Saving Seafood

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

Scientists Warn About Effects Of Seismic Blasting Off Of East Coast

June 8, 2017 — Scientists are concerned about a proposal to search for oil and gas below the Atlantic Ocean floor. The proposal comes after President Donald Trump’s executive order to roll back a 5-year ban on drilling for oil off the East Coast.

The National Marine Fisheries Service is looking to authorize seismic air-gun surveys. That means explosions go off in the ocean looking for signs that oil may be available underneath.

The explosions would happen every ten seconds. Senior Science Advisor at the New England Aquarium Scott Kraus said adding sound in the water would be a problem for marine mammals like whales, who depend on sound for survival.

“So they use acoustics for finding food, finding mates, maintain social cohesion, they use sound for migration, they use sound for everything that is critical for their lives,” said Kraus.

Read the full story at Rhode Island Public Radio

Researchers: Where are all the right whales?

February 24, 2017 — MELBOURNE, Fla. — Maybe the right whales are all just in the wrong place at the wrong time this year.

Where spotters typically see 20 newborn North Atlantic right whales, this winter only three have been born, the lowest number of newborns since only one was born in 2000.

Three dozen or more adult and baby right whales usually pass through Florida and Georgia waters during the winter calving season, which runs mid-November to mid-April. This year, only seven whales have been documented.

“Not only is it the fewest number of calves, but it’s also the fewest number of individuals seen,” said Phil Hamilton, a research scientist at New England Aquarium, which monitors right whales.

Scientists suspect a warmer North Atlantic, driven in part by climate change, might be disrupting the density of animal plankton that the whales need to feed, increasing the time it takes for females to bulk up for pregnancy and forcing the whales to scatter in search of food.

“A lot of people are doing a lot of head scratching,” Julie Albert, who monitors right whales for the nonprofit Marine Resources Council, said of this winter’s whale migration.

Read the full story from Florida Today at NorthJersey.com

NOAA: Fishing gear killed endangered right whale

October 3, 2016 — ELLSWORTH, Maine — Entanglement in a morass of fishing gear killed an endangered right whale spotted off Boothbay Harbor last week and brought ashore in Portland last weekend for a necropsy, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Speaking on Monday, Jennifer Goebel, a spokeswoman for NOAA’s Greater Atlantic Region in Gloucester, Mass., said scientists from the fisheries service had determined that “chronic entanglement was the cause of death” of the 45-ton, 43-foot-long animal.

Goebel also said that the New England Aquarium had identified the whale as No. 3694 in its North Atlantic Right Whale Catalog. According to Goebel, the whale was a female, believed to be about 11 years old, with no known calves.

The whale was first sited by researchers in 2006. Since then, the whale has been sited along the Atlantic Coast 26 times, most recently off Florida in February of this year.

According to Goebel, passengers on a Boothbay Harbor-based whale watching boat spotted the dead whale on Friday floating about 12 to 13 miles off Portland wrapped in fishing gear. Rope was reportedly wrapped around the whale’s head, in its mouth and around its flippers and its tail.

Read the full story at the Ellsworth American

MASSACHUSETTS: Lobstermen press pols to ease access to restricted areas

September 23, 2016 — Bay State lobstermen want federal fishing regulators to work with them to ease restrictions on lobstering in Massachusetts Bay and two areas east of the South Shore, proposing new safety measures that would allow boats to continue to operate while also protecting endangered whales.

Local lobstermen and leaders of the South Shore Lobster Fisherman’s Association met Wednesday, Sept. 21 at the State House with legislators and representatives for members of the state’s Congressional delegation to discuss their pitch for preventing whale entanglements without having to remove all traps from February through April.

John Haviland, president of the association who lobsters out of Green Harbor, said lobstermen are proposing to open three sections – representing a fraction of the larger 2,965 square nautical mile restricted area – for parts of the three-month ban as long as traps are retrofitted with sleeves for their vertical lines that would break every 40 feet under 1,575 pounds of pressure.

Haviland said the line-safety improvement proposal is based on research done by the New England Aquarium and Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute showing that right whales would be as much as 85 percent less likely to become entangled in lines engineered to break at those specifications.

“The point is not to repeal the closure. It’s to reach a compromise,” said State Sen. Bruce Tarr, R-Gloucester.

Read the full story at the Marshfield Mariner