Saving Seafood

Oregon: Sea lions continue to eat endangered fish

May 29, 2018 — All the time, money and sacrifice to improve salmon and steelhead passage in the Willamette River won’t mean a thing unless wildlife managers can get rid of sea lions feasting on the fish at Willamette Falls.

That was the message Tuesday from Shaun Clements, senior policy adviser for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who met at the falls with Liz Hamilton, executive director of the Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, and Suzanne Kunse, district director for U.S. Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore.

The group watched as several sea lions patrolled the waterfalls and nearby fish ladders. Clements said there could be as many as 50-60 sea lions in the area on any given day in April or early May, and the animals are responsible for eating roughly 20 percent of this year’s already paltry winter steelhead run.

As of May 22, ODFW has counted just 2,086 winter steelhead at Willamette Falls. That’s less than half of the 10-year average and 22 percent of the 50-year average.

ODFW applied in October 2017 to kill sea lions from Willamette Falls under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, though Clements said he does not expect a decision from the National Marine Fisheries Service until the end of the year. The department also tried relocating 10 California sea lions to a beach south of Newport earlier this year, only to see the animals return in just six days.

Read the full story at the Capital Press

 

Marine mammals protected by federal law

May 21, 2018 — Federal fisheries officials have issued a reminder that the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits killing marine mammals, except for exemptions for subsistence harvests by Alaska Natives.

“Marine mammals are an integral part of a healthy ecosystem,” said NOAA Fisheries Alaska Regional Administrator Jim Balsiger. “Unless it is being harvested for subsistence purposes, or is otherwise authorized, intentionally killing a marine mammal is illegal.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act also protects marine mammals from harassment, which is defined as “any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance which has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild; or has the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.”

Penalties for violation of the MMPA include up to a fine of $28,520 and/or one-year imprisonment.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Solons shaking sabers over right whales

May 7, 2018 — The plight of the North Atlantic right whales certainly remained in the news last week, as a group of U.S. senators from New England, including Edward Markey of Massachusetts, hinted at a possible trade action against Canada if our neighbors to the north don’t impose stricter protections for right whales.

Then U.S Rep. Seth Moulton and other members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation got in on the rattling of cutlery with a letter to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Munchin urging them to require Canada to “apply for and receive a comparability certificate” for any of their commercial fisheries implicated in the incidental killing of North Atlantic right whales.

Or else.

“If Canada cannot secure a comparability finding for those fisheries then the (Marine Mammal Protection Act) requires the National Marine Fisheries Service, in cooperation with the Department of the Treasury and Department of Commerce, to impose a ban on the importation of commercial fish or products from fish harvested in those fisheries,” the letter stated.

The diplomatic grumbling served as a backdrop to the seasonal return of the right whales to Massachusetts — including a feeding fest on Friday off the rocky cliffs that separate Long Beach from Good Harbor Beach chronicled in the Saturday pages of the GDT and online at gloucestertimes.com.

(And thanks to Marty Del Vecchio for generously sharing his great images with us for that story.)

Residents and workers in the area reported seeing up to about a dozen of the imperiled marine mammals, with some of them venturing within 25 feet of the rocks in a galvanizing display of nature in the raw.

The best line of the morning belonged to Anthony Erbetta of Marblehead, who was working with his buddy Nick Venezia, also of Marblehead, on restoring and renovating a cliffside home on High Rock Terrace.

Told that they were right whales, Erbetta said: “Right whales, left whales. I really don’t think we should get into whale politics.”

Actual good news on whales

It may not involve the right whales, but according to a piece in the New York Times, humpback whales are forging a comeback in the southern oceans near Antarctica.

The piece reported a new study shows that humpback whales that live and breed in those waters have been hard at work making little humpbacks, “with females in recent years having a high pregnancy rate and giving birth to more calves.”

The higher levels of whale recruitment represent a stark contrast to the condition of the humpback populations in the 19th and 20th centuries, when they were hunted nearly to extinction.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

As US officials step up to protect the right whale, senators ask about Canadian actions

May 2, 2018 — Over the next two months, federal officials will step up patrols in the northeast Atlantic as they look to do more to save an endangered species.

