Saving Seafood

NOAA moves ahead with whale-safety rules

September 16, 2019 — The National Marine Fisheries Service has announced it is reviewing claims by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association that a goal to reduce the industry’s risks of harming North Atlantic right whales by 60% is too high. But the federal agency said it will move ahead with crafting federal rules to reduce the risk to the whales of vertical fishing rope associated with trap and pot fishing.

“In the coming months, we will proceed with rule-making as planned,” Chris Oliver, the agency’s assistant administrator, said in the statement Wednesday.

The fisheries service is in the midst of preparing a draft environmental impact statement on the proposed rule changes, based on a pact approved nearly unanimously in April by the 60 members of the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, including the Maine association.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

New England Herring Fishery Restricted For Several Weeks

September 12, 2019 — Commercial fishing of an important species of bait fish is going to be shut down in one of its key areas in New England for about six weeks.

Interstate regulators say the Atlantic herring fishery in the inshore Gulf of Maine is nearing a quota limit and will be subject to restrictions from Sept. 15 to Oct. 31. That means fishermen will not be allowed to bring the fish to land until that date.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Maine Public

NOAA awards $2M for lobster research, much of it to be conducted in Maine

September 11, 2019 — The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program has awarded $2 million to lobster research projects and a regional lobster extension program.

Seven research projects were chosen through a competitive process that included expert review, according to a news release.

The projects aim to increase understanding of factors such as lobster biology, distribution and socioeconomic issues associated with a steep decline of landings in southern New England, as they pertain to Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine.

Collectively, the projects and the regional extension program are called the Sea Grant American Lobster Initiative.

Read the full story at MaineBiz

Ocean warming is changing the relationship coastal communities have with the ocean

September 11, 2019 — Climate change has made record-breaking heatwaves all the more likely, both on land and beneath the ocean’s surface. As the world’s ocean sucks up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—as well as most of the additional heat being trapped by global warming—it is undergoing some significant changes.

Marine heatwaves—prolonged periods of unusually —are one of those changes. These  are increasing in frequency around the globe and wreaking havoc on marine ecosystems.

As an oceanographer, I study the many ways oceans change—from week-to-week, year-to-year and, of course, over decades and centuries—to better understand the changes that are underway and the far-reaching impacts they may have on  and the communities that rely on them.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

MAINE: LePage op-ed in Wall Street Journal criticizes proposed lobstering regulations

September 9, 2019 — An opinion piece by former Gov. Paul LePage published in the Wall Street Journal criticizes federal officials for proposing restrictions on the lobstering industry that fishermen say would put them out of business.

LePage writes that the restrictions required by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association would not actually reduce the number of right whale deaths in the Gulf of Maine because, he says, “No whale deaths due to entanglements or ship strikes have been recorded in Maine waters since 1998.”

However, in September 2016, the Portland Press Herald reported that NOAA officials concluded the death of a 43-foot right whale found floating off Boothbay Harbor was most likely caused by entanglement in fishing gear ropes.

Read the full story at News Center Maine

NOAA mum on Maine defection

September 9, 2019 — So, you may have read in the pages of this here newspaper, or online at gloucestertimes.com, that the Maine Lobstermen’s Association on Aug. 30 informed NOAA Fisheries that it was repealing its support of the current federal plan to afford more protections to the imperiled North Atlantic right whales because of what it considers faulty science, an unfair portrayal of the lobster industry’s culpability and a rushed process.

When we reached out to NOAA Fisheries on Wednesday for comment on the seismic move by the nation’s largest lobster industry membership, we were told to expect a statement from NOAA Fisheries on Thursday. Thursday came and went, no statement. Probably Friday, we were told.

We checked back on Friday. Maybe, we were told. But it really felt like probably not.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

U.S.-Canada dispute over fishing grounds focus of film

September 6, 2019 — Award-winning Boston filmmaker and journalist David Schwab Abel’s documentary “Lobster War: The Fight Over the World’s Richest Fishing Grounds,” about the conflict between the United States and Canada over waters that both countries have claimed since the end of the Revolutionary War, will be shown at 7 p.m. on Tuesday Sept. 10, in the Moore Auditiorium on the Schoodic Institute campus. Admission is free.

Abel, who was part of The Boston Globe team covering the April 15, 2013, Boston Marathon bombing, covers fisheries and the environment for The Globe.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

Lobster industry group lays out objections to whale proposal

September 5, 2019 — It’s not just that proposed federal rules intended to protect endangered right whales from entanglement with fishing gear will be expensive and difficult to implement, industry representatives say. It’s also that they won’t work.

That’s the argument Patrice McCarron, executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, made in a letter sent to NOAA Fisheries on Friday.

The proposed rules came from a meeting in April of a federal stakeholder group, the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Team, which includes McCarron and four other Maine lobster industry representatives. That Maine delegation is now withdrawing support from the “near-consensus” plan, McCarron wrote.

“The Agency’s current rulemaking does not address the full scope of known human causes of the decline in the species and will be insufficient to reverse the right whale population’s downward trend,” she wrote.

At the April meeting, McCarron notes, the full group recommended that NOAA Fisheries “revisit the Team’s recommendations if revisions to the model suggest … a distinctly different understanding of risk” to the whales.

Read the full story at the Mount Desert Islander

Maine group backs out of right whale agreement

September 4, 2019 — On Friday, Aug. 30, the Maine Lobstermen’s Association officially withdrew its support from a federal proposal to reduce fishery impacts on the North Atlantic right whale biomass, citing NMFS data that shows the proposal would not be effective in reducing right whale mortality.

“NMFS own data show that that the lobster fishery is the least significant cause of right whale serious injury or mortality,” said Patrice McCarron, the association’s president, “while ship strikes, gillnets and the Canadian snow crab fishery pose much greater risks.”

According to MLA’s analysis, the Canadian snow crab fishery accounts for 31 percent of right whale serious injury and mortality; gillnet and netting gear represent 13 percent; unknown trap/pot gear represents 4 percent; and U.S. trap/pot gear represents 4 percent.

U.S. and Canadian vessel strikes account for the remaining 48 percent of right whale injury and mortality.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Here’s the central question at the heart of the right whale debate

August 27, 2019 — There’s a debate raging over how much Maine’s lobstermen should have to change how they fish for the sake of the endangered North Atlantic right whale.

The state’s congressional delegation and governor have sided with lobstermen, arguing that Maine’s iconic fishery isn’t responsible for the shrinking population of right whales. Meanwhile, propelled by a lawsuit from conservation groups, the federal government is working on regulations that would require lobstermen to use less fishing line and switch to weaker rope from which entangled whales can more easily break free.

The debate boils down to this: Should regulators give more weight to risk or evidence?

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News