Saving Seafood

Winning the fight for the lives of whales

April 23, 2023 — Massachusetts officially declared April 24 as Right Whale Day to raise awareness about the endangered. North Atlantic right whales, the state’s official marine mammal.

Right whales have been coming to Cape Cod Bay in April for as long as there has been a Cape Cod Bay. These sandy, shoaly waters warm faster than deeper, dark-bottom ocean realms. In the Gulf of Maine, a sea beside the Atlantic Ocean, seawater rotates counterclockwise fastest in April, driven by river water coming off the land. Nutrient-rich waters are upwelled on the threshold of Stellwagen Bank, defining the east boundary of Massachusetts Bay and drift on into Cape Cod Bay where phytoplankton blooms, feeding zooplankton feeding right and sei whales. Forage fish, including sand lance, herring, and mackerel eat zooplankton and are then scooped up by gaping-mouthed minke, fin, and humpback whales.

It’s time for the National Marine Fisheries Service to slow down to 10 knots or less the speeds of all vessels. Ships were slowed down from March 1 to April 30. There were no vessel-related right whale deaths during the spring season from 2008 until 2016.

On May 5, 2016, a right whale calf was found dead off Morris Island in Chatham. It was the first right whale fatality by ship strike since speed restrictions were implemented in 2008. The 30-foot-long calf weighing about 10,000 pounds was the eighth right whale born to a whale named Punctuation. Mother and calf were observed swimming together in Cape Cod Bay on April 28. As a result, speed restrictions were extended in the Race Point area after April 30.

On April 13, 2017, a juvenile female right whale was found dead off Barnstable, where speed restrictions were in effect from Jan. 1 to May 15. This second right whale death was the first ship strike death documented in or near a seasonal management zone since the speed rule was enacted.

Read the full article at Gloucester Times

Blown Away: Offshore wind regulators ignore danger to fishing industry

April 18, 2023 — Last May, Tommy Beaudreau touted the potential of renewable energy sources like offshore wind to an audience that included some of his government colleagues and former industry clients.

“This industry, this group of people in the room today, really are the key to unlocking that clean energy future,” Beaudreau, the deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, proclaimed at a conference hosted by the American Clean Power Association, a lobbying group largely funded by offshore wind developers.

Just one year earlier, Beaudreau had been a corporate lawyer, earning part of his $2.4 million income from offshore wind developers. Then he was appointed to regulate the industry he was previously paid to represent. During Beaudreau’s tenure, developers including several of his former clients have gained preliminary or final approvals for an unprecedented expansion of offshore wind, despite repeated warnings from federal scientists about potential harms to marine life and the fishing industry.

While the Trump administration put roadblocks in the path of offshore wind development, the Biden administration is fast-tracking clean alternatives like wind and solar to expand domestic energy production and slow the pace of climate change. In the next decade, 3,411 turbines and 9,874 miles of cable are slated to be built across 2.4 million acres of federally managed ocean.

Beaudreau is part of a revolving door between the government and offshore wind. Much as the Trump administration had a pipeline to and from oil and natural gas companies, in recent years at least 90 people have shuttled between federal, state or local government and the offshore wind industry, a ProPublica/New Bedford Light investigation has found. They range from rank-and-file bureaucrats to top policymakers like Beaudreau.

Read the full article at the New Bedford Light

MASSACHUSETTS: Spring Migration of Right Whales Happening Off the Massachusetts Coast Inbox

April 18, 2023 — There are an estimated 350 North Atlantic right whales in existence. Most, if not all, will pass along the Massachusetts coast between now and late spring.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, “Every winter, many right whales migrate more than 1,000 miles. The right whales travel from their feeding grounds off Canada and New England to the warm, shallow coastal waters of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida’s east coast.”

“These southern waters are the only known place where right whales give birth and nurse their young,” according to NOAA.

In the spring, the right whales begin the slow migration north to their feeding and mating grounds in the Gulf of Maine and the eastern Canadian Atlantic.

Read the full article at WBSM

 

MASSACHUSETTS: New Bedford Port Authority calls for changes to NOAA National Seafood Strategy

April 6, 2023 — The New Bedford Port Authority (NBPA), in the U.S. state of Massachusetts, recently submitted comments on NOAA Fisheries’ National Seafood Strategy, asking the administration remain cognizant of the many challenges the fishing industry faces in the coming decade.

NOAA Fisheries released its draft National Seafood Strategy in February 2023, outlining how the federal government plans to support the domestic seafood sector in the coming years. The strategy, which NOAA said is “based on sound science,” addresses factors affecting the seafood industry, including the financial viability of fisheries and the resilience of coastal communities – like New Bedford, Massachusetts – that depend on them.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSSETS: Blue Harvest suspends New Bedford processing operations, plans groundfish fleet upgrade

March 27, 2023 — Blue Harvest Fisheries is temporarily suspending operations at its processing plant in New Bedford, Massachusettsm U.S.A. as part of an overall strategy shift to “realize potential” of its groundfish operations.

