June 9, 2021 — The U.S. Senate has passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (SFSEA), moving a commercial ban on the trade of shark fins and products containing shark fins closer to reality.
The U.S. Senate ended up passing the bill on 8 June as part of a broader legislative package – the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act. That bill will now head down to the U.S. House, where both chambers will negotiate the final form of the package.
February 12, 2019 — Capturing, taking, abusing or killing a shark in Hawaii waters would be illegal, under a Senate bill quickly gaining support.
The measure also expands a ban on killing manta rays to all rays in state waters.
Senate Bill 489 has the support of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Humane Society, and a number of environmental groups.
Violators of the proposal would face fines of $500 for a first offense and $10,000 for a third offense.
The islands are already at the forefront of enacting protections for sharks, but some say more work is needed to safeguard the animals at a time when the health of the world’s oceans is in decline.
Sharks and rays “are long-living and slow-growing, start reproducing at an advanced age, and produce relatively few offspring per year,” the measure before lawmakers says.
“Protection for sharks and rays ultimately means healthier, more resilient oceans and reefs that are better able to withstand other pressures on the ocean ecosystem from climate change and pollution.”
January 31, 2019 — The following is excerpted from a story published today by The Atlantic:
Let us first establish that sea lions are supposed to live in the sea.
Since the 1990s, however, male sea lions—a handful at first, now dozens—have been captivated by the attractions of the Willamette River. They travel all the way from Southern California to Oregon and then swim up 100 miles of river to arrive at an expansive waterfall, the largest in the region. Here, salmon returning to spawn have to make an exhausting journey up the fish ladders of the Willamette Falls. And here, the sea lions have found a veritable feast.
“[They’re kind of sitting ducks,” the wildlife biologist Sheanna Steingass told me, describing the salmon. She paused to consider the metaphor. “Or sitting fish.” Every sea lion eats three to five fish a day.
In another world, this could just be a story about the intelligence of sea lions and their adaptability to river life. But in this world—where salmon populations throughout North America have plummeted, and where the winter steelhead run at Willamette Falls has fallen from 25,000 fish in the 1970s to just hundreds in 2018—it’s a dire story for the fish. After spending years trying and failing to deter the sea lions by nonlethal means, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, where Steingass leads the marine-mammal program, started “lethal removal” of sea lions in December. As of mid-January, they have trapped and euthanized five sea lions at Willamette Falls.
Killing animals to save other animals is always controversial. Animal-rights groups like the Humane Society of the United States denounced the sea-lion killings, calling them a distraction from the salmon’s real problems. And it’s true that a long chain of human actions—overfishing, destruction of salmon habitats, dams blocking their migration, hatchery mistakes—have led to what everyone can admit is this nonoptimal situation.
“In a perfect world, in an unaltered world, this wasn’t a problem, because historically there were 16 million salmon in the Columbia River,” says Doug Hatch, a senior fisheries scientist at the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. The sea lion’s appetites would have barely made a dent. It’s only because humans have so unbalanced the natural world that as drastic an action as culling sea lions could appear to be the fix.
Read the full story at The Atlantic
February 23, 2018 — On January 22, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration got word of a juvenile, North Atlantic right whale carcass floating off the coast of Virginia. Later identified as whale #3893, the 39-foot, 10-year-old female was towed to shore, where researchers examined her partially-decomposed remains. A few days later, preliminary necropsy findings indicated that the whale died of “chronic entanglement,” meaning it was caught in rope or line, according to a report from NOAA.
It was the first right whale to die in 2018, but it comes on the heels of the deaths of 17 right whales in the North Atlantic in 2017—a record setting number that is more than all right whale mortalities in the five previous years combined. NOAA researchers are calling the trend an “unusual mortality event”—a particularly concerning phenomenon, as North Atlantic right whales are an endangered species. There are only about 450 left in the wild, according to NOAA, and at the current rate, scientists predict the species could be functionally extinct in fewer than 25 years.
NOAA hasn’t determined the cause of the “unusual mortality event,” but some are looking right at Washington, and at NOAA itself. A new lawsuit, filed January 18 in US District Court in Washington, D.C., argues specifically that the Trump administration is at least partly responsible for failing to adequately address this epidemic.
Between 2010 and 2016, 85 percent of diagnosed whale deaths were the result of entanglement, typically in commercial fishing gear. The plaintiffs—the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Humane Society—allege that President Trump’s Department of Commerce, of which NOAA is a branch, is in violation of the 1973 Endangered Species Act and the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act over their management of the North Atlantic lobster fishery, which “frequently entangles right whales,” according to the suit. Under the Endangered Species Act, the plaintiffs point out, any action, direct or indirect, by a federal agency must not be “likely to jeopardize” any endangered or threatened species.
Read the full story at Mother Jones
February 5, 2018 — They call her Halo — the right whale was born to another documented calving female, Loligo, in 2005, and was last seen in 2016. That was until staff with the Sea to Shore Alliance spotted her Wednesday near Little St. Simons Island. She, and her companion, are the first right whales seen off the coast of Georgia this calving season, which typically is from November to April.
