National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Archives - Page 201 of 260

Less whale tours, dams: Washington task force returns with guidance on Tuesday

November 13, 2018 — Gov. Jay Inslee first assembled the group in March, inviting representatives from tribal, federal, local and other state governments, as well the private and non-profit sectors, to come together and develop longer-term action recommendations for orca recovery and future sustainability.

The task force’s main goals were to reduce the harm of the three main challenges facing orcas: pollution; lack of access to their primary prey, the chinook salmon; and boat traffic noise.

And though it’s only been about six months since Gov. Jay Inslee created a task force to draw up some guidelines about how to help the local Southern Resident orca population, it feels like a different world for the whales.

The pods had a rocky summer, starting with the latest census data showing that their population had dipped to a 30-year low, having lost 25 percent of the local orcas since the 1990s. Shortly after that, Tahlequah made headlines around the world when she swam with the body of dead calf for a week, covering 1,000 miles.

Later in the summer, the youngest member of the J-pod fell ill. Despite many researchers attempting to help get her back up to fighting weight, her disappearance and assumed death marked another disheartening chapter to the summer of the Southern Residents.

It’s especially discouraging considering that the outlook is a lot sunnier up north — the Northern Resident orca population has doubled since 1974, to a total of 309.

But the end of the summer brings a few bright spots: Multiple Southern Residents appear to be pregnant, and the task force’s guidelines are finally being filed.

“I look at 2018, and I hope this is the low point,” Barry Thom, regional administrator for NOAA fisheries West Coast Region, said a hearing regarding the orcas in Friday Harbor earlier this year. “The clock is running out on killer whale recovery, and it is heart wrenching to see.”

Draft recommendations released for public comment include significantly increasing investment in restoration and acquisition of habitat in areas where chinook salmon stocks most benefit Southern Resident orcas, immediately funding acquisition and restoration of nearshore habitat to increase the abundance of forage fish for salmon, and determine whether the removal of some dams would provide benefits to the Southern Resident orca population.

Read the full story at SeattlePI

Divers haul in large amount of debris from marine monument

November 13, 2018 — A team of divers hauled in nearly 165,000 pounds (75,000 kilograms) of abandoned fishing nets and plastic waste during a cleanup expedition at Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, federal officials said.

The 18 divers left Sept. 19 and returned Oct. 29 from a trek to the chain of isles and atolls located 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers) northwest of the main Hawaiian islands, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which runs the expeditions.

The divers hauled in about 82 tons (74 metric tons), which is comparable to the weight of 45 mid-sized cars or one space shuttle, NOAA said.

The team of divers from NOAA Fisheries and University of Hawaii’s Joint Institute of Marine and Atmospheric Research sorted out the debris Friday.

The group split the debris into categories such as plastic laundry baskets, fishing nets, tires, buoys and smaller personal-care items such as plastic toothbrushes and combs.

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument is uninhabited by humans. But due to its central location in the system of circulating currents called the North Pacific Gyre, the debris has been carried by currents to its shores for decades.

NOAA’s marine debris team has been going on expeditions to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands almost yearly to survey and remove litter since 1996. Cumulatively, including the last mission, teams have collected about 2 million pounds (0.91 million kilograms) of debris.

The litter does ecological damage at Papahanaumokuakea, said NOAA’s Kevin O’Brien, who served as chief scientist for the mission this year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Hawaii Tribune-Herald

Veterans get foothold in marine science through NWFSC internship

November 13, 2018 — The following was released by NOAA:

Two veterans will mark this Veterans’ Day as part of research teams at NOAA Fisheries’ Northwest Fisheries Science Center (NWFSC), one focused on the ecological response to dam removal and the other on the effects of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab and krill.

Katherine Rovinski, who served seven years in the Navy as a surface warfare officer, and Shawna Worley, an Army intelligence analyst for six years, just began NWFSC’s internship program for veterans, known as the Washington Veterans Corps Fisheries Program. The program offers veterans a foothold towards a career in marine science, while also supplementing the Science Center’s research staff.