The company announced on 24 March it is planning to continue a shift further into the New England groundfish fishery. It said as part of the shift, it was halting operations at its processing plant, laying off 64 employees, the New Bedford Light reported.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

MASSACHUSETTS: Offshore wind in New Bedford: A guide to what you need to know

March 26, 2023 — An already busy port of New Bedford will be even busier when the full effect of the offshore wind industry hits.

A direct impact on the New Bedford/Fairhaven Harbor is already being felt, and seen, most recently with the demolition of the former Eversource plant chimney to make way for the New Bedford Foss Marine Terminal on the New Bedford waterfront.

With Massachusetts preparing for a fourth round of funding for offshore wind projects, what comes next?

Offshore wind companies, electric companies and local leaders from Greater New Bedford have weighed in on changes that should be made to the process during this next round. Vineyard Wind was the winning bidder in the first round, Mayflower Wind Energy LLC won the second round, and Commonwealth Wind and Mayflower Wind LLC were the winning bids in the third round. Massachusetts is preparing for bid submissions for a fourth round of offshore wind contracts.

Read the full article at SouthCoastToday

MASSACHUSETTS: SouthCoast Wind Environmental Report Draws Divergent Views

March 26, 2023 — Falmouth residents joined others from across Massachusetts in a lively expression of their frustrations and hopes for SouthCoast Wind’s proposed offshore wind farm during a virtual public comment session on the project’s draft environmental impact statement.

Work on the nearly 2,000-page impact statement, prepared by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), began in November 2021.

BOEM’s SouthCoast project coordinator Genevieve Brune presented the statement’s findings to the 71 participants at the session, held online Monday, March 20. The evaluation is required under the National Environmental Policy Act and will guide permitting judgements by state and federal authorities, including the Army Corps of Engineers.

Read the full article at The Enterprise 

MASSACHUSETTS: From spawners to tuna sampled in the Annisquam, GMGI talk focuses on sustainable fisheries

March 26, 2023 — Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute’s 10th anniversary just happens to coincide with 400th anniversary of the nation’s oldest and one of its most storied working seaports at a time when the fishing industry has been snagged by state and federal regulations meant to keep the local fishery sustainable.

A community talk as part of the Gloucester 400+ celebration with 100 people in Kyrouz Auditorium in City Hall on Wednesday showed how the use of advanced molecular techniques at GMGI can be used to support sustainable fisheries into the future.

A team at GMGI has figured out how to identify Atlantic cod which spawn in winter versus those that spawn in the spring. Its staff have used environmental DNA techniques to survey the types of fish found in the Annisquam River, among other things.

GMGI fisheries research scientist Tim O’Donnell talked about how his team’s research may help keep fisheries sustainable so future generations “can also have the privilege of having access to the bounty of the ocean.”

When it comes to fisheries science and management, O’Donnell said, various entities collect data on their local fisheries through classic surveys or by analyzing fish biology. But certain species or areas in the ocean can be hard to study and that can create gaps in the data.

Read the full article at Gloucester Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Cape Lobstermen Would Rather Wait Than Switch

March 23, 2o23 — A 21-year-old North Atlantic right whale known as Porcia was observed in Cape Cod Bay on March 18. The whale was seen swimming with her 2023 calf by her side. And last week, before this first mother-calf pair of the season was spotted, Scott Landry, director of the disentanglement team at the Center for Coastal Studies, estimated there were already between 30 and 40 right whales in the bay.

That means Cape Cod lobstermen are on land, waiting out the whales.

Elsewhere in Massachusetts waters, however, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is running an experiment that gives lobster fishermen exempted fishing permits to work in areas that are otherwise restricted. What they are testing is something called on-demand fishing gear — gear operated via an app to minimize the time that lengths of rope stay in the water.

Landry wants to see “our absolute reliance on rope to harvest our food” go away. But for the time being Cape Cod Bay is not the site of any on-demand gear experiments.

Lobsterman Mike Rego, who lives in Truro, is glad about the cautious approach. He sees the strict closures, though they shorten his season, as too important. “I don’t want to lose four months of my fishing season, but I don’t want to kill a whale either,” he said. “The whales are protected while they’re here. Why jeopardize any of that?”

The North Atlantic right whale is a critically endangered species with only some 340 animals remaining in the world. The majority of those whales feed in Cape Cod Bay during their thousand-mile spring migration from their calving grounds off the coasts of Georgia and Florida to Canada, where they summer.

Read the full article at The Provincetown Independent

Northern Wind expanding its lobster traceability with right whales in mind

March 8, 2023 — New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Northern Wind is expanding its scallop traceability program into its lobster supply, with an aim of developing the technology to help reduce the risk of North Atlantic right whale entanglements.

Northern Wind finalized a partnership with traceability technology company Legit Fish in 2021, enabling full-chain of its North Atlantic scallop supply. That technology, which traces product origin, harvest area, and landing-date – verifiable to government records – will now be utilized in the company’s lobster supply.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource