Saving Seafood

Scientists and fishermen team up to help save North Atlantic right whale

August 23, 2018 — Whale researchers and fishermen are out at sea together on a two-week mission, combining efforts to help save the endangered north Atlantic right whale.

These two worlds have usually stayed far apart, but for the first time scientists are onboard a crab boat to do their field work.

It’s been a controversial fishing season in northern New Brunswick.

Whale protection efforts caused many fishing areas in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to be closed off, angering fishermen who saw it as an attack on their livelihood — some even taking to protest.

Crab fisherman Martin Noel, captain of the Jean-Denis Martin boat in Shippagan, agreed to take scientists out in the gulf to help them carry out their research this year.

“We don’t want to be called whale killers,” Noel said. “We want to be called fishermen that are implicated in the solution.”

All season, fishermen begged Ottawa to involve them in fisheries management. They felt the federal government was imposing overly strict measures without consultation with industry.

Read the full story at CBC News

 

Court Orders Seafood Import Ban to Save Vaquita

July 31, 2018 — Responding to a lawsuit filed by conservation groups, the U.S. Court of International Trade has ordered the U.S. Government to ban seafood imports from Mexico caught with gillnets that kill the critically endangered vaquita porpoise.

As few as 15 vaquita remain, and almost half the population drowns in fishing gillnets each year. Without immediate additional protection, the porpoise could be extinct by 2021.

This is the life line the vaquita desperately needs, said Giulia Good Stefani, staff attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, who argued the case before the Court.

The ruling follows a lawsuit filed in March by the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Center for Biological Diversity, and it affirms Congress’ mandate under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act that the United States protect not just domestic marine mammals, but also foreign whales, dolphins, and porpoises.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

 

Scientists study how marine mammals survive at great depths

April 30, 2018 — Whales, dolphins and seals have evolved to hunt prey deep in the ocean, an environment that would otherwise prove deadly to animals that depend on breathing air to live. Until recently, scientists believed marine mammals’ known physical adaptations protected them from the effects of such punishing depths.

But scientists were baffled by computer models that showed that, even with the known adaptations, 50 percent of animals studied still should have experienced the bends. Researchers concluded there must be some else going on.

A new study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Oceanographic Foundation of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain, may provide an answer. The study, funded by the U.S. Navy, found that deep-diving marine mammals use a physical adaptation — the collapse of one portion of the lungs — to block the flow of nitrogen into the blood and prevents the animals from getting the bends, the crippling release of nitrogen gas that can occurs when surfacing from dives deeper than 130 feet.

“If you get the conditions right, you can get a nice exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide but block the nitrogen,” said Michael Moore, a WHOI senior scientist who specializes in the analysis of marine mammal mortalities. Moore is a co-author of the study, which was published April 25 in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B.”

The mammals have other physical adaptations that help them survive the depths when they exhaust available oxygen in their lungs, including a high amount of proteins in blood and muscle that bind oxygen and a higher ratio of red to white blood cells. Their ribs and lungs can collapse under pressure without breaking and their airways are hardened bunkers that remain partially open to power the signals they use to locate one another and their prey.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

 

NOAA gives foreign fisheries 4 years to detail marine mammal protections

April 4, 2018 — The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published a list of marine mammals at risk in 135 countries and given each foreign commercial fishery four years to report what harvesting practices are being employed to preserve the species, Mongabay, an environmental science and conservation news site, reports.

The list is born from a 2016 rule that grew out of a 2008 petition to the Department of Commerce brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and Turtle Island Restoration Network to halt the import of swordfish from countries where fishing methods put other animals in danger, the news service explains.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

 

Lobster fishery reduces floating rope in hopes of protecting North Atlantic right whales

April 4, 2018 — Lobster fishers on P.E.I. are taking new measures this season to help protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from entanglement.

In January, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Dominic LeBlanc announced changes to the snow crab fishery in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to protect the right whales, including reducing the amount of rope floating on the surface and mandatory reporting of all lost gear.

Fishermen are also required to report any sightings of the endangered whales.

At least 18 North Atlantic right whales died in Canadian and U.S. waters last year.

Necropsies on seven of the carcasses determined four whales died of blunt force trauma from collisions with ships, while the other three likely died from entanglements in fishing gear.

There are only an estimated 450 to 500 of the whales left in the world.

‘Delicate balance’

This winter, the P.E.I. Fishermen’s Association set up a special working group focused on helping to protect the right whale, with members representing all 13 species fished around Prince Edward Island.

“It’s a delicate balance between the fishery and the survival of these species,” said Melanie Giffin, a marine biologist and program planner with PEIFA.

“So our members will do everything they can in terms of reducing rope and to try to help reduce those entanglements for the whales.”

Giffin said most of the measures are being mandated by the federal department of fisheries.

“There’s a reduction in the amount of floating rope on the surface of the water and that’s being done in numerous species,” she said.

‘It’s not specific that it has to be lead rope but the rope needs to be sinking.”

In the snow crab fishery, there will also be colour coding of ropes, with different colours woven into the rope to identify where it’s from, including P.E.I.

“That’s to ensure that if there is a whale entangled, we have an idea of where that whale was entangled,” Giffin said.

“If they’re all entangled in the same area, then maybe management measures need to be looked more closely in that area, rather than the Gulf as a whole.”

There is no colour coding for lobster ropes yet, she added.

Read the full story at CBC News

 

Report highlights how tuna fisheries can reduce bycatch

April 4, 2018 — Four environmental organizations have joined forces in an effort to reduce the amount of bycatch produced by longline tuna fishing operations.

