Saving Seafood

Humpback whale disentangled off coast of Massachusetts

June 16, 2026 — The Center for Coastal Studies disentangled a humpback whale Sunday afternoon off the coast of Massachusetts.

The young whale was anchored in fishing gear in the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and was freed by the center’s Marine Animal Entanglement Response team.

While the whale sustained some injuries from the entanglement, the team feels reasonably confident that it will recover, according to a release from the Center for Coastal Studies.

Late Sunday morning, recreational boaters reported a relatively small whale struggling in the buoy line of fishing gear.

The boaters reported the sighting to the U.S. Coast Guard, who contacted the NOAA Fisheries and the Center for Coastal Studies hotlines.

The Massachusetts Environmental Police were on patrol nearby and volunteered to stand by the whale while the response team attempted the disentanglement during a very short window of calm seas. TowBoatUS overheard the report and offered to stand by.

Read the full article at The Inquirer and Mirror

22 Right Whale Calves Born So Far This Winter

February 5, 2026 — An aerial survey of Cape Cod Bay conducted by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) on Jan. 10 found 33 North Atlantic right whales here — the highest number on a single day in January in the center’s 27 years of such surveys. Normally the whales are just starting to trickle into the area at this time of year, said Daniel Palacios, director of the center’s right whale ecology program.

“It was a surprise,” said Palacios. “There are good plankton resources in the bay right now, and that’s drawing them here earlier than usual.”

Over more than 40 years of research, the CCS has established that Cape Cod Bay is the greatest known aggregation point for the roughly 380 members of the endangered species. In the winter, more than half of the remaining population comes here to feed on dense patches of plankton, said Charles “Stormy” Mayo, who founded the center’s right whale ecology program after conducting the first successful whale disentanglement in 1984.

In the warmer waters between Florida and the Carolinas, calving season, which runs from mid-November through mid-April, has been good. Twenty-two calves have been born so far, compared to 11 in last winter’s season and 20 the year before.

The most recent calf to be identified was just off the coast of Flagler Beach, Fla. on Jan. 30, according to the New England Aquarium.

The sighting of so many calves is “a very positive sign,” Mayo said. “We should be encouraged. But this population, at less than 400 animals, is still in tough shape.”

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the right whale is in the midst of an “unusual mortality event” that began in 2017, when 17 whales are known to have died in one year.

There are only about 70 breeding females in the entire population, and the number of calves born per season can range dramatically, with the highest recorded number being 39 in 2009 and the lowest zero in 2018.

The average number of calves born from 1980 to 2022 was 16, so 22 calves is considered a good season. Nonetheless, population biologists at NOAA Fisheries have said that 50 or more calves need to be born every year for many years to reverse the species’ decline and set the stage for recovery.

The original cause of the right whales’ decline was whaling — the entire population was reduced to 100 or fewer animals off the coast of the U.S. and Canada in the early 1900s. An international ban on hunting all right whales went into effect in 1935, but the population has struggled to recover due to mortality and serious injury from vessel strikes and entanglement in fishing gear.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

$2M Grant to Fishermen’s Alliance Means More Boats Gathering Ocean Data

December 5, 2024 — Strange things have been happening in recent years in the Gulf of Maine, the 36,000 square miles of relatively enclosed ocean stretching from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia. Low-oxygen zones have become annual occurrences, a large brown algae bloom in summer 2023 grew from Maine to northern Massachusetts, and looming over it all is the accelerating warming of surface waters. The Gulf of Maine is warming three times faster than the global average, according to the Maine Climate Council, which is faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.

Understanding these phenomena and their effects on fisheries is difficult, said Owen Nichols, Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies, because of the lack of data available on the ocean water below the surface — at the depths where most fish live.

There is one group of people, however, who regularly put equipment deep in the ocean: fishermen. And many of them are already working with scientists to gather data on the water.

But on Oct. 31, Gov. Healey’s administration announced a nearly $2 million grant to the Chatham-based Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance that will significantly expand fishing vessel-based measurements. The grant is from the quasi-public Mass. Technology Collaborative.

Since 2001, a Northeast Fisheries Science Center project has partnered with local fishermen to try to fix the lack of data about the depths. The project, called eMOLT (Environmental Monitoring on Lobster Traps and Large Trawlers), has so far installed sensors on about 100 fishermen’s gear to gather data on stratification of water temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, and other parameters.

Read the full story at The Provincetown Independent

‘Resilient’ leatherback turtles can survive fishing rope entanglements. Mostly

April 6, 2022 — Leatherback sea turtles run a gantlet of fishing lines and other human impacts during their annual migratory loop from Caribbean nesting grounds to the eastern coast of North America and back. One of the leatherback turtle’s biggest obstacles is entanglement in ropes from lobster pot traps deployed by commercial fisheries in the waters of New England. A recently published report in Endangered Species Research found that while turtles can survive entanglement if reached by rescuers, new approaches in fisheries are needed for them to survive over the long term.

“I was surprised and encouraged by how many of the cases [showed] that the turtles were able to survive these events,” said lead author Kara Dodge, from the New England Aquarium in Massachusetts, who analyzed 15 years’ worth of data collected by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) based in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The CCS played the dual role of collecting data and coming to the rescue during turtle entanglements with its Marine Animal Entanglement Response Program. Between 2005 and 2019, the CCS saved more than 100 leatherback turtles. The world’s largest sea turtle, the leatherback, Dermochelys coriacea, is currently listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, and is threatened by fisheries, destruction of beaches and climate change.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

North Atlantic right whale researchers spot 21 right whales south of Nantucket during winter field work

March 10, 2022 — North Atlantic right whale researchers recently spotted more than 20 right whales while exploring southern New England waters during winter field work.