“This is the perfect opportunity for me to learn more about the science, and what it’s like to work at NOAA,” said Worley, 33, who is working with NWFSC researcher Sarah Morley’s team tracking changes in the Elwha River system following the removal of two large dams that once blocked it. “This is exactly what I’m interested in studying and learning more about.”

NOAA Fisheries West Coast Region and the NOAA Restoration Center created the internship program in 2016 in partnership with NWFSC, Washington’s Department of Veterans Affairs and Veterans Conservation Corps. This is its third year. Barney Boyer, the first veteran to complete the program, started graduate school in fisheries last year on a full scholarship.

Rovinski, 29, said she is impressed at how widely NOAA Fisheries staff share information in all directions, avoiding silos that otherwise can form. She noted regular webinars and cross-division meetings that help employees learn more about science and the surrounding issues. “There is a lot of cross-pollination going on,” she said.

After earning a bachelor’s degree from Maine Maritime Academy and a master’s from the University of Washington, Rovinski spent last summer aboard Sound Experience’s Adventuress, a tall ship that sails the Salish Sea on educational trips for schools and other youth groups. She heard about the NWFSC’s internship program, and immediately thought, “That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’ve known about NOAA since the first time I looked at charts,” so it didn’t need much explaining, she said.

Rovinski is working out of the Mukilteo Research Station, just across the water from Whidbey Island, where she lives. She is assisting with research looking at the effect of ocean acidification on Dungeness crab, a staple of coastal life in the Northwest, and krill, the tiny, plankton-like organisms that support much of the marine food chain including salmon, steelhead, and other key species.

One of the first challenges is keeping the krill alive in the laboratory environment. “We’re trying to recreate the conditions in the environment so they will eat,” she said.

Worley has spent the first few weeks of her internship cataloging samples collected from the Elwha River, where NWFSC scientists are documenting ecological changes following dam removal. She is particularly interested in how marine nutrients move from fish into the environment, fertilizing its productivity.

She is also reading everything she can on the Elwha.

“I cannot say how great it is to have someone so engaged, so dedicated, and so sharp to help support our work,” said Morley, who leads the lab at NWFSC’s Montlake campus where Worley is based. “It’s been a great fit.”

Read the full release here

Warm temps hurt shellfish, aid predators

November 13, 2018 — Valuable species of shellfish have become harder to find on the East Coast because of degraded habitat caused by a warming environment, according to a pair of scientists that sought to find out whether environmental factors or overfishing was the source of the decline.

The scientists reached the conclusion in studying the decline in the harvest of four commercially important species of shellfish in coastal areas from Maine to North Carolina – eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops. They reported that their findings came down squarely on the side of a warming ocean environment and a changing climate, and not excessive harvest by fishermen.

One of the ways warming has negatively impacted shellfish is by making them more susceptible to predators, said the lead author of the study, Clyde MacKenzie, a shellfish researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is based in Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

“Their predation rate is faster in the warmer waters. They begin to prey earlier, and they prey longer into the fall,” MacKenzie said. “These stocks have gone down.”

MacKenzie’s findings, the product of a collaboration with Mitchell Tarnowski, a shellfish biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, appeared recently in the journal Marine Fisheries Review. The findings have implications for consumers of shellfish, because a declining domestic harvest means the prices of shellfish such as oysters and clams could rise, or the U.S. could become more dependent on foreign sources.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Express

New protections for herring but lobster bait crunch imminent

November 12, 2018 — Fishing managers are considering extending new protections to Atlantic herring, but catch quotas for the important bait fish are still likely to plummet before the end of the year, which is bad news for the American lobster industry.

Herring is the most important bait source for the lobster fishery, which is one of the most lucrative marine industries in New England. A recent scientific assessment of the herring population says the fish’s population has fallen in the past five years.

An arm of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission voted last month to initiate changes to try to better protect spawning herring off of New England.

The new protections are coming at a time when the lobster and herring fisheries are expecting a dramatic cutback in herring quota. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is expected to propose new rules about herring fishing this month and implement them by early 2019, when next year’s herring fishing season starts.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bradenton Herald

Key US Shellfish Quotas Will Remain the Same Next Year

November 8, 2018 — A couple of the most significant fisheries for shellfish on the East Coast will have the same catch quotas next year.

