Saving Seafood

Massachusetts: Whales in distress located off Provincetown

April 27, 2018 — The Center for Coastal Studies Marine Animal Entanglement Response team recently shot a “cutting arrow” at a rope around a whale to save the marine mammal from entanglement.

Two weeks ago the team got a report of an entangled right whale about three miles north of Provincetown.

The right whale was identified as a mature female, according to a statement from Center for Coastal Studies executive assistant Cathrine Macort.

“She was found with a tight wrap of very thick rope around her upper jaw and over the top of her rostrum (blow hole),” it stated. “There was no trailing line, so the usual technique of attaching buoys to the entanglement to slow the whale and keep it at the surface could not be utilized. Instead, responders used a cutting arrow fired from the deck of the rescue boat to damage the rope. The now-weakened line should deteriorate and be shed naturally over time.”

Researchers will continue to monitor the whale. It was originally seen in Stellwagon Bank, the 842-square-mile federally protected marine sanctuary.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Wicked Local

 

‘Truly alarming’: No babies for endangered right whales

March 27, 2018 — SAVANNAH, Ga. — The winter calving season for critically endangered right whales has nearly ended with zero newborns spotted in the past four months — a reproductive drought that scientists who study the fragile species haven’t seen in three decades.

Survey flights to look for mother-and-calf pairs off the Atlantic coasts of Georgia and Florida are scheduled to wrap up when the month ends Saturday. Right whales typically give birth off the southeastern U.S. seacoast between December and late March. Researchers have recorded between one and 39 births each year since the flights began in 1989.

Now experts are looking at the possibility of a calving season without any confirmed births.

“It’s a pivotal moment for right whales,” said Barb Zoodsma, who oversees the right whale recovery program in the U.S. Southeast for the National Marine Fisheries Service. “If we don’t get serious and figure this out, it very well could be the beginning of the end.”

Zoodsma said she doesn’t expect any last-minute calf sightings this week.

The timing could hardly be worse. Scientists estimate only about 450 North Atlantic right whales remain, and the species suffered terribly in 2017. A total of 17 right whales washed up dead in the U.S. and Canada last year, far outpacing five births.

With no rebound in births this past winter, the overall population could shrink further in 2018. One right whale was found dead off the coast of Virginia in January.

“It is truly alarming,” said Philip Hamilton, a scientist at the New England Aquarium in Boston who has studied right whales for three decades. “Following a year of such high mortality, it’s clear the population can’t sustain that trajectory.”

Right whales have averaged about 17 births per year during the past three decades. Since 2012, all but two seasons have yielded below-average calf counts.

Scientists will be looking for newborn stragglers as the whales return to their feeding grounds off the northeastern U.S. this spring. That happened last year, when two previously unseen babies were spotted in Cape Cod Bay.

Right whale researcher Charles “Stormy” Mayo of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, Massachusetts, said he was hopeful some calves were born this season off the Carolinas or Virginia, where scientists weren’t really looking.

It’s also possible right whales could rally with a baby boom next year. Females typically take three years or longer between pregnancies, so births can fluctuate from year to year. The previous rock-bottom year for births — just one calf spotted in 2000 — was followed by 31 newborns in 2001, the second-best calving season on record.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Boston Globe

 

Canadians Implement New Crab Fishing Rules to Protect Endangered Right Whales

January 29, 2018 — HYANNIS, Mass. — Canadian Fisheries officials recently announced a handful of new rules for snow crab fishermen to protect critical endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement.

The regulations include reducing the amount of rope allowed to float on the surface.

The new rules are a result of at least 17 right whale deaths last year, many of which were in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Right whales are the most endangered marine mammal in the world with an estimated population around 450.

Charles “Stormy” Mayo with the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown gave kudos to the Canadian officials for being proactive this year.

“It’s a shame we didn’t know where the whales were last year so they could have taken action earlier,” Mayo said.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

 

Another right whale found dead

August 18, 2017 — There doesn’t seem to be an end to the bad news on right whales this summer. With a dozen found dead this year, most of them in a flurry of deaths since June, the Coast Guard reported right whale death number 13 Monday, 145 miles east of Cape Cod.

On Thursday, the whale was identified by matching the pattern of hardened patches of gray skin with photos found in a database at the New England Aquarium. The right whale Couplet was a frequent visitor to the Cape, arriving here first as a yearling in 1992, and seen in Cape Cod Bay mostly in April to feed on abundant plankton blooms for 15 of the 26 years of her life. The last time she was sighted here was in 2015, and she brought her last of her five calves to Cape Cod in 2014.

“We study this unique animal and it is hard not to get attached to it,” said Amy James, aerial survey coordinator for the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. “You get used to seeing the same ones come back year after year.”

The loss of females is especially tragic, James said.

The Northwest Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered whale populations on earth with around 500 individuals and less than 100 breeding females.

“All of her future calves, the ones she could have gone on to create, that opportunity has been lost,” James said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Marine group disentangles humpback whale off Cape Cod

July 22, 2017 — A marine conservation group says it has disentangled a young humpback whale off Cape Cod.

