Saving Seafood

Scientists: Maine coast could see more great white sharks

December 5, 2017 — PORTLAND, Maine — A great white shark detected in waters off Maine could be a sign that the big fish will become a more common sight in the years to come, say scientists who study sharks in New England.

White sharks are near the northern edge of their range along the Maine coast, though they are not commonly seen in the area. One of the sharks was spotted in the waters off Kennebunkport in the summer of 2016, sparking interest in finding out how many live off Maine.

University of New England marine scientist James Sulikowski has set out to answer that question, and he’s making his first findings public. Tracking devices discovered a different, 12-foot great white about 1.5 miles off of Old Orchard Beach in September of this year, he said.

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

 

New Method to Estimate Abundance/Detect Trends in North Atlantic Right Whales Confirms Recent Population Decline

Study confirms need for urgent action

September 22, 2017 — NOAA Fisheries researchers and colleagues at the New England Aquarium have developed a new model to improve estimates of abundance and population trends of endangered North Atlantic right whales, which have declined in numbers and productivity in recent years.  The findings were published in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

Between 1990 and 2010, the abundance of North Atlantic right whales increased just under three percent per year, from about 270 animals in 1990 to 482 in 2010. After relatively steady increases over that time, abundance has declined each year since 2010 to 458 animals in 2015.  The analysis shows that the probability that the population has declined since 2010 is estimated at 99.99 percent. Of particular concern is decline of adult females in the population, estimated at 200 in 2010 but 186 in 2015, the known deaths of 14 North Atlantic right whales this year, and the widening gap between numbers of males and females.

“Although our work directly reveals a relatively small decrease, the subtext is that this species is presently in dire straits,” said lead author Richard Pace.

Read the full story at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center

A new model for right whale estimates

New system confirms population decline as another death is reported in Canada.

September 21, 2017 — NEW BRUNSWICK, Canada — Another North Atlantic right whale death in Canadian waters has brought further attention to the threat of fishing gear to the endangered marine mammals.

“It’s considered a severe entanglement,” New England Aquarium spokesman Tony LaCasse said of the dead female, believed to be around 3 years old. Fishing rope and gear, including a snow crab pot, entangled the pale, deeply cut carcass, estimated to be 36 feet long.

The right whales, which frequent Cape Cod waters in late winter and early spring, are among the rarest whales in the world, with 524 estimated in 2015 in a report by the North Atlantic Right Whale Consortium. The death brought the total fatalities this year to 14, representing about 3 percent of the population.

The carcass was spotted by airplane surveyors Friday off Miscou Island, New Brunswick. The dead whale was towed to the island Monday, and a necropsy was performed Tuesday.

“The key thing is that the animal was entangled,” said Tonya Wimmer of the Marine Animal Response Society in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Aquarium hosting symposium of female shark scientists

September 12, 2017 — BOSTON — Girls interested in marine science will get a chance to hear from women making waves in the field this month at the New England Aquarium.

The aquarium and the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy will host the symposium featuring 10 female shark experts from around the world who will present ideas and research on various shark topics to the general public and a group of 150 high school and college-aged women.

Titled ‘Shark Tales: Women Making Waves,’ the symposium is organized by the Gills Club, an education initiative of the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy based around getting girls involved in science.

Read the full story at FOX 25

Another right whale found dead

August 18, 2017 — There doesn’t seem to be an end to the bad news on right whales this summer. With a dozen found dead this year, most of them in a flurry of deaths since June, the Coast Guard reported right whale death number 13 Monday, 145 miles east of Cape Cod.

On Thursday, the whale was identified by matching the pattern of hardened patches of gray skin with photos found in a database at the New England Aquarium. The right whale Couplet was a frequent visitor to the Cape, arriving here first as a yearling in 1992, and seen in Cape Cod Bay mostly in April to feed on abundant plankton blooms for 15 of the 26 years of her life. The last time she was sighted here was in 2015, and she brought her last of her five calves to Cape Cod in 2014.

“We study this unique animal and it is hard not to get attached to it,” said Amy James, aerial survey coordinator for the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown. “You get used to seeing the same ones come back year after year.”

The loss of females is especially tragic, James said.

The Northwest Atlantic right whales are among the most endangered whale populations on earth with around 500 individuals and less than 100 breeding females.

“All of her future calves, the ones she could have gone on to create, that opportunity has been lost,” James said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

Endangered right whales seeing catastrophic die-off in New England, Canadian waters

The deaths of dozens of whales may be the result of a migration to less-protected areas because of lack of food in the Gulf of Maine.

August 15, 2017 — The North Atlantic right whale, the world’s second most endangered marine mammal, is having a catastrophic year in the waters off New England and Atlantic Canada, and scientists from Maine to Newfoundland are scrambling to figure out why.

At least a dozen right whales have been found dead this summer in the worst die-off researchers have recorded, a disastrous development for a species with a worldwide population of about 500.

“Just imagine you put 500 dollars in the bank, and every time you put five in, the bank takes 15 out,” says Moira Brown, a right whale researcher with the New England Aquarium who is based in Campobello Island, New Brunswick. “This is a species that has not been doing well, even before we had all the dead whales this summer.”

Canadian authorities have documented 12 dead whales in the Gulf of St. Lawrence since June 7, though it’s possible that two carcasses that weren’t recovered after their initial sighting were counted twice. Two more of the rare, slow-moving whales were found dead off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, bringing this summer’s mortality to between 12 and 14 whales, more than 3 percent of their total population.

