Saving Seafood

Retention Limit of Aggregated Large Coastal Shark and Hammerhead Shark Management Groups Increased to 36 Sharks per Trip Effective July 16th

July 17, 2017 — The following was released by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission:

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has increased the retention limit for the commercial aggregated large coastal shark (LCS) and hammerhead shark management groups (Appendix 1) for directed shark limited access permit holders in the Atlantic region from 3 to 36 LCS (other than sandbar sharks) per vessel per trip effective July 16, 2017. The revised retention limit will remain in effect for the rest of the 2017 fishing season or until NMFS announces another adjustment to the retention limit.

This action is intended to promote equitable fishing opportunities in the region, while allowing quota to be harvested throughout the year. All other retention limits and shark fisheries remain unchanged in the Atlantic region.

As agreed upon by the Commission’s Coastal Sharks Management Board, the Commission will follow NMFS for in-season changes to the commercial retention limit. Therefore, no more than 36 LCS other than sandbar sharks per vessel per trip may be retained from the aggregated LCS and hammerhead management groups by a state licensed fishermen effective July 16, 2017.

The Federal Register commercial retention limit notification can be found at: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/species/sharks/news/shark_news_2017.html. 

Shark landings can be found at: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/sfa/hms/species/sharks/Landings/index.html.

Please contact Kirby Rootes-Murdy, Senior Fishery Management Plan Coordinator, at (703) 842-0740 or krootes-murdy@asmfc.org if you have questions.

A PDF of the announcement can be found here.

Environmental group sues after Trump administration scraps effort to protect West Coast sea animals

July 14, 2017 — An environmental group has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s withdrawal of proposed limits on the number of endangered whales, dolphins and sea turtles that can be killed or injured by sword-fishing nets on the West Coast.

Oceana Inc., which lodged the case late Wednesday in Los Angeles, alleges that the government violated required procedures for rescinding the proposed caps that had been recommended in 2015 by the federal Pacific Fishery Management Council.

Named as defendants in the U.S. District Court case are Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“The withdrawal of this important protection for whales, sea turtles, and other species is plainly illegal,” said Mariel Combs, Oceana’s attorney. “The law requires the fisheries service to respect the fishery management council’s expertise in managing fisheries.”

Read the full story at the Los Angeles Times

Feds extend comment period on seismic testing in the Atlantic

July 5, 2017 — The public is being given 15 more days to comment on applications by five companies to do seismic airgun surveys for oil and natural gas deposits in the Atlantic Ocean.

The National Marine Fisheries Service on Wednesday announced the extension of the comment period to July 21.

Five Houston-based survey companies are seeking “incidental harassment authorizations” that allow them to disturb or harm marine mammals during the course of their airgun surveys.

The applications had been denied by President Barack Obama’s administration, but were revived under President Donald Trump, who has said he favors oil and gas exploration along the Atlantic Coast.

Last week, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that federal officials have begun the process of developing a new five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program. Initial public comments on the 2019-2024 plan also are being taken.

Read the full story at The Virginian-Pilot

War Games Planned for East Coast and Rhode Island Waters

July 5, 2017 — The Navy intends to fire missiles, rockets, lasers, grenades and torpedoes, detonate mines and explosive buoys, and use all types of sonar in a series of live war exercises in inland and offshore waters along the East Coast.

In New England, the areas where the weapons and sonar may be deployed encompass the entire coastline, as well as Navy pier-side locations, port transit channels, civilian ports, bays, harbors, airports and inland waterways.

“The Navy must train the way we fight,” according to a promotional video for what is called “Atlantic Fleet Training and Testing Phase III.”

An environmental impact study of the war games was released June 30. Public comment is open until Aug. 29. A public hearing is scheduled for July 19 from 4-8 p.m. at Hotel Providence. Comments can be submitted online and in writing, or through a voice recorder at the hearing.

The dates and exact locations of the live weapon and sonar exercises haven’t yet been released. In all, 2.6 million square miles of land and sea along the Atlantic Coast and Gulf of Mexico will be part of the aerial and underwater weapons firing.

