Marine mammals Archives - Page 4 of 6

NOAA Fisheries Will Announce Over $3.7 Million of Grants Awarded Through the FY 2021 Prescott Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Grants Program

September 15, 2021 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

These Prescott Grants support a core mission of NOAA Fisheries— the conservation and recovery of protected marine species—by helping to improve our national marine mammal stranding response capabilities. Through this program, we have provided $67.5 million over the past two decades, and our stranding network partners have provided, at minimum, an additional $28.3 million in matching funds, to build a strong network of over 100 trained, professional partners. These trained professionals and volunteers provide valuable environmental intelligence as they respond to marine mammals in distress, helping NOAA establish links among the health of marine mammals, coastal ecosystems, and coastal communities.

For FY 2021, NOAA Fisheries awarded 55 grants to 50 recipients in 19 states and one tribe, representing marine mammal stranding network partners from every NOAA Fisheries Region. Additional information about this successful program can be found here.

Regional breakdown of the FY 2021 Prescott Grant awards (detailed table below):

Greater Atlantic Region: 11 awards (total $913,262)
Southeast Region: 10 awards (total $675,124)
West Coast Region: 21 awards (total $1,223,913)
Alaska Region: 4 awards (total $243,070)
Pacific Islands Region: 2 awards (total $195,000)
National: 7 awards (total $465,102) are for projects that meet national research or services needs (diagnostics, tagging, etc.) across regions.

Additionally, NOAA is announcing that the application deadline for FY 2022 Prescott grants is October 13, 2021.

Marine animals live where ocean is most breathable, ranges may shrink with climate change

September 17, 2020 — As oceans warm due to climate change, scientists are trying to predict how marine animals—from backboned fish to spineless jellyfish—will react. Laboratory experiments indicate that many could theoretically tolerate temperatures far higher than what they encounter today. But these studies don’t mean that marine animals can maintain their current ranges in warmer oceans, according to Curtis Deutsch, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Washington.

“Temperature alone does not explain where in the ocean an animal can live,” said Deutsch. “You must consider oxygen: how much is present in the water, how well an organism can take up and utilize it, and how temperature affects these processes.”

Species-specific characteristics, overall oxygen levels and water temperature combine to determine which parts of the ocean are “breathable” for different ocean-dwelling creatures. New research led by Deutsch shows that a wide variety of marine animals—from vertebrates to crustaceans to mollusks—already inhabit the maximum range of breathable ocean that their physiology will allow.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

Seeking Nominations for Candidates for the Marine Mammal Atlantic Scientific Review Group

September 4, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

NOAA Fisheries published a Federal Register Notice on September 3, 2020 soliciting nominations to three independent marine mammal scientific review groups.

The three independent regional scientific review groups, covering Alaska, the Atlantic (including the Gulf of Mexico), and the Pacific (including Hawaii), were established under section 117(d) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act to provide advice on a range of marine mammal science and management issues.

We would like your assistance to identify qualified candidates for the Atlantic (including the Gulf of Mexico) review group. We are seeking individuals with expertise in one or more of the following priority areas (not in order of priority): Protected species conservation, wildlife management, and policy/science interface especially in the non-governmental sector; line-transect methodology, mark-recapture methods, survey design, and quantitative ecology; life history and ecology, particularly large cetaceans and delphinid species; Gulf of Mexico cetacean population dynamics; Southeast U.S. cetaceans; Northeast U.S. Large Marine Ecosystem (LME); marine mammal health, physiology, energetics, and toxicology; genetics; fishing gear and practices, particularly fisheries with marine mammal bycatch, fishery bycatch estimation, and bycatch reduction; ecosystem climate impacts; and manatees.

As you consider nominating candidates, please remember

A Scientific Review Group member cannot be a registered Federal lobbyist or foreign agent;
Service is without pay, except for reimbursable travel and related expenses; and
Individuals serve for a term of three years, for no more than three consecutive terms if re-appointed.

Nominations are due by October 5, 2020.

NOAA Fisheries Releases Proposed Rule for Marine Mammal Non-Lethal Deterrents

August 31, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Today, NOAA Fisheries is soliciting input on a proposed regulation for safely deterring marine mammals from damaging fishing gear or catch, damaging personal or public property, or endangering personal safety. MMPA section 101(a)(4)(B) directs the Secretary of Commerce, through NOAA Fisheries, to publish guidelines for safely deterring marine mammals and recommend specific measures to non-lethally deter marine mammals listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This is an opportunity for the public to provide input on these guidelines and recommended specific measures. NOAA Fisheries has included in the guidelines and recommended specific measures those deterrents that are unlikely to kill or seriously injure marine mammals; we have not evaluated the effectiveness of deterrents.

We are accepting comments on the proposed rule for 60 days through 10-30-2020. For more information and to review the draft Environmental Assessment and other materials prepared in support of this action visit our website.

Guidelines for Safely Deterring Marine Mammals

August 28, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Copies of the draft Environmental Assessment prepared in support of this action are available and accessible via the Internet at: https://www.regulations.gov/. We are accepting comments on the proposed rule for 60 days through 10-30-2020.

