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Helping Fishermen Catch What They Want, and Nothing Else

May 3, 2016 — Heather Goldstone, of NPR affiliates WGBH and WCAI, discusses bycatch reduction in fisheries on a recent episode of “Living Lab.” Her guests were veteran gear designer Ron Smolowitz of the Coonamessett Farm Foundation, who has worked with the southern New England scallop industry; Steve Eayrs, a research scientist at Gulf of Maine Research Institute, who has worked with groundfishermen in Maine; and Tim Werner, a senior scientist with the New England Aquarium, who put acoustic pingers on gill nets to warn away dolphins. An excerpt from the segment is reproduced below:

It’s the holy grail of commercial fishing: catch just the right amount of just the right size of just the right species, without damage to the physical environment. It’s a tall order, and few fisheries are there yet.

Leaving aside the issue of straight up over-fishing, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that, each year, fishermen around the world accidentally catch more than seven million tons of marine life – everything from whales and turtles, to sea cucumbers – that they weren’t even after. Such by-catch, as it’s known, is essentially collateral damage.

And fishing has other environmental impacts. In some parts of the ocean, the scars left by trawls dragged across the sea floor can be seen for years.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way. Over the past decade or so, a lot of effort has gone into designing fishing gear and related equipment that allows fishermen to catch more of what they do want, and less of what they don’t, while also minimizing damage to the environment. For example:

  • Veteran gear designer Ron Smolowitz and the Coonamessett Farm Foundation have worked with the southern New England scallop industry over the past several years to develop a trawl that excludes loggerhead sea turtles. It turns out, it’s also better at capturing scallops, with the end result that scallopers can use smaller areas and less fuel – 75% less – to make their catch.

Read the full story and listen to the segment at WCAI

More than 3 million pounds of fishing gear removed from United States waterways and coastlines

April 15, 2016 — The Fishing for Energy partnership announced that more than three million pounds of old fishing gear and marine debris have been removed from United States waterways and coastlines since 2008 and converted into clean, renewable energy. Fishing for Energy, a partnership between the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), Washington, D.C., the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program, Washington D.C., Covanta, Morristown, New Jersey and Schnitzer Steel Industries, Portland, Oregon, has successfully worked with local commercial fishermen and ports to collect and responsibly dispose of thousands of abandoned fishing traps and other unwanted gear.

“Together, with the help of fishermen in over 49 communities across the nation, we are ensuring retired gear is disposed of properly and not ‘fishing’ longer than intended. Proper disposal of fishing gear can help minimize impacts that lost or abandoned nets, lines and traps can have on our natural resources and our economy,” says Nancy Wallace, director of the NOAA Marine Debris Program.

Read the full story at Recycling Today

Sedgwick fisherman faces charges, suspension after lobster conflict flares

March 12, 2016 — STONINGTON, Maine — A Sedgwick fisherman is facing criminal charges and a possible three-year suspension of his lobster license because of a violent ocean confrontation last fall in which he allegedly rammed another fisherman’s boat, shot off a flare gun and intentionally broke a line on one of that fisherman’s traps.

Carl W. Gray, 41, is facing a civil charge of tampering with another fisherman’s gear and three criminal charges associated with the Oct. 5 incident. He has been charged with operating a watercraft to endanger and theft by unauthorized taking, both Class E misdemeanors, and a Class C felony charge of reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon, according to court documents filed in Ellsworth.

A Maine Department of Marine Resources hearing on the civil tampering charge was held Feb. 24 at the Hancock County Courthouse so Gray could make his case about why the proposed three-year suspension, which has yet to go into effect, should not be imposed.

At the hearing, a former Marine Patrol officer who responded to the incident recapped the alleged events.

Owen Reed, who works as a Maine State Police trooper, told Susan Cole, the DMR officer conducting the hearing, that he was contacted Oct. 5, 2015, by a third party and told that brothers Caleb Heanssler and Zachary Heanssler had gotten into an altercation with Gray several miles out to sea from Stonington.

According to Reed, the brothers told him that during the altercation, Gray tried to ram Caleb Heanssler’s boat, that Gray recklessly shot off a flare and that Gray intentionally broke a line to one of Zachary Heanssler’s traps by attaching it to his boat and gunning his engine.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

Fishing for a solution for endangered right whales

December 29, 2015 — Sometimes technology solves a problem, sometimes it makes it worse.

When researchers at the New England Aquarium and the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown examined ropes recovered from whales entangled in fishing gear from 1994 to 2010, they found that entanglements for North Atlantic right whales, the world’s most endangered great whale species, accelerated dramatically from 1993 to 2010, in both frequency and in the severity of the entrapment.

The culprit, scientists believe, is a new type of rope known as Polysteel, that rope manufacturers began making and marketing to fishermen and others in the marine trades as being 40 percent stronger and more durable than other synthetic ropes. Plus, the lobster industry also shifted from wood to wire traps that allowed them to use heavier gear and for the pots to stay in the water through the winter, increasing the likelihood of interaction with whales.

Even though fishermen already employ weak links designed to break and separate the line from the buoy when a whale pulls on it, researchers found the lines themselves were still doing a lot of damage.