In working with Greenpeace, Birdlife International, and The Nature Conservancy, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership released in late March detailing the impact longline practices have on other species. They hope to influence processors and retailers who wish to market sustainable tuna and want to improve the environmental performance of the fisheries who supply them.

In some cases, the species most impacted by longline tuna operations are endangered or vulnerable, such as sharks and sea turtles. Other species that can find themselves entangled in the lines include baleen whales and seals.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Opponents say Block Island wind farms are causing problems across prime fishing grounds

March 19, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — The five enormous turbines that have been generating electricity off Block Island over the past year are considered a model for the future of offshore wind.

But the nation’s first ocean-based wind farm also has exposed what fishermen say are serious threats to them caused by scattering massive metal shafts and snaking underwater cables across prime fishing grounds.

With state officials poised to announce the winners of bids to develop much larger wind farms south of Martha’s Vineyard, fishermen across the region have been pressing officials for answers to their concerns about where the turbines will be located, how far apart they’ll be built, and the placement of the cables to the mainland.

“It’s true that the area where the turbines are have created habitat that attracts fish, which is good; but in the area where the cable lines extend to the mainland, it’s completely devoid of fish,” said Michael Pierdinock, chairman of the Massachusetts Recreational Alliance, which represents about 50,000 recreational fishermen. “Theseused to be fruitful fishing grounds.”

The opposition of the fishing industry, a powerful interest group in New England, could prove a hindrance for developers of the proposed wind farms, which will be chosen next month.

Those projects, which could ultimately span hundreds of thousands of acres some 14 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, are expected to generate 1,600 megawatts of power within a decade, or enough electricity for about 800,000 homes.

At a meeting last month in New Bedford of fishermen, developers, and state and federal officials, Pierdinock and commercial fishermen urged regulators to study the potential impact of the proposed wind farms on marine mammals, spawning grounds of herring and squid, and other species that inhabit the area.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

Alaska: In Nome, state experts ponder responses to Bering Sea crises

February 21, 2018 — Experts from around the state gathered in Nome to discuss marine mammals and how multiple entities can respond to different types of emergencies that may happen in the Bering Sea.

Mandy Migura with the National Marine Fisheries Service was one of the presenters at a “Strait Science” talk hosted at University of Alaska Fairbanks Northwest Campus.

Migura discussed how marine mammal stranding events take place in Alaska sporadically but have been rising in numbers since tracking began in the 1980s.

“Strandings involve live marine mammals. these may be animals that are unable to return to their natural habitat without some kind of assistance. And they may be injured, they may be entangled in gear or marine debris, they may be entrapped — ice entrapment, ice may form up and they’re in an area where they can’t get back to where they should be — or they may be disoriented, may be a health issue or something in the environment that’s affecting them.”

Migura is Alaska’s marine mammal stranding coordinator and said dead marine mammals can also be categorized as stranded.

With more cases of marine mammal strandings being reported, the Bering Sea marine ecosystem is currently in a volatile state.

Nome-based marine advisory agent Gay Sheffield mentioned how sharks have been found more frequently in the Bering Straits region, with the latest one documented in Gambell in summer 2017.

On the other side of St. Lawrence Island, a stellar sea lion was harvested last year in Savoonga, which she said is uncommon.

Migura said local and regional partners reporting this kind of information greatly benefits the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Read the full story at KTOO

 

Marine debris threatens Hawaii’s ecosystem, but collecting it can get complicated

February 15, 2018 — Marine debris continues to litter our beaches, and more of it is on the way if our current weather patterns continue.

Nets, floaters, and other rubbish aren’t just ugly and dangerous to marine life.

They hide small organisms and creatures that could harm our fragile shorelines.

Scott Godwin works with the Hawaii Department of Land and National Resources Division of Aquatics Resources Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) team. He’s been studying invasive species and marine debris for more than 15 years.

“There’s a lot of stuff out there all the time,” Godwin said, “and Hawaii seems to be in the right place to get that stuff just because of the oceanographic conditions.”

He explained that the current winds and currents have simply been washing debris onshore that would normally otherwise float by the islands and go unnoticed.

The debris poses many dangers. Marine mammals and fish get tangled in floating masses of nets and die.

Read and watch the full story at KHON2

 

Fossil fuel search would target migratory path of right whales

November 14, 2017 — Conservationists will gather today in Washington, D.C., to stop a bill they say will “fast-track” air gun surveys for oil and gas off the U.S. coasts that could harm whales, dolphins and other marine mammals.

“This is a pro-oil and gas industry wishlist,” said CT Harry, a marine conservation campaign officer for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which is one of the nine lead conservation groups heading the lobbying effort.

More than 50 marine mammal advocates and ocean conservationists are expected to visit Capitol Hill, on the 45th anniversary of the passage of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The act, enacted in 1972, established a moratorium on the taking of marine mammals in U.S. waters, where “take” means hunt, harass, capture or kill, or attempt to do so, and the act set a national policy to prevent depletion of marine mammal populations. Exceptions to the moratorium can be made through permits for lawful activities that might incidentally result in a “take.”

Conservationists say that House bill 4239, known as the Secure American Energy Act, contains provisions to weaken the MMPA permitting for “incidental” events, where the weakened measures could harm marine mammals all along the East Coast, particularly the North Atlantic right whales. The House Committee on Natural Resources passed the bill last week, and the House could vote on it in the next few weeks.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times