NOAA Fisheries Releases Proposed Rule for Marine Mammal Non-Lethal Deterrents

August 28, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

Two years after regulation, NOAA Fisheries evaluating importers’ mammal bycatch

October 17, 2018 — Two years after U.S. officials established new regulations regarding imported seafood and bycatch, NOAA Fisheries is taking steps to make sure other countries are working on reducing the interaction their fisheries have with marine mammals.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act Import Provisons Rule, announced in August 2016, requires seafood importers to maintain the same bycatch standards as American fisheries. The rule took effect on 1 January 2017 but gave countries a five-year period to evaluate their marine mammal stocks and reduce their bycatch to match U.S. standards.

Among the steps completed this year include the creation of a list of foreign fisheries, which was produced in March. The document, considered the first of its kind, evaluated nearly 3,300 fisheries operating in nearly 140 countries. Those fisheries were rated by the frequency and likelihood of whether marine mammals suffered serious injuries or were killed in the process of harvesting fish or other seafood products.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Lobster industry blasts proposed regulations intended to protect whales

October 5, 2018 — Maine officials and members of the state’s lobster industry are blasting a new federal report on the endangered right whale, claiming it uses old science to unfairly target the fishery for restrictions.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources, the agency that regulates the $434 million lobster fishery, and the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the trade group representing Maine’s 4,500 active commercial lobstermen, question the scientific merits of the report from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center, which was issued in advance of next week’s meeting of a federal right whale protection advisory team.

“They’re painting a big target on the back of the Maine lobster industry, but the picture isn’t based on the best available science,” DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher said Thursday. “If we use the wrong starting point, and that’s what this report is, the wrong starting point, what kind of regulations will we end up with? Ones that could end up hurting the lobster industry for no reason and won’t do much to help the right whales. That is unfair.”

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald

Humpback whale sightings around Hawaii declining

October 1, 2018 — Whale researchers are spotting a trend in the Hawaiian Islands — a decline in humpback whale sightings.

Not only are there fewer sightings, fewer male Hawaiian humpback whales have been recorded singing, and the number of mother-calf pairs has been diminishing for the past three seasons, according to the researchers. While the trend has been consistent over the past three years, the scientists refrained from sounding an alarm about the whales disappearing as a new season is around the corner.

“They’re not all gone,” said Ed Lyman, who is with the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. “We are seeing indications of fewer whales near the islands where our effort is … There are still plenty of whales out there.”

The peak of the season is usually between January and March, when thousands of humpback whales migrate from Alaska to Hawaii to mate, calve and nurse their young, although they can be spotted in November or earlier, and stay as late as May.

Lyman, a researcher and the sanctuary’s whale entanglement response coordinator, said for him, the first signs of the decline were in late December 2015.

That’s when he got calls from whale-watching tour operators on Hawaii island, inquiring about their late arrival. Lyman reached out to tour operators on other islands, as well, and found them saying the same thing — the whales were late, and there were fewer sightings. He got the same reports from contacts in Mexico.

Read the full story at the Honolulu Star-Advertiser

NOAA Memorandum on Whales Lays Basis for Much Stricter Regulation of Trap Fisheries

September 28, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — A recent technical memorandum from NOAA on right whale recovery in 2018 could push the agency to require new limits on trap fishing technology.

In short, the memorandum says that the measures adopted to reduce the number of rope lines in the water have backfired.

Although the number of lines to individual buoys have been reduced, the remaining trawl strings have more traps and stronger rope.

The result is that whales are suffering more for entanglements than they were before the new rules were introduced.

The memorandum says that “stronger rope contributed to an increase in the severity of entanglements.”

“Knowlton et al.(2012) showed that nearly 85% of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once, 59% at least twice, and 26% of the regularly seen animals are entangled annually. These findings represent a continued increase in the percentage of whales encountering and entangling in gear, which grew from to 61.5% in 1995 (Hamilton et al. 1998), to 75.6% in 2002.”

“Rough estimates are that approximately 622,000 vertical lines are deployed from fishing gear in U.S. waters from Georgia to the Gulf of Maine. Notably until spring of 2018, very few protections for right whales were in place in Canadian waters. In comparison to recent decades, more right whales now spend significantly more time in more northern waters and swim through extensive pot fishery zones around Nova Scotia and into the Canadian Gulf of St. Lawrence (Daoust et al. 2018).

Taken together, these fisheries exceed an estimated 1 million vertical lines (100,000 km) deployed throughout right whale migratory routes, calving, and foraging areas.”

“Each vertical line out there has some potential to cause an entanglement. With a 26% annual entanglement rate in a population of just over 400 animals, this translates to about 100 entanglements per year.”

The problem is that sub-lethal entanglements can impact the reproductive success of the population.

“While serious injuries represent 1.2% of all entanglements, there are often sublethal costs to less severe entanglements. Should an entanglement occur but the female somehow disentangles and recovers, it still has the potential to reset the clock for this “capital” breeder. She now has to spend several years acquiring sufficient resources to get pregnant and carry a calf to term, the probability of a subsequent entanglement is fairly high, and this will create a negative feedback loop over time, where the interval between calving becomes longer. This is certainly a contributing factor in the longer calving interval for females, which has now grown from 4 to 10 years.

The implication of this technical report is that substantial reductions in entanglements will be necessary if the long term decline in the population is to be reversed, and under the endangered species act, NOAA will be required to evaluate any actions that increase harm or fail to mitigate harm to the right whale population.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News, it is republished here with permission.