Saving Seafood

US Supreme Court turns down marine monuments challenge, for now

March 23, 2021 — Conservationists earned a victory on Monday, 22 March, when the U.S. Supreme Court opted against taking a case that questioned the establishment of national marine monuments. However, Chief Justice John Roberts strongly hinted the court may welcome future challenges of a similar ilk.

The Massachusetts Lobstermen’s Association had asked the nation’s top court to consider its case against the federal government and its use of the Antiquities Act to establish marine monuments, which then-President Barack Obama used to create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument in 2016. While the court decided that the lobstermen’s case did not warrant consideration, Roberts took an unusual step in issuing a statement raising issues about the scope of the monuments.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Noise Pollution in Our Oceans: Can We Turn Down the Volume for Marine Life?

February 24, 2021 — Unlike light, noise is a long distance traveler and can go astonishing distances through the water.  In 1943, the sound fixing and ranging (SOFAR) channel, a horizontal layer of water in the ocean at which depth the speed of sound is at its minimum, was discovered. The SOFAR channel was capable of transmitting low-frequency, long-wavelength sound waves produced by an explosion near the Bahama Islands to receivers stationed near the coast of Africa. Sound waves in the narrow SOFAR channel that are traveling at minimum velocity can go as far as 15,000 miles or more.  Unfortunately for those that live in the ocean, this means their world has become loud – very loud.

On February 5, 2021, Duarte et al., published “Noise Pollution: The soundscape of the Anthropocene ocean” in the journal Science. A soundscape is an acoustic environment and a wide variety of noises make up the soundscape under the world’s oceans. Weather conditions, like storms, wind or rain falling, and geological processes, such as earthquakes or undersea volcanoes, are geophony; the natural sounds that animals and organisms make, such as vocalizations, calls, trills, fins flapping, etc., are biophony. And then there are humans – the sounds we and our human activities contribute to the soundscape are called anthrophony.

One of the most widely recognized incidents representative of the impact of human sound on marine life is the March 2000 stranding of seventeen marine mammals (16 of them whales) in the Bahamas. The animals had beached themselves in and around the islands, some with bleeding ears; six of them were dead. After learning that this had occurred very shortly after US Navy destroyers were using sonar in training exercises nearby, government scientists launched an investigation. An interim report released in December 2001 concluded that the strandings were caused by several factors, but admitted the sonar pings likely dazed the mammals, causing confusion and disorientation.

Read the full story at The National Law Review

Trump plan to allow seismic blasts in Atlantic search for oil appears dead

October 2, 2020 — The Trump administration’s plan to drill off the Atlantic Coast for the first time in more than half a century is on the brink of collapse because of a court development Thursday that blocked the first steps to offshore oil and gas exploration, as well as the president’s recent actions that undermine his own proposal.

Opponents of the drilling declared victory on Thursday after the government acknowledged that permits to allow seismic blasting in the ocean — the first step toward locating oil deposits for drilling — will expire next month and not be renewed.

Nine state attorneys general and several conservation groups filed a federal lawsuit early last year to block seismic blasting, arguing it could harm endangered whales and other marine animals. The court battle dragged out so slowly that, in the meantime, time ran out on the permits.

Donna Wieting, director of the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a court declaration, released Tuesday, that her agency “has no authority to extend the terms of those [permits] upon their expiration. Further, NMFS has no basis for reissuing or renewing these [permits].” The five companies that were granted permits would have to restart the months-long process leading to approval or denial, Wieting said.

Also on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel of South Carolina held a telephone conference with all parties of the lawsuit to determine how to move forward. The judge is expected to declare the case moot because the seismic mapping cannot occur without the permits, said Michael Jasny, who was on the call and is director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Why everything you’ve heard about ‘ropeless’ crab fishing gear is false

August 26, 2020 — Is the so-called “ropeless” fishing gear the silver bullet for solving the perceived problem of marine mammal interactions in California’s crab fisheries?

Several profit-driven environmental groups, including Oceana, would like the public and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to believe these baseless claims.

That’s because these groups are ramping up efforts to force California’s historic and economically most important fishery — which helps create $400 million annually for working families — to adopt expensive, impractical and unproven new fishing gear which would force most crab fishermen out of business.

But the problem is that neither the science, nor any other reliable data, support their false claims. “Ropeless” gear is not a silver bullet — in fact, it’s actually dangerous — and ironically, it still has ropes. Nor are marine mammal populations currently at any significant risk.

Francine Kershaw, staff scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, has misleadingly asserted that “off the West Coast, the number of deaths of humpback whales caused by entanglements are now high enough for the population to slip into decline.”

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman

With US ban on Mexican seafood imports in place, vaquita court case dismissed

April 22, 2020 — A lawsuit against the U.S. government aiming to require it to enforce the Marine Mammal Protect Act in regard to the critically endangered vaquita porpoise has been dismissed after the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service expanded a ban on imports of seafood products caught in the vaquita’s habitat.

U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Gary S. Katzmann dismissed the suit at the request of the plaintiffs, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity, and the Animal Welfare Institute, on 22 March.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

U.S. bans more Mexico seafood imports to protect vaquita porpoises

March 11, 2020 — Almost all Mexican shrimp and fish caught from the northern Gulf of California was barred from U.S. trade March 4, as NMFS invoked the Marine Mammal Protection Act in a bid to stop use of gillnets blamed for entangling endangered vaquita porpoises.