“It was a huge change,” said Amy Knowlton, the lead author of the study and a research scientist with the New England Aquarium working to reduce the risk of whale entanglement and death from fishing gear and lines. Scientists put the number of North Atlantic right whales that can be lost due to human causes at less than one per year, if the population is going to increase and avoid extinction. The National Marine Fisheries Service has calculated that 3.25 right whales per year either died or were severely injured between 2007 and 2011 by being caught up in fishing gear and lines. The agency estimates that 83 percent of the right whale population shows scarring from fishing gear.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Inflatable vessel to help Maine improve disentanglement efforts

December 24, 2015 —  With recent funding from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund, the Maine Department of Marine Resources has taken another step forward in its ability to lead whale disentanglement efforts.

The $20,000 grant will be used by the DMR to purchase a soft bottom inflatable boat that can maneuver more safely and effectively when Maine Marine Patrol, along with key DMR staff, respond to entangled whales.

“Often, responders have to pull alongside an entangled whale which might surface underneath the boat,” said DMR Scientist Erin Summers, who is coordinating the purchase. “A soft bottom boat will move and form to the body of the whale, making injury to the whale less likely. A hard bottom boat is also more likely to tip when hit from below, which could endanger the responders.”

Read the full story at Wiscasset Newspaper

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Study eyes fish freed from hooks

December 24, 2015 — Researchers at the New England Aquarium, in conjunction with those from state agencies, are getting closer to releasing study results on the collateral impact of recreational haddock discards on the overall mortality rate of the species.

Dr. John Mandelman, director of research at the Boston-based aquarium, said the the field work for the study was completed in early November. He expects the New England Fishery Management Council, which helped fund the study, to complete vetting the analysis sometime early next spring.

The field work was performed with significant assistance from recreational fishing operators such as Gloucester-based Yankee Fleet and Seabrook, New Hampshire-based Eastman’s Docks Fishing Fleet.

“As with all studies, what we very much tried to do was to work as much as possible as part of a legitimate fishing effort, or what we call a fishery-dependent exercise” Mandelman said. “This was a really nice partnership.”

Mandelman said project researchers made about eight trips last spring aboard some of the Yankee Fleet’s larger party boats, focusing on observing how a full range of anglers — from novice to veteran — performed catch-and-release of haddock discards, while also charting catch gear, catch conditions, injuries to the fish, time out of water and sea temperatures.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Maine to acquire soft-bottom boat for whale entanglements

December 20, 2015 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — The Maine Department of Marine Resources is getting a $20,000 grant that it will use to help make it safer for its staff members to respond to whale entanglements along the coast.

The grant from the Maine Outdoor Heritage Fund will be used to purchase an inflatable, soft-bottom boat that will be used by Marine Patrol to help free whales from ropes in the ocean, the state agency announced in a prepared statement released this week.

The agency currently uses one or more boats with rigid, v-shaped hulls to deal with entanglements, but such boats can pose a hazard both to whales and the people in the boats if the whale should surface underneath the vessel, according to Department of Marine Resources staff. The hard bottom is more likely to injure the whale, which already could be sick or injured, than a soft-bottom boat. A hard-bottom boat also is more likely to tip or capsize if the whale pushes it up out of the water.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

 

Gulf of Maine Research Institute to study fishing communities’ climate vulnerability

December 16, 2015 (AP) — The Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland will get $1.3 million in federal money to investigate fishing communities’ vulnerability to climate change in the Northeast.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the award Tuesday. Researchers from the institute will examine ecological, social and economic impacts of climate change on fishing communities.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Portland Press Herald

Study: Ropes that break more easily could save some whales

December 15, 2015 — BOSTON (AP) — A study published in a scientific journal says life-threatening whale entanglements could be reduced by using ropes that break more easily under the force of the enormous animals.

Whales become entangled in commercial fishing gear almost every week along the East Coast of the United States and Canada. A coastal study in conservation biology examined ropes retrieved from live and dead whales entangled in fishing gear from 1994 to 2010.

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

Activists and fishermen team up to address record whale entanglement

December 10, 2015 — Past efforts have pitted the wildlife experts and fishermen against each other and offered little additional protection for whales. This year, the two camps are trying something different: cooperation.

Fishermen have long been at odds with wildlife experts who claim lobster and crab traps are killing whales. And unusually warm waters off the coast of California this year have already caused 60 whales to become entangled in offshore fishing gear.

In response to a 400 percent increase in whale entanglements this year, whale advocates and fishermen teaming up to find solutions that protect both whales and area fishermen whose livelihoods depend on traps in the sea.

Prevention strategies over the last twenty years haven’t done much to help whales and only served to bankrupt the fisherman, says Geoff Shester, California campaign director for Oceana. This time around, wildlife advocates and fishermen are trying a new strategy: cooperation.

“We’ve got pots in the water, we’ve got ropes in the water and we’ve got whales in the water,” crabber Jim Anderson told the Associated Press. “What can we do to make this a safe place for everybody?”

Read the full story at The Christian Science Monitor

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