November 11, 2022 — The National Marine Fisheries Service is developing an amendment to incorporate the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts ban on commercial fishing into regional fishery management plans.
Originally declared during the Obama administration, partially overturned in the Trump years, and reinstated by President Biden, the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument covers nearly 5,000 square miles of sea floor east-southeast of Cape Cod.
November 10, 2022 — It was a report many were looking forward to – whether or not the United States National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) would decide for or against adding the great hammerhead shark (Sphyrna mokarran) to the Endangered Species List (ESA).
Known for its unmistakeable hammer shaped head and a tall first dorsal fin, these nomadic, generally solitary, and highly migratory species have a circumglobal distribution. The largest species in the Sphyrnidae family, it was listed on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as Critically Endangered due to being caught globally as target and bycatch in coastal and pelagic large- and small-scale longline, purse seine, and gillnet fisheries. Retained by many fishers for its large fins, combined with high bycatch mortality, makes this long-lived predator vulnerable to overfishing pressures. With this evidence, many hoped for good news today. Instead, they received disappointing news.
On June 16, 2022, the NMFS received a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) to list the great hammerhead shark as a threatened or endangered species under the ESA and to designate critical habitat concurrent with the listing. The CBD argued that the 2019 assessment carried out by the IUCN had designated the species as “critically endangered,” which meant “the species satisfies the listing criteria under the ESA.”
October 31, 2022 — On October 18, a federal appeals court sided with the Maine Lobstermen’s Association in granting the MLA’s request to expedite consideration of its appeal of the decision in Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service. The Court rarely grants motions to expedite, according to a press release.
On October 11, the MLA announced that it has retained former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement and had filed for expedited consideration of MLA’s appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in its lawsuit to reverse a scientifically-flawed federal whale plan that will cripple Maine’s lobster industry.
In granting the motion for expedited appeal, the court laid out a timeline that requires all briefs to be submitted by January 10, 2023.
September 30, 2022 — An in-person public scoping meeting on proposed changes to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan is scheduled for Portland, Maine, on Oct. 5 from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.
The event will “collect public input on modifications to the Atlantic Large Whale Take Reduction Plan to reduce the risk of death and serious injury caused by U.S. commercial fishing gear to endangered North Atlantic right whales in compliance with the mandates of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” the agency said in an announcement Thursday morning.
September 22, 2022 — A lawsuit filed against the National Marine Fisheries Service in 2020 reared its head in a U.S. district court in Washington state on 8 August, 2022, and it could spell changes in fisheries management for Southeast Alaska trollers.
The case stems from a suit brought by the Wild Fish Conservancy that challenges the biological rationale in setting allocations of Pacific Salmon Treaty chinooks that local trollers catch.
September 20, 2022 — Scientists and fishermen have worked together over many years to develop bottom trawl survey gear that performs consistently, ensuring accurate and reliable data for U.S. fisheries management.
This summer they have been evaluating a potential way to better standardize survey gear – a ‘restrictor rope’ that helps keep the distance between trawl doors consistent while trawling in different conditions, depths, warp lengths, and gear configurations.
A summary of the project from the National Marine Fisheries Service’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center describes experiments in spring and summer 2022 at sea with scientists and fishermen with long experience in cooperative survey work.
Their main platform was the F/V Darana R, with Captain Jimmy Ruhle, his son Bobby Ruhle and their crew. Homeported at Wanchese, N.C., the Darana R has for years supported the bi-annual Northeast Area Monitoring and Assessment Program bottom trawl survey, led by the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at Gloucester Point, Va.
The NEAMAP program facilitates the collection of fishery-independent information in the Northeast, and standardizes survey procedures to improve data quality and accessibility.
Expanding offshore wind energy development off southern New England will force changes on bottom trawl surveys in just the next few years. The Vineyard Wind, South Fork Wind and Revolution Wind turbine arrays will be built between Martha’s Vineyard and Long Island’s East End.
“Existing surveys will need to adapt to operate in and around offshore wind farm areas,” according to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “Researchers will also need to develop new surveys to fill data gaps created when pre-existing survey locations can’t be accessed. A standardized gear configuration will need to be used so data collected during existing and new surveys can be used, and compared.”
For help with that redesign, the science center went to the Northeast Trawl Advisory Panel, a joint advisory panel composed of Mid-Atlantic and New England Fishery Management Council members, as well as fishing industry, academic, government and non-government fisheries experts. It identified the use of a restrictor rope as a possible way to standardize all Northeast bottom trawl surveys in the region. None have used restrictor ropes yet.
August 19, 2022 — A federal judge in Seattle has ruled that the National Marine Fisheries Service violated a key provision of the Endangered Species Act in 2019 when it published research on the harvest of king salmon in Southeast Alaska that failed to address its impact on a small population of killer whales in Puget Sound.
In a summary judgment granted to the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, U.S. District Court Judge Richard A. Jones on Aug. 8 ordered that an “appropriate remedy” be found, that — while it could limit commercial trolling for chinook in Southeast — will more likely result in a rewrite of the biological opinion that led to the problem.
“I think we’ve won the recognition that this fishery was actually causing harm to threatened and endangered species, and for all intents and purposes was illegal,” said Kurt Beardslee, director of special projects for the conservancy.
The Wild Fish Conservancy filed suit against the National Marine Fisheries Service in March of 2020, arguing that the government failed to adequately address the impact of Alaskan king salmon harvests on southern resident killer whales, whose population has dropped to critically low levels.
The Wild Fish Conservancy says 97% of king salmon harvested by Southeast Alaska trollers don’t originate in Alaska, depriving southern resident killer whales of their primary food source.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game puts the share of out-of-state chinook in the Alaska harvest much lower — 30-80%, depending on the year.
Matt Donohoe, president of the Alaska Trollers Association, says few if any of those are from Puget Sound, where southern resident killer whales spend several months each year.
August 12, 2022 — A U.S. District Court judge in Seattle has found the National Marine Fisheries Service has failed to ensure that Southeast Alaska salmon harvests not harm protected Pacific Northwest chinook and endangered southern killer whales that prey upon them.
The Monday ruling came in a brief summary judgment from U.S. District Court Judge Richard Jones. It is a significant victory for the Washington-based Wild Fish Conservancy, which argued that the National Marine Fisheries Service approved a flawed plan to compensate for the harvest by increasing hatchery release of chinook.
“We applaud Judge Jones’ ruling that is finally calling into question decades of unsustainable Chinook harvest management in Southeast Alaska,” said Emma Helverson, Wild Fish Conservancy executive director, who in a statement called the decision a “watershed moment” for efforts to recover southern resident orcas and wild chinook.
The southern resident killer whales are an endangered community native to the Pacific Northwest that consists of 73 members across three pods: J, K and L, which have struggled amid a decline in wild chinook populations that are a key part of their diet. Some whale advocates have long looked with concern to Southeast Alaska harvests of the salmon.
It is still uncertain what the judge’s ruling will mean for Southeast Alaska fisheries catching salmon that would eventually head south to British Columbia or the Pacific Northwest to spawn.
August 11, 2022 — Republicans, Democrats and independents seeking a variety of elected offices across Alaska appear united by a desire to restrict deep-sea trawling.
In candidate questionnaires submitted to the Alaska Beacon, candidates for statewide and legislative races — regardless of party — say the restrictions are the best way to improve salmon returns on the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers.
“I support efforts to reduce the wasteful bycatch of Alaska’s seafood by Seattle-based high seas fishing corporations,” said Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Alaska’s U.S. House seat.
“Science provides the best guide. However, I think most Alaskans agree it is past time to get high seas trawler bycatch under control,” said Tuckerman Babcock, a Republican candidate for an Alaska Senate district on the Kenai Peninsula.
Their comments were typical of those submitted to the Beacon, and Linda Kozak, a Kodiak fisher who has been following fisheries issues for three decades, said she’s seen a public reaction unlike anything in her career.
“For the first time in as long as I’ve been involved in fish politics, bycatch is a household name in Alaska. It’s something that the public is interested in,” she said.
Though Bristol Bay’s red-salmon fishery is enjoying a record year, fishing for king and chum salmon on the Yukon has been curtailed for a second straight summer because of low returns, leaving traditional subsistence fishermen unable to catch fish. Similar restrictions are in place on the Kuskokwim.
The low returns have been blamed on a variety of factors, including climate change, habitat destruction and bycatch, which occurs when ships catch salmon while pursuing other fish.
July 14, 2022 — A federal circuit court has reinstated a ban on lobster fishing gear in a nearly 1,000-square-mile area off New England to try to protect endangered whales.
The National Marine Fisheries Service issued new regulations last year that prohibited lobster fishing with vertical buoy lines in part of the fall and winter in the area, which is in federal waters off Maine’s coast. The ruling was intended to prevent North Atlantic right whales, which number less than 340, from becoming entangled in the lines.
The circuit court sent the case back to the district court level, but noted in its ruling that it does not think the lobster fishing groups that sued to stop the regulations are likely to succeed because Congress has clearly instructed the fisheries service to protect the whales.
Commercial fishing groups have filed lawsuits about new rules designed to protect the whales because of concerns that the regulations will make it impossible to sustain the lobster fishing industry. The industry, based mostly in Maine, is one of the most valuable in the U.S., worth more than $500 million at the docks in 2020, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Conservation groups have called for tighter laws. Tuesday’s ruling is “a lifesaving decision for these beautiful, vulnerable whales,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity who argued the case at the circuit court.