Saving Seafood

Whales Off California Coast Delay Commercial Crab Season

November 25, 2022 — For the fourth year in a row, the start of the commercial Dungeness crab season in California will be delayed to protect humpback whales from becoming entangled in trap and buoy lines, it was announced Monday.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife announced that it was delaying the start of the commercial season, which traditionally begins Nov. 15, until further notice for waters between the Mendocino county line and the border with Mexico.

Authorities first announced a delay late last month. The situation will be reassessed on or before Dec. 7 and if conditions allow commercial crabbing could be permitted on Dec. 16, the department said.

Read the full article at NBC San Diego

Lawsuit calls for feds to protect California humpback whales from gill nets

October 28, 2022 — The Center for Biological Diversity is suing National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, claiming it is not protecting endangered Pacific humpback whales from entanglements in California drift gillnets.

The Center, in the lawsuit filed in federal court Thursday, claimed that in the past two fishing seasons, about 12 Pacific humpbacks were caught in the California drift gillnet fishery. Researchers claim this excessive harm to endangered humpback whales violates the Endangered Species Act.

Whales caught in drift gillnets can drown or become constricted by nets as they swim away, causing stress, injuries and infections. This makes any entanglement of a humpback whale in drift gillnet gear an unlawful “take” under the act.

The fishery allegedly leaves mile-long hanging nets in the ocean overnight to catch large fish like Pacific bluefin tuna, swordfish and thresher sharks. The fishery then discards more than half of the fish caught, the lawsuit alleges. The fishing effort takes place from Aug. 15 through Jan. 31 and overlaps with important areas for sea turtles, threatening those endangered animals as well.

The Center claims NOAA Fisheries failed to adequately analyze the impact on the humpback populations listed under the act in 2016. Entanglements can lead to death, injury and lower calving rates in whales.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Environmental group sues feds for failing to protect humpback whales from deadly fishing gear

January 11, 2022 — The Center for Biological Diversity sued the National Marine Fisheries Service Monday, accusing the agency of failing to protect endangered Pacific humpback whales from deadly entanglements in sablefish pot gear off the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington.

Here’s the center’s news release on the lawsuit:

Monday’s lawsuit challenges the federal permit given to the fishery in December to kill and injure endangered humpback whales without any changes to avoid harming whales. Fishing gear entanglements are a leading threat to endangered humpbacks that migrate along the West Coast, where 48,521 square nautical miles were designated as critical habitat in April.

Read the full story at KTVZ

 

An ‘unforgettable’ humpback disentanglement raises new hope about ‘weak’ fishing rope

October 1, 2021 — As a naturalist leading whale watches out of Gloucester, Jamie McWilliams has seen her share of entangled whales. This past August, a familiar, grim scenario seemed to be unfolding in front of her.

This article was first published by CAI.

“From a distance — we were probably half-a-mile away — we saw a whale splashing and thrashing at the surface,” she said on a sunny Friday morning aboard a Cape Ann Whale Watch boat. “And it’s: a) acting erratically, and b) you can see the line and the buoy.”

From her perch on the boat, McWilliams identified the entangled whale as the six-to-eight-month-old calf of a humpback named Jabiru. She and her 250 passengers watched the calf struggle with a rope from lobster gear wrapped around its flipper, and more rope threatening to bind its tail. Then, unexpectedly, it began circling the boat.

“So it passes underneath the bow, goes down the right-hand side, and then with all the gear attached, goes down underneath the stern, or the back, of the boat, and then pops up on the left-hand side,” McWilliams said. “And I’m watching and I’m watching and I’m watching…”

And then she saw something incredible happen – something she’d never seen in six years leading about a thousand whale watches.

“And I’m watching, and it’s there, but there’s no gear,” she said. “So I literally turn to my captain and I’m like, ‘The gear is gone. Like, where’s the gear?’ He was like, ‘What do you mean it’s gone?’ And I’m like, ‘It’s not there.’ Like, ‘What just happened?’ you know?”

Read the full story from WCAI at New Hampshire Public Radio

 

When a Right Whale Dies

November 4, 2019 — Around 3 p.m. on September 16, 2019, Atlantic Marine Conservation Society (AMSEAS) received a call about a very decomposed whale carcass. It was floating about 4 miles south of Fire Island Inlet of Long Island, New York. Dead whales floating in the waters off Long Island have been a fairly common occurrence over the last few years, mostly humpback and minke whales. When AMSEAS reported the call to us at NOAA Fisheries, we were prepared to assist with what has now sadly become somewhat routine response planning.

Day 1: Mobilizing the Response

Response planning involves a series of coordination calls. We need to:

  • Make arrangements to tow the carcass to a beach (usually public but not crowded).

  • Arrange heavy equipment (front loaders, backhoes) to help position the carcass.

  • Secure the carcass from tides and possible souvenir hunters.

  • Assemble a team to take measurements and samples (necropsy team).

  • Handle media and bystander inquiries.

  • Plan for the disposal of the carcass—usually deep beach burial, but sometimes other options are considered.

Read the full story at NOAA Fisheries 

Dramatic Increase in Whales in NJ/NYC Raises Safety Concerns

August 9th, 2019 — The number of humpback whale sightings in New York City and northern New Jersey has increased dramatically in recent years, by more than 500 percent, as a result of warmer and cleaner waters, raising the risk of dangerous interactions between the huge marine mammals and humans, according to a Rutgers University-New Brunswick researcher.

