Saving Seafood

Lobstermen Banned from Most MA Waters Until Late Spring to Protect Endangered Whales

January 29, 2021 — The state’s Marine Fisheries Commission approved the latest suite of protections for North Atlantic right whales on Thursday, including a three-and-a-half month trap gear closure throughout a large swath of state waters and mandated use of weaker buoy lines.

Already, from Feb. 1 to April 30, no trap pot gear or vertical lines are allowed in an area of over 3,000 square miles around Cape Cod Bay. The new rules from the Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission extend and expand the closure up to the New Hampshire border until May 15.

The commission exempted state waters south and southwest of the Cape. Whale survey records showed North Atlantic right whales are rarely seen in that area around Nantucket Sound during the proposed closure period.

The commission, made up mostly of commercial fishermen, voted overwhelmingly in support of the new restrictions because the state’s lobster industry is currently under threat from a federal judge, who could close the fishery outright for failing to protect the whales under the Endangered Species Act.

Read the full story at CAI

Massachusetts passes new right whale protections

January 29, 2021 — The state’s Marine Fisheries Commission passed regulations Thursday that it hopes will dramatically reduce the risk to highly endangered right whales from lobster pot and gillnet buoy lines.

The state plan is intended to dovetail with a federal plan from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to reduce the risk of entanglement in fishing lines by 60%. The administration released its plan for public comment last month.

The state Division of Marine Fisheries estimated that the new measures will make gear entanglements in state waters 76% less likely for whales.

“Massachusetts stepped up to the plate today and did something significant for North Atlantic right whales,” said Gib Brogan, a senior campaign manager for the marine conservation organization Oceana. “By reducing the risk of entanglement in fishing gear, which is a leading cause of death for this species, Massachusetts set its lobster industry apart today and showed itself as a leader in ocean conservation and responsible lobster fishing.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Fish panel bans inshore lobstering during whale migration

January 28, 2021 — The Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission on Thursday approved additional protections for the endangered North Atlantic right whales, including a three-and-a-half month trap gear closure throughout state waters and mandated use of weaker buoy lines.

Meeting via webinar, the MFAC overwhelmingly approved five of the six recommendations presented by the state Division of Marine Fisheries, setting the stage for a hectic start to the state’s 2021 lobster fishing season.

“We think this is surgical and appropriate,” DMF Director Dan McKiernan told commission members. “We believe this is the most responsible way to manage this fishery.”

As the state faces challenges on two fronts — the federal take reduction team initiative to stem whale entanglements and deaths and ongoing federal litigation that names Massachusetts as a defendant in a lawsuit filed under the Endangered Species Act — the commission approved:

* A Feb. 1 to May 15 closure to commercial trap gear in all state waters — including off Cape Ann — to help mitigate whale entanglements, injuries and deaths during the period when the right whales are most prevalent in state waters. The closure is roughly two weeks longer than DMF’s initial recommendation, but the measure gives DMF the power to lift all or part of the closure between May 1 and 15 “based on the presence and absence of right whales.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

As fishermen weather the winter cold, are they truly prepared for survival?

January 27, 2021 — The temperatures were awfully chilly this weekend.

On Saturday night, 27 degrees at Provincetown Municipal Airport, with winds at 25 miles per hour and gusts to 37. The low Saturday night was 22 degrees.

It felt like the first truly freezing temperatures this winter on the Outer Cape.

That chill is a reminder of what fishermen have to consider every time they leave the dock.

At a December training in Sandwich, 25 crewmen and captains from Cape and New Bedford fishing vessels sat down in slushy snow to wriggle into what could be the most important article of clothing they will ever try on.

They call them Gumby suits, or immersion or survival suits. A survival suit is bright orange with oversized hands and feet and a tight-fitting hood that reveals only a small moon of flesh: eyes, nose and mouth. The water temperature on that training day was 47 degrees, and Dan Orchard, the vice president of Fishing Partnership Support Services, had the men suit up and jump into the water within a half-hour of arrival. Going from comfort to cold, disorienting water temperatures was about as close to the real thing as could be had shoreside.

Read the full story at Wicked Local

Fishing industry moves to head off Northeast canyons monument reversal

January 27, 2021 — Northeast fishing advocates mobilized as President Biden moved fast to reverse executive orders from the Trump administration — possibly including Trump’s move to back off fishing restrictions in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument.

Biden ordered a broad review of more than 100 actions by the Trump administration on environmental issues, including the former president’s attempts to alter national monuments. Fishing advocates moved to get in early and persuade the new administration that the U.S. fisheries management system that’s been in place for more than 40 years can handle protecting the Northeast offshore habitat without executive intervention.

“We kind of saw it coming, and we sent letters off to politicians,” said Jim Budi, who owns a swordfish and tuna longline vessel that works out of New Bedford, Mass. “We had great fishing there this year. If it wasn’t for that, we’d be in the red.”

Environmental groups pushed Biden on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, to reinstate the Obama administration’s offshore monument declaration, with its potential to foreclose most fishing at the edge of the continental shelf.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Beware ’30×30′ in federal climate bill

January 27, 2021 — 30×30, a major provision in the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act that would ban all commercial fishing in at least 30 percent of U.S. oceans by 2030, has drawn widespread opposition by fishermen and fisheries scientists since it was introduced in the House of Representatives last year. In a letter to Congress last November, over 800 participants in the U.S. seafood economy wrote that 30×30 “would undermine our nation’s world-class system of fisheries management.” 

