Saving Seafood

Feds will form team to tackle fishing gear threats to Pacific humpback whales

September 29, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced it is forming a team to protect endangered Pacific humpback whales from deadly sablefish fishing gear entanglements in the Pacific ocean.

The service intends to form a take reduction team by Oct. 31, 2025, under a settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued the service in January 2022.

The take reduction team will develop plans to address the incidental mortality and serious injury of Pacific humpback whales from sablefish pot fisheries. Most pot fisheries use static, vertical lines that connect buoys on the water’s surface to heavy traps on the ocean floor. These lines, typically made of heavy rope, can wrap around whales’ mouths, fins, and tails, cutting the animals. When a whale cannot break free, it can eventually drown from exhaustion or die of starvation.

“Fishing gear entanglements regularly injure and kill Pacific humpbacks. This team offers a glimmer of hope for change,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Humpbacks cycle nutrients that feed fish, delight whale-watchers and intrinsically improve the oceans. A dedicated team could keep these endangered whales from starving, suffering and dying in fishing gear. It can’t start soon enough.”

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Environmental Alliance Challenges Accepted Offshore Sonar Levels

September 13, 2023 — Saying protective distances adopted by the National Marine Fisheries Service for incidental harassment authorizations related to offshore wind sonar work is having the opposite effect, Save the Right Whales Coalition wants the federal government to take emergency action to halt the work.

NOAA Fisheries issues permits for “incidental harassment” of whales and dolphins when it authorizes seabed surveying using high-intensity noise devices.

“Our data shows that the sonar is producing Level B harassment noise levels at distances that exceed those set by NOAA Fisheries,” Lisa Linowes, co-founder of Save the Right Whales Coalition, wrote in a Sept. 8 letter to Richard Spinrad, NOAA administrator and undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere. “Marine mammals are likely getting much closer to the sonar than should be allowed.”

Read the full article at the Sand Paper

Federal fisheries service agrees to deal aimed at curbing whale entanglements in fishing gear

July 19, 2023 — A legal agreement finalized Tuesday over the protection of humpback whales is expected to help the threatened animals thrive while maintaining the ocean’s health.

The deal stricken between the National Marine Fisheries Service and Center for Biological Diversity will create a team to reduce the number of whales that get tangled in a West Coast federal fishery. The service will form the team by Oct. 31, 2025, a press release stated.

“There is no reason these animals should have to suffer or die in this way,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the center. “This agreement is incredibly important.”

A federal court in March sided with the center after it filed suit last year against the fisheries service. The center argued the service failed to protect Pacific humpback whales from getting entangled in sablefish pot gear off the California, Oregon and Washington coasts.

According to Monsell, the fishery operates in an area with two humpback whale populations: a Central American population and a Mexican one. The Central American population is considered endangered and only hundreds of the whales remain. The Mexican population is threatened and some 3,000 remain.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Feds to reevaluate threat of gillnet fishing to humpback whales

April 23, 2023 — Environmentalists claimed victory following an agreement by the National Marine Fisheries Service to complete a new biological assessment on the state of humpback whales living in the waters off the West Coast.

The announcement follows a joint stipulation approved Thursday by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer after the Center for Biological Diversity sued Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2022. The suit claimed the drift gillnet fishery caused “excessive harm to endangered humpback whales,” in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

“Humpback whales just won a key victory against destructive gillnets,” said Catherine Kilduff, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, in a statement. “These amazing animals face so many threats off California, and absurdly huge nets are a hazard they really shouldn’t have to dodge. This agreement will help ensure whales are protected while the drift gillnet fishery winds down operations over the next five years.”

Kilduff said humpbacks have been endangered since the creation of the Endangered Species Act in 1973.

Read the full article at Courthouse New Service

‘Ropeless’ Fishing Gear Aims to Protect Whales, But Adds Complications, Costs

April 13, 2023 — A handful of Rhode Island lobster fishermen are working this season with federal regulators to use and study some complex and early stage equipment that is intended, eventually, to greatly reduce entanglements and deaths of whales.

The experimental equipment for this so-called “ropeless” fishing would eliminate the vertical ropes — or “lines” — running down the water column from buoys on the surface to lines connecting a series of traps on the seafloor. The existing function of buoys and vertical lines — to find and retrieve traps — would be replaced under a new system by computerized acoustic signals from boats to the seafloor and geopositioning via cell signals or satellites.

Using federal experimental fishing permits, three Port Judith-based lobstermen are struggling to use the new gear, borrowed from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), a branch of NOAA Fisheries.

On a recent sunny April morning, Richard Lodge and his sea dogs Rudder and Dory were preparing to embark from his dock at Point Judith on his boat Select for a day of lobster fishing using the experimental gear. The gear is informally called “on demand” because the fisherman uses an acoustic signal, like a dog whistle, to release floats on the seafloor and to raise one end of the trawl line to the surface.

His experimental fishing permit allows Lodge to use and test the gear in a portion of the ocean called the South Island restricted area, to the south and east of the Rhode Island coast. The restricted area was designated two years ago, and lobster fishing — using buoys and vertical lines — is banned there from February through April, when the endangered North Atlantic right whale is moving through the area.

Lodge uses a mild tone in talking about using the gear, which is a little surprising, considering the years of previous regulations on the fishery and the hassles of managing the computer-driven gear.