The Center for Coastal Studies says a charter vessel discovered the whale just outside Nauset Inlet on Friday afternoon. It had a bridle of heavy line looped though its mouth and twisted across its back. Two orange buoys trailed behind it.

The center’s Marine Animal Entanglement Response team cut away the gear and the twisted line, leaving the whale with just a short length of line in its mouth. As the whale moved away the remaining rope was pulled from its mouth and it sped off.

The Center for Coastal Studies urges boaters to report any entanglement sightings of whales, sea turtles or other marine animals.

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

Researchers study whales and the food they eat

April 24, 2017 — North Atlantic right whales need a lot of food each day — the caloric equivalent of 3,000 Big Macs — and right now there’s plenty of it in Cape Cod Bay, in the form of a tiny crustacean.

“The food resource is the thickest we have seen in 32 years,” Charles “Stormy” Mayo, head of the right whale ecology program at the Center for Coastal Studies, said of the zooplankton that whales consume.

In years past, the center’s water sampling in the bay has shown total zooplankton densities usually less than 5,000 organisms per cubic meter. While the individual zooplankton are measured in millimeters, the whales that eat them are among the largest animals on earth, reaching lengths of more than 50 feet and weighing up to 79 tons.

But on April 14, for example, the densities reached well over 40,000 organisms per cubic meter across most of the bay, according to Christy Hudak, the center’s associate scientist. Some areas west of Great Island in Wellfleet reached 72,000 organisms per cubic meter.

On that same day, more than 40 percent of the total population of right whales left in the world, 217 out of 524, were spotted in the bay.

“It might be that the food resource is particularly strong this year, and if it continues that will bode well for right whales,” biologist Mark Baumgartner of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said. “Alternatively, food in other habitats at other times of the year may be poor, leading to right whales concentrating in fewer places and fewer times, such as Cape Cod Bay in early spring.”

Scientists are looking at possible connections between the high concentration of right whales in the early spring in Cape Cod Bay and low calving rates.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Fishing for Derelict Gear in Cape Cod Bay

April 11, 2017 — The Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) has begun its “Fishing for Derelict Gear in Cape Cod Bay,”  a project funded by the NOAA Marine Debris Program to identity, remove, document, and properly dispose of lost, abandoned or derelict fishing gear.

Side-scan sonar surveys have been conducted off of Provincetown, Truro, Sesuit and Sandwich, with additional surveys planned for the Chatham area. The surveys identify areas where lost gear exists and assists with documentation and recovery.

Commercial fishing vessels from each area will be enlisted to deliver divers to certain locations so they can document the lost gear as it rests on the ocean floor, and to recover the gear by towing a small grappling hook in targeted locations.  Once returned to shore, the derelict gear will be sorted for recycling, disposal, or return to rightful owners. The first recovery work will take place in Provincetown on April 8th at MacMillan Pier.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

It’s a Boy! Right whale calves spotted in Cape Cod Bay

April 5, 2017 — On Monday, April 3, the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) right whale aerial survey team spotted a right whale mother and calf pair in the north end of Cape Cod Bay between Race Point and Marshfield. This sighting came just hours after researchers from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center identified a different mother / calf pair observed in the Cape Cod Canal.  These are the first sightings of the new calves of the year in Gulf of Maine waters.

The male calf spotted by the CCS team is the offspring of a whale named Pediddle, a whale at least 39 years old that was first identified in 1978 and first seen in Cape Cod Bay in 1979. The new calf is Pediddle’s eighth documented by scientists; her last calf was born in 2009.

“During the sighting the mom was subsurface feeding while the calf was rolling and tail slapping,” said Alison Ogilvie, an aerial observer for the Center’s Right Whale Ecology Program. “Mom and calf looked very healthy considering they’ve just completed a more than 800 mile migration from the calving grounds off Georgia and Florida.”

The aerial survey team also observed and photographed 71 other individual right whales in Cape Cod Bay on Monday, the most seen so far this season.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

MASSACHUSETTS: Right whales return to Cape Cod Bay

January 24, 2017 — Two rare and critically endangered North Atlantic right whales were spotted in Cape Cod Bay, the first of the year seen in the area, according to the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

The center’s research vessel Shearwater spotted the two whales in the bay five miles south of Provincetown Harbor on Jan. 17. On Thursday, center officials say they saw five right whales in the same area.

There are only an estimated 524 right whales in the world, according to the center. They come to the bay every winter due to the high concentrations of microscopic zooplankton there, which is a food source for the whales.

The whales’ presence in the bay warrants caution, according to the center.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Tropical Fish in Cape Cod Waters: “The More You Look, the More You See.”

October 24th, 2016 — Gulf Stream Orphans are appearing in our region. That’s not the name of a rock band, and they’re not unaccompanied children. Gulf Stream Orphans is the research term for Caribbean fish that show up in our Cape Cod waters, and scientists are looking to see if their numbers are increasing.

Owen Nichols, Director of Marine Fisheries Research at the Center for Coastal Studies, joins us to talk about these fish, what types they represent, and new efforts to understand whether they’re appearing more often, or simply being noticed more now that researchers are looking for them.

Read the full story and listen to the audio at Cape and Islands