For the very first time, the New England Aquarium scientists are surveying this region by boat as they try to better understand climate change impacts on this critically endangered species.

The researchers went out on the water for four days from mid-January to early March, looking for right whales about 70 miles south of Nantucket. The scientists spotted 17 individual right whales by boat, or about 5% of the population, which is estimated to be less than 350.

Aquarium scientists worked in tandem with the New England Aquarium aerial survey team, as well as with teams from the Center for Coastal Studies and the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which helped navigate the boat to whale sightings. In total, the aquarium teams identified 21 unique right whales from either the air or the water.

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

2 years ago, lobsters started dying in their traps. Now scientists think they know why

November 10, 2021 — In September of 2019, Tracy Pugh started getting phone calls about dead lobsters.

Pugh is a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, and a handful of fishermen in Cape Cod Bay were reporting traps full of dead lobsters — “anywhere from several dozen to hundreds,” she recalled. “So way, way more than normal.”

Some reported dead fish and crabs in their traps, as well. One trawler came up with a bunch of dead scallops.

Pugh, working with scientists at the Center for Coastal Studies, found the reason soon enough: a roughly six-mile stretch of water in Cape Cod Bay almost completely depleted of oxygen. “It was pretty bad,” said Pugh.

The hypoxic zone — or “blob,” as it became known — ambled around the sea floor for at least a week. Any animals that could swim or crawl away from the blob did, said Pugh. But those stuck in traps or unable to move, died.

The hypoxic zone dissipated in October of that year, but a new one appeared in 2020, around the same time and place. The blobs left behind a mystery: what caused them? And were they going to come back every year?

Read the full story at WBUR

MASSACHUSETTS: NPS provides $368k to Coastal Studies

September 8, 2021 — The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) in Provincetown has received $386,000 from the National Park Service and $75,000 the state of Massachusetts to establish a new Shark Ecology Research Program.

The foundation of the program is an ongoing study conducted by Bryan Legare, a seascape ecologist in the Center’s Marine Geology department.

Legare is examining the relationship between white shark behavior and habitat use in the shallow nearshore waters off the Cape Cod National Seashore to understand how sharks use the environment.

For the last three summers, Legare has deployed a dense array of acoustic receivers in a study area at Head of the Meadow beach in North Truro; he added a second array off Nauset Beach in 2020.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

 

Right Whales Increase Activity in Ocean Waters Slated for Offshore Wind Farms

August 2, 2021 — Critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are increasing their presence in waters south of Martha’s Vineyard, according to a recent study, including large swaths of ocean slated for wind energy development.

Conducted by scientists with NOAA Fisheries, the New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies using aerial survey data from 2011 through 2019, the study found that 327 unique right whales have been spotted in the waters of southern New England, making the area a crucial habitat for a species teetering on the edge of extinction.

Scientists estimate the North Atlantic right whale population at less than 400 total specimens, including approximately 100 breeding females.

Meanwhile, the study comes just as the country’s first industrial-scale offshore wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1, has cleared federal approvals and is scheduled to go online by 2023, jump-starting a nascent offshore wind energy industry that could lead to the construction of hundreds of underwater wind turbines in the region.

According to Vineyard Wind, the project will include 64 turbines approximately 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Additional leaseholders in the area, including Mayflower Wind and a second Vineyard Wind project, would significantly increase turbine counts.

In the study, scientists noted that the presence of right whales has been sighted in the area south of the Vineyard every month in recent years, with large aggregations occurring during the winter and spring.

Between December and May, almost a quarter of the right whale population may be present in the region, and the individual residence time for whales has increased to 13 days during the period, the study states. Visual and acoustic monitoring, from flight surveys and photography, showed consistent use of the wind energy area by a third of the species, including 30 per cent of breeding females.

Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette

Whale rescuers free humpback from fishing gear entanglement

June 11, 20221 — A three-day effort to free a humpback whale from entanglement in fishing gear ended in success this week, marine mammal experts said Thursday.

The whale, identified as a mature female named Valley, was first spotted Monday by a whale watch boat on Stellwagen Bank northeast of Provincetown, according to a statement from the Center for Coastal Studies.

The center’s entanglement response team found that the whale had a heavy line lodged in its mouth, but because sea conditions were poor, it could not be freed.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Gloucester Daily Times

North Atlantic Right Whales On the Move in the Northeast

April 16, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

On March 21, 2021, 89 North Atlantic right whales were spotted by scientists from the Center for Coastal Studies in Cape Cod Bay. Just a few days later, on March 30, scientists spotted 57 North Atlantic right whales off Southeast New England in and around the wind energy development areas. They were seen by scientists from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center flying a sighting survey. Three mother/calf pairs have been sighted there to date.

Right whales have typically appeared in Cape Cod Bay during spring, but in recent years have been arriving sooner and staying longer. Right whale use of areas south and west of Nantucket Shoals has been documented in just the last 10 years. In recent years, the right whales appear to be staying in these waters in greater numbers and for longer periods than in the past.

What gives? To find out, we track when and where these whales are found throughout the year, using sighting surveys and passive acoustic listening devices.

“A very small portion of the right whale population heads south to the waters off northern Florida and Georgia in the winter—mostly just the moms—to give birth,“ said Tim Cole, a marine mammal researcher and lead of the center’s aerial whale survey team. We try to determine where the rest of the population is and have found them so far this year in large numbers on Nantucket Shoals south of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and in Cape Cod Bay.”

Read the full release here