Saving Seafood

Fish food for thought: New research affects catch limits

December 21, 2015 — PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — What happens when a fisherman tosses a fish back overboard?

It’s not a frivolous question. The government bases catch quotas and other rules in part on the mortality of tossed fish, and there isn’t always accurate data available about how many fish survive the fling. Now, a group of New England scientists says it’s finding that a surprisingly high percentage of the lucky fish might live to swim another day.

Scientists with the New England Aquarium and other institutions want to help the fishing managers get a better handle on what happens when cod, haddock and cusk get thrown from a fisherman’s line back into the sea. The first round of their research, on the imperiled Gulf of Maine cod, found that 9 to 21 percent of the fish died, better than the 30 percent estimate regulators had been using.

That data could help change quotas for recreational fishermen, who like their commercial counterparts must abide by strict limits on some species.

“We found that mortality rates are pretty low,” Dr. John Mandelman, the New England Aquarium’s director of research and a co-leader of the study. “Generally, in the past, they’ve used really conservative estimates.”

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The News Tribune

 

Study: Ropes that break more easily could save some whales

December 15, 2015 — BOSTON (AP) — A study published in a scientific journal says life-threatening whale entanglements could be reduced by using ropes that break more easily under the force of the enormous animals.

Whales become entangled in commercial fishing gear almost every week along the East Coast of the United States and Canada. A coastal study in conservation biology examined ropes retrieved from live and dead whales entangled in fishing gear from 1994 to 2010.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at Gloucester Daily Times 

Rare North Atlantic right whale spotted off Gloucester, Mass.

December 1, 2015 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — Lucky Gloucester residents got a rare glimpse of a North Atlantic right whale this week within 300 feet of the city’s rocky shoreline.

The whale sighted Sunday morning is one of only about 500 North Atlantic right whales left in existence, and though the animals regularly swim along the coast, they are seldom seen.

Researchers have confirmed that the whale spotted off Gloucester was a right whale.

“It’s one of the rarest individuals in the world, so to have this sighting is special,” said Amy Knowlton, a research scientist at the New England Aquarium. “They were hunted nearly to extinction … and they really have not recovered very quickly.”

The aquatic mammals feed on copecods, crustaceans that are abundant on Jeffreys Ledge, about 20 miles northeast of Gloucester, according to Tim Cole, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

 

GLOUCESTER DAILY TIMES: Loss of Research Center a Blow to Gloucester

September 29, 2015 — GLOUCESTER, Mass. — It is difficult to think of the departure of the Large Pelagics Research Center as anything less than a great loss for Gloucester.

Officials from the facility, associated with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst since 2010, announced earlier this week that the center will move from Hodgkins Cove to Boston, and change its affiliation within the university system.

The research center will join UMass Boston’s School for the Environment, allowing founder and director Molly Lutcavage to work with researchers from that school as well as those from the New England Aquarium.

“It’s kind of like starting over again,” Lutcavage told reporter Sean Horgan. “But it’s a really exciting time and we’re really looking forward to working with an incredible cross-section of ocean and research scientists within the School for the Environment. This is really exciting for us to be affiliated with them.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times