“Ropeless technology is excessive; I honestly don’t think it is necessary,” Lodge said. “This is a solution to a problem that isn’t there.” He and other Point Judith-based lobstermen said that in decades of time at sea, they don’t know of one instance in which whales were entangled in their lines.

“I’ve fished here for 40 years and we haven’t had a problem with whales,” said Galilee-based fisherman Eric Marcus, who also has an experimental fishing permit to use and test the ropeless gear in the restricted zone. “Where we are isn’t a breeding ground for whales.”

Daniel McKiernan, director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries, said there are 6,000 commercial lobstermen and 350 right whales, “so naturally the vast majority of lobstermen are not entangling whales.”

Read the full article at ecoRI News

Tribal organizations file lawsuit alleging NOAA fisheries use outdated data, harming subsistence fishing

April 11, 2023 — The Association of Village Council Presidents and the Tanana Chiefs Conference have filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in U.S. District Court to protect subsistence fishing rights.

The two organizations represent nearly a hundred tribes in Alaska, and are suing the federal government in order to protect their rights to subsistence fishing. The nonprofit EarthJustice is representing the Tribal organizations.

“It’s challenging the National Marine Fisheries Service’s recent decision adopting the catch limits for the Bering Sea groundfish fisheries,” EarthJustice senior attorney Kate Glover said.

The lawsuit alleges that NOAA fisheries have been using outdated environmental studies when setting groundfish catch limits for the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands.

Read the full article at Alaska New Source

US court rules NMFS must move on whale take-reduction plan for West Coast black cod fishery

March 16, 2023 — A federal court in the U.S. state of California has ruled the National Marine Fisheries Service must develop a whale take-reduction plan for the West Coast sablefish pot fishery, a decision that will put more pressure on the agency and industry to come up with gear alternatives.

U.S. District Court Judge James Donato ruled 14 March in favor of the Center for Biological Diversity, which sued NMFS challenging its permitting of the fishery without having a plan in place to reduce the danger of humpback whales entangling in vertical trap lines.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Feds sued to protect endangered turtles, whales, sharks from fishing lines

February 24, 2023 — The Conservation Council for Hawaii sued National Marine Fisheries Service fisheries in Hawaii and American Samoa for delaying consultations meant to ensure the fisheries are properly managing incidental catch species including several endangered sea turtle, whale and shark species.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Conservation Council and Michael Nakachi, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, claim the longline fisheries have been exceeding their incidental take limits for nearly nine years in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

The fisheries’ longline fishing gear, mileslong mainlines with baited hooks extending vertically into the water, primarily targets tuna but has no way to exclude nontarget marine animals, luring in and eventually killing hundreds of species including endangered ones.

“By failing to complete the consultations, NMFS is failing to ensure that these fisheries do not jeopardize the continued existence of these species or destroy or adversely modify their critical habitat, in violation of ESA Section 7 and its implementing regulations,” the plaintiffs say in the complaint.

Earthjustice, on behalf of the Conservation Council, first initiated action against the agency in May 2022, asking for consultations and reports to be done on oceanic whitetip sharks, which had been recently designated by the Endangered Species Act and did not have previously established take limits. All parties stipulated to a voluntary dismissal after the fisheries service promised to complete the consultations, which it submitted in September. The plaintiffs say this wasn’t enough.

Read the full article at Courthouse News Service

Green groups targeting blue-collar lobstermen are largely funded by dark money

February 6, 2023 — Environmental groups that have led litigation targeting the lobster fishing industry have been heavily funded by various liberal dark money groups that don’t disclose their individual donors, a Fox News Digital review of tax filings found.

The organizations — the Center For Biological Diversity, Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) and Defenders Of Wildlife — first filed a joint federal lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in 2018, arguing a rule issued by the agency years earlier failed to properly protect the endangered North Atlantic right whales from lobster fishing equipment. In April 2020, a federal judge ruled in favor of the groups, ordering the NMFS to issue tighter restrictions.

“Right whales have been getting tangled up and killed in lobster gear for far too long,” Kristen Monsell, the oceans program litigation director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said at the time. “This decision sends a clear signal that federal officials must protect these desperately endangered animals from more painful and deadly entanglements before it’s too late.”

Read the full article at Fox News

Feds deny Bering Sea Crabbers’ request for emergency area closure

January 23, 2023 — The National Marine Fisheries Service denied a request for emergency action to close red king crab habitat areas to all fishing gears, ruling that “available evidence does not support a finding that the proposed emergency regulations would address the low abundance and declining trend of mature female Bristol Bay red king crab.”

The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers association filed the emergency petition Sept. 28, days widespread fishery shutdowns were ordered in response to declining red king and opilio. The crabbers sought closures in red king crab savings areas, “to protect Bristol Bay red king crab and their habitat at a time of historically low crab abundance,” according to NMFS’ announcement Friday that the petition was rejected.

The red king crab savings area was established in 1996. It is permanently closed to bottom trawling but is open to pelagic trawling, pot fishing, and longlining. The crab fleet, facing a virtually complete shutdown, asked for a Jan. 1 to June 30 closure to keep away all gears, contending that all bycatch and habitat impacts need to be addressed.

In a response Friday afternoon, the Bering Seas Crabbers said NMFS is discounting the effects of other gear types

Read the full article at the National Fisherman