Read the full story at ecoRI News

The Bipartisan Fight for Quieter Oceans

July 5, 2017 — Last night, to celebrate the fourth of July, the air over the U.S. filled with fireworks. The noise they created was extremely loud and, mercifully, brief. But imagine having to listen to even louder explosions once every ten seconds, for days or weeks on end. Starting this fall, that may be the new reality for whales, fish, and other marine life off the eastern seaboard, if the Trump administration’s plans go ahead.

Following the president’s executive order to open the Atlantic to offshore drilling, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) is set to permit five companies to begin seismic airgun blasting—an old but controversial technique for detecting reserves of oil and gas. Ships will tow an array of 24 to 36 cannons behind them along with streamers of underwater microphones. The cannons create explosions by releasing pressurized gas, while the microphones detect the echoes of these detonations to pinpoint petroleum deposits beneath the ocean floor.

Each airgun produces up to 180 decibels of noise, making them around 1,000 times louder than nearby fireworks. And each will go off five or six times a minute, for months at a time, from the back of slow-moving ships that crisscross 90,000 kilometres of Atlantic waters from New Jersey to Florida. There is clear evidence that noise of this magnitude kills or perturbs marine life at every scale—from titanic whales to tiny plankton. It “poses an unacceptable risk of serious harm to marine life… the full extent of which will not be understood until long after the harm occurs,” said a group of 75 marine scientists in 2015.

Read the full story at The Atlantic

‘Fishal recognition’ for better fisheries management

June 29, 2017 — To monitor fish stocks in about 3 million square miles of ocean including the North Pacific Ocean and East Bering Sea, the Alaska Fisheries Science Center turned to facial recognition technology — or more accurately, “fishal recognition.”

Part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service, the center is working to get more accurate counts of marine life by applying the same facial recognition techniques that identify people to recognize fish according to their facial features underwater.

The agency began experimenting with this technology several years ago and is now on its second generation of camera-based trawl, or CAM-Trawl. It has worked with ADL Embedded Solutions on hardware improvements, such as small form factor embedded Vision Boxes — the image acquisition computers — a Quad-Core Intel Core i7 processor to enable real-time processing of image data and waterproof enclosures and connectors.

Before using CAM-Trawl, the traditional method of measuring fish stocks had been to use trawlers to scoop up all the fish in a particular region of the ocean, bring them on deck, count them and then multiply that number out, according to said JC Ramirez, director of engineering at ADL.  “If you did 10 square miles, multiply that by 10 for 100,” for example, he said.

But that method had several shortcomings, including extrapolation errors, high costs and ecological impacts on fish populations.

“They were looking for not only a more benign way to do that, but also perhaps a way that would allow them to cover more regions and get a little bit more specificity on the variations in the data from area to area,” Ramirez said.

Now researchers can pull a rig outfitted with the cameras that are linked back to ADL’s control computer, which typically resides in the wheelhouse. It monitors external sensors such as location, time, pressure sensors and radio frequency identification tag readings. It then, based on sensor input, communicates with one or more Vision Boxes to do the image capture, managing the remote on/off power, clock syncing, and starting and stopping of image collection.

Read the full story at GCN

Is the Cook Inlet beluga population stable or in danger? Depends on whom you ask.

June 29, 2017 — Alaska’s most urban whales have yet to show any meaningful increase in numbers, evidence that recovery remains elusive for the endangered population despite numerous protective measures imposed in recent years. On the plus side, the Cook Inlet beluga population has not declined notably in the past two years, scientists say.

The latest survey of the small and endangered white whales estimates the population at 328 animals, within a range of 279 and 386, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports.

That represents barely any change from the previous estimate of 340 animals, from 2014, but far below the 1,300 belugas that scientists say were swimming three decades ago in the silty, salty water between Anchorage and the Gulf of Alaska.

“Cook Inlet belugas are still in danger of extinction because the population is so small,” said Paul Wade, head of Cook Inlet beluga research at NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service. “The population trend over the last 10 years has been relatively stable compared to the steep decline seen in the 1990s, but there is some evidence the population has continued to decline slightly. We are concerned that the population is not yet increasing towards its former abundance level,” Wade said in a prepared statement.

The newest population estimate comes from the latest in a series of regular aerial counts conducted by NMFS. The estimate is based on thousands of photographs taken from the air a year ago; analysis of those images is a laborious process, so the count that emerged required a full year of work and review, officials said.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Fishing Report: NOAA seeks input on sanctuaries and monuments

June 29, 2017 — In a media advisory last week, NOAA said it’s soliciting public comment on National Marine Sanctuaries and Monuments designated or expanded since 2007 to determine if they should exist.