U.S. Coast Guard and NOAA Law Enforcement personnel will monitor for illegally placed fishing gear in the region through 30 June, according to a USCG news release. The air and sea patrols, which started on Tuesday, 1 May, are being done in accordance with the Marine Mammal Protection Act to limit interactions with North Atlantic right whales migrating into the region.

Officials estimate only 450 such whales are alive, and just a quarter of those are females in breeding age. Last year, NOAA investigated 17 right whale deaths in U.S. and Canadian waters. Of those, officials determined fishing gear entanglements or boat collisions were responsible for seven fatalities.

Coast Guard officials will also patrol the water and inspect lobster and gillnet gear left unattended to further decrease the chances for interaction with the whales.

While the Coast Guard and NOAA ramp up activities, a group of 11 U.S. senators from the region want to make sure Canada is doing everything it can to prevent right whale deaths as well.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Coast Guard, NOAA Increase Efforts to Protect North Atlantic Right Whale

May 5, 2018 — BOSTON — Northeast Coast Guard units and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Office of Law Enforcement personnel are increasing focus this year on the enforcement of the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan(ALWTRP), to detect and deter illegally placed fishing gear and reduce the likelihood of fatal whale entanglements from occurring.

Under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and in alignment with whale migration patterns, increased operations will run May 1 through June 30 and compromise of more frequent air and sea patrols in seasonal gear closure areas by NOAA law enforcement personnel and Coast Guard patrol boats, cutter crews, and air assets.

Additionally, Coast Guard units across the First District will engage in an operation taking aim on at-sea inspections of unattended lobster and gillnet gear. The goal is to identify and affect the removal of illegally rigged and improperly marked gear in an effort to decrease whale entanglements within New England’s waters.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Today

 

Salmon survival: ‘We need more lethal removal of sea lions. Hazing is not the answer’

April 6, 2018 — Ted Walsey’s shotgun cracked like thunder, lobbing a cracker shell into the Columbia River and sending the big brown sea lion beneath the surface in search of friendlier waters. But the boat and the noises emanating from it weren’t far behind.

Just as crews from the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission have for a number of years, Walsey, Bobby Begay and Reggie Sargeant patrolled the river just below Bonneville Dam on Wednesday afternoon, harassing but not killing sea lions with cracker shotgun shells and so-called seal bombs — both essentially big firecrackers, the former shot from a shotgun, the latter dropped by hand — downstream and away from the fish ladders, where endangered migratory salmon congregate.

For the salmon, it’s the first chokepoint on a long journey to their spawning grounds. For hungry sea lions, it’s like a quick trip to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries division estimates about 45 percent of spring chinook salmon are lost between the mouth of the Columbia and Bonneville Dam, with sea lions being primarily responsible.

Sea lions — as well as whales, dolphins and porpoises — are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. For the last 15 years or so, states and tribes have been able to kill some sea lions, but they have to go through a long and laborious permitting process to do so on an animal-by-animal basis.

Read the full story at TDN

 

NOAA publishes global list of fisheries and their risks to marine mammals

April 3, 2018 — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published the first list of foreign fisheries, detailing the risks that commercial fishing around the world pose to marine mammals.

“The [List of Foreign Fisheries] is an important milestone because it provides the global community a view into the marine mammal bycatch levels of commercially relevant fisheries,” according to a statement published on the NOAA Fisheries website.

“In addition, it offers us a better understanding of the impacts of marine mammal bycatch, an improvement of tools and scientific approaches to mitigating those impacts, and establishes a new level of international cooperation in achieving these objectives,” the statement says.

The register is a step toward meeting specific requirements in the Marine Mammal Protection Act on the sources of fish imported into the U.S. It includes nearly 4,000 fisheries across some 135 countries. These fisheries have until 2022 to demonstrate that the methods they use to catch fish, as well as other marine animals such as coral, crabs, lobsters and shellfish, either aren’t much of a danger to marine mammals, or they employ comparable methods and mitigation measures to similar operations in the United States.

Fishing nets can exact a high toll on animals that fishers don’t intend to catch. Nets themselves can trap dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions as bycatch. In Mexico, a fishery targeting the totoaba for its swim bladders that fetch high prices in Asian markets has decimated the tiny porpoise known as the vaquita (Phocoena sinus). Perhaps as few as 12 remain in the wild.

