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Canada announces changes to protect right whales

January 24, 2018 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Canadian officials announced new restrictions Tuesday on the amount of rope that snow crab fishermen can use in an ongoing effort to reduce the effect of fishing on the highly endangered North Atlantic right whale.

“We don’t want meters and meters of rope floating on the surface of the water,” Fisheries and Oceans Canada Minister Dominic LeBlanc said.

With 450 or fewer right whales remaining, after the death last year of 16 in Canadian and U.S. waters, and a possible 17th death still under review, pressure is increasing on two ways that humans cause right whale deaths: fishing gear entanglement and ship strikes. Last week, U.S. conservation groups sued the National Marine Fisheries Service to tighten restrictions on lobster fishing to protect the whales.

A roundtable on right whales, convened by LeBlanc last November, with fishing and marine business people, environmental groups, indigenous community members, scientists and Canadian and U.S. government officials, led to a more thorough understanding of the situation, according to a statement from the Fisheries Service and Oceans Canada.

LeBlanc’s announcement Tuesday was about four initial changes in snow crab fishing policy and practices to better protect right whales, 12 of which were documented as being found dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. More initiatives to limit entanglement and ship strikes are likely to come, he said.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” said biologist Regina Asmutis-Silvia, executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation, of LeBlanc’s announcement. “To me it all hinges on what comes next. This in and of itself isn’t enough.”

New England Aquarium research scientist Heather Pettis agreed, saying the first steps looked promising and appeared to show that LeBlanc understood the urgency of the problem.

“We’re digesting it all and looking at how each of these four measures are going to help protect this population,” said Pettis, who is the administrator for the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium, a research collaborative.

The primary limit LeBlanc set on snow crab fishing is to allow no more than 12 feet, or 3.7 meters, of floating rope between a snow crab trap’s primary buoy and its secondary buoy, which is expected to “massively” reduce line in Canadian snow crab fishing areas, LeBlanc said.

Of six right whale necropsies completed by Oct. 5 in Canada, two deaths were attributed to entanglement and four to ship strikes.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

U.S. putting whale rescue efforts on hold after Canadian fisherman is killed

July 17, 2017 — The U.S. is suspending whale rescue efforts after a Canadian fisherman died last week during one such mission.

Joe Howlett, founder of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team, was killed Monday while helping to free a North Atlantic right whale off the coast of New Brunswick. Mackie Green, captain of the rescue group, told the Canadian Press the team had actually succeeded in freeing the animal when “some kind of freak thing happened and the whale made a big flip,” striking Howlett.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is now “suspending all large whale entanglement response activities nationally until further notice, in order to review our own emergency response protocols in light of this event,” Chris Oliver, assistant administrator for NOAA Fisheries, said in a statement.

Read the full story at USA Today

Fisherman killed saving whale recalled as longtime advocate

July 14, 2017 — Members of the marine community in the U.S. and Canada said Thursday that a Canadian fisherman who died freeing a whale from fishing gear was a longtime whale advocate who bridged gaps between fishing and conservation.

Joe Howlett was killed on Monday after freeing a North Atlantic right whale that had been entangled in fishing gear off New Brunswick. A close friend of his said the 59-year-old Howlett was hit by the whale just after it was cut free and started swimming away.

Howlett’s death came as a shock to many in the maritime communities of New England and Atlantic Canada. Howlett lived on Campobello Island, a Canadian island which can only be accessed by road from Lubec, Maine, and he was well known in fishing and marine circles on both sides of the border.

The New England Aquarium said Howlett was a lobsterman, boat captain and whale rescue expert who helped found the Campobello Whale Rescue Team.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Fox News

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