shipping industries as in unleashing their knowledge and creativity, and enlisting fishermen and mariners in the cause of right whale protection.”

Ropeless fishing, lower breaking strength rope and acoustic underwater monitoring are all on the table right now, but still require testing and investment.

Read the full story at the Globe and Mail