Saving Seafood

Experts Prepare Plan to Capture Ill Orca as Last Alternative

September 13, 2018 — Federal biologists said Wednesday they are preparing a plan to capture and treat a sick, critically endangered orca if there is no other way to save her in the wild.

Officials said they will intervene and rescue the orca only if she becomes stranded or separated from the rest of her tightly knit group of whales.

They want the 4-year-old orca known as J50 to survive in the wild and contribute to the recovery of southern resident killer whales, without putting the rest of the orcas in her pod at risk.

“We don’t intend to intervene while she’s with her family. If we are presented with a situation where a rescue is the only viable alternative, we will rescue her,” Chris Yates, assistant regional administrator for NOAA’s protected resources division, told reporters during a call.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

California sea lion population rebounds

January 24, 2018 — California sea lions are doing just fine. Thanks for asking.

More than fine, actually.

Sea lions have fully rebounded with an estimated population of more than 250,000 in 2014, according to a recent study by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1975, the population was estimated at less than 90,000.

The study reconstructed the population’s triumphs and trials over the past 40 years.

“The population has basically come into balance with its environment,” co-author Sharon Melin, a research biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, said in a statement. “The marine environment is always changing, and their population is at a point where it responds very quickly to changes in the environment.”

NOAA’s declaration that California sea lions have fully rebounded does not mean a “delisting” as it would if the sea lion was listed as threatened or endangered under the federal Endangered Species Act.

“Although there is no provision in the Marine Mammal Protection Act (which protects sea lions) to delist a species, there is a provision that allows states to ask NOAA Fisheries to take over management of species that have reached carrying capacity (in the law it is called Optimum Sustainable Population or OSP) and potentially do more to control their numbers,” wrote NOAA spokesperson Michael Milstein when announcing the report’s findings.

The goal now, Melin said, is to keep the population balanced between 183,000 and 275,000 individuals.

The rebound is a victory for the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. But as in other instances of animal populations beating the odds — wolves, for example — it’s a success story that comes with challenges.

As the California sea lion population has grown, the animals have expanded their range, bringing them into conflict with humans and endangered fish.

Where you sit’

In Astoria, male California sea lions have taken over an entire stretch of docks at the Port of Astoria’s East Mooring Basin. Port employees have attempted numerous deterrent tactics over the years, everything from fluttering wind dancers to a fake killer whale. Nothing has really worked.

Upward of 1,000 pinnipeds were recorded in a single daily count at the mooring basin in 2015. While fewer sea lions returned this spring, plenty showed up in the fall and many have stuck around through the winter instead of leaving like they have in the past, said Janice Burk, marina manager.

The port plans to install more low railing fabricated by students from Knappa along the docks in the spring. It has proved to be the one deterrent that seems to work. Sometimes.

Read the full story from the Columbia Basin Bulletin at the Chinook Observer

 

NOAA: Determination that bluefin aren’t ‘endangered’ unlikely to affect quota setting

August 15, 2017 — US regulators’ recent decision to reject a petition from environmental groups to list Pacific bluefin tuna as an endangered species is unlikely to affect quota levels, which are set by international bodies.

“I don’t envision this domestic Endangered Species Act determination directly implicating the international management of this species,” Chris Yates, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s west coast assistant regional administrator for protected resources said, in response to a question from Undercurrent News.

The US government doesn’t directly determine bluefin fishing rules in the Pacific, having ceded that authority by treaty to Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC), of which major bluefin catchers Japan, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan are also members. The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) also manages bluefin stocks in those areas of the ocean.

IATTC, which is under strong pressure from environmental groups to conserve declining bluefin stocks, recently failed to agree to new measures at a meeting earlier this month in Mexico City. But members have agreed to revisit the issue at a future meeting in Busan, South Korea.

NOAA assessment

After a recent review of the stock, NOAA scientists struck a mostly positive tone about the stock’s prospects to recover.

Yates, and Matthew Craig, who recently chaired a NOAA review into the health of bluefin stocks, said that there are roughly 1.6 million individual bluefin in the North Pacific Ocean, with 140,000 bluefin being of reproductive age and size.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Tuna won’t be listed as endangered, Trump administration says

August 8, 2017 — Rejecting a petition from environmental groups, the Trump administration announced Monday that it will not list Pacific bluefin tuna — a torpedo-shaped fish that can grow to 1,000 pounds and which sells for $100,000 or more per fish in Japanese sushi markets — as endangered, despite that fact that the animal’s population has fallen 97 percent.

Even with heavy fishing pressure, the steely fish, which swim 6,000 miles between California and Asia, still number about 1.6 million, officials from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Monday.

“The Pacific bluefin tuna does not meet the definition of threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act; that is, it’s not likely to become extinct either now or in the foreseeable future,” said Chris Yates, assistant regional administrator for protected resources at the NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region in Long Beach.

“The population has been at low levels before and has rebounded,” he added.

Environmental groups, however, were disappointed. They have compared bluefin tuna to elephant tusks or shark fins — products that come from an important, but vulnerable, species and command high prices for status value.

Read the full story at the Mercury News