The porpoises’ population had already plunged from an estimated 560 animals in the 1990s to 30 surviving by 2017, when the Mexican government officials banned most gillnets in the area.

But the rule was poorly enforced, and the NMFS import ban puts more pressure on the government to carry out blanket prohibition and enforcement that environmental groups and marine scientists say are the only chance for saving the porpoises.

“Mexico has no choice but to eliminate the destructive fishing taking place in the northern Gulf of California that is driving the vaquita to extinction,” said Zak Smith, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It’s the only hope the vaquita has for survival, and it is required if Mexico wants to resume exporting these products to the United States.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman

California’s ban on shark fins doesn’t stop the trade from passing through its ports

February 25, 2020 — Three years ago, a cargo container purportedly transporting thousands of pounds of pickles from Panama was placed on a Hong Kong-bound ship that stopped at the Port of Oakland on a chilly February night. Hundreds of rectangular containers were stacked on the giant vessel like Lego blocks, but state and federal wildlife agents knew there was something fishy about this one.

Inside, the agents found nearly 52,000 pounds of frozen shark fins, cut from an estimated 9,500 sharks. A cursory inspection revealed that some of the fins were from protected species that require permits to be legally traded. So officials seized the shipment, valued at just under $1 million, making it one of the largest single shark fin seizures in U.S. history.

California may have banned the shark fin trade years ago, but the container is hardly the only one of its kind passing through the state’s bustling ports: A recent report from the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that hundreds of thousands of pounds of shark fins from Latin America transit West Coast and other U.S. ports each year, destined to land in a bowl of shark fin soup in Hong Kong and other Asian cities.

“We think we’ve just found the tip of the iceberg, and it’s a little hard to say how big the iceberg is,” said the report’s author, Elizabeth Murdock, the San Francisco-based director of the environmental group’s Pacific Oceans Initiative.

The wildlife agents and scientists waiting for the container in Oakland on Feb. 10, 2017, had been tipped off by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, whose agents had cracked open the container at the Port of Long Beach. An agency spokesperson declined to comment on what led to the container’s initial inspection, but its contents were a far cry from the “cucumbers/gherkins” listed as the shipment’s tariff code.

The fin trade is driven by the high demand for shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy that has caused the value of fins to skyrocket to as much as $500 a pound.

Read the full story at The Mercury News

Court Upholds Creation of National Monument in Atlantic

December 27, 2019 — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld former President Barack Obama’s designation of a federally protected conservation area in the Atlantic Ocean, a move that commercial fishermen oppose.

Fishing groups sued over the creation of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a 5,000-square-mile (8,000-square-kilometer) area that contains fragile deep sea corals and vulnerable species of marine life. The monument was established in 2016.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit last year, and the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the decision Friday.

The appeals panel brushed aside arguments that federal law governing monuments applies only to land, not oceans; that the area of the ocean is not “controlled” by the federal government; that it is not compatible with National Marine Sanctuaries Act; and that it is not the “smallest area compatible” with management goals.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The New York Times

Bottom-trawling fishing severely restricted off West Coast starting in January

November 19, 2019 — The most extensive ban on bottom trawling — dragging weighted nets on the sea floor — became law Tuesday after fishing groups and environmentalists agreed to protect more than 140,000 square miles of seafloor habitat along the West Coast, including beds of lush coral around the Farallon Islands.

The new regulations, which will take effect Jan. 1 after being published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, will restrict fishing over 90% of the seafloor along the coast from Canada to Mexico, the largest contiguous area protected from bottom trawling in the world.

At the same time, about 3,000 square miles of sandy seafloor previously closed to fishing under the 2002 Rockfish Conservation Area rules were reopened after it was determined that rockfish populations had recovered in those areas.

“It’s monumental,” said Geoffrey Shester, the senior scientist for the conservation group Oceana, which has fought for years to limit bottom trawling, long considered the most damaging method of fishing in the ocean. “It puts the West Coast at the top of the barrel for global leadership in protecting our seafloor.”

Read the full story at the San Fransisco Chronicle 

Tribes, environmental groups sue to stop mine in Alaskan salmon spawning areas

October 9, 2019 — Five native, business and environmental organizations sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday over a proposed controversial Alaska gold and copper mine that the Trump administration has backed after it reversed an Obama-era decision that stopped the project due to environmental concerns.

On Tuesday the five groups, representing 31 tribes and tribal governments as well as a seafood development association and hundreds of commercial fishing interests, all sued the EPA in federal court in Anchorage, Alaska, over the administration’s lifting of the Obama EPA 2014 Clean Water Act protections. The Trump administration in late July lifted the Obama EPA’s roadblock on the massive proposed Pebble mine, allowing the project to largely move forward towards the permitting process.

On Wednesday a similar lawsuit was filed against the EPA by more than a dozen other environmental groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, Defenders of Wildlife, the National Parks Conservation Association and SalmonState. Like the lawsuit filed Tuesday, these environmental groups Wednesday allege the EPA broke the law when it recently withdrew the Obama-era protections that had stopped the mine.

Read the full story at CNN