Fishermen harvest surf clams and ocean quahogs from the Atlantic Ocean every year for use in chowders, fried clam dinners and other popular seafood dishes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the quota for the two species will be unchanged in the new fishing year that begins on Jan. 1.

The quota will be 5.33 million bushels for ocean quahogs and 3.4 million bushels for surf clams. The quota for Maine ocean quahogs will be limited to 100,000 Maine bushels, which is also the same as the current year.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at U.S. News

Study says ocean oscillation changes reduced shellfish landings

November 6, 2018 — For years, Maine shellfish harvesters have been complaining that there are fewer softshell clams while arguing that the diggers who go out on the mud flats aren’t the cause of the problem.

A recent study by researchers from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources backs them up on both counts.

According to Clyde L. MacKenzie Jr. of NOAA and Mitchell Tarnowski from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, between 1980 and 2010, documented landings of the four most commercially important inshore bivalve mollusks along the Northeast coast — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops — dropped by 85 percent.

The principal cause, they say, was warming ocean temperatures associated with a shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation which resulted in damaged shellfish habitat and increased predation from Maine to North Carolina.

“My first response is that the article confirms what I have been seeing with soft-shell clams over at least the last decade or so,” Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine Machias and director of research at the Downeast Institute on Great Wass Island, said last week.

The North Atlantic Oscillation is a fluctuation of atmospheric pressure over the North Atlantic that affects both the weather and the climate along the East Coast, especially in winter and early spring.

According to NOAA, shifts in the oscillation can affect the timing of a species’ reproduction and growth, the availability of microscopic organisms for food and predator-prey relationships.

Over a period of several years, MacKenzie and Tarnowski interviewed shellfish wardens and harvesters along the New England coast, as well as examining landings records and other research in an effort to determine the “true causes” of the precipitous drop in shellfish landings.

Read the full story at The Ellsworth American

MASSACHUSETTS: Losing lobster lines

November 6, 2018 — Scientists from the New England Aquarium will spend much of next year testing ropeless lobster gear as part of the escalating effort to mitigate entanglements with right whales and other marine species.

The research project, funded with a $226,616 grant recently received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will involve co-operative research with active lobstermen, possibly including some from the state’s most lucrative lobster port in Gloucester, according to one of the aquarium’s chief scientists.

“We want to get good technology in the hands of fishermen so they can evaluate its potential,” said Tim Werner, the aquarium’s senior scientist and director of its Consortium for Wildlife Bycatch Reduction. “They need to be able to use it and find out what it needs to be functional.”

Werner said researchers already have begun to develop various types of ropeless traps, using different technologies to achieve the same goal of drastically reducing or eliminating entanglements of leatherback sea turtles and whales in the forest of vertical lines stretching from fishing gear on the ocean floor to the ocean’s surface.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

NOAA releases data on illegal striped bass poaching ring

November 5, 2018 — Over the last couple years, news came out of North Carolina of arrests of fishermen involved in an illegal striped bass poaching ring.

Thirty co-conspirators were part of the illicit activity, but only 12 subjects were charged and sentenced in connection to this case, which saw 52 charges in 13 indictments.

This week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data on the results of the investigation and court proceedings.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

Researchers identify causes of decline in shellfish harvests

November 5, 2018 — NOAA researchers studying the 85 percent decline between 1980 and 2010 of the four most commercially-important bivalve mollusks — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams, and northern bay scallops — have identified the causes.

Along with the sharp decline in commercially important bivalves, there has been a corresponding decline in the numbers of fishermen (89 percent) who harvested the bivalves, said researchers with NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service.

The bivalve declines are in contrast to the previous three decades (1950–80) when the combined landings of the same bivalves were much higher and the trend in each of their annual landings was nearly level, decade by decade.

The only exceptions to the declines were seen in the harvest of northern quahogs in Connecticut and American lobsters in Maine. However, the numbers of American lobster landings have fallen precipitously – as much as 98 percent – from southern Massachusetts to New Jersey.

The researchers also found during the course of the study that a number of groups of marine and land animals have also experienced large shifts in abundance since the early 1980’s.

Read the full story at Digital Journal