The increase in sightings near one of the world’s busiest ports is a safety concern for both whales and humans, especially with a new wave of migration headed close to shores this fall, said Danielle Brown, a doctoral student in ecology and evolution in Rutgers’ School of Environmental and Biology Sciences and the lead humpback whale researcher and naturalist for Gotham Whale, a New York-based nonprofit that studies and advocates for whales.

Since Gotham Whale started documenting humpback whale sightings in the New York Bight apex – the Atlantic Ocean area from New York harbor east to Fire Island and south to the Manasquan Inlet– the number has increased to 272 last year up from five in 2011. Many of the sightings have occurred less than two miles from the shore.

Read the full story at Rutgers Today

Equinor to support New York Bight whales monitoring

April 10, 2019 — Offshore wind power developer Equinor Wind US is entering a joint project with conservationists and scientists to deploy two new acoustic buoys to expand detection and monitoring of whales in the New York Bight.

To be operated with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s New York Aquarium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts, the buoys will provide near real-time monitoring of species including sei, fin and humpback whales, and the extremely endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The buoys will become a broader network with a previously deployed acoustic buoy, funded by the G. Unger Vetlesen Foundation and the Flora Family Foundation, now on station about 22 miles off New York.

Read the full story at WorkBoat

Whales are dying along East Coast—and scientists are racing to understand why

March 14, 2019 — On a blustery winter afternoon off the coast of Virginia Beach, people are pressing forward on the bow of the Virginia Aquarium and Marine Science Center’s whale watching boat as a dorsal fin breaks the surface. Cameras click in staccato for a second or two before the humpback whale dives to feed again.

The relatively small dorsal fin belies the humpback’s size. Calves weigh about a ton. Adults can grow heavier than a yellow school bus loaded with kindergarten students. Few things that swim in the sea can break their bones.

A mile to the north, however, by the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, a massive cargo ship is pushing south toward the whales. On this Saturday in late January, these humpbacks are swimming in traffic in the shipping channel that leads vessels to and from some of America’s busiest ports. These shipping vessels are one of the few true physical threats to humpback whales.

“Those big ships, they’re churning up the water and the fish are coming through and that’s what the whales are going for,” says Mark Sedaca, captain of the 65-foot Atlantic Explorer on this whale watching trip.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Ghost gear a growing threat

November 26, 2018 — KAPAA, HI — There’s more haunting the humpback whale migration from Alaska to breeding grounds in Hawaii than shipwrecks — ghost gear also litters the 6,000-mile journey.

These lost or abandoned nets, lines and traps can get caught on migrating whales and other marine animals, causing drag and exhausting them or cutting into their bodies after becoming wrapped around tails or fins.

Dozens of organizations worldwide work to reduce ghost gear in the ocean and Surfrider Kauai has spent the last two years partnering with federal, state and nonprofit organizations to remove more than 369,393 pounds of marine debris from circulation.

The Hawaii Nei Marine Debris Removal Project just wrapped up and, since 2016 team members and volunteers have conducted 137 community cleanup events and 668 derelict net recovery patrols to remove line, plastic, nets and other debris from Hawaii oceans.

Read the full story at The Garden Island

Entangled: Making The Sea Safer For Whales

November 1, 2017 — More than 30 times this year, the federal government has received reports of whales tangled in fishing gear along the West Coast. Sometimes the whales manage to wriggle free. Other times you see heart-rending pictures on the news or a rescue mission.

The culprit often involves Dungeness crab pot lines. Now Oregon crabbers are working with marine scientists to make the seas safer for whales and to avoid a black mark on their brand.

Bob Eder has fished commercially out of Newport, Oregon for decades.

“Over 45 years of pulling crab pots—I think I’ve probably hauled in close to a million—I’ve never encountered an entangled whale,” he said.

‘We want to be proactive’

Eder often sees whales at sea and recognizes just one bad outcome blamed on fishing gear could be all it takes to cause a PR nightmare. Whale numbers are up, but so are sightings of humpback whales, gray whales and the odd blue whale entangled in fishing lines and buoys—especially in California.

“We want to get out ahead of it. We want to be proactive,” Eder said. “We don’t want to be sued by the Center for Biological Diversity. We want to see what we can do to mitigate the situation.”

The Center for Biological Diversity is an environmental group and it did just sue the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. The group wants a federal judge to order the state regulator to make crab fishermen do more to avoid harm to endangered whales.

Crab traps themselves are not the problem, but rather the heavy-duty ropes stretching from the seafloor to one or more buoys at the surface. Whales can snag a fin or a tail and get all tangled up if there’s too much slack in the vertical line or excess floating on the surface.

“They normally don’t come in where our gear is,” Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission Executive Director Hugh Link said. “But when we get warmer water and the feed comes in closer to shore, then we have an issue.”

Link and Eder are two members of a work group of crabbers, marine biologists and government agency and nonprofit representatives. They’ve been meeting in Oregon since March.

A grant from NOAA Fisheries launched what is known as the Oregon Whale Entanglement Work Group, which is facilitated and now supported by Oregon Sea Grant. Washington state crabbers and other interested parties plan to meet in Montesano on November 8 to hear an update on whale entanglements and discuss whether the Washington-based/the local fleet should launch a proactive work group too.

The work group agreed to distribute a flyer to crab boat operators ahead of the season opener next month with best practices for setting and tending gear. Oregon and Washington also have programs to retrieve lost or derelict fishing gear. The work group next plans to survey the fleet about potential season modifications and area closures to keep whales away from gauntlets of ropes.

Read the full story at KUOW