President Donald Trump’s Offshore Energy Strategy, outlined in his May executive order, has ordered the Secretary of Commerce through NOAA to review whether national monuments and sanctuaries present “lost opportunity” with regard to potential energy and mineral exploration and production.

Many in the fishing community are split about National Monuments. Some believe, as the president does, that profits and jobs should come first. However, a large part of the fishing and conservation communities believe it should be the environment and fish that should be first. Many believe that National Marine Sanctuaries and Marine Monuments serve as a sanctuary and spawning grounds for a variety of sea life and fish and should be left untouched.

For information on National Marine Monuments and Sanctuaries visit NOAA Fisheries website at http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/.

Read the full story at the Providence Journal

Seven Species of Giant Clam on Deck for Federal Protection

June 28, 2017 — The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that seven of ten giant clam species petitioned for listing under the Endangered Species Act need further study. The 90-day review process found that the petition provided enough scientific evidence to move seven of the species to the second stage of the ESA listing process, known as the 12-month status review.

The petition was filed by “private citizen” Dwayne W. Meadows Ph.D., formerly the Coordinator for the NMFS’ Species of Concern Program, who is a conservation biologist and educator, with additional background in SCUBA diving and underwater photography.

Giant clams live along shallow shorelines and reefs in the tropical Indo-West Pacific region. The largest of the giant clam species, Tridacna gigas, grows up to 4.5 feet wide and can weigh up to 440 pounds. “The petition points out that the giant clam (T. gigas) is preferentially targeted for international trade due to its large size and because it is considered a desirable  luxury item in China thought to confer supernatural powers and improve health,” the action notes. “A pair of high quality shells (from one individual) can fetch up to US $150,000.”

A United Nations tribunal arbitrated a dispute between the Philippines and the People’s Republic of China last year regarding maritime rights in the South China Sea, including the matter of China’s poaching of giant clams.

“The Tribunal is particularly troubled by the evidence with respect to giant clams, tons of which were  harvested by Chinese  fishing vessels from Scarborough  Shoal,  and  in  recent  years, elsewhere in the Spratly Islands. Giant clams (Tridacnidae)… play a significant role in the overall growth and maintenance of the reef structure…Excavation is highly destructive, with early reports showing a drop in coral cover by 95 percent from its original value. More recently, fishermen  in  the  South  China  Sea  are  reported  to  utilize  the  propellers  of  their  boats  to excavate shells from reef flats in the Spratly Islands on an industrial scale, leading to near-complete destruction of the affected reef areas,” the report stated.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

Seafood Traceability Rule to Remain in Place, Says Court

June 28, 2017 — As reported previously on this blog, concerns about illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) seafood fraud, led to a proposed rule to establish a traceability program for certain seafood species. The final rule establishing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program was published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Department of Commerce, in the December 9, 2016 Federal Register.

The Program established permitting, data reporting and recordkeeping requirements for the importation of certain priority fish and fish products—including abalone, several types of cod and tuna, red snapper, shrimp and swordfish—that were identified as being especially vulnerable to seafood fraud. The rule requires seafood importers to trace the origin of the fish they import to either the specific boat that caught the full fish or a “single collection point,” to the day the fish was caught, and to the sector of the specific ocean where the fish was caught.

On January 6, 2017, the National Fisheries Institute, Alfa International Seafood, Inc. and others filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging what they called a “Midnight Final Rule.” In the suit, the plaintiffs questioned whether the Department of Commerce cut corners by, among other things, refusing to disclose for public comment the data that it relied on to identify the seafood species subject to the rule and by allowing “a low-level bureaucrat to issue a binding final rule absent a valid delegation of authority from the Secretary.”

In a June 22, 2017 ruling, Judge Amit P. Mehta did not overturn the final rule establishing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program. Rather, Judge Mehta wrote: “The proper course at this juncture—just months before the rule goes into effect—is to defer ruling on Plaintiffs’ broader challenge to the agency’s authority to engage in rule-making and, instead, afford the federal defendants an opportunity to submit a signed statement from a principal officer within the Department of Commerce that ratifies the rule.”

Read the full story at The National Law Review