“There was an adult female spotted that has had calved before — or has had a calf before — and so we’re hoping that she’s pregnant and we’ll have a calf in the upcoming days or weeks,” said Clay George, who heads up the state Department of Natural Resources’ right whale efforts. “There was another whale seen with her that was large and appeared to be an adult or a juvenile, but it was not a calf that was born this year. So, we are hoping that perhaps it was also an adult female and may be pregnant also.”
There has also been action in the Gulf of Mexico this year.
“My understanding, from talking to colleagues that work for the state of Florida, that at least two of the sightings (in the gulf) have been confirmed to be a right whale, and the photos suggest that it may have been the same individual whale was seen in both locations, and if so, it appears to be a 1-year-old whale that was born last year,” George said. “So, those three whales are the only whales that have been seen south of Cape Hatteras, N.C.”
There is more than a little amount of worry among whale researchers and experts that the world could be watching the extinction of right whales, considering births are not keeping up with deaths — especially with human-influenced mortality from whales becoming entangled in heavy fishing gear used for lobsters and snow crabs further north.
Read the full story at the Brunswick News
January 26, 2018 — About 25 North Atlantic right whales gathered south of the Vineyard this week, marking an early-season sighting of a species that scientists warn could go extinct in the next 20 years.
The sighting belies the plight of the species, Dr. Mark Baumgartner told a crowd of about 50 people gathered in the Gazette newsroom Tuesday for a talk. There are an estimated 450 whales left.
Mr. Baumgartner, a scientist with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and president of the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, said he and other scientists have documented an alarming decline in right whale calving rates alongside a rise in deaths from fishing gear entanglement.
“We have years, not decades to fix this problem. The longer we wait, the harder the problem gets to fix.” Mr. Baumgartner said. “We don’t need more science to be done on this species. We need to act.”
While the situation is grave, he said, solutions including weaker fishing rope and an emerging ropeless fishing technology that could reduce the number of entanglements that kill or injure the whales.
North Atlantic right whales are about the size of a city bus, and individuals can be identified by unique patterns of callosities on their heads. The whales eat copepods, tiny crustaceans, to the tune of one or two tons a day, Mr. Baumgartner said, the caloric equivalent of about 3,000 Big Macs.
Right whales got their name because they were the “right” whales to pursue during the whaling era. The whales are slow-moving, live near shore, and float after they are killed, making them easier to drag ashore.
The population was decimated beginning around the time of the Revolutionary War. “They’ve been down for along time, but not out,” Mr. Baumgartner said.
More recently, scientists have closely monitored the population from the southern Atlantic calving grounds they visit in the winter to feeding grounds off New England and Canada. Two recent trends paint a dire picture, Mr. Baumgartner said. Last winter, five right whale calves were born, the smallest number scientists have documented in 17 years. So far, he said, no calves have been seen this year. “This year I fear may be worse,” he said.
Read the full story at the Vineyard Gazette
January 19, 2018 — Three national organizations went to court Thursday in an effort to force the federal government to provide greater protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whale.
The plaintiffs allege that the federal government has failed to manage the fishing industry by not enforcing the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Scientists say right whales are facing extinction largely because the animals die after becoming entangled in lobster trap lines and commercial fishing gear.
The civil suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Secretary of Commerce was filed Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife, and the Humane Society of the United States.
During a meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in October, scientists said the species is doomed to extinction by 2040 if humans don’t make substantive changes to protect them. A total of 17 right whales were found dead last summer and fall in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and off Cape Cod.
Dave Cousens, president of the Maine Lobsterman’s Association and a lobsterman who fishes out of South Thomaston, said he wasn’t surprised by the lawsuit after last year’s die-off.
“A lot of whales died,” Cousens said. “We have done a lot (to avoid entanglements) in Maine, and I have to say I don’t think Maine has been the cause of any of the deaths.”
Cousens said he fully expected that conservation organizations would demand that additional steps be taken to avoid entanglements with fishing gear.
In the suit, plaintiffs sharply criticize the NMFS for supporting a 2014 biological opinion that found commercial fisheries are likely to kill or seriously injure more than three North Atlantic right whales a year, but also led the federal agency to conclude “that the fishery is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of North Atlantic right whales.”
Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald
January 18, 2018 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Last year, at least 17 endangered North Atlantic right whales died in Canadian waters and off the coast of New England. Some of those deaths were attributed to the whales’ entanglement with lobster fishing gear.
On Thursday, three conservation organizations sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service in the federal district court in Washington, D.C. to force the agency to impose stricter regulations on lobstermen fishing in federal waters.
The suit, filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and The Humane Society of the United States, asks the court to rule that the National Marine Fisheries Service is violating the federal Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act by allowing the lobster fishery to continue without adequate protection for right whales.
The complaint also asks the court to require that the agency “implement additional mitigation measures to reduce the risk of entanglement of North Atlantic right whales.”
Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander