Saving Seafood

Crabbing industry up to challenge of reducing whale entanglements

October 18, 2019 — Oregon’s commercial crabbing industry prides itself on sustainability. Though Dungeness crab has been harvested commercially since the late 1800s, this population is considered to be stable to increasing along the West Coast — thanks to commercial and recreational regulations that protect the breeding population and ensure the state’s official crustacean will be conserved for future generations.

Now, the fishing industry is facing a new environmental challenge — whale entanglements in crabbing gear. Before 2014, such entanglements were rare, numbering about 10 annually off the entire West Coast. Since then, entanglements have become more common, peaking at 55 in 2015 and numbering 46 off the West Coast last year, according to NOAA.

Forensics of each entanglement tell us that about half of them can be attributed to fishing gear, a third to Dungeness crab gear. Most of the crabbing gear entanglements are attributed to California fisheries, but Oregon gear has been confirmed in several entanglements over the past few years. Whales can be disentangled in some cases, and fishermen and other ocean users know to immediately report incidents to a hotline or hail the U.S. Coast Guard to initiate a response from NOAA’s disentanglement team.

Read the full story at The Newport News Times

West Coast whale entanglements reduced by half this season, but reason why is debated

September 13, 2019 — Whale entanglements involving fishing gear along the West Coast have dropped by more than 50% so far this year compared to 2018.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as of Aug. 23, the National Marine Fisheries Service reported 17 confirmed whale entanglements in 2019, compared to 40 for the same period a year prior.

In both years, entanglements involved commercial Dungeness crab gear and drift gillnets.

“Year to date, it’s lower and is encouraging,” said Justin Viezbicke, NOAA’s West Coast Stranding coordinator. “We’ve seen spikes where we’ve seen seven or eight in a month and with three months left this year, things could still change.”

Read the full story at The Orange County Register

Whale entanglements along West Coast drop by nearly half

September 9, 2019 — A conservation group says the number of whales entangled in crab fishing gear along the West Coast dropped by nearly half this year after a lawsuit settlement ended California’s commercial Dungeness crab season early.

The Center for Biological Diversity says preliminary data released by the National Marine Fisheries Service shows 18 whale entanglements were reported in the first eight months of this year, down from 42 reports during that same period in 2018. The majority of entangled whales were spotted off California.

Read the full story at the Associated Press

California Whale Entanglements Halved with Shorter Crab Season

September 4, 2019 — According to data from the National Marine Fisheries Service, the rate of whale entanglements in fishing gear along the U.S. West Coast has fallen by half this year, from about 40 incidents January-August last year to 18 incidents for the same period this year. The environmental advocacy group Center for Biological Diversity connected the improvement to a legal settlement shortening the California crab fishing season.

A lawsuit filed by the center in 2017 ultimately led to a settlement with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Association, and the terms included ending the California crab season on April 15 instead of June 30 as scheduled.

The settlement also includes additional measures to mitigate entanglement risks. It promotes the use of ropeless gear and creates a system for assessing risks to whales and triggering area closures when necessary.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

California coasts recovering, but more marine heatwaves like ‘The Blob’ expected

July 26, 2019 — The effects of the marine heatwave off the California coast from 2014 to 2016, better known as The Blob, that led to a decrease in Chinook salmon and virtually shut down the Dungeness crab industry are finally starting to wear off.

The heatwave led to major shifts in the marine ecosystem, with species of fish migrating to different regions where the temperature was more favorable. It caused declines in certain species and increases in others. A type of algae that produces the neurotoxin domoic acid also outcompeted other forms of algae, leading to huge blooms that poisoned a variety of sea life, such as Dungeness crab.

“It wasn’t about (a lack of) abundance,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. “It was about destabilized ecosystems.”

The ecosystem is still recovering from the marine heatwave, slowly cooling down, but conditions are improving enough to have led to a 12.3% increase in West Coast fishery revenues, primarily “driven by Pacific hake, Dungeness crab and market squid,” according to the 2019 California Current Ecosystem Status Report prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Jennifer Gilden, the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s staff officer for outreach, habitat and legislation, said the ocean conditions are improving, though the Chinook salmon population has yet to fully recover.

“This year won’t be great,” Gilden said, “but conditions will be improving over the next few years.”

Read the full story at Mercury News

Oregon wants to untangle whales from crab fishery

July 23, 2019 — Oregon fishery managers are changing how the state’s lucrative Dungeness crab fishery will be managed to avoid tangling whales in commercial fishing gear.

Though the changes happening this season are relatively minor for commercial fishermen, difficult discussions are on the horizon.

The number of whales entangled so far this year off Oregon, Washington state and California appears to be down compared to prior years, according to preliminary reports. But Oregon wants to avoid a lawsuit like the one brought against California by the Center for Biological Diversity. That lawsuit, over impacts to whales from commercial fishing activities, settled in March.

For now, fishery managers will eliminate a two-week postseason cleanup period in the commercial Dungeness fishery — a grace period for fishermen to clear gear out of the water. Instead, all commercial gear must be out of the water by the last day of the season on Aug. 14.

The measure, along with others, including the introduction of new buoy tags to help better identify gear, were among a list of recommendations proposed by the Oregon Whale Entanglement Working Group. The stakeholder group, which includes fishermen and industry representatives as well as researchers and fishery managers, began meeting in 2017 following several years of record-high incidents of whale entanglement.