Humans appear to have been the immediate cause of at least some of the deaths. Necropsy results have been issued for just four of the whales found off Canada, showing one had become entangled in snow crab fishing gear and three were apparently struck by ships.

The whales deaths have prompted Canadian officials to impose emergency restrictionson shipping and snow crab fishermen in parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence – the vast body of water bounded by New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Labrador and eastern Quebec – and an urgent effort by researchers to figure out what happened.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Tenth right whale found dead: ‘This population can’t sustain another hit’

August 3, 2017 — The first North Atlantic right whale to turn up dead in the Gulf of St. Lawrence was a 10-year-old male, back on June 7. Researchers had spotted it just six weeks earlier in Cape Cod Bay, looking healthy.

Another was a vital 11-year-old female that might have added at least five to 10 calves to the dwindling population.

Among the others: Two whales at least 17 and 37 years old, according to the New England Aquarium, which catalogues them through their distinctive white markings.

The 10th and most recent carcass of the critically endangered species found in the gulf was reported Tuesday, a horrendous die-off not seen since the docile, curious creatures were hunted for their oily blubber in the 1800s.

The federal Department of Fisheries said the “unprecedented number of right whale deaths is very concerning.”

It’s estimated there are only about 500 North Atlantic right whales still living, and Jerry Conway of the Canadian Whale Institute in Campobello, N.B., said the losses are disastrous for an already vulnerable species.

“We feel there is tremendous urgency,” he said Wednesday in an interview. “This has had catastrophic ramifications on the right whale population, this number of whales being killed when we only know of three calves being born this year.

“It certainly indicates a rapid decline in the population.”

Read the full story at the Times Colonist

Fisherman killed saving whale recalled as longtime advocate

July 14, 2017 — Members of the marine community in the U.S. and Canada said Thursday that a Canadian fisherman who died freeing a whale from fishing gear was a longtime whale advocate who bridged gaps between fishing and conservation.

Joe Howlett was killed on Monday after freeing a North Atlantic right whale that had been entangled in fishing gear off New Brunswick. A close friend of his said the 59-year-old Howlett was hit by the whale just after it was cut free and started swimming away.

Howlett’s death came as a shock to many in the maritime communities of New England and Atlantic Canada. Howlett lived on Campobello Island, a Canadian island which can only be accessed by road from Lubec, Maine, and he was well known in fishing and marine circles on both sides of the border.

The New England Aquarium said Howlett was a lobsterman, boat captain and whale rescue expert who helped found the Campobello Whale Rescue Team.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Fox News

US bars people from disentangling whales after Canadian’s death

July 13, 2017 — U.S. officials are temporarily barring anyone from approaching an entangled whale after a Canadian fisherman was killed trying to free one in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Joe Howlett, a fisherman from Campobello, was struck by a North Atlantic right whale on July 10, moments after he and other responders had freed it from fishing gear near Shippagan, New Brunswick, on the province’s northeast coast.

“Because ensuring the safety of responders is of paramount importance, NOAA Fisheries is suspending all large whale entanglement response activities nationally until further notice, in order to review our own emergency response protocols in light of this event,” said Chris Oliver, assistant administrator for the fisheries division of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Marine mammals are protected under federal law, which means it is illegal to harass or harm them. Exceptions are made for properly trained people who are pre-approved by NOAA to respond to entanglements or strandings. By suspending entanglement responses, NOAA temporarily is banning anyone from approaching or trying to free an entangled whale.

Disentanglement efforts have been intense this past month in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which is ringed by five Canadian provinces, as seven North Atlantic right whales have been found dead in the gulf over the past several weeks. The causes of death for each one have not been determined. Researchers estimate that the critically endangered species has a population of only roughly 500 individual whales.

NOAA Fisheries and its partner agencies will continue to respond to all other reported stranding of marine mammals in distress, but Oliver emphasized that those efforts are technically challenging and should be attempted only by trained experts.

Read the full story at the Bangor Daily News

Interior secretary visits Mass. to review marine monument

June 19, 2017 — Editor’s Note: At the request of the Department of the Interior, Saving Seafood’s National Coalition for Fishing Communities helped facilitate a meeting between Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and over 20 representatives of the commercial fishing industry. The meeting also included staff members from the offices of Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI):

Capping off a four-day New England tour, US Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke visited Boston Friday to meet with local scientists and fishermen in his review of the East Coast’s only — and highly controversial — marine monument.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, located approximately 130 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, covers more than 4,000 square miles. It includes three underwater canyons and four seamounts — mountains rising from the ocean floor —housing dozens of deep-sea corals and several species of endangered whales.

Former president Barack Obama proclaimed the area the country’s first marine national monument in the Atlantic Ocean in September 2016. The Antiquities Act, signed into law in 1906 by national parks champion Theodore Roosevelt, grants presidents unilateral authority to establish national monuments on federal land.

But now, under President Trump, the fate of the underwater zone is in doubt.

Trump signed an executive order in April directing Zinke to review all national monuments designated over the past 21 years, calling the practice of using executive authority to designate such monuments an “abusive practice.”

Zinke met with scientists from the New England Aquarium and the Massachusetts marine monument’s superintendent from the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the morning, before heading to a roundtable with local fishermen.

“Right now, I’m in the information collection stage, so everything is on the table,” Zinke said.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe