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MASSACHUSETTS: Fear on Cape Cod as Sharks Hunt Again

October 25, 2021 — Over the past decade the waters around Cape Cod have become host to one of the densest seasonal concentrations of adult white sharks in the world. Acoustic tagging data suggest the animals trickle into the region during lengthening days in May, increase in abundance throughout summer, peak in October and mostly depart by the dimming light and plunging temperatures of Thanksgiving. To conservationists, the annual returns are a success story, a welcome sign of ecosystem recovery at a time when many wildlife species are depleted. But the phenomenon carries unusual public-safety implications. Unlike many places where adult white sharks congregate, which tend to be remote islands with large colonies of sea lions or seals, the sharks’ summer residency in New England overlaps with tourist season at one of the Northeast’s most coveted recreational areas. Moreover, the animals are hunting in remarkably shallow water, at times within feet of the beach. This puts large numbers of people in close contact with a fast and efficient megapredator, historically the oceans’ most feared fish.

Among critics of the white-shark status quo, disillusionment runs deep. Other members of the Cape Cod Ocean Community, including Drew Taylor, reject the reliance on nonlethal approaches. Taylor proposes challenging policy and amending federal law to allow communities to set preferred population levels for white sharks and gray seals and permit hunting or fishing to reduce their numbers. Conservation laws, he said, were understandable in intent but lack tools to deal adequately with rebounds of this scale. “How can you write a law that protects something in perpetuity?” he said. His views, like those heard in human-wildlife conflicts elsewhere, can be summarized like this: It’s perfectly reasonable to find lions or cobras or white sharks captivating but not want hundreds of them feeding in your neighborhood park. He blames federal policies for fostering biological and social dynamics that force people to yield without question or recourse to dangerous or nuisance animals. Marine mammals, he noted, enjoy protection that terrestrial mammals do not; a sole black bear that roamed Cape Cod in 2012, for example, was promptly tranquilized and removed.

Greg Connors, captain of the 40-foot gillnet vessel Constance Sea, which fishes from Chatham, said environmentalists and bureaucrats have not fully considered the gray seal recovery’s effect on people who live on the water. Seal advocates and scientists, he said, have not shown convincing evidence that the historic seal population in New England was as large as it is now and operate on assumptions that all increases are good. At some point, he said, other voices and interests should be balanced against those in control. “They never set a bar on how high they want it to get,” he said of the seal population. “It’s always just more. That’s a terrible plan.” Seals, he said, have done more than attract white sharks; they have driven fish farther to sea and steal catches from nets. Nick Muto, the lobster captain, said marine-mammal protections, as designed, defy common sense. Why, he asked, do protections apply equally to North Atlantic right whales, of which perhaps 400 animals remain, and gray seals, which in the western Atlantic number roughly half a million? He was surprised that Medici’s death didn’t change the official stance. “I thought once somebody died here,” he said, “it would be lights out for the seals.” Connors and Muto acknowledge there is little chance for an amendment, an assessment shared by their industry group. “We’re under no illusion that there is going to be a cull,” said John Pappalardo, who heads the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance. “Blood on the beach? People would not tolerate that.” But frustrations capture the degree to which one side feels overtalked and alienated by the other, including many people whose lives center on the water.

Read the full story at the New York Tims Magazine

 

New Study Develops Alternate Methods to Manage Gray Seal Bycatch

September 27, 2021 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

Marine mammal conservation is one of the top goals of U.S. ocean management. That is why it’s particularly important for regulators to have an accurate estimate of how fisheries and other ocean users may impact marine mammal populations. A new study looks at ways of strengthening and fine-tuning existing marine mammal management and assessing the impacts on one marine mammal population in the western North Atlantic, the gray seal.

The study, from Drs. André Punt, John R. Brandon, Doug DeMaster, and Paula Moreno, is the culmination of a 3-year research project led by Dr. DeMaster and conducted in collaboration with the scientists at NOAA’s Northeast Science Center, with funding from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries. It specifically examines a key variable in marine mammal management, the Potential Biological Removal (PBR) level.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, marine mammal populations are managed according to their Potential Biological Removal (PBR), which determines the level of mortality (and serious injury) that is sustainable for each marine mammal population. When bycatch of a marine mammal population nears or exceeds its PBR level, restrictions are often imposed on nearby fisheries as a precautionary measure to prevent the population from becoming depleted.

In the case of gray seals, assessments of human-caused mortality levels are complicated by the fact that the gray seal population exists on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border. Determining when the gray seal PBR is exceeded is subject to errors due to incomplete information, meaning that certain management decisions could unnecessarily trigger fishing restrictions (termed by scientists as ‘false positives’) or needed restrictions are not imposed (known as ‘false negatives’). These restrictions often include catch limits of commercially valuable species, limits on what kinds of gear can be used, and other regulations that can be costly for the fisheries forced to adopt them.

To address this, the authors assembled the best available data on the western North Atlantic grey seal population and Canadian fisheries. This allowed them to produce two key estimates when assessing whether gray seal bycatch exceeds the PBR level. It used a more realistic, species-specific rate of gray seal maximum net production (i.e., 14.1% per year), rather than using a generic default value for other seal species (12% per year). If adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), this would increase gray seal PBR level by 18%. The study also used an extrapolated bycatch estimate for adjacent Canadian waters, which had not previously been attempted.

The study found that, in comparison to the base model currently used by NMFS, this approach is more robust to transboundary movements and uses a more accurate estimate of maximum net production of gray seals, allowing managers to adopt more appropriate management measures on fisheries while still achieving precautionary conservation goals for the grey seal population. The results can provide a blueprint for other assessments of marine mammal-fishery interactions for similar transboundary marine mammal stocks.

View the full study here

 

SCEMFIS Research Provides New Insights on Gray Seals; Suggests Alternatives to Current Management

September 28, 2020 — The following was released by the Science Center for Marine Fisheries:

Decades of strict conservation and management have led to a rebound of gray seals in the North Atlantic. Now, research from the Science Center for Marine Fisheries (SCEMFIS) is providing new insights into this population, how local fisheries interact with them, and better options to manage them.

The study, led by Drs. Doug DeMaster, Paula Moreno, Andre Punt, and John Brandon of the Independent Advisory Team for Marine Mammal Assessments, is evaluating how interactions with regional fisheries, specifically the New England sink gillnet and bottom trawl fisheries, affect the gray seal population. Revising estimates for key parameters such as abundance, levels of bycatch, and the proportion of seals crossing between the U.S. and Canada, the study is providing alternative approaches for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to estimate Potential Biological Removal (PBR) levels. PBR determines the number of gray seals that can be removed annually by human activities without threatening the conservation status of the stock.

Preliminary results from the study find that calculations made by NMFS to determine the PBR threshold are likely too conservative. Specifically, it finds that NOAA’s estimate of gray seal productivity, a key metric in determining PBR, is too low by approximately 17 percent. It also finds that NOAA is likely being overly conservative in how it classifies at least one fishery, based on productivity, bycatch levels and assumptions regarding transboundary movements of gray seals between the U.S. and Canada.

Under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), bycatch is strictly managed based on PBR levels, and fisheries are often required to adopt burdensome mitigation strategies as a result. Having an accurate estimate of the seal population that is interacting with commercial fisheries, and setting an appropriately precautionary estimate of PBR, is critical not just for seals, but for the fisheries that interact with them.

“With the gray seal population continuing to grow, the fishing industry is increasingly concerned about bycatch and other issues that come from seal interactions,” said Greg DiDomenico, a member of SCEMFIS’ Industry Advisory Board. “The results of this study will provide options for managing gray seals that are both consistent with federal conservation goals and may be helpful in avoiding unnecessarily burdensome regulations on fishermen.”

Read the full release here

Rare Visitors: Harp Seals in New England

March 12, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

While we’re used to seeing harbor and gray seals in New England, we occasionally get seal visitors from the Arctic. In late winter, it’s not unusual—though it is rare—to see harp seals on our beaches.

Sometimes well-meaning people come across these seals and, while wanting to help them, do exactly the things that cause these animals stress.

Find out more about these seals, and what you should do — and not do — if you come across one on the beach.

Read the full release here

Researchers Return to Study Gray Seal Pups in New England

February 6, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

It’s gray seal pupping season in New England! NOAA researchers are working with colleagues to gather data from pups on Muskeget and Monomoy islands off the southeastern Massachusetts coast.

Pupping season generally runs from mid-December to early February, peaking in mid-January. Our researchers have conducted studies of animal abundance, distribution, and health on the islands in January for the past eight years. One research team is working on Muskeget Island off Nantucket, the largest gray seal breeding and pupping colony in the United States. Another team is on Monomoy, an island near Chatham on Cape Cod that is part of the Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge.

Kimberly Murray, who coordinates the seal research program at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s Woods Hole Laboratory and leads the team on Muskeget Island, outlined the teams’ goals. “We plan to place 20 satellite tags and nine acoustic tags on the weaned gray seal pups, and to collect as many health samples from pups as we can. Our goal is to sample 50 pups on Muskeget and 100 on Monomoy, but that depends on factors such as weather conditions, scheduling, and departure of weaned pups.”

The team also sampled 14 weaned gray seal pups on Seal Island in Maine. They placed five satellite tags and two acoustic tags on seal pups there to learn where those pups go. On January 30 researchers sampled and tagged 15 gray seal pups on the Coskata-Coatue Wildlife Refuge, which includes Great Point Light, on Nantucket and collected scat or seal poop for microbiome/microplastics/food habits work.

Read the full release here

Sharks and seals: A success story on Cape Cod

July 1, 2019 — Eighteen years ago, charter boat captain Joseph Fitzback and his customers held on tight as a 14-foot great white stripped a striped bass off a fishing line, then rocked the boat with a couple of exploratory bumps, 2 miles off Chatham’s Lighthouse Beach.

Television crews and reporters lined up to interview Fitzback, but as the numbers of seals, and the sharks pursuing them, have increased, such interactions are almost commonplace. In a relatively short time the Cape has evolved from ocean playground to wilderness experience, and today Fitzback’s story might get little more than a few hits on social media.

By now, the first of perhaps hundreds of great whites, the largest such aggregation on the East Coast, have returned to the Cape for the summer from their winter grounds to the south. They are hunting a gray seal population that has exploded from almost zero in the 1970s to nearly 30,000, possibly as many as 50,000, today, depending on the science you choose to believe.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Seals on a comeback, attracting sharks

May 28, 2019 — Seals have rebounded to healthy numbers along Massachusetts’ shores after being nearly decimated by early settlers and a bounty that later wiped out tens of thousands of them, according to experts — and that is what is attracting sharks.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates there are at least 27,000 gray seals and 75,000 harbor seals in U.S. waters during their breeding seasons.

“What we’re witnessing is a comeback to a really healthy marine environment,” said Kimberly Murray, seal program lead at NOAA Fisheries in Woods Hole.

The numbers are a stark contrast to the 1700s, when gray seals had been nearly wiped out during the first 100 years of New England settlement, said Tony LaCasse, a spokesman for the New England Aquarium in Boston.

By the late 1800s, the seals had rebounded, but conflicts with commercial fisheries and a desire for the seals’ meat and pelts led to a bounty on both gray and harbor seals from 1888 to 1962 in Massachusetts and Maine. During those years, as many as 135,000 seals were killed, Murray said.

“Seals were perceived as competitors to fisherman,” LaCasse said. “Fishermen would carry shotguns in their boats and shoot them on sight.”

Read the full story at the Boston Herald

After A Shark Attack, Addressing Cape Cod’s Growing Seal Population

October 10, 2018 — In the wake of the Cape’s first shark fatality, there have been increasing concerns about the seal population and its impact on tourism and the economy of fisheries, which leaves many people wondering — does Cape Cod have a seal problem?

Out at the Chatham Harbor fish pier, tourists gather on an observation deck to watch gray seals wait for scraps from nearby fishing boats. The spot is well-known amongst pinniped lovers like Debbie Hinds-Gale, a visitor from Syracuse, NY who returns to this place every year her family visits the Cape. She pointed out at a seal not far from the shore.

“There’s another one with its fins up, I think it’s fun when they lay on their backs like that and put their fins up in the air, it’s like they’re doing tricks for you,” she said, adding that she could watch them for hours. “To me it almost looks like a smaller manatee, but their faces, I think look like they’re between a dog and a horse face.”

But for others, the seals have become more than just adorable creatures to see on vacation. The Cape’s population of gray seals has grown dramatically in the past 20 years. For fisherman Mike Rathgeber who runs fishing tours out of Provincetown, the seals have become a nuisance.

Read the full story at WGBH

 

NOAA officials say seal die-off linked to virus

September 24, 2018 — Gray and harbor seals have lured sharks in increasing numbers into Cape Cod waters, with tragic results, but the burgeoning seal population is taking a hit from viruses.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has issued an unusual mortality event alert for both species of seal in the Gulf of Maine.

From July 1 to Aug. 29 (when the alert was issued) 599 seals were found dead (137) or ill and stranded (462) on New England shores. In the few weeks since that number has soared to 921. Most of those were in Maine (629), with 147 in New Hampshire and 125 in Massachusetts.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

The dead or dying seals have been located mostly to the north but a couple were found as far south as Plymouth in Cape Cod Bay.

For comparison the nearly 500 seals found last month is roughly 10 times the number that stranded in August of 2017.

“That is attributed to the influences of disease,” noted Terri Rowles, NOAA’s Marine Mammal Health and Stranding Program coordinator.

Read the full story at the Eastham Wicked Local

 

Infected East Coast seals are washing ashore – and are a danger to people and pets, experts say

September 4, 2018 — Hundreds of East Coast seals are showing up, stranded on New England shores dead or sick.

Harbor and gray seals on the northern Atlantic Coast of the United States have tested positive for avian influenza, or bird flu, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s fisheries. Others have tested positive for phocine distemper virus, similar to the virus dogs can contract and which has caused epidemics among seals in other parts of the world, killing thousands, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Both gray and harbor seals can range as far south as the Carolinas, where they sometimes travel during the winter months and haul themselves onto beaches to rest and soak up some sun.

The seals that end up stranded but alive are “in poor body condition with clinical signs of lethargy, coughing, sneezing and seizing,” according to NOAA. As of last week, 532 seals had washed up on the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Of those, more than 400 were found dead.

Samples from those seals were sent to Tufts University and the University of California, Davis labs for testing, NOAA said. Samples tested “preliminarily positive” for either bird flu or the distemper virus. Four of the seals tested positive for both viruses.

Read the full story at The Charlotte Observer

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