Read the full story at The Astorian

In a settlement over whale entanglement, California’s Dungeness crab fishermen lose the spring season

June 3, 2019 — The worst-case scenario has been averted — no multiyear closure of California’s Dungeness crab fishery. But fishermen will feel the sting for years to come after a settlement in a lawsuit over whale and sea turtle entanglements has closed spring crabbing in the state for the foreseeable future. And the fishermen are not happy.

“The settlement is going to be extremely painful and extremely difficult to deal with,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, noting that millions of dollars in product will be left in the water this year. “But this was the best possible deal that was acceptable to all parties.”

At issue is a 2017 lawsuit in federal court by the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Biological Diversity that argued the state of California was in violation of the Endangered Species Act after a three-year spike in whale entanglements in Dungeness crab fishing gear from 2014 to 2017.

The lawsuit sought to force the state of California to obtain a federal incidental take permit for whales and turtles — a process that takes around three years to implement. It would have been possible for the fishery to remain closed during the intervening years, although the CBD says it never sought an indefinite closure through litigation.

In 2015, 50 whales, including humpback, gray and blue whales, were confirmed to have become entangled in fishing gear, up from an average of less than 10 annual entanglements in the 15 years prior. In 2016, the number of entanglements remained high at 48 confirmed whale entanglements. Numbers in 2017 were down, but still above historical norms, with 31 confirmed entanglements on the West Coast.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Hearing held on Oregon crab boat sinking that killed 3

May 14, 2019 — The captain of a crabbing vessel that sank in high waves, killing him and two other fishermen, had methamphetamine and alcohol in his system, according to testimony Monday at the opening of a five-day U.S. Coast Guard hearing.

Stephen Biernacki, 50, and crew members James Lacey, 48, of South Toms River, New Jersey, and Joshua Porter, 50, of Toledo, Oregon, all died Jan. 8 after their 42-foot crabbing boat was battered by waves up to 20 feet (6 meters) tall as it crossed the Yaquina Bar near Newport, Oregon, during the lucrative but fickle Dungeness crab season.

Toxicology tests found cannabis in Lacey’s system; Porter had no drugs or alcohol in his body when he died, according to results shared at the hearing, which was streamed live from Newport, Oregon.

The bar — where the Yaquina River meets the ocean current — can be so treacherous that the dangers of crossing it with a fully loaded crab boat were the premise of a spin-off of the “The Deadliest Catch,” a reality TV show about commercial fishermen that aired on the Discovery channel.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Washington Post

‘Desperately needed’: Congress OKs more than $29 million in disaster relief for California fisheries

May 1, 2019 — It’s taken four years but fishermen along California’s North Coast who have seen crab and salmon seasons truncated and even closed altogether will finally see some relief after $29.65 million in federal disaster relief funding was approved by Congress.

It was in the 2015-16 year the Dungeness crab fishery and the Yurok Chinook salmon fishery both collapsed due to poor water quality. Despite $200 million in relief funding made available in 2018, the release of the money was delayed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and it took a letter from U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman and Rep. Jackie Speier to get the ball rolling again last year.

“We’ve been waiting almost two years since these funds were made available by appropriations from Congress,” said Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman’s Association on Monday. “These funds have been desperately needed for a long time and the crab fishermen are already experiencing another severe hardship with whale entanglements and the funds are needed more now than they were before.”

Oppenheim said local crab fishermen will see anywhere from $22,000 to $45,000 depending on the size of their operation and it’s not as if someone has hit the lottery, this is money that will be used on the basics and the bare necessities.

Read the full story at the Santa Cruz Sentinel 

Explaining California’s sudden humpback entanglement surge

April 22, 2019 — Every year, humpback whales make their annual trek from tropical calving grounds to feed in the cold, nutrient-rich waters off the coast of California. Historically, they arrived to feast in June just as the Dungeness crab fishery was closing and gear was being pulled in for the season. But in 2012, they arrived a few weeks earlier than normal. In 2014, they were a month early. By 2015, the humpbacks arrived in April, a full two months earlier than the norm.

That shift has been dangerous for the whales. In March, it was the subject of a lawsuit settlement that prompted an early end to the Dungeness crab season. Some of our own research has determined the cause: climate change.

Humpback sightings from the Golden Gate Bridge are a hallmark of summer in San Francisco. The whales come to feed where the narrow straits of the Bay meet the ocean. Marine life abounds here, where nutrient-dense water feeds blooms of phytoplankton. They are then eaten by zooplankton, including krill, tiny reddish shrimp-like crustaceans which are a favored food for whales. Seasonal blooms of these tiny animals support the ecosystem bottom-up, producing a massive marine buffet for fish, birds and other marine mammals. Predators gorge themselves in the summer and fall when this area supports the most amount of food.

Where there are high concentrations of fish, there are people catching them, and the whales’ earlier arrival has driven more interactions with West Coast fisheries. Since 2014, the number of whales entangled in Dungeness crab pots has escalated dramatically, with 129 cases reported between 2015 and 2017, compared to around 10 each year in previous decades.

Read the full story at the San Francisco Examiner