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    • Fishing Terms Glossary

Fishing Gear Recovery Project Begins in Cape Cod Bay

April 8, 2019 — The Center for Coastal Studies has begun field work with area lobstermen to remove, document, and properly dispose of lost, abandoned or derelict fishing gear in Cape Cod Bay.

“Mobilizing Diverse Stakeholders to Remove Derelict Fishing Gear from Beaches & Bay” is a project funded by the NOAA Marine Debris Program. It takes place during the winter season, when lobster fishing is prohibited in the bay to protect the critically endangered North Atlantic right whales who feed here.

The CCS Marine Geology Program will first conduct side-scan sonar surveys in areas identified by fishermen as locations where lost gear likely exists.

Commercial fishing vessels from each area are enlisted to recover the gear by towing grappling equipment in targeted locations.  Once returned to shore, the derelict gear will be sorted for recycling, disposal, or return to rightful owners.

“Who better to help in this effort than the fishermen who have dedicated their lives to understanding the environment?” said Demi Fox, the NOAA Marine Debris Program’s Northeast Regional Coordinator.

“They have a critical desire to protect the ecosystem upon which their livelihoods depend, and we are grateful for their expertise. The NOAA Marine Debris Program appreciates the hard work of passionate partners like CCS and the fishing community.”

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

MASSACHUSETTS: Right Whales Begin Seasonal Migration to Cape Cod Waters

March 22, 2019 — Cape Codders know that tourists come with the warming weather.

So do the whales.

Researchers say North Atlantic right whales and their newborn calves have been arriving off the shores of Cape Cod.

The endangered and very rare species of whale makes the yearly migration from waters off the coasts of Florida and Georgia to feed in cooler waters off the Cape.

“We have quite a few whales here, especially considering that this is a pretty small bay and these are very rare animals,” said Charles “Stormy” Mayo of Center for Coastal Studies.

“We had 61 whales sighted on our last aerial survey.”

The North Atlantic right whale population is seen by researchers to be at great risk of extinction, with only an estimated 411 remaining in the world. Statistics show the mammal’s steady decline in numbers from 2010 through 2017.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Reports of Right Whale Calves Give Researchers Hope

January 23, 2019 — Local North Atlantic Right Whale researchers are hearing some good news from their colleagues off the southeastern coast of the United States.

A third right whale calf was recently spotted during the current birthing season in waters off Florida.

The critically endangered species has an estimated population just over 400.

Center for Coastal Studies Researcher Charles “Stormy” Mayo said the three births are excellent news but female right whales need to reproduce more.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

2nd North Atlantic right whale calf spotted off Florida

January 17, 2019 — Another North Atlantic right whale calf and its mother have been spotted off Florida, the critically endangered species’ second confirmed newborn of the winter birthing season, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

The mother, tentatively identified as #3317, is an important example of the ideal calving rate for a reproductively mature right whale female, said Philip Hamilton, a research scientist with the New England Aquarium’s Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

“She actually gave birth three years ago,” Hamilton said about a previous birth, compared to the nine years between documented births for the season’s other right whale mother, #2791, spotted with a calf Dec. 28 off Jacksonville Beach, Florida. “That’s very heartening that at least some right whales are able to reproduce as quickly as they can.”

Right whale #3317 is about 16 years old, and has been spotted by government surveys since 2002 from Florida to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, according to the aquarium’s right whale database. She was spotted in Cape Cod Bay several times in 2016 by researchers for the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard Times

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.

Cutting Fishing Gear Off of Whales Is Not a Way to Save Them

May 2, 2018 — When an entangled whale is sighted in New England, the call comes here – to the Marine Animal Entanglement Response team at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. The hotline phone is red, of course. After just one loud, shrill ring, the call goes directly to rescue assistant Everett Sacrey’s cell phone.

“First thing I do is grab my little pad and pen and paper over here,” explains Sacrey, “We have a bunch of questions that we want to ask.”

As Sacrey takes down information about the location and condition of the animal, the team grabs their gear and heads for the response boat on MacMillan Pier.

“It’s minimum time wasted and maximum time responding and trying to get to that animal,” Sacrey said.

That’s what happened on April 10th of this year. Researchers caught sight of a female North Atlantic right whale known as Kleenex who’s been entangled for more than three years. Take a second to think about that. Three years spent swimming around with rope wrapped through her mouth and around her head, and this is the first time responders have had an opportunity to help her.

Read the full story at WCAI

 

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

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