The lines from traps, pots and nets can also ensnare even the largest animals in the ocean. Recent research has shown that almost every one of the estimated remaining 451 North Atlantic right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) either is toting errant fishing equipment around or it bears the scars of entanglements with gear. These ropes can cause injuries to right whales and other animals that can lead to infection or death. And towing pieces of gear that can be longer than the whale’s body causes what scientists call “parasitic” drag that can interfere with the ability to find food.

Read the full story at Mongabay

 

Species battle pits protected sea lions against fragile fish

March 23, 2018 — The 700-pound sea lion blinked in the sun, sniffed the sea air and then lazily shifted to the edge of the truck bed and plopped onto the beach below.

Freed from the cage that carried him to the ocean, the massive marine mammal shuffled into the surf, looked left, looked right and then started swimming north as a collective groan went up from wildlife officials who watched from the shore.

After two days spent trapping and relocating the animal designated #U253, he was headed back to where he started — an Oregon river 130 miles (209 kilometers) from the Pacific Ocean that has become an all-you-can-eat fish buffet for hungry sea lions.

“I think he’s saying, ‘Ah, crap! I’ve got to swim all the way back?'” said Bryan Wright, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife scientist.

It’s a frustrating dance between California sea lions and Oregon wildlife managers that’s become all too familiar in recent months. The state is trying to evict dozens of the federally protected animals from an inland river where they feast on salmon and steelhead that are listed under the Endangered Species Act.

The bizarre survival war has intensified recently as the sea lion population rebounds and fish populations decline in the Pacific Northwest.

The sea lions breed each summer off Southern California and northern Mexico, then the males cruise up the Pacific Coast to forage. Hunted for their thick fur, the mammals’ numbers dropped dramatically but have rebounded from 30,000 in the late 1960s to about 300,000 today due to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at ABC News

 

Alaska: Sea otter resolution gets first hearing in Senate committee

March 16, 2018 — A Senate committee heard Monday from supporters and opponents of state involvement in the management of sea otters in Southeast Alaska.

The Senate Resources Committee held its first hearing on Senate Joint Resolution 13, which calls on the federal government to allow the state or a Native organization to co-manage the rebounding marine mammals and seek ways to increase harvest of otters.

“We’re urging the federal agencies to work with state, Native and local leaders to establish a sea otter management plan to protect the shellfish resources and subsistence availability,” said Sitka Republican committee member Bert Stedman, who sponsored the resolution.

Once nearly hunted to extinction in the region, otters are protected under federal law.

Only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from pelts.

The resolution calls on Congress to change the Marine Mammal Protection Act to allow expanded use of those pelts.

The measure also urges the transfer of otter management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or National Marine Fisheries Service.

Commercial fishing organizations and municipalities have called for the changes to slow the increase in Southeast’s otters because of their impact on shellfish and other sea food.

Commercial sea cucumber diver Stephanie Jurries of Craig told of a rapid loss of fishing areas on the western shore of Prince of Wales Island.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

ALASKA: Petersburg assembly joins call for increased sea otter harvest

March 12, 2018 — Petersburg’s borough assembly this month joined the call for measures to slow a growing population of sea otters in Southeast, as the marine mammals are impacting shellfish stocks.

The assembly passed a resolution at its March 5th meeting calling for the federal government to work with the State of Alaska and Alaska Native tribes to establish strategies for an ecological balance of shellfish resources and the reintroduced sea otters.

The municipal government sought input on the problem and received letters from commercial fishing organizations like the Petersburg Vessels Owners Association, United Southeast Alaska Gillnetters and the Southeast Alaska Regional Dive Fisheries Association. Those letters call for measures to increase the harvest of otters and allowances for expanded use of their pelts by coastal Alaska Natives. Sea otters are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and only coastal Alaska Natives are allowed to hunt them and sell products made from otter pelts.

Petersburg assembly member Eric Castro was convinced to pass the resolution in support of changes to otter management. “All the letters written to this point have been very compelling by all the individuals and groups and I sincerely hope that our federal officials take note on our comments,” Castro said.

Read the full story at KFSK