In an open letter to Congress last December, a group of fisheries scientists wrote that 30×30 “is not based on the best scientific information available” and “will decrease flexibility of the fishery management system to adapt to climate change.” 

The following is excerpted from an article by Doreen Leggett, communications officer at the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance, published by Wicked Local:

Commercial fishermen rely on the sea and are often more aware of the changing ocean environment than anyone else.

Take fisherman Kurt Martin of Orleans. For close to three decades he has kept daily logs of everything from where he fishes to weather conditions, water temperatures and depth.

A few things stand out: Fog that was virtually synonymous with Chatham is becoming a rarity, summer ocean temperatures have increased about 10 degrees and walking around an iced-in Pleasant Bay come Christmas is a distant memory.

Meanwhile, the lobster fishery south of the Cape is much diminished while Canada’s is growing as warmer water pushes north. Martin said the lobster fishery on the Cape is “stable” now.

“But we are basically on the edge of disaster. We can definitely see the trend of the shift being made.”

Climate change has pushed commercial fishermen to change their business plans, the way they fish, what they fish for, even their home ports. But when far-reaching climate legislation was drafted and filed in the House of Representatives last year (by a representative from Arizona), fishermen were shut out of the conversations. They may be shut out of their fishing grounds as well.

There are many positives in the 300-page bill, but one section would harm fishing communities across the nation, hamstring buy-local movements, increase seafood imports, and complicate efforts to combat climate change.

The initiative, dubbed 30×30, a focal point in the House version of the Ocean-Based Climate Solutions Act, would require “protection” of at least 30 percent of U.S. oceans by 2030 by banning “all commercial extractive use” in broad swaths of the ocean, circumventing the country’s sustainable fishery management process. (Specific areas have not yet been identified.)

Read the full article at Wicked Local

DOREEN LEGGETT: The Fishing Life: Beware ’30×30′ in federal climate bill

January 26, 2021 — Commercial fishermen rely on the sea and are often more aware of the changing ocean environment than anyone else.

Take fisherman Kurt Martin of Orleans. For close to three decades he has kept daily logs of everything from where he fishes to weather conditions, water temperatures and depth.

A few things stand out: Fog that was virtually synonymous with Chatham is becoming a rarity, summer ocean temperatures have increased about 10 degrees and walking around an iced-in Pleasant Bay come Christmas is a distant memory.

Meanwhile, the lobster fishery south of the Cape is much diminished while Canada’s is growing as warmer water pushes north. Martin said the lobster fishery on the Cape is “stable” now.

“But we are basically on the edge of disaster. We can definitely see the trend of the shift being made.”

Read the full opinion piece at Wicked Local

Decision due next week on seasonal lobstering ban

January 25, 2021 — In China, 2021 is down as the Year of the Ox. In the cold waters off the coast of New England, it is shaping up as the Year of the Whale. The North Atlantic right whale.

Federal regulators, through the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction team, and the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries have proposed a series of overlapping new protections for the imperiled species that will have a significant impact on the region’s lobster industry.

In Massachusetts, lobstermen will find out next week whether the state will implement DMF’s recommendations for state waters that include a new seasonal closure on all lobstering from February to May — the time period of the annual migration and feeding along the Massachusetts coast by the whales whose numbers are estimated to have dropped below 400.

The Massachusetts Marine Fisheries Advisory Commission is set to meet Thursday morning via zoom. DMF Director Dan McKiernan will present the agency’s recommendations — which also include the utilization of weaker, break-away vertical buoy lines to help mitigate gear entanglements — and the commission will vote.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts launches ropeless gear study

January 22, 2021 — A year-long feasibility study to assess using ropeless trap gear in the New England lobster fishery has been launched by the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries.

Funded in part by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation in partnership with NOAA, the “accelerated timeline” project “will interview dozens of fishermen, technologists, policy experts, and scientists to fully evaluate the challenges and opportunities of the new gear type,” the state agency said in a Jan. 21 statement.

Ropeless gear – sometimes known as pop-up gear, or as Massachusetts officials call it, on-call gear – are designs that seek to replace the traditional floating buoy line gear used in lobster, crab and fish trap fisheries.

There’s high interest in these alternatives as a potential solution to prevent marine mammal entanglements in gear – especially the highly endangered northern right whale, with an East Coast population now estimated to be less than 400 animals.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

NOAA report sides with right whale activists

January 22, 2021 — A federal report released Thursday largely agreed with the concerns expressed by animal rights activists and conservation groups that voluntary speed limits intended to protect highly endangered North Atlantic right whales were not working, and that even mandatory restricted speed zones needed to be expanded.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s vessel speed rule assessment recommended that the vessel strike rule that was implemented in 2008 be strengthened. They want increased enforcement of speed limits, expansion of mandatory no speed zones and a rethinking of areas that have only voluntary speed restrictions that are routinely violated and where an increase in vessel collisions with whales have been seen.

NOAA also wanted to consider mandatory speed restrictions or some other protections for an area just south of Nantucket where right whales have